Sarazen's Hunt

by Isabel Wroth

  She tossed the blankets away and followed Kalix out. Zee was asleep on the floor, but they didn’t make it across the room before he was wide awake and wanting to know what was wrong.

  “Feeling claustrophobic, Zee. Just need some air. Go back to sleep, it’s okay.”

  The kid obeyed after only a minor hesitation, rolling over on the palate he had insisted on making himself in front of the low burning fire.

  Kalix set the biometric lock and assured her no one would be able to gain access to the room, or Zhenya while they were gone. He took her hand, and Alec noticed the moment where her muscles tensed to jerk away.

  Relax. He’s trying so hard.

  The thought crossed her mind, and for a moment Alec almost thought it was her own inner voice, but something tugged deep inside her. Pricked at her heartstrings and made her throat close as she looked around, some stupid impulse making her think for a minute she’d heard Meg’s laughter.

  “Alec?” Kalix’s hand firmed around hers, his eyes serious and gentle with concern.

  She opened her mouth to tell him it was nothing, but the thoughts that sounded so much like Meg’s voice came again.

  Let him in. Be his mate, stop fighting him. Let yourself be happy for once, it won’t kill you.

  He must have become truly worried because he was suddenly crowding her, cupping her cheek in his hand, using his thumb to swipe away the tear she hadn’t realized had slipped free.

  “What is it?”

  “This place makes me crazy,” she rasped. “I swear I can hear my sister talking to me.”

  Alec held her breath after blurting the truth out like that, expecting Kalix to laugh at her or tell her she was losing her mind.

  He did neither. He continued to brush his thumb back and forth over her cheek, giving her his absolute attention.

  “What does she tell you?”

  Taken aback by the utter seriousness of his question, Alec floundered for an answer.

  “To relax. To stop fighting you, us, and um, let myself be happy.”

  He gave a hum, his lips kicked up in a small smile. It was warm, tender, and so was the kiss he touched to her brow.

  “I agree wholeheartedly with your sister then.”

  “You don’t think I’m crazy?”

  “Not at all. Come, I have something to show you.”

  Kalix kept her hand, nodding to the warriors who stood sentinel in the hallways. They went up one level and down a corridor to a pair of large metal banded doors. Kalix shouldered one of them open and motioned for her to walk inside.

  Unsurprisingly, the room was cavernous, lit by hundreds of candles set along special trenches throughout the indoor garden.

  The air felt different in here, lighter, almost fresh and moving gently through the room. Waterfalls fell from a crevice at the rear of the chamber, spilling down the wall into a shallow pool that in turn trickled out to feed a series of ponds dotted around the space.

  To the left hand side sat a pair of oddly curved benches and behind them, a gigantic statue of a Sarazen beast that looked like it would prowl right off the stone and come to life any second.

  “This is a temple to your god?”

  Kalix made a curious noise beside her, his fingers working gently to squeeze and rub at hers.

  “This is a temple, yes, and many do regard this creature as their god. It is said this beast here was the very first of what later became the Sarazen people. I was taught to think of the Beast differently.

  “My sire was with me when I struggled with my first change. It came earlier than expected, I was much younger than most.

  “I was frightened and certain I wasn’t strong enough to shift. Certain I would die before ever making the transformation.

  “I remember wondering why that made my sire laugh, and he told me even the Great Beast had once suffered through his first shift, only backwards from beast to male.

  “Just days before, my sire showed me a wooden carving made by the sire of his sire, a toy we played with. It looked much like this,” Kalix nodded to the statue, “only smaller. When I did begin my transformation, my sire told me to see myself as that same great animal, to keep the image of it in my mind and allow myself to become my beast.”

  Kalix shot her a quick smirk, “I recall being quite proud of myself when I shifted and was so much larger than the carving.

  “I don’t remember much of my youth before the uprising, but I do know the Beast wasn’t a god my family prayed to. He was a creature to be emulated. Be strong like the Beast. Be fierce like the Beast.

  “I remember my sire would sit beside me in the darkness of my room and his voice, soothing my fears. ‘If you are frightened, remember the first of us, where you come from, and have no fear.’”

  Alec reached up to touch the cold stone, her fingertips finding the fine grooves the artist had carved to give life to the fur of the creature.

  She walked around the statue entirely, studying it, listening to the affection in Kalix’s voice as he recounted memories from his childhood.

  The only good memories she had of her own childhood involved Meg, and Clary’s parents. Alec had stopped being jealous of other people with caring mothers and fathers a long time ago, but she still felt a punch of emotion all the same.

  “It sounds like your father loved you very much.”

  “He did.”

  “How did you do it?” she murmured, hugging herself while she looked into the snarling face of the stone cat.

  Kalix’s heat touched her back before his hands curved over her shoulders.

  “Do what?”

  What would it be like to let him take her weight, to hold her up, to not be—

  Such a hardass? Just give a little, Alec. Just try.

  So it was official. As her anger faded and the grief set in, Alec was going insane.

  “Alec?”

  His voice, the vibration of his words on her back made her blink. It took effort to unlock the muscles in her knees, conscious thought to allow him to hold her.

  His arms were warm and strong, strong enough to hold her up when all she wanted to do was run from the room and chase down the ghost of her sister’s voice.

  Alec sucked back her tears and tried to remember what she had intended to ask.

  “Succeed when everyone around you slandered your father, your family?”

  “Because no matter what they said, true or false, my sire, my mother, my brothers? I knew nothing of the politics or the friction between the clans as a cub.

  “All I knew was that I had been loved. So I held the memories close, and I remembered what my sire told me. To be strong and have no fear.”

  “To be a warrior,” Alec murmured.

  “Yes. There were times when it was harder than others to remember. Sometimes when it got too dark, all I wanted to do was escape the barracks and run home.

  “I felt like the walls and the cots with the other cubs beside me would suffocating me.

  No one understood, or cared enough to try, so sometimes I did escape.

  “I only ever made it as far as the rooftop, and I was always alone. Some nights the trainers assigned to teach us left me be, and those nights of their neglect were some of my most cherished moments.”

  “Why?”

  Kalix didn’t immediately answer her, turning her so he could bend and pick her up, cradling her like a child as he carried her over to the curved stone benches.

  He sat, settling her between his thighs and lay back with her, holding her steady while he loudly commanded the room to illuminate.

  Only it wasn’t light that filled the temple. She gasped in awe as the shadowy ceiling was suddenly covered with stars and planets. A far more sophisticated hologram of the heavens than Alec had ever seen.

  “My mother loved the stars. We used to lay on the roof of our den and she would tell me the story of how our ancestors became stars once they gave their last breath.

  “She told me those same stars we had once used to n
avigate across the continents, before the Sarazen people became technologically advanced, were because those who had come before us loved us enough to light the way home.

  “So those moments alone on the rooftop of the barracks, I looked for my way home. I looked for stars I had never seen before, hoping perhaps I could tell, that I would just know somehow which stars my parents and siblings had become.

  “Some nights I swear I could hear my mother’s voice in my ear, telling me I could never be alone so long as there were stars left to shine. My father’s voice, telling me to be strong and have no fear.”

  Moved beyond anything Alec had experienced thus far, she stayed quiet and let herself feel. Let herself listen to the deep rhythmic cadence of Kalix’s voice while he stretched his arm up to show her the constellations his mother had taught him to navigate by.

  She watched him trace the shapes of animals and birds and allowed herself to relax. To imagine the child Kalix had been, lying out on a roof somewhere alone, looking up to the stars for his family. How lonely he must have been.

  How every word he had spoken was evidence to support the fact that though their situations had been different, he did indeed understand what it felt like to be an outcast among his own people.

  To be alone.

  She realized how hard he must have struggled and fought for a place to belong, and once he had attained a place of esteem and honor, how difficult it might have been to give it all up. For the first time since learning of his abandonment of her, Alec tried to understand.

  To acknowledge as hard of a struggle as it had been for her to find a place to belong in a new world, to have a purpose now that every reason she had for fighting was moot, Kalix had been struggling in a similar manner. Only for much longer.

  As many times as she had been told how long lived the Sarazen people were, their rate of time explained and compared to the human measurement of months and years, it still baffled her that a fair number of the warriors she had met were between the ages of eight and twelve hundred years old.

  Clary had told her Kalix had been born in the same decade as Tarek, which put Kalix closer to that twelve hundred year mark. If he had spent even half of that time fighting for a place within his community, for respect among his peers, or even acknowledgment of his loyalty as a warrior, what right did Alec have to be upset with him for wanting to keep the position he had struggled to attain for so long?

  She couldn’t know what she might have done differently if Kalix had gone and staked his claim on her back on board his warship.

  The moment he had spilled the blue crystals into her palm and explained where they had come from, if he had opened his arms to her then, maybe she would have fallen into them. Maybe she would have lashed out later and blamed him for trying to take advantage of her pain.

  Did it matter now? He was here now and he was trying.

  Sensing the change in her mood, he dropped his arm from pointing at another cluster of stars to rest on her belly.

  He was making a habit of that, touching her, finding ways to slip his fingers beneath the edge of her shirt to rub at her skin. It was distracting, though it was a habit she would be hard pressed to say she didn’t like.

  His hand spread on her stomach, his fingertips spreading back and forth, drawing the weirdest sound from inside her.

  Alec startled, the purr that vibrated out of her own throat turning to a choked gargle when she tried to stop.

  Kalix chuckled, curving his palm around her throat gently. “That sound was very sweet, mate.”

  “Sweet? I just made a sound no human throat is supposed to make!”

  He laughed in earnest now, rearranging her so she was laying on top of him, face to face.

  “Alec? You are no longer altogether human.”

  He took her hand, spreading his fingers between hers, looking at her blunt fingernails. He squeezed each of her knuckles gently to release her claws, shaking his head with a bemused little smile on her face.

  “I pity the person stupid enough to forget it.”

  *****

  Kalix wondered if Alec could tell yet their bond strengthened enough to allow their emotions to flow back and forth between them.

  He wanted to give her time to acclimate to it, but they were on their way to meet with the Asho and as he could sense Alec’s apprehension, Kalix did his best to share his calm with her.

  She projected a beautifully strong female on the outside, not a scent to betray her otherwise, but inside she was a seething mess of emotions. Chief among them was uncertainty.

  Kalix knew the blame for that lay at his feet, insinuating others among the community would have reason to fear Alec, or perhaps it was a residual discomfort from this morning.

  Her reaction to the gifts Kalix and Zhenya had presented her with to celebrate her day of birth.

  Alec had been very careful to conceal the devastation she had felt when she had come out of their sleeping quarters. It was the moment he had realized their bond had formed in truth, as agony had speared right through him.

  Somehow despite her pain, Alec had smiled when Zhenya had loudly announced,

  “Happy birthday!” and held out a sweet cake the cub had somehow managed to acquire from Ne’tare.

  She had even laughed a little when Zhenya had bemoaned the fact that Sarazens did not have candles small enough to be placed on top of the cake, trying to cover his nervousness with a joke to say Alec’s cake might catch on fire.

  Kalix had no idea what placing candles on a cake symbolized, but the antics of the cub had caused Alec to laugh.

  To hear it made Zhenya grow a little emotional himself, and Alec’s devastation had turned to a sweeter, softer sorrow.

  The cub had distracted her with his gift, something Zhenya called a utility belt. The cub blushed with pride as he explained the many uses of his creation, his cheeks bright when Alec put it on and declared it to be the most amazing thing Zhenya had made yet.

  Kalix had opted to give only one of his gifts, despite the fact he had brought many, and as luck would have it the twelve blades no longer than Alec’s palm he had purchased at the market fit perfectly into the pockets on her belt.

  Alec had been surprised by his gift, her eyes widening with recognition, then shot to him with astonishment.

  “These are from the market we went to the other day.”

  Kalix shrugged, attempting to conceal his relief at her reaction. “You spent a great deal of time perusing the table of weapons, but continued to return to those with interest.”

  She shocked him with the shy kiss she brushed across his cheek, thanking him softly before turning to Zhenya and demanding cake for breakfast.

  Kalix had stood rooted to the spot for a moment, attempting to understand the burst of feeling he had experienced, uncertain he could even define what it was.

  Walking toward the secure room the Asho had taken as his command center, Kalix was still not sure if that roil of tender emotion had come from him, or from Alec.

  She stopped suddenly in the hallway, which of course meant he stopped as well, concerned by the frown on her face.

  He immediately tried to decipher what she was feeling, but there were so many things still rioting around inside her, he had difficulty.

  “Is something wrong?” he glanced around at the warriors escorting them, glad when they obeyed the flick of his chin and withdrew to a respectful distance.

  Alec didn’t seem to notice or care, staring at their joined hands for a moment before looking up at him.

  “No. Before we go in, I just wanted to say, thank you.” When he tilted his head curiously, wondering what she could possibly be thanking him for, she tugged at her lip with her blunt little teeth and turned pink with a lick of embarrassment.

  “For this morning. But more for last night. I don’t know how you knew, but I was thinking of how much I needed the wind and sky, and that place you took me was perfect.”

  He hummed as understanding dawned, bending to rub
his nose alongside hers, unashamed to give her a soft rumble of affection.

  “I am very glad you found it so pleasing. It would be no hardship to install a holo-view in your quarters at the fortress with the same view.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “Good. Come, we must not be late.”

  As soon as they crossed the threshold of the command room, Clary pounced to envelop Alec in a tight hug, murmuring a very soft, kind happy birthday in her ear.

  Kalix experienced Alec’s surprise, her sorrow, her uncertainty, the war of discomfort and gratitude for the Asho’na’s embrace.

  Alec returned Clary’s hug, fighting to maintain her composure despite how emotionally off balance she was.

  Kalix grew concerned that today might have been the wrong day for this, or at least too much for Alec to endure with her normal tenacity.

  The females exchanged their pleasantries before they all took their seats, though Alec did not sit in his lap the way Clary crawled comfortably onto Tarek’s.

  Kalix could tell this gave Alec pause, her emotions flowing freely between them enough for Kalix to understand she was as curious as she was put off.

  There was no denying Kalix longed for the day when Alec felt so comfortable as to openly share such affection and solidarity with him.

  “So, what has prompted this meeting?” Tarek asked, giving nothing away in expression or scent to display his thoughts.

  Trained to come to the point as quickly as possible, Kalix began to explain. “Alec had an altercation with—”

  “It was not an altercation,” Alec interrupted, scowling at him. Sinking into her chair a bit more when he lifted his brow at her and fought not to smile.

  “Very well, an incident which required her to reprimand—”

  Alec interrupted again and explained for herself what had happened. “I got pissed off that Jonas was sticking his nose in my business again. Apparently he thought he needed to tell Kalix how to deal with me after my first shift, insinuating I might be irrationally emotional or something, and I decided I’d had enough of his meddling. I told Jonas in plain terms what I would do if he overstepped like that again.”

  Clary sighed as though she understood Alec’s displeasure perfectly. Tarek merely blinked.