by Poppet
Why the hell would he fix the bike he fucked up?
“Yup, maybe he's feeling guilty,” says Zauran, with a secretive smile.
What the fuck is going on?
“Spill,” I order, leaning over to grab the coffee and pour myself a mug.
“Venix isn't the bad guy, neither is Ellindt. It's someone else. As a show of good faith Venix waved his magic hand and fixed the Ghost, and said he'd see us later so he can magically fix you the same way after Zauran snaps your back,” says Zaria, so sexy and husky it doesn't even sound offensive.
Jeez, do all slakax sound like that when they're pregnant? Looking at my brother, I catch the glint and the faint misting of aqua plyx from his opal black eyes.
Snapping to Aisyx, I notice he has the same response, but darker. That does it, Zena is either never getting pregnant, or I'm going to keep her in the basement if she is.
The first thing that hits you about the slakax women is their smell. There's nothing on earth as powerful and seductive as the scent of their spirit and femininity. It's so overpowering you can think of virtually nothing else when you first meet them. It drives neuri libido over the edge instantly, and all you can think of is boning her so hard she'll be crawling for the next decade. I wonder if Zaria likes it as rough as Zena does?
What the fuck is wrong with me? Snap out of it Sveta, now.
We have honor, if nothing else, even if we are an only male species and they are mostly all female. We were so fucking lucky to land two of them.
The thought galvanizes my resolve, knowing my decision to turn alpha to help Zena is the greatest gift I can give her.
Looking up from my coffee cup, pulling my head into the violence game waiting ahead of me, my jaw clenches when I catch Zauran looking through me.
I can't wait to be alpha because then you can't hear every fucking thing I think, I snap irritably.
Think about my wife like that again and I'll more than break your back.
Wife?
WHAT!
*
Jowendrhan:
She's bleeding red light all over me and it's fucking with me. I know she's slakax but let's be honest, it's not like every mall in Belgrade is packed with slakax chicks.
I fucked Phoebe, and I've fucked Božena, and that's it. So this weird shit she's doing is way out of my normal shooting range, and I don't know how to stop the buzz.
This is all new to me because the only two slakax' I've boned thought they were human, until now that is. And right this second Božena's just blasting me with sexy slakax tingles that start in my marrow and ripple out in constant waves, culminating with the lust leaking out of me.
I am getting high on it, and if my dick gets any harder I'm going to go fucking grenade all over her, and I doubt very much man or beast could resurrect Hump-ty Dump-ty after this one blows.
Unable to contain the urge, I push her away, standing and walking across to the fireplace, keeping my back to her, willing the throbbing boner to lay low and stop being so god damn obvious.
Puke, think of puke. Dirty baby diapers, yeah now we're talking.
Actually, now that I think about it, she's sure got the good end of this deal; she didn't even have to give birth. Fuck, shut up Jo. Shut up! Now all I can think about is how tight her pussy still is and how we could fuck all day and she'd still be game and juicy.
Pivoting to stare at her with the hard-on right back to raging in my leather jeans, I wonder if she still likes being blindfolded and tied up.
“Did I bruise you?” I ask, without censoring my mouth by thinking first.
“What?” she sniffs, wiping her eyes on her t-shirt, lifting it high enough for me to get an eyeful of plump cleavage wrapped in black lace.
Jesus fucking christ help me!
“Ughrum,” I clear my throat, gripping my hair with a tight fist, pulling like a bitch to get a hold on my hormones. “Did I bruise you when we... when we conceived the twins?”
She slumps back on the leather couch, lifting one leg and balancing her foot, knee tented, shooting my gaze right to her slender thighs and the perfect hollow at the top of them.
She exhales, pouting those swollen lips more, and I can't fail to notice her right nipple is hard. Breast feeding. Fuck, I'd give my left one to see her breast feeding.
“I don't think so. I was out of it completely. I was unconscious for two days straight,” she says, looking me right in the eye with those vulnerable blues wide open with delicate trust. “I was just trying to breathe and stay alive while the world insisted on hanging upside down and making me want to hurl my guts every three seconds. I thought I was dying. I didn't even think about my body until I stabilized.”
“You seem different today, Zena.”
“Don't change the subject. Why do you ask?” she says.
That's what I like about Zena, she's a straight shooter. You never have to guess with her cos you always know exactly where you stand.
Something in me snaps and I space hop in a flash to right over her, holding her hands in mine and clamping her wrists in front of her face in a titanium grip, “Because I don't think I've ever done this to any woman. What the fuck do you see in that savage delinquent?”
I show her the bruises ringing her delicate skin, then point to her carotid, “Have you seen your neck? I bit you baby, and I made you scream with ecstasy when I did it. I ripped you open to drink your adrenaline and I did not leave a brand like that on you to mark my territory, and I didn't leave damaging welts, bruises, or marks on you either. How fucking insecure is that wanker?”
How dare he mark and hurt her like this! Why? Branding her with his orange circle right under her skin like a fucking tattoo.
“Why the hell do you care? You fucked off and left me pregnant, turning into a vamp without any fucking help!” she snaps.
“What? Did he piss on you too, to mark his territory?”
“Don't make this about Sveta when it's clearly about you and me. Where the fuck were you Jo? Why did you leave me when I needed you most?”
“I didn't leave you! I was having my bones crushed into a demon smoothie for making you pregnant! I was sent to hades for fucking discipline! I would never leave you! Never!” Torn in half emotionally I'm finally getting the bigger picture. She thinks I abandoned her. “I was abducted, Zena.”
Gripping her face to force those defiant eyes to engage mine, I whisper emphatically over her lips, “You are the best thing that ever happened to me. You have to know I wouldn't leave you unless I was forced to against my will!”
I'm so close I can smell her, and for the first time in my life I have sweat trickling down my neck with the duress of being this close and trying not to rip her clothes off to suck every pore on her body black.
“He loves me, more than you ever will.”
“Is that a challenge?” I drawl low and soft, the fangs extending so far they almost nick my chin, my humanity gone.
I have the voice of a purebred vampyre and the fire is burning so hot in me I'm surprised her wrists aren't smoking.
If there's one thing I can't resist, it's a challenge.
Leaning in to the light she's napalming me with, I sink my teeth into the other side of her neck, giving back to her the bubbling passion she's boiling me with.
This time I'm leaving my mark. Fuck you Sveta.
The gasp of shocked pleasure she exhales in my ear twitches my dick so high I wouldn't be surprised if I speak with a falsetto after this.
*
Sveta:
“No Zaria. You're female, not to mention pregnant - your hormones are spiking enough. You'll get hysterical and interfere. There's a reason why we are a male only race. No ladies allowed at initiation, ever.”
“Don't be so damn sexist!”
“Would you two cut it out!” I snap. “I'm freaking out enough as it is. Zaria, thank you for wanting to have my back on this, but this is one fight I have to do alone without having Zauran's weak link messing up the process. No offense
sugar, but I'm going to get royally broken, and I refuse to distress you or those babies. You are staying here even if I have to lock you up myself!”
“Sveta!” she shouts, as if I just raped her on the kitchen table with an audience.
“Zaria please...” I spread my hands helplessly. Jesus I just want to get this behind me and Zauran's 'wife' is having her tantrum now.
Screw this.
“Aisyx please keep Zaria here,” I order, then looking at Zauran I nudge my head and go marching out the back door.
She won't know where to find us, it's underground in the woods... for a fucking damn good reason.
A solid thump in my shoulder nudges me, and I twist round to spy Zauran racing me, like he did when we were kids.
Laughing, I sprawl in a gangly adjustment into a run, trying to catch up, until we're both sprinting flat out over spongey compost covered in a layer of rich reds and golds formed of fallen autumn foliage, leaping over logs, crunching dried leaves, pounding over day old mushrooms, mulch, bugs, we're just bulleting like torpedoes, a blur to human vision.
Hot damn!
I miss running like this. I miss my brother even more. I wonder if becoming an alpha will make me a wanker too.
“Oi! I am not a wanker wing-nut!” he laughs, showing off, running backwards, flipping me the bird.
Laughing, I launch, tackling him and wrestling him to the dark fertile earth deep in the forest. It's dark this far in and my neuri vision flicks on automatically.
Head-locking each other, I'm breathless with laughter, “What the fuck brat? Your wife?”
“It slipped out,” he grunts from behind the clamp of my bicep, rolling us in a somersault to try and get me to lose grip.
I throttle harder, “Wife? Wanna fill me in? And if you slipped she wouldn't be pregnant now.” I laugh, licking the side of his face just to piss him off.
“I asked, she said yes, I just have to get a ring,” he thumps me, now doing the thigh scissor to get me to let go. He's going easy on me and I know it.
“Romantic wimp,” I chuckle-choke-grunt, throwing him and taking off at a full length sprint into the gaje, down the old molded stairs, deep into the bowels of clammy close quarters, skidding and slipping on the mildew and moss.
Slamming into the ancient underground chamber, my shoulder connects with the stone wall hard enough to echo a boom into the hollow room beyond.
“Are you in a hurry, Sveta?” he drawls, swaggering down the underground passage, not even out of breath.
“Fuck yes! The last time I 'let' you beat me up, I was five.”
“Let me? Ha!”
We laugh, thumping fists, the bond tighter than it has been for months. First and foremost he's my brat, (my brother), my blood, my alpha.
Whatever happens in this chamber stays between us. It will never be revealed, no matter how close I teeter to death. And no matter what damage I incur, I asked him to do this to me, no resentment, no bullshit.
What happens in Višnjica, stays in Višnjica.
Chapter 20
Sveta:
“Wrap my hands up?”
“Yup,” he nods, helping me wind the red strip over my knuckles.
“That's hardly a fair fight Zauran.”
He sits back on his haunches, looking levelly at me. “An alpha fights with his mind, Sveta. Not his fists.”
Hang on.
His serious visage breaks into a wide smile, “Now you understand how Ryan managed to fuck me up so bad. You have zero training to help you. You either have the instinct, or you don't. An alpha is inherent inside you, or not there at all.”
My Adam's apple has suddenly wedged itself into my vertebrae, and I can't swallow.
I am fucked.
We're both stripped down to our boxers now. I thought I had a chance man to man, muscle to muscle. Yes, he has a measly half an inch of height on me and a good couple of pounds of might, but I'm fast, I train... fucking hard, daily.
Blindsided, I stare at the floor, forcing myself to calm, breathe, to harness my plyx into a lasered pinpoint of purpose.
Closing my eyes, inhaling deeply, I know I can do this.
Between the Tai Chi and Yoga, I know I can use the prana and chi combined with my neuri fire, to my advantage. Zauran has no martial training, so he has no clue what a master can do with kyu.
Delving back mentally, I recall the dojo in Okinawa, in the mountains, watching two masters hurl each other across the retreat with chi so powerful it was hot and lethal. All they focused was their minds, their eyes missing nothing, their chi so wide they could feel a threat from fifty feet. Their combat was mind to mind, they did not touch each other hand to hand, or fist to fist.
They are living examples of the power of the mind. And that's what Zauran just said, this is a battle of energy, mind to mind, will to will.
My will is stronger because I'm doing this not for my ego, or to rule a continent, but to save the woman I love from heartache and psychological scars.
I'll do anything. Anything. Focus Sveta, focus and be triumphant by staying humble.
Be the air, the water, the universe.
The pre-combat knot twists my solar plexus. My chi is already tightening up, readying, steeling my body for assault, readying my hands to be three times stronger than they are as flesh and bone. Energy is harder than a concrete block when you know how to form it to your will, with your mind, focussing.
Only the calm fighter is victorious. When you let rage rule your mind, or panic, you scatter, your energy goes everywhere instead of blocking for you, and it leaves you vulnerable.
Chi also knows when to be soft, to widen and run around the immovable, closing it in instead of being toppled by remaining rigid. It's the principle of go-ju, hard-soft.
Yes, I can do this.
Clasping my tethered hands together, I pull my aura in, bottling it, letting it build pressure.
Opening my eyes, I focus on Zauran, who is ready, waiting on the blackened sooty stone floor in true neuri form.
Fuck!
The basics. I'm so freaked out I forgot step one. Become yourself, unguarded.
Releasing the stranglehold I have on my body, my muscles pump out, harden, expand, veins running over powerful musculature as I grow seven inches, my shoulders widen, my teeth extend and turn piranha, and my vision contains pure energy.
This is why we were confused for werewolves. We're built like them, our teeth look rabid, our eyes glow, and we exude light as we become half energy beings.
We are the reason the forests contained tall tales of glowing gods living in the trees, who convene and commune with women, making them fall into a deep sleep, which we call today – compulsion.
We had to breed, find mates, forever it's been with human women, but now the slakax are back and that's just so much better. Light to light, power to power, united we will elevate the spiritually afflicted by joining our higher selves to uplift the vibration of this land. The more slakax appear, the faster we can pull the human race into the fourth dimension and finally rid this planet of fear and violence.
“Stop stalling Sveta,” breaks my reverie.
Snapping attention to my alpha, I bow in respect, ready.
Stepping forward, neuri vigilance is at my fingertips, plyx ready to launch, and taking a leaf from the book of experience, I attack first.
He won't expect that.
Vaulting high, flipping midair with the immense power and grace which comes naturally to the neuri, I flog him with a pulse of fiery plyx, and don't stop. In the dojo we call these plasma balls hadouken.
I'm on the offensive, dancing back and forth, matrixing like Neo off the walls, spinning, rotating, dodging, ducking, pumping an endless semi-automatic magma flare of wildfire.
Hurling fireballs around the room, I focus on each one, aiming at him, forcing Zauran to leap, morph, his body blurring into an endless streaming ribbon of aqua plyx.
Accelerating, the size of my plyx expands until I block his traj
ectory with a solid wall, edge to edge, blockading myself behind an enormous nebulous barrier.
He responds with ease, blasting my energy with petrol green and peacock blue pulses, aiming true and steady, endlessly in the same zone, until my chi physically aches with the assault.
Dropping my guard for half a second, the blast is a deadlock sidewinder smacking its target, hurtling me like a tumbleweed so hard into the wall, something fractures.
Without missing a second he's on me, forcing compulsion onto me with brutal force.
Erecting a mental buttress immediately, I block the compulsion while wrestling with the incessant aqua flood thumping me in places I didn't know I had.
My vision starts blurring, the colors smearing together in a rainbow of luminescent brilliance, shattering the zen within.
Immediately I resort to might, rolling him, head butting, pressing off in a backflip and running for the wall, using inertia to run up it, arc, and glide back over him to roundhouse kick him in the back of the head.
“Alpha or not, a battle is a battle Zauran!” I snarl, guttural and savage, the beast within raging.
“Fine, we'll do it your way,” he rumbles, the boom of his voice reverberating an energy ripple across the room and back.
In warfare we use everything at our disposal. Elbowing his neck, I sprint for the opposite wall to avoid the retaliation already coming for me, hurtling with such acceleration I'm flying off the wall, using the gap to breathe in chi, damaging myself internally, scrambling to reclaim the calm I witnessed in those masters in Okinawa.
Landing on my feet, compacting into the spring-fall to absorb impact, I stop dead when I uncoil, staring at him charging for me with his plyx bombing the entire chamber in balls of fire - all rapid-firing at me.
I am a master, be the master.
What would a master do?
Fuck, come on Sveta, hurry up. Think!
They know they are greater than themselves. They are the universe inside a man.
What would the universe do?
Open up and absorb that energy, returning it by channeling it. Always use the opponent's strength to bolster your own.
