The female sniffled and looked up at him with large, watery eyes, a smile twisting her lips, revealing the broken remains of her teeth.
“Yes, yes. Please. I want that. Can I go now?”
“Of course, Essi. Right away. We won’t delay a moment longer.”
Essi bowed her head, her body sagging with relief. She seemed unaware as he pulled a knife from his belt. Arie bit back a gasp as Merik slashed the blade over the woman’s neck. Essi’s eyes widened in panic and horror, her body twisting wildly as she choked on her own blood before she fell to the ground. Her body convulsed, and then she was gone. Arie silently cried from where she cowered at the other side of the tent.
Merik glanced around, impatience drawn tight over his features as he hunted for a scrap of cloth. Seizing upon a bit of material, he wiped Essi’s blood off him as if it were a terrible inconvenience that he had dirtied himself in such a way. He glanced over at Arie and laughed.
“Do not look so disturbed, girl. Essi got exactly what she wanted. She is among her people again. The ferals were all killed, all except for her, and her village destroyed. It was an act of mercy to take her life.”
“What did they do to you?” Arie croaked out around her tightening throat.
Merik scoffed and shook his head. “They exist. Like the Ragoru, the ehurmu do not belong in our world. It is their place to be destroyed to satisfy the Order of the Gracious Mother.”
“The Mother does not ask for such things.”
“You have no insight into the desire of the Mother. Our clergy have revealed to us her will, and it is to that we adhere, not the madness of one who has allowed herself to be tainted by them.” He paced toward her; his head cocked to the side as his eyes lit with fervor. “Do not be mistaken, if I had my way, you would be released to oblivion as well, your soul freed and purified from the taint that you welcomed into you.” He sighed in disappointment. “Alas, it is out of my hands.”
The flap of the tent shifted at that moment and a voice drifted in from outside. “Huntsman Elite Merik, a messenger has arrived on the trail from the Citadel. The First Elite Edwar wishes an immediate report on the condition of the target.”
“Very well. I shall be there presently,” he informed the guard, and the flap dropped once more. Merik sighed and brushed a lock of hair off his forehead. “It seems my duties are never complete. We will have to finish this charming discussion later. A guard will be by within the hour with your meal.” The huntsman turned on his heel and exited the tent.
Within minutes of his departure, an adolescent boy no older than sixteen entered and busied himself with dragging out the remains of Essi. Arie wanted to feel sorrow for the woman, but she was numb. The only thing she was aware of at that moment was a sense of gratitude that she wouldn’t be confined with the body of the dead ehurmu. She knew it was callous, and that later the full horror of the situation would hit her, but her grief was too consuming for her to be able to feel anything more.
She sank down onto the padded mat and closed her eyes against the world as she wept bitterly for her loss.
Rager knew there was something wrong when he scented the blood a short distance from the cave. When he arrived and saw his brother lying at the back of the cave in a pool of his own blood, Rager cast aside the rooter he found and fell forward, his body suddenly weak beyond reason. He leaned forward near Kyx, braced on all four of his arms as he shuddered and moaned with sorrow. He crawled forward and lifted his brother’s head into his lap. A loud impact alerted him to Warol’s presence.
“What has happened here?” Warol’s voice was biting with fury.
Rager shook his head slowly. “I do not know. I just arrived myself.”
“Is he…?”
His fingers dug through the thick fur of Kyx’s ruff to find the delicate skin beneath his jaw. Rager felt a weak heartbeat beneath his fingers. He let out a bark of relief.
“No, he is alive! Help me Warol, we must tend to his wounds.”
Warol dropped beside him, lifting Kyx’s arm before meeting his eyes. “What of Arie?” he asked, as he leaned down toward a deep wound in their brother’s side.
“There is no sign,” Rager said as he began to tend to Kyx’s head wounds. “It is like she disappeared completely. The only trace scents of her are mingled with ours when we arrived.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. Once we see to Kyx, I will double-check. We had to have missed something when we arrived. No one can just disappear. We have to find her.”
Rager nodded as he focused on the task in front of them. He was just as worried as Warol, but he also knew that Arie would not want them to hunt for her before they cared for her third mate. Their female loved each of them with the fullness of her heart and he could not bring himself to dishonor that. Nor would he forgive himself if Kyx should die because of his lack of attendance to his wounds.
To his surprise, Warol dropped into silence and also began to work earnestly on their brother. His body was taut with tension, but he bent himself to his task without allowing any distraction. Not even to speak further on how they might find Arie, as he was certain plagued Warol’s mind. Instead, between the two of them they worked in unison, carefully cleaning every wound they came across.
When he finally cleaned the last of the blood from around Kyx’s eyes, Rager sighed in relief. The red male’s eyes somehow remained whole and untouched despite the terrible wounds that ran around and between them that had bled so freely. Still, he couldn’t help but wince. The entire left side of his brother’s face was a network of scars. The fur would eventually regrow around his eyes and down the side of his face, but for now it hurt him just to see Kyx’s face in such a state. Even Warol whined in the back of his throat.
“Kyx will not take this well,” Warol said.
Rager narrowed his eyes at his second. “Kyx will be fine. At least he is alive, and his wounds are healing swiftly. That is something we should all celebrate.”
“How long do you think it will take him to wake?”
Rager shifted his shoulder’s forward with uncertainty. “I am not certain. He could be unconscious all day, or for several days.”
“Let us hope for the former,” Warol said. He leaned close to a red ear and hissed loudly. “All the times you sat by when I was hurt saying I needed to toughen up—it is your turn now. Mend quickly and wake up. Our mate needs us.”
Rager thought he saw a shiver run through Kyx’s body, but he couldn’t be certain. It seemed more likely to be a figment of his desperate imagination needing Kyx to waken. Despite the wounds slowly sealing together under the influence of their saliva, Rager knew that there was no guarantee that their brother would wake. He’d lost a lot of blood. They could still have been too late to save his life.
As the hours slipped by without any sign of recovery, Rager’s sorrow deepened as he began to lose faith that their brother would recover. He foresaw himself burying Kyx there in the soft earth outside of the cave. He moaned low and dropped his head with misery.
“Do not start looking maudlin,” Warol snapped. “Kyx will not give up. He may call me stubborn, but he is the most persistent male I’ve ever met. All that cheerfulness would be hard to maintain if he wasn’t. Who looks that happy all the time?”
“He was determined from the beginning not to let go of Arie,” Rager said, a soft chuff escaping him. “Never wasted a moment to remind us that he was set on keeping her despite our intentions and agreement with her.”
“We should have let him have his way from the beginning. It would have saved us a lot of trouble,” Warol said, scratching behind his ear.
“I will remind you of that next time you don’t want to listen to me,” a weak voice hissed out at them.
Rager and Warol pulled back to stare down at their third. Warol laughed and pulled the injured male up against him, eliciting a pained groan from Kyx. Rager shoved their over-enthused brother away and clasped Kyx’s arm in a gentle yet firm hold of solidarity.
The male blinke
d his eyes several times, the amber orbs glazed over with pain. Kyx looked around, his brow drawing lone with confusion.
“Where is Arie? Did you find the huntsmen?”
Rager pulled back in alarm. “Huntsmen? We didn’t sense any presence of them.”
Kyx shook his head weakly. “They took us by surprise. I didn’t scent them either. Suddenly they were just there. I tried.” He groaned. “I tried to fight them away and keep Arie safe. But I failed.”
“You did as much as you could. What anyone would expect. You fought for our mate and our family. That is not failure.”
“How are we going to track them without being able to follow their scent? I couldn’t smell them until they were trying to pull me away from our mate.”
“We will search every inch of this area for any sign of them. We will begin there. All we need is a place to begin and things will come together.”
“And then we will make them suffer,” Warol growled.
Rager’s blood boiled in agreement. He would make sure that any he found would suffer like no other. He and Warol both lost family to the huntsmen—and now their mate.
Such transgressions would no longer be allowed to pass unanswered. He would not grieve and slink away. He didn’t care if he had to enter the Citadel itself and destroy it, one piece at a time. He would find their mate, one way or another.
26
Arie had been drugged. She didn’t remember eating or drinking anything, but somehow, they managed to do it anyway. She woke with this knowledge as she blinked up at a pristine, elegantly molded white ceiling, trying to pull her thoughts together into some form of coherence. She recalled vague impressions of being seated on a horse, riding double with a huntsman as they left the woods and passed over the mountains, but remembered little else of the journey.
Her mind still hazy, she attempted to put together where she was. It was obvious that she was in the Citadel. Not only because Merik said as much regarding their destination, but because nothing in the village resembled anything as elegant as the ceiling above her. She turned her head, her stomach rebelling at the movement as she became lightheaded. Arie closed her eyes and breathed through it.
Even through the fog of the drugs, she was swamped with a sense of loss. Tears spilled down her cheeks as she recalled the final moments with Kyx. She knew Warol and Rager would take his loss heavily, and would be grieving as much as her. She hoped they would bring her some comfort.
A door creaked, and Arie’s eyes cracked open just enough to see a tall, forbidding woman enter the room. Clearly a lady belonging to an influential family, the lines of her face were set in firm disapproval, not one laugh line in sight bracketing her mouth or crinkling the corners of her eyes. With her pale, powdered skin and her iron-gray hair pulled into a tight bun, she resembled a wraith, reinforced by the ebony dress hanging from her lean frame. The woman’s lips tightened severely, making her thin face somewhat resemble an angry bird as she drew up to the side of Arie’s bed, her eyes narrowing shrewdly.
“So, you are my Elizabet’s daughter. I can’t say that I am not disappointed,” she said with a dour sniff. “But then, I should have expected it with Samel for your father.” She circled the bed.
“I am Lady Vera. You will address me as such. By the laws of Old Wayfairer Citadel, you are my legal ward. You will present yourself accordingly and abide by my rules until you are settled into your own household. Not that I don’t have my work cut out for me. I see nothing of your mother’s elegant beauty in you. Just your father’s crude common stock,” she stated baldly and clicked her tongue as her eyes focused on Arie’s face. “Still, you are not at a total loss—pretty enough, I suppose, for the tastes of some men. All that horrible red hair though, we will have to do something about that.”
Arie stiffened, a hand going up to her hair as she eyed her grandmother. This was not what she had expected when she’d imagined their meeting so many times as a child. Her mother had made her grandmother sound like a great lady, but Arie didn’t see anything great about the woman in front of her. Just a cold, shrewd, commanding woman who seemed bent on wielding complete control over her.
“If it is all the same, I’d rather go home,” Arie replied, refusing to flinch as her grandmother’s face hardened.
“Don’t be ridiculous! You no longer have a home in that hovel of a sanctuary village. If you are referring to the Ragoru you were found holed up with, I refuse to see my own flesh and blood living with those terrible beasts. No, you will remain here and do your duty to your family that your mother refused.”
“Wait, what duty to my family?”
Lady Vera smoothed her wide, voluminous skirts, her smile brittle. “You will be uniting our family with the power of the First Elite of the Order. Your mother was to join our families together, but now you will take her place.”
“That is insane! I will do no such thing. I have my own mates I need to get back to. I have no interest in joining with the First Elite or any other man.”
Vera’s eyes widened with horror. “You joined with beasts? Do you realize what you have done? You have tainted both yourself and our family. I see now that I will have to summon the clergy to see to more extensive purifications. Rest assured you will never see the Ragoru again.”
“They are not beasts! They are good males whom I love and will be returning to. You can’t keep me from them.”
Her grandmother clucked her tongue. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that you have a choice. I will not make the same mistakes that I made with your mother. There will be no sneaking off. You will always be chaperoned by guards within and outside these walls. There are currently two stationed right outside your door. None will have admittance to you outside of whom I allow until the day you are joined, and that responsibility shifts to your spouse. Sadly, you do not have the benefit of Elizabet’s education, which does not make you as suitable a match. You should be thankful that the First Elite Edwar doesn’t mind.”
Arie jerked up from the bed, throwing back the blankets, and she snorted with disgust. “That is what you think. You cannot keep me here against my will. I don’t care if the guards follow me to the ends of the earth—I am leaving.”
A flash of wooziness hit her, making her legs buckle as soon as she stood up from the bed. Her grandmother smirked and shook her head.
“Not well, are you? I’m afraid you still have the sedative in your blood. For your safety, you will be kept mildly sedated while you are in this house. We wouldn’t want anything to happen to you, so please, for your own wellbeing, don’t attempt to do anything foolish.”
“Why?” she croaked, falling back onto the bed, her eyes closed as the room tilted violently around her. “You couldn’t possibly care about me. Why are you so determined to do this to me?”
Her grandmother became nothing more than a shadow as a fog descended over her vision when she stepped forward.
“Because your family needs the connections and wealth that you will provide for us. We are an old and distinguished family in this Citadel, but our affluence is nothing compared to the family of the First Elite. You will open that up for all of us with your joining.”
“So you seek to use me?”
Vera chuckled, the sound worn and raspy like she seldom bothered to laugh, yet there was no real humor in it. “My dear girl, you will soon learn that we all use one another. It is the way of life in the Citadel.”
With a rustle of skirts, her grandmother turned and hurried away, her steps brisk as she made her way back to the door. Arie blinked, her vision clearing as she watched her grandmother slip a narrow hand into the pocket of her dress and pull out a key. Panic swelled in her breast.
The crazed old woman was going to lock her in the room!
Arie pushed off the bed, her feet heavily weighted from the drugs, and stumbled toward the door. The room spun around her but Arie swallowed back her nausea and summoned a burst of speed. It was not enough. The door cracked open, providing nothin
g more than adequate space for Vera to slip out and give Arie a glimpse of the green coats of the guards before the swinging shut again.
The lock clicked, loud in the silence of the bedroom, as Arie collided with the door. Her fingers scrambled against the doorknob, turning it in vain. With a frustrated shriek she released the metal knob and pounded her fists upon the solid wood all her strength. Every strike was punctuated by a raw sob. She hammered at the door with her hands and kicked at it with her feet until she exhausted herself.
Hands buried in her hair, clutching the side of her head, Arie sank to the floor, her legs tucked under her. Everything felt wrong. Her body was strangely scented in whatever astringent chemical she’d been washed in, and even her comfortable leather dress had been replaced by a loose linen nightgown that billowed down to her ankles.
There wasn’t a trace of her life with her mates. Not even their comforting scents clinging to her skin.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, but eventually she forced herself to get up and move back to the bed. No matter how she begged, the guards might as well not have been there. No one had responded. If she was going to lie in a miserable heap, she figured that she might as well move back to the bed where she would be far enough away from the door to be able to react to any potential threat coming in.
She glanced out the window, curious if there would be any opportunity to escape. She was greeted by the sight of a steep drop from a tower room high above the gardens. The view was pretty, and the rich perfume of flowers that drifted through the window bathed her senses in their sweet scent, but it did little to soothe her. Instead, the roses made her eyes sting with tears as it conjured Rager to mind talking about his mother’s roses around their den. With tears tracking down her face, Arie climbed back into the plush bedding and cried herself to sleep.
It was several hours later, the evening sun shining through her window, when a purple-robed priest of the Order came into her room. His dark eyes squinted at her from a round, cherubic face. Arie imagined he would make a passing model for one, if cherubs were beady-eyed sour little individuals with a penchant for using too much hair grease. The guards stepped in after him, taking position at either side of the door, watching silently as he opened a bundle and began to lay various tools out.
Red: A Dystopian World Alien Romance Page 20
