The chain jerks high and tight, acting as both guillotine and noose.
The vision that follows him to his death is one of a filthy First Species, crazed eyes marching over him as the pinhole of light narrows to black, and the ragged cries of Seiger's prized female the symphony that accompanies his last breath.
Then Dirk knows no more.
Chapter 13
Jael
O h my God!” I scream, trying to scramble away. But no. Instead, my palm slaps in what's left of dickhead-donkey's neck, a patch of hot, wet gore glue.
I throw myself back and crab-crawl backward, keeping my butt off the floor, eyes pegged to the cooling corpse on the ground.
Casek had been one of the many chores tasked to me by Seiger. He'd been a shifter I'd felt sorry for. The only one in the entire colony.
Because the others had watched me with greedy eyes.
Never understanding the pain I was in each night as my rapid growth in both brain and physical stature had given me what the humans call “growing pains,” squared. I literally suffer, and have suffered, since I can remember. I have no mother. She was bred to death as is the Mutable way in their treatment of most females in an attempt to gain multi-forms.
Now, I'm in a situation without guards and in close proximity to a male who must hate me—who's been treated horribly. After all, I am the bearer of food that's the waste from what the other males won't eat.
I flip over, hoping if I don't look, I can erase the image of that arm swinging through Dirk the Donkey's throat like a knife to butter.
The guards. Vile as they are, if I can get to them, Casek won't tear my arms and legs off like a despised spider.
Staggering to my feet and ignoring what's on my hands, I run to the door.
It seems meters away.
A strong arm curls around my waist and snaps me against a huge body.
Oh Earth.
The hand I'd given food to covers my mouth, and I begin to struggle in earnest.
“Do not move or scream, Jael.”
I blink back tears, shaking my head. Screaming won't help me. I don't want Seiger to come for me.
Tearing my attention to the window, I think of the many times I've dreamed of leaving this place.
Now I won't. Ever. I'll die in this cell before I can even claim adulthood. My eyelids sweep closed, scalding regret soaking my cheeks and that hand that covers my mouth.
But instead of death, the male lowers me to the ground, slowly turning me to face him, and curves filthy fingers around my shoulders, staring into my eyes.
His are warm amber, slowly revolving inside a brutally fashioned face. Eyes I'd dreamed about. Eyes that I thought held compassion for me. Eyes I'd wished could belong to a real mate like the one's I'd hear about from the other females before they're bred out—not the male who's claimed me. My future.
“Female.”
I jump at the low timbre of the single word.
I drop to my knees, clasping my hands before me and raising them high. “Please, Casek—don't hurt me.”
His smile is slow and cruel. “I will not, on one condition.”
My heartbeats thump away, beating a drumbeat inside my chest, but my eyes remain on his. “What?”
When he shifts his molten gold gaze away from me, I turn to follow his stare and swallow.
The window.
It is only big enough for a small person to slip through. Certainly no Mutable would be able to maneuver themselves through that opening. I'm sure that was the intent when it was designed that way.
“I—,” I place my hand on my chest, “you want me to go through that?”
He nods, dropping his hands from my shoulders and lifting me to standing. “I will kill the guards to allow your escape.”
I frown. This was not how I was thinking this would go. I ask quietly, “But what about you?” My eyes flick to the blood slowly pooling around Dirk, and I shiver. I have witnessed far worse in my short life.
“You will release me.”
My attention returns to Casek. I don't want to help him. He scares me with his half-changed First form and the teeth of a Lycan and vampire both.
I thought Casek would kill me. Now I don't know what to think.
His cunning eyes narrow on me, and up close, my gaze roams over the tiny scars that litter every bit of his skin. “I smell your fear and reluctance, Jael.”
I drop my eyes from his insight, ashamed and frightened.
His finger lifts my chin. “Time grows short. I killed the donkey quietly, but the guards who've grown complacent with the frequencies of your visits will come.”
Rolling my bottom lip between my teeth, I gnaw at it. “Okay.”
“No.” Casek frowns. “You will return.”
A beat of time pounds between us as my palms dampen, and I long to wipe them on the simple black pants everyone in the Mutable colony wears. “Where?” I ask, but in my heart, I know I'll be too frightened to come back.
Casek flicks his bright gaze toward the opposite door from the one I entered. There are only two exits, both secure.
I run my hands down my sides, smearing blood on my top, and the urge to cry is so strong my lungs burn. Finally, I say, “That's guarded. They'll...” I don't state the obvious.
“They fear Seiger. They will not partake of the power of your flesh, not yet.”
I'm not so sure. I'm not so sure that once I let Casek out, he'll not do something awful to me.
The Mutables have taught me caution, though technically Casek is not a Mutable, he has lived in the colony since toddlerhood.
“Have I ever given you reason to fear or doubt me though I've been shackled and fed spoiled meat?”
Oh my earth—how did he escape? “No,” is my honest answer.
Casek cocks his head, listening to sounds I can't hear.
“They're coming.”
His form shifts, and I instantly close my eyes, getting slapped with the hot, sopping proof of his change, cringing from the impact. It's not the first time a male has changed forms around me and I've gotten the brunt of the mess.
After all, there is no respect for me as anything but a future breeder.
I feel his strong arms wrap around me and the motion of walking. Casek lifts me in one arm, and I attempt to wipe my eyes, but his command stops me.
“Don't—reach out with your fingertips.”
I open my eyes, lashes glued together with the gel of his last form. But I've been in worse. Covered in worse.
Not thinking about that right now.
I grip the stone ledge that abuts the lower window frame, the textured stone adding to the grit of my palms.
“Undo the latch.” His voice has gone to gravel as he is now in the gorillan form of the First Species. The same form he assumed when he partially decapitated Dirk—at least his arm was that of a First's.
My fingers slip on the catch, but finally, I twist the casement-style latch to the left and push the frame open. Fresh air swarms the normally dank space, taking the few hairs not plastered against my temples and lifting them.
“Pushing you through.” Casek's voice is sandpaper rough, and that's one of the marks of the partial form; the voice box flattens, and the words come out like they've been through a meat grinder.
I bite the inside of my cheek because as Casek shoves me through the bottom of the window, the motion takes the skin from my back in a long scrape right through the thin t-shirt and bra I wear.
Tears pour from my eyes, traversing the muck of my face. I ignore it all, sinking my hands into the grass, and drag my body forward while my butt gets some of the same treatment as my back.
Rolling over, I heave on my side and face Casek. He's so tall in his half form that he's eye level with the window.
I am free.
He can't get through. Now's the time for me to run and escape my horrible prison where a future of daily rape and baring children, who, if female, will share the same fate as I, and if they're male, will
perpetuate it.
Casek doesn't try to influence me or beg. His eyes train on my form, the promise he forced out of me filling those volcanic eyes. Casek could have killed me in the moments after he took care of Dirk or worse. I'm well aware that I'm about a seventeen-year-old in human years. The only fact that has spared me from Seiger’s attention is that I'm too immature. He wants to get me with child more than he wants to breed me.
But from my early training of the females who remain, that is in there too.
The Mutables of the colony are petrified of Seiger. Casek isn't. He goads Seiger to kill him.
He behaves as though he wants to die.
Casek has been my only friend if there's such a thing in the only hellhole I've ever known.
A howl sounds from the far end of the hall inside the underground cell system, and I feel my eyes widen.
Casek drags his eyes from mine and faces the guards.
Rending flesh meets my ears.
Grabbing the soft grass, I heave myself upright, wincing at the torn flesh of my back, and rear, fleeing.
Instead of doing the instinctive thing I've dreamed about and knowing it's the single worst mistake of my life, I run to the door that is under guard. Without a plan.
Without a hope.
I fall twice, slipping on grass that remains slick with the dew from the morning, and blink at the disarming sunlight, holding my hand above my eyes to see where I'm going.
Struck with sadness, I think of my short life. In the darkness, the bowels of the colony, I've lost all sense of time.
Disoriented but determined, I race to the door that leads to the opposite side of the prison where the colony keeps prisoners and tortures its own.
Rounding the corner of Queen Bee Mill, the stone hedge of Sioux Falls, I come up short as a Mutable hyena yips a greeting. He'd been in human form until he caught my scent. Then, his body exploded in a three-meter radius of blood, sinew, and skin, blasting chunks around him in a halo of discarded flesh.
I walk over it all with bare feet, feeling the mess of his change squishing between my toes. The corner of his lips hike, exposing his pointed teeth in a grimace of menace. His razor-thin lips lift at the edges as his lascivious eyes run down my body. “Seiger will tie you down, female.”
Hyenas are so lineal in their thought processes.
“So take me to him.” Just open the door, jackass.
He shakes his head as nutmeg-colored spots appear, racing down his now-naked flanks, a sure sign of agitation. “You escaped—how?” His frown is comical. There's only so much facial expression for a horror of a shifter like a hyena.
Or the donkey that Casek killed.
He bares his double rows of teeth, minuscule nostrils flaring. “I scent the mongrel.”
Catching me off guard and faster than I can track, he cups my sex, sneering.
I choke on my next breath.
“Did he pluck the unripe fruit?” The hyena cocks his head, expression amused.
Until I stab a finger in his eyeball.
He screams, high and shrill, releasing my crotch as I dive between his legs, going for the door right behind him.
Still yapping and shrieking, he lands on my legs, pinning me. My face hits the top step as a shrapnel of pain spirals through my head, causing dizziness to sweep in where coherent thought had been before.
I twist my body, throwing up a forearm as his teeth snap above my face.
Screaming at his nearness, I lift my leg and position my knee at his testicles, jerking my limb up hard.
Hyena rolls off my body, starting to heave his guts, and I take a second to note that if I had been male, I'd have been dead, before I plunge my elbows into the grass and army-crawl my body forward, feeling my back and butt as one long, burning line of agony.
My eyes sight the door, gaze moving to the latch.
A body slams against the door, causing it to shudder.
Oh no.
Hyena is barfing, but fervent movement behind me tells me he's coming.
Jerking myself upright, I throw myself on the door, catching my inevitable face plant with my palms. My breath shudders as I lean my face against the solid wood and turn the deadbolt latch, not yet pulse-activated like most modern doors, and fall backward as the door gets yanked open from inside.
Casek faces me, chest heaving. He's covered in shards of skull, thick chunks of brain and blood soaking every inch of him—only his eyeballs are free of the violence he perpetuated.
He steps through, hands fisting as his eyes shift over my shoulder.
“Casek,” I croak as the hyena pounces on my back, and I crack my head against the door that stands open.
Casek stops the momentum of the door with a palm, his teeth snowy white as a smile splits the scarlet paint of his face.
As I swing to the side, I grip the door with both hands, hanging on for everything I'm worth, and roll my face to the side, feeling the roughness of the wood as it presses against my cheek.
His face dives forward, jaws wide. Then he tears the hyena’s ear off, spitting the disgorged piece onto the ground.
I begin to slide down the door, growing lightheaded sometime between the shrieking decibel level of the missing ear and the head flying past me in an arcing spray of arterial blood.
My consciousness is fuzzy as I feel Casek carefully lift me, securing my small body against his own.
I remember how he positions me against his chest, our bodies filthy from death and change, his protection shrouding my shame.
My role.
My everything. I fall into the sleep of despair, an inevitability.
Glad to be away from the Mutables, uncertain of what will become of me.
What little life I have lived.
Chapter 14
Talyn
I can't leave the children,” I explain to Doric, our Alpha. “They're still nursing.”
Cupping his chin with a large hand, he rolls his expressive eyes to mine. Oblong and magnetic, indicative of his prehistoric beast—dragon—Doric doesn't rule our clan with fear but with diligence and deliberate farsightedness.
I'm glad. Because I've abandoned my old life (everything but Pookey the cat), and I should be allowed to have a voice, independence, and be a part of something worthwhile that's not run by a colossal jerk.
It's a good thing my internal monologue is just that—internal.
“Talyn—we need you. I wouldn't ask otherwise.” He spreads heavy arms away from his body. “There are two females who share your unique situation.”
“Forty and mother of twins?” My voice is dry.
Doric's smile is thin. “One female nears her thirty-ninth cycle,” thirty-nine years old, I automatically translate, “and is a teacher of the younglings who remain of the humans. Those with special needs.”
All children have special needs, I reflect with sadness. If we don't watch it within the current climate of infertility, the shifters and vamps could overtake the humans.
Everything is so desperate now with the challenge perpetuated by the miserable Zondorae geneticist duo. Damage has been done; their zero population strategy nearly worked.
Now we move forward as best we can.
“Her name is Camille Becker. I have been in close contact with the Alpha of the First, and Conrick assured me he's sent two of his best, Drest and Kiel.”
I shift my weight. “You mean the only other Alphas.”
Doric's smile spreads to genuine. “Yes, I cannot get much by you.”
“Nope.” I bite my bottom lip in nervous habit. “I thought it wasn't safe for me to leave our clan.”
“You will have a contingent of males.”
“What about my males,” I spread my fingers on my chest.
Doric sighs, walking slowly to the row of windows that have been carved into a rock wall one half-meter thick. It was done long ago. The glass held inside the narrow wood frame is hand-rolled, giving a warped appearance. The windows serve their purpose, very tall and narr
ow, allowing light but disallowing entry.
The entire stone fortress that the prehistoric clans live within is engineered for defensibility. They could stand a woman's touch, I think sourly.
Doric brings me back to the issue at hand with his next words, “The male who Conrick sent first, Drest—his cousin, was injured in an accidental conflict with the bounties.”
I feel my jaw unhinge. “What?” I instantly remember my time with Narah and Murphy.
Expression severe, Doric gives a steep nod.
“What—the Final Enforcement crew hurt him?”
Doric lifts a massive shoulder, letting it drop a moment later. “There was a breakdown in communication, and the female vampire hybrid, vesting an unfortunate injury upon his arm.”
“I'll say.” I remember Narah Adrienne and give an involuntary shiver. I wouldn't want to go against her in a hundred years. She scares me.
“Regardless,” Doric turns his huge body toward me but remains in semi-profile, “I am looking to smooth the waters.”
My eyes narrow. “You're looking to see if any of our males could possibly be mated with,” I roll my eyes to the twenty-foot stone ceiling, attempting to remember the name of the young waitress, “Paige LaRue.”
Doric knots his hands behind his back, causing his shoulder muscles to sprout babies. “Yes,” he replies somewhat wearily.
“Listen,” I begin, taking pity on him, “I understand that you're always needing to maneuver and that our terms with the First Species are good. They must understand the prehistorics need females too.”
Doric's round eyes, usually so soft when he interacts with me, grow hard. “At our core, we are animals, Talyn. Now, there are the humans to deal with.”
“Hey,” I say, slightly offended.
His palm lifts in supplication. “I mean no insult—and do not forget you are only partly human.” Doric lets his hand fall to his side. “When the humans had the ability to breed at will and with great numbers, it was the prehistorics against the vampires, Lycan and all of the supes against Mutables. Now we must worry that mundane humans might scoop up a rare female to rape and desecrate. There was one only this past year...”
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