Page 12 of Bound to the Beast (Interstellar Brides Program: The Beasts #9)

K rystal

I came out of my classroom just in time to watch Mrs. C march the kindergarten class right in front of me—minus one.

“Mrs. C? Where’s Brody?”

One of the little girls trailing the end of the line looked up at me. “The mean lady wouldn’t let him go to lunch. I think she’s the one who made Mr. Smith so sad.”

Mean lady? Sad? “What—” I lifted my gaze as she darted past me and saw four federal agents—looked like S.W.A.T.—in position outside the kindergarten classroom’s door. Serious looking men armed with semi-automatic rifles.

I ran. I had to get to Brody.

One of the officers grabbed me around the waist and swung me away from the door. “No, you don’t.”

“Let me go!”

Instead of releasing me, he tilted his chin down to speak into a radio attached to the front of his shoulder. “Woman outside. Trying to get in.”

I didn’t hear the response, but three of the men stood and burst into the room, weapons pointed at Iven.

The fourth dragged me along like luggage, tossing me in front of him once we were inside the room.

With a cry of relief, I held out my arms and Brody ran to me, his arms locking around me in a tight hug. “I’m sorry!”

“For what?” I hugged him close and looked at Iven. “What’s going on?”

“He’s coming,” Brody whispered. “He knows. He’s coming.”

“Who?”

Brody didn’t answer me, his gaze focused on the two windows along the wall on my right.

Iven stood in the center of the room with his arms relaxed at his sides, a completely unreadable expression on his handsome face. Did he know these people? What was happening? Why was a S.W.A.T team at the school?

Why did every single one of them have their weapons pointed at Iven?

One of the officers sidled along the wall until he reached a locked metal door that led outside. The door was thick and kept locked. To be used in emergencies only.

He shoved it open and the school’s alarm bells went off, filling the room with a deafening tone as three more teams of two armed men came into the room from outside.

Ten of them?

I stumbled toward the hallway, pulling Brody with me.

“Where do you think you’re going, Krystal?”

The woman’s voice sent a chill down my spine. I’d heard it before.

Turning slowly to look over my shoulder, I shifted Brody away from her and shoved him behind my back. “Daciana.”

Her smile was cruel. It made her normally timid face nearly unrecognizable.

“What do you want? You already have all of Brody’s money.”

She looked at me like I was the biggest idiot ever born. Perhaps I was. I’d hoped, if we didn’t take any of Brody’s inheritance off planet, they’d leave us alone. That whoever had killed my sister and Rojak would leave us the hell alone.

“We aren’t going back. Rojak can have everything.”

She cursed at me in Everian, words so vile the NPU struggled to keep up. “Rojak is worthless. My sons carry the Elite bloodlines. Not from their father.” She tilted her head and stared, almost as if she could literally see through my body to where Brody clung behind me.

How had I been so wrong about her? I’d been around her on Everis.

Watched her wipe tears from her eyes at the funeral.

Seen her cower and defer to her mate and sons, act as if she had no courage, no ambition, no desires.

I’d believed her to be barely more than a bump on a log. A mouse in a house full of predators.

I was wrong. So wrong. “Does Pridon know what you’ve done?” I didn’t like Rojak’s cousin, had assumed he was the one who’d sent assassins to hunt Brody.

She signaled on of the two man teams to move into position behind Iven. “You really are stupid. He’s next.”

“Your sons will never forgive you for killing their father.”

She scoffed. “They’ll never know.”

“You killed Rojak?”

She bowed as if proud of herself.

“You murdered my sister.”

She stared at me like I was reading her the ingredients list from a cereal box.

“And?” She motioned with her hand for me to continue. “Try really hard to use your little human brain.”

“You sent assassins after us,” I said. “You took control of Brody’s inheritance. You’re going to kill your mate and what? Keep it all for yourself?”

“For my children, dear. Not for me.” She held a Coalition Fleet ion blaster now—she must have had it in a hidden holster—a small, silver handgun I’d seen on one of my visits to space.

I knew the innocent looking weapon could blow a hole in the side of the school with one shot. She had it pointed at Iven.

“So just let us go,” I pleaded. “We’ll never go back to Everis. I swear.”

“Brody is an Elite Hunter. You truly believe he will obey you when he is an adult? If he returns to Everis, I lose everything.”

I pulled Brody around to my side and looked down into his eyes, begging him to play along. “Tell her, Brody. Tell her you’ll never go back.”

The little boy I loved to distraction blinked slowly and turned to look his cousin by marriage straight in the eye. “When I grow up, you’ll be the first person I hunt.”

Daciana cackled with glee. “See?” She snorted as she lifted the blaster higher, aimed at Iven’s head. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with, human.”

“I’m getting tired of listening to this bullshit, lady.” One of the men dressed as a S.W.A.T. officer lifted the end of his rifle, pointed it at me. “You didn’t pay us enough to listen to a fucking speech.”

Pay them enough? They were what then? Human mercenaries disguised as police?

Daciana, wife of Pridon of Everis, grumbled then shrugged. “Fine. Get on with it.” She smiled at Brody. “Make sure the boy is dead.”

She turned around and walked out of the room.

“Sar, we doing this?” one of the men asked. “I fucking hate doing kids.”

“I’ll do it,” Sar shifted his weight, lowered his rifle to point it at Brody.

“Brody, now!” Iven shouted.

Brody threw his body into mine, took me down at the knees and flung his body on top of mine where I sprawled on the floor.

Bullets flew.

Glass shattered. I saw a flash of fur, heard one of the men scream as Alexander the Great’s familiar screeching echoed through the room.

Where the hell had the cat come from?

“Move! Move!” Brody shoved me in the direction of one of the art tables. We scrambled on our hands and knees. When we were close enough, Brody reached up and pulled the table down onto its side and ushered me behind it. “Go. Stay down.”

I huddled with him behind the table, shocked to the core. “Brody? What? How are you…?” I didn’t know how to ask a six-year-old boy why he was acting like a trained soldier four times his age.

“Iven taught us. He’s been teaching us what to do.”

“The whole class?”

“Uh-huh.” He peaked his head over the top of the table and grinned like he was having fun. “Father told me about beasts.” His voice was filled with awe, admiration, as he watched whatever was going on, on the other side of our makeshift blockade.

“He did?”

“Yeah. He said they were the best fighters in the universe.” He ducked just in time to avoid being hit by a flying mercenary whose lifeless body slammed into the wall behind us before sliding into a lump on the floor.

I expected Brody to be terrified. Panicked.

Like me.

But then I realized that wasn’t exactly true of me either, not with Iven here. In fact, I had no doubt every single one of the bad guys was going to end up on the wrong side of the dirt, and that Brody and I would be just fine.

Because my mate was a Warlord. A beast.

I smiled and flipped around so I could peek over the edge of the table, too.

Alexander the Great prowled past and launched himself at one of the three men still fighting. The bastard never stood a chance. The cat had him on the ground, his throat shredded, before the man took two steps. And he was still a kitten.

Brody was watching as well. “Told you he was coming.”

“How did he know?”

“We talk to each other inside our brains.”

“Even when he’s home and you’re at school?”

“Yep.” Brody turned his attention from the cat to Iven, and I did the same. I’d think about alien cat telepathy later.

Iven wasn’t Iven. Not anymore. His clothes were ripped to shreds.

Pants in tatters around thighs bigger than tree trunks.

His shirt was, once more, in tatters, but this time I understood the cause.

Iven had transformed. Grown nearly two feet taller.

His head almost touched the ten foot ceiling, and his shoulders were almost as wide as the teacher’s desk.

His face was his…but not. His jaw was thicker.

Wider. His handsome face was less refined, more primal.

He was Iven to the tenth power. The same, but more.

As I watched, he plucked a bullet from his shoulder and laughed. The flesh moved, filling in the gap, healing him faster than the attackers could do any significant damage.

“Holy shit.” Did they all heal like that?

“Told ya.” Brody was practically giddy, like we were in the front row of a rock concert watching his favorite band. “My father said Atlan Warlords are the strongest warriors in the whole fleet. He said he never worried about going into battle if they had beasts with them.”

I tried to imagine Iven on a battlefield surrounded by hundreds of Warlords in beast mode. Iven was unarmed, mostly naked. What would it be like facing a thousand beasts wearing armor? Carrying blasters or blades?

How was it possible the war with the Hive had been going on for hundreds of years, as the Prillons claimed, if the Warlords all fought like this?