Page 54 of Captured By the Dragon Warlord (Fated Mates of the Sarkarnii Warlords #2)

N ev Dante and his nevving psi-grenades. The nevving Sarkarnii is unhinged at the best of times, even before we came through the wormhole, but put something which makes a noise and damage in his hands and it is mayhem.

Mayhem I needed, but Dante is not stopping and there’s no sign of Dalsor. I need to get back to my Scarlett.

I spot the streak of green scales through a gap in the smoke which is steadily filling the neutral sector, and I dive at it. If I can stop Dante, I might possibly make the target I’m really after.

With a thump, I hit a body, and we tumble over and over until I’m sure he’s dizzy enough he might just stop with the psi-grenades.

It is not Dante.

I have found my mark. Dalsor stares up at me, his eyes blank, his jaw slack. For a nova-second, I think I might have killed him, and I swear under my breath.

I had questions. He had answers.

Then he blinks.

“Who are you serving?” I snarl in his face.

“Dexx.” I hear Driok’s voice behind me.

“Nev off. This is my business,” I growl, glaring down at Dalsor.

The nevver will not leave my sight again, not until I’m done. And I will be done.

“Dexx,” Driok snarls again.

“What?” I heave Dalsor to his feet and turn to face Driok.

He has hold of another warrior. Not just any warrior though. He has Dalsor too.

“What the nev?!”

“Dexx!”

I keep hold of the warrior in my claws tightly as I turn in the direction of Scarlett’s voice. She’s racing towards me out of the smoke. I know I told her to wait, but if she’s here, something is wrong.

“Scarlett?”

“It’s Dalsor…he’s…oh!” She skids to a halt, eyeing the two Dalsors Driok and I hold. “It’s not him. It’s Drex. These are…I don’t know what they are, under some sort of mind control…but it’s Drex you want. He’s been using Dalsor and who knows how many others,” she says breathlessly.

I look at Driok. He flings the second Dalsor at me.

“Got to get back to my sector,” he snarls. “This has gone on long enough.”

He turns, his tail shifted like mine, and thumps away through the smoke.

I have hold of both warriors as Dante lands. I shove the pair at him.

“Deal with these, but don’t kill them,” I order.

Dante sniffs at the pair and wrinkles his nose, recoiling from them with a growl. “I do not want these warriors.” He attempts to push them back on me.

The pair are not trying to escape. In fact they’re passive in a way I also dislike. I scent them like Dante and also instantly dislike their scent. It’s artificial and wrong.

“What the nev is going on here?” I growl at the pair, but they are silent.

“I think they’re not…Sarkarnii…anymore,” Scarlett says. “Look at their eyes.”

I grab Dalsor and pull him to me. He is passive, strange to the touch, his scales almost brittle under my claws. I grasp his head and glare at him.

Something flashes back at me, something inorganic…something of a machine not a Sarkarnii.

I want to fling him away from me. I don’t want to be close in any way to this thing which was once Dalsor. He makes my skin itch worse than the need to shed. I know instantly what Dante doesn’t like, but I can’t say exactly what.

“Not Sarkarnii,” I rasp.

Dante shudders in a way I’ve never seen before. The king of mayhem can be excitable, he can be dangerous, refusing to back down from a fight more than any warrior I’ve ever dealt with, but he is not scared of anything.

“Not my fight,” he growls.

“This is every Sarkarnii’s fight,” I respond, dropping Dalsor and grasping Dante’s shoulder.

His shifted wings flex. He doesn’t look me in the eye.

“This is our fight for survival, like the one we fought when we first came through the wormhole,” I tell him. “The one which changed us, which took our females but made us stronger.”

“Your shift?”

“My shift is my strength.” I look over at my mate, my beautiful Scarlett who has given me so much more than I could have possibly imagined. My rut, my desire, my reason for being. If I always have to shift to be with her then it is no hardship.

My clan and I are way beyond our shift being a hardship. It is what makes us who we are. It is not something we should have ever been ashamed of.

“Being a Sarkarnii is our strength.” I stare at Dante.

He lifts his lips to reveal his fangs, reminding me in such a sudden flash I nearly reel back from him, I need to claim my mate.

I need my venom in her blood and her blood in my mouth.

“It is who we are and nothing can beat us, not even the universe.”

Dante shivers again, blinking hard at me as if I am the last Sarkarnii he will ever see. His thoughts, tumultuous at best, incoherent at worst, swirl through me like a fog, as if I’m absorbing them from him, even though I have no intention of doing so.

I cannot control thoughts, I cannot control Sarkarnii, even if Dante needs to calm the nev down and focus.

“Calm the nev down and focus,” he murmurs.

“What?” I glance over at Scarlett as my blood spikes with heat.

“Calm the nev down and focus.”

She looks at me as Dante repeats the words.

“You mean that?” I give him a brief shake, and his eyes, somewhat glassy, meet mine.

“Dexx?” He blinks again and shakes his scales and wings, hard. There may even be drool.

“Dante,” I growl.

“Where are my nevving psi-grenades?” he says. “I’ve got some killing to do.”

“We need to determine the enemy, Dante,” I respond. “Which means we need the others before we do anything else.”

“I’ll get them,” Dante rasps, his hand thumping over his chest as the other finds the last two remaining psi-grenades on his belt and I get a wave of relief from him.

“Bring the warlords here. We need to show them what we’re up against,” I call after the nevver as he takes to the air, partially shifted.

It seems we’re all in a flux state, and yet we know not who we are fighting, not yet.

But my Scarlett does, and her mouth is drawn into a thin, hard line as she watches Dante leave before her gaze returns to me.

“Drex said only me and the other humans stand in his master’s way,” she says. “I don’t understand what that could mean, but it puts us all in danger, and any Sarkarnii too.”

“Anything which makes clones of Sarkarnii is dangerous.” I glare at the two which are standing completely still, as if something has turned them off.

“Not as dangerous as you think,” Scarlett says. “Drex did say one thing, when he was pretending to be with us not against us, but he mentioned Dalsor was never around when it was time to shift, to be in the mines. Maybe these clones are just of your unshifted form and can’t be anything else.”

I take her hand, bending my knee to my ancestor sent female. “And maybe what the master wants is for his clones to have all the abilities?”

“We need to find the puppet master to determine what the puppets are,” she says cryptically.

I don’t need to read minds to know what she is thinking, how dangerous this is for her and her unborn sarkarnlings as well as for her friends.

It is my duty as a warrior, as a commander, as a Sarkarnii warlord to protect her foremost. To do what I do best. I pull her to me, placing my mouth on hers and wrap my tongue around hers.

It might not be what she needs, but it is what I need, and without her, I am nothing.