Page 27 of Marked

All of a sudden, out of nowhere, the window exploded and shattered all around us.

Tiny shards of glass rained down onto the floor, and a few pieces bounced off the backs of my hands, leaving several jagged cuts behind.

Almost at once, the tiny wounds began to heal, leaving small lines of silvery blood behind.

Alaric grunted on top of me, and I knew it must have hurt him far more than it did me. When the glass settled around us, he moved, and he moved fast. He hurtled over the window ledge and carried me with him. As quickly as I could, I found my footing and ran after him.

I chanced a look back to see that we were being followed by a group of what appeared to be military Ghengrills. They must have been the reason the window exploded. Not wanting to trip and fall flat on my face, I quickly turned back and focused on running.

He followed the curve of the hill down, and I was hopeful we could find the air hangar before even more of Ghengra blew up in our faces.

The desert was surprisingly hard to run on.

What I thought was sand at first was actually hard little pieces of rock that molded together almost like clay.

The red and purple clouds had brightened overhead, and I wondered if that meant it was the middle of the day or sunset or what on this strange, alien planet.

There didn’t seem to be any life out here. Maybe the Ghengrills had killed everything.

The rumbling grew louder, and a strange feeling of foreboding began to brew deep in the pit of my belly. Alaric and I continued to run, until we turned the corner and a lone building rose up in the distance. It was about a mile or so away.

Another blast roared past us, exploding only about a few hundred feet away from us. The force of it pushed us back, and I cried out as I landed flat on my back. Alaric fell not far away from me, but I heard his back slam into the rocky surface. He groaned and I heard the pain in his voice.

I didn’t know how much longer that would last, but I needed him right now. No. I needed him forever.

I had his child in my belly.

Slowly, I pushed myself to my feet. I heard Alaric moving beside me, but I didn’t turn to look because something else caught my attention. I turned back toward that hazy horizon and stilled at what I saw.

There were at least six very large, dark shapes moving toward us. Quickly.

“Fuck,” Alaric whispered.

“What?” I asked.

“We need to move,” he said quickly.

“What are they?” I pressed, unable to tear my eyes from the growing shapes in the distance. They appeared pitch black against the white rocky desert surface, and as they grew closer, the magnitude of just how big they were started to dawn on me.

“It’s the Uruk-Zuk,” Alaric whispered. “They’re vicious beasts, and under Ghengrill mind control, they’re even more dangerous. We need to run now. If we don’t get to that building and fly out of here on a ship, we’re doomed.”

I looked at the building in the distance and then back to the Uruk-Zuk.

There wouldn’t be enough time. There was no way we’d be able to run that far fast enough, but I had to at least try.

Alaric didn’t even give me time to think about it.

He grabbed my hand and practically tore my arm out of my shoulder socket in his haste.

I hissed and opened my mouth to complain, but I decided to focus on sprinting as fast as I could instead.

I did run faster now. My stride was longer and more graceful than before.

I knew where every footfall was going to land before I made it.

My heart pounded in my throat, and my muscles cried out with exhaustion, the soreness in my limbs a stark reminder that I had only just come out of my heat and that I hadn’t had a single moment to rest since then.

I just wanted to fall asleep in Alaric’s arms.

I wanted to be somewhere safe. I wanted to be home.

Hot, fierce anger welled up from the very tips of my toes. I ran faster. Harder. I put everything into putting one foot in front of the other, but I feared it wouldn’t be enough.

Another blast burst to our right. I’d caught sight of it this time and swerved as much as I could to avoid the fallback.

It didn’t help though, because I still stumbled and fell to the ground from the force of it.

I rolled quickly and jumped back up to my feet, just falling behind Alaric by a few yards.

The rumbling behind us grew louder, and it soon became clear what it was.

It was hooves. The sound of countless hooves pounding against the rocky desert surface, again and again in an orchestra of endless noise.

They were so much closer now, and as I stared at the distance we still needed to traverse to make it to the hangar, I came to the sickening realization that we weren’t going to make it. It was still too far away.

We were going to have to fight.

My anger grew stronger. Fiercer. More consuming.

I couldn’t control it. It seemed to well up from the very pit of my soul, and then it swirled around me. Alaric urged me onward, but I was too angry.

I wanted to fight. I wanted to rip the Ghengrills apart, limb by fucking limb for daring to interfere in my fate.

For daring to try to separate my mate and me.

For trying to stop him from taking me like I was meant to be taken.

I realized that the totality of what they had actually attempted to take away from me, was what my heart continued to beat for, the very thing I now breathed for.

My family.

The child growing inside my belly.

They were trying to take it all away from me.

I wasn’t going to allow that.

I snarled loudly and skidded to a stop, tiny rocks skittering across the hard surface.

I threw myself forward and pivoted back toward the Uruk-Zuk that were rushing our way.

I heard Alaric come to a stop behind me.

He snarled something about continuing to run, but I neither heard the words nor did I care what they were.

I had to save my family. I had to save us.

I roared with anger and he stopped talking.

I got my first real look at the Uruk-Zuk then.

They were big. Almost as tall as an eighteen-wheeler and maybe half as long.

Gengry had been right in calling them similar to Earth bears, but that wasn’t really true either.

They had six pairs of legs that were thin and scrawny like a spider’s but that terminated in hooves.

Their torsos were covered in thick black hair that reminded me of a mammoth, but their scraggy heads had the appearance of an ox.

Long noses led out to thick nostrils that flared open and shut with the exertion of running toward us.

Their mouths had fallen open, and I could see sharp, jagged teeth that were the size of my forearms lining their jaws.

But their eyes were the most alarming.

Alaric had mentioned mind control, but he hadn’t mentioned how that meant that the Uruk-Zuk had the very same eyes as the Ghengrills, the same sickly yellow. A Ghengrill rode each one of the six Uruk-Zuk, seated in thick leather saddles specially made for such monstrous creatures.

Some sort of contraption connected the two species from the top of the Ghengrills’ shiny bald heads to the backs of the Uruk-Zuk’s scalps. It looked like a rope.

I wondered if that was how they were controlling them.

One of the Ghengrills lifted something that looked like a rocket launcher and pulled the trigger. A blast of red laser soared toward us, and I quickly dove and rolled to the side, before pushing myself back up to my feet. I growled in their direction, and my anger grew stronger.

It turned into fury.

Uncontrollable, destructive rage.

Alaric moved to grab my hand, and I shook him off, watching as the Uruk-Zuk pounded toward us. My upper lip rolled as I stared them down. The Ghengrill holding the laser launcher lifted it once more and it was too much. I lost it entirely.

I screamed and my wrath exploded into something physical.

The wind whipped up and something that sounded like a sonic boom split the air around us.

The tiny little rocky bits of the ground lifted up into the air and then burst upward in a solid barrier, effectively blocking the blast from the launcher.

The bright red laser burst into fragments, raining down on the ground instead of tearing us into pieces.

Alaric took a step back.

I screamed again. I couldn’t stop whatever was about to happen.

Rage personified.

I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I could feel myself growing stronger. It was as though I controlled the very fabric that held the air together. Alaric had protected me before. He’d rescued me from the Ghengrills and freed me from their clutches. Now it was my turn to return the favor.

I needed to defend my family. My mate. My baby.

Nothing was going to come between us ever again.

I screamed and the sound cut through the air with so much force that the ground began to rattle with it. The Uruk-Zuk kept running, hurtling toward us at a furious pace, but when I roared again, a much deeper sound began to echo below us.

The surface of Ghengra began to shake, and small fissures began to crack open on the surface. They grew wider and deeper. The tiny pieces of rocks rattled on top of the hardened surface, sounding like raindrops splashing down all around us.

More anger hurtled through me. More of it built up around us and crackled in the planet beneath us. It became stronger, almost like a physical, palpable force, and then it collapsed in on itself.

Those tiny fractures quickly developed into much larger cracks, splintering the surface with astonishing speed.

All at once, Ghengra split open before us into a deep chasm that felt like it had ruptured the very planet in half.

My eyes drew down, and I couldn’t see the bottom.

For all I knew, I’d broken Ghengra apart straight down to its core.