Page 6

Marinah

King arrived just as I was halfway through my evening meal. Normally, we waited for each other, but after my sudden and unplanned swim in the pool, I wasn’t in the mood to deprive myself of food for the extra ten minutes it might take him to join me.

The anger from earlier had dissolved, but I had no intention of admitting to King that his little stunt might have been the catalyst for my improved mood. Honestly, it wasn’t the water itself. Seeing Callie coming to my rescue had lightened my spirits more than I cared to admit. She now lounged on the bed, grooming every inch of her fur with the lazy confidence of a creature who knew she owned the world, or at least our room. A small smile tugged at my lips as I glanced in her direction.

“Do you want to talk about it?” King asked, his deep voice pulling my attention as he sat next to me.

His sharp blue eyes locked on mine, their usual intensity cutting straight through me. They only softened in the privacy of our chambers, when it was just the two of us. Right now, though, they were probing and assessing my mood. King’s adult life had been filled with death, destruction, and betrayal. Trust came hard for him, and his Beast side didn’t trust at all. Was I becoming the same way?

I pushed the thought aside, stood, and closed the short distance between us. Without a word, he opened his arms, and I sank into his chest. His hands shifted to cradle my back as he pulled my legs across his lap, holding me like I was the only thing anchoring him to the earth.

Mate.

The whisper came from deep within, and like pieces of a puzzle clicking into place, something inside me settled. That internal, primal part of me that claimed this man as my own relaxed into the calm waters he provided. The bond between us tightened, locked into place, even stronger than before.

Why did I fight this so much?

His warmth surrounded me, melting away the last remnants of my earlier fury. His hands moved across my back, leaving trails of energy that danced on my skin. My voice came out muffled against his chest, tinged with self-pity I couldn’t quite suppress.

“The women hate me.”

His hand continued its soothing rhythm on my back, grounding me in the moment. He didn’t offer a solution; didn’t tell me it would get better or that I was wrong. He just held me, letting the silence speak for itself.

King rarely had to deal with the women on the island. His fierce, no-nonsense demeanor had shielded him from their day-to-day grievances. I wasn’t that lucky. Leadership had landed in my lap, and no one seemed to care that I hadn’t asked for it.

Finally, King tilted my chin so our eyes met. “They don’t know what you’re capable of, and they don’t fear you as they should.”

“I don’t want them to fear me,” I snapped, disgust coloring my words.

He pulled me closer. “You can’t have it both ways. They respect you and see you as their leader, but they have no understanding of war or what it takes to defeat an enemy.”

“You think they’d treat me differently if they knew what I become?”

His arms tightened around me. “I don’t know. They think they know you too well. They met you as human, and even when you’re in Warrior form, they still see the woman they knew before. They don’t see the killer.”

“They see you as a killer,” I said, my tone laced with resentment.

“And is that so bad?” he countered. “The Warriors know what you’re capable of. They’ll never doubt you.”

I held my breath for a moment, the question on my tongue heavy with vulnerability. “Do you doubt me?”

King didn’t hesitate. He lifted me higher in his arms, and his lips brushed mine as he whispered, “Never.”

“Take me to bed,” I demanded in my queen voice, my confidence slipping back into place.

The corners of his mouth quirked into a knowing smile. “Your hellcat is on the bed staring daggers at me.”

For the first time that day, I laughed, a genuine sound that broke through my morose mood. “Carry me close to the bed. I have the balls to knock her off her pedestal.”

King growled playfully against my hair as he strode toward the bed. Using his foot, he nudged Callie off her perch. She landed on the floor with an indignant yowl, slinking away to sulk elsewhere. For the next hour, she didn’t dare sneak under the covers, and I didn’t mind at all.

∞∞∞

The blaring emergency alarm ripped through the quiet, jolting us awake. King and I were on our feet instantly, grabbing our clothes and weapons before the sound even stopped.

The door flew open, and Beck burst in without knocking. Neither of us had the time or the patience to growl at his lack of courtesy.

“Our home is under attack,” he barked. “Fifty soldiers with hellhounds.”

I knew instantly what home he was talking about. Our true home, even if we rarely stayed there. The people there were part of our extended family. We trusted them, and now they were in danger.

“Where is Nokita?” I demanded sharply. He was one of my personal guard.

Beck and King both knew I wasn’t asking about Nokita. It was Che and Baby Boot that I was worried about.

Beck’s eyes met mine briefly. “They’re at home.”

Home meant they were in danger. “Is the helicopter operational?”

“I’ve been told it might get us that far,” Beck cautioned grimly.

“Then we take it.”

Ten minutes later, I was in the helicopter, my fingers crossed tightly. This mechanical nightmare had gone down twice before, thankfully with no casualties, but there was always a first time. It was about as trustworthy as the first rickety Federation plane that had brought me to the island. Worse yet, there was the risk of falling out of the sky due to the electromagnetic pulses that always accompanied the resurrection of hellhounds.

Electronics triggered the hounds to dig themselves out of the ground, and their answering pulses were always the first sign that they were coming. The stronger the pulse, the more hounds we faced. The pulses themselves also disrupted electronics. It was an endless, brutal cycle, and stopping the cycle had become one of our biggest challenges.

The Federation, our enemy, had learned how to control the hounds. Now they used the terrifying creatures to do much of their dirty work. Thankfully, we managed to reverse-engineer one of their control devices and had our own whistles for commanding hellhounds. We hadn’t planned to deploy them yet, intending to save them for an offensive against the Federation on our terms. But none of that mattered now. There was no way I would let the Federation’s hounds kill my people.

“Make plans so God laughs” had become my motto, and right now, it felt like He was rolling on the floor in hysterics.

King grabbed one of the leather straps across my chest, pulling me closer to steady me as the helicopter lurched. We were all in Beast form, and at the moment, King and I were the only ones with full control. That meant the Warriors with us could differentiate friend from foe, but little else. If we pointed, they killed. It was simple and brutal.

King’s control, once he shifted, had improved almost as much as mine. He said my Beast helped his, and I believed him. Over time, our Beasts had learned to work out their issues instead of fighting against our human sides. They had found balance.

We’d noticed changes in the other Warriors too. Their control over their Beasts wasn’t on par with ours yet, but the time it took for them to gain mastery had improved. What used to take an hour was now down to about forty minutes. Each small gain felt like a victory even if we were unsure exactly what was triggering it.

Beast form was our preferred fighting mode. We didn’t resemble any earthly animal, more like the creature from the old Predator movie, the good one with Arnold Schwarzenegger. When we transformed, our entire body underwent radical changes thanks to the chemical hormone Kedorine 5. The chemical flooded our alien systems, spiking oxytocin and dopamine levels to many times higher than in humans. The transformation wasn’t subtle: bones cracked and reshaped, our jaws elongated into grotesque snapping maws lined with six-inch razor-sharp fangs, and non-retractable claws extended three inches past our fingertips. It made handling firearms clumsy, but give us a sword, and it became an extension of those deadly claws. I won’t lie; we weren’t exactly winning beauty contests in Beast form.

I glanced out the chopper’s window, my mind drifting to six-year-old Che. He’d been working hard on his training alongside Ruth, my twelve-year-old protégé. The two of them were inseparable, two peas in a pod. Beck’s eyes caught mine, and I saw a flicker of apprehension in them.

I pulled my headphones from around my neck and adjusted them over my ears, bringing the mic closer to my mouth. “Beck, where’s Ruth?” I asked, my words distorted around the massive fangs crowding my jaw.

“She’s with Che,” he replied. “They wanted a sleepover, and Missy finally gave in.”

My chest tightened further. Ruth and Che together thought they could take on the entire world, hellhounds included.

King’s large hand landed on my thigh, his paw-like fingers rubbing reassuringly along the fabric of my pants. “We’ll find them,” he said, his own fangs making his voice rougher than usual.

I nodded. “Yes, we will.”

What I didn’t say was what I feared most: they’d likely be in the thick of the fight. And all I could hope was that we weren’t already too late.