Page 5 of Shadow (Marinah and the Apocalypse #1)

King

B east eventually settled, his restless energy receding into a simmering calm. Nokita kept his distance, far enough to avoid provoking a fight but close enough to do his job, which was protecting me. When the tension drained from my muscles and my breathing evened out, I waved him over.

“Shift and run with me,” I rumbled through elongated jaws, my voice guttural and edged with a low growl. “Adjust my gear belts first.”

Our military fatigue pants were crafted from tough, stretchable material that accommodated our transformations, but the leather belts and crisscrossing chest straps were less forgiving. They were designed with just enough give to keep from snapping when we morphed, but they were far from comfortable. In beast form, fine motor skills were nearly impossible. Our claws blocked our fingers’ dexterity for even simple adjustments.

Now that the rage had ebbed, the constriction of my gear became impossible to ignore. I stood still as Nokita moved to my side, carefully loosening the straps to give me room to breathe. His hands made quick work of the adjustments, and once finished, he fine-tuned his own.

Our beast form was like nothing found in nature or myth. We could never pass as anything but nightmares given shape. Every inch of our body transformed. Bones cracked and reshaped, jaws elongated, and our teeth extended into six-inch, razor-sharp fangs capable of tearing through muscle and crunching bone. Claws, non-retractable and deadly, stretched three inches past our fingertips. These adaptations rendered delicate tasks impossible, including traditional use of firearms. Our trigger guards had been removed to accommodate the monstrous hands that wielded them. We also grew a ridge of one-inch protruding bone along our backs for added protection. It wasn’t like the hellhound spikes on their backs; ours protected us from their teeth.

We didn’t just become more lethal; we became giants. In beast form, we grew over two feet taller, towering above even the tallest humans. The sheer size and power of our transformation made us nearly unstoppable.

But with this evolution came challenges. Particularly with boots.

No engineer had yet managed to design footwear that allowed for the explosive growth of toes capped with three-inch claws. Even in human form, boots were hard to come by, and many of our warriors forwent them entirely.

The pair I had when I exited the car? Gone. Ruined in the transformation. I had a backup pair but would need another. It could be weeks, maybe longer, before I came across a damned pair that fit.

For now, bare feet would do. The terrain ahead mattered little when you were built to shred anything in your path.

Our thought process shifted dramatically when we transformed. The frontal lobe of our brains flooded with dopamine at ten times the level of a stressed human. Adrenaline and noradrenaline surged through the rest of our system, fifty times the level of an enraged human. The result? We became the ultimate killing machines.

In the minutes immediately following a shift, rational thought was almost nonexistent. Our minds operated purely on predator instinct, processing only the immediate environment. The one saving grace was that we could mostly distinguish friends from foe. Basic strategies stayed intact, but complex reasoning? That took time. The key to stabilizing the flood of chemicals was simple: give us something to kill quickly or enough space to run off the excess energy.

Now that I had burned off Beast’s raw fury, my thoughts started to align. I could analyze, strategize, and assess. Nokita ran beside me, his own rage simmering just beneath the surface. If we kept moving, he’d begin to fade from his primal state in thirty minutes or so.

This slow return to clarity was something we had kept hidden from the Federation. They had never suspected that we gradually regained cognitive function after a shift. To them, we were mindless brutes, dangerous tools to be wielded and discarded. Their fear of us was understandable. Their contempt, however, was less forgivable.

Not all humans shared this disdain. Secretary Church and his closest men had treated us with respect, taking the time to understand our capabilities and acknowledging us as soldiers. Even so, we safeguarded our secrets. Trust didn’t come easily when survival demanded constant vigilance.

The critical difference between humans and our kind lay in a chemical they would never touch: Kedorine 5.

For centuries, we had studied our physiology, and recent advancements in science had yielded groundbreaking discoveries. Kedorine 5 was the foundation of our strength, our resilience, our ability to shift.

It was also our greatest safeguard. Upon death, K-5 broke down completely, vanishing from our bodies within an hour. We had no doubt the U.S. had collected the corpses of fallen Shadow Warriors, but their autopsies would have revealed nothing useful.

The thought of humans desecrating our dead stirred my rage anew, but I forced it down. There was no point in wasting energy on what I couldn’t change. For now, I focused on the rhythm of my strides and the steady calming of Beast.

We could hold this form indefinitely, but the longer we stayed like this, the harder it was for our human brain function to normalize after shifting back. Staying in beast form for two weeks before Marinah’s arrival had been a mistake. If I had shifted back a few days earlier instead of mere hours before she landed, I would have had more control.

Now that Beast had run a few miles, my thoughts cleared. My ability to adapt quickly after a shift was one of the reasons my men had named me alpha.

I had advanced capabilities inherited from Greystone, my uncle, the mightiest Shadow Warrior in two hundred years.

Only the strongest among us could command a squad, let alone the entire pack.

I was the rare one who could do both.

Greystone had foreseen this when I was a child. He had told me I would walk in his shoes, but I hadn’t believed him then. To a boy who idolized his uncle, the idea of Greystone being mortal had been impossible. Hero worship had blinded me to reality.

My thoughts shifted back to the woman. Marinah.

Months had passed since we had begun to reconsider our stance on humans, despite their betrayal after we saved them from annihilation. Bringing a woman here to negotiate had been my idea. Women and children had a way of calming us, grounding our instincts. I had known that if a man of power had arrived, there would have been trouble.

Our intelligence had indicated that no women held positions of power in the U.S. government, so my request had seemed straightforward. By asking for a woman, I had assured myself I could control both myself and my men.

But now Marinah held a position of power among our enemies.

Her father had been a powerfully strong man, and that made her extremely dangerous.

Kill her, Beast whispered inside my skull for the first time since meeting the woman.

But something about it was different.

His suggestion didn’t alarm me. Beast wanted to kill most humans. What made this different was his delay. Beast rarely hesitated over males or females. That hesitation made Marinah’s presence a problem.

My human side resisted the idea of harming her, but I couldn’t tell if it was driven by logic or something more primal.

Maybe it was better described as my sexual side.

I had fought not to think about her long legs, but the intrusive image surfaced.

Marinah was a complication I hadn’t planned for, and complications in our world were deadly.

After two more hours of running, Nokita rumbled, “May I ask a question?”

His speech was improved, evidence that he had been mulling over whatever had happened between me and the woman.

“You may ask,” I growled. Our transformed jaws forced us to speak from our throats, a skill we were taught to master when our transformations began at puberty.

“Woman,” he snarled.

I couldn’t stop the answering snarl that rose in my throat at his unintended tone.

“Yes?” I replied, working to block the dopamine threatening to flood my brain again. Beast sensed my irrationality, and his agitation rippled beneath my skin.

“Mate?” Nokita asked.

I stopped running abruptly. Nokita took a few more steps before halting and turning to face me.

The word mate circled in my mind, and I shook my head.

“No. The need to protect her is not heightened beyond that of any other female.”

“Grrph, lust,” he grumbled.

There was no denying the truth of it. Lust was there, and Beast was fully aware.

“We need to head back,” I said, dismissing the conversation before it continued.

“Lust,” Nokita grumbled again, this time quieter.

“I haven’t denied it, so stop with the ‘lust,’” I snapped.

Nokita clamped his jaws shut, and we turned back toward the motorcycle.

I’d had enough of Nokita’s presence, so I shifted into my human form and hopped onto the bike, leaving him to find his own way back. The hum of the engine filled the silence as I navigated through the narrow streets, retracing the path Boot had taken with the woman earlier.

Her arrival had been planned down to the smallest detail. The Federation might lack satellites to monitor our progress since taking over the island, but we suspected a spy.

No one had been caught.

Yet.

The state of the town itself didn’t matter. What did, were the civilians we were hiding. The Federation didn’t need to know about most of them. These people were ours now, and the only way the U.S. would get their hands on them was through battle.

If it came to that, not a single human in the Federation would survive.

Right now, they needed us to deal with what they called hellhounds. Only a select few in their government truly understood what they were up against, and they kept the truth hidden from the rest.

We would guard the secret of what the hellhounds really were for as long as it served our purpose.

Our kind had stayed hidden for two centuries. We had mastered the art of secrecy.

The question was whether Marinah could keep her mouth shut when it mattered.

Her ability to hold onto a few key secrets could determine everything.

Beast stirred beneath my skin.

“The woman has a chance,” I said aloud, letting the wind carry the words.

Beast didn’t like that.

He retaliated, slamming one of my ribs with a sharp jolt of defiance.

Pain rippled through me, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

He hated being controlled.