Unleashed

by Tiffany Roberts

  While Vortok and Balir moved to the cave opening, Nina slung her bag over her shoulder and looked around the small space, committing it to memory. It wasn’t much, but what she’d shared with her valos here made it worth remembering.

  Aduun scattered the little fire, plunging the cave into shadow. Nina turned toward the cave mouth, her gaze following the faint illumination on the floor. The sky outside was dark, but whereas the stone ceiling and walls around her were totally black, the heavens were deep violet, sprinkled with countless stars — countless unfamiliar stars.

  She and Aduun joined the others, and together they stepped out of the cave.

  The landscape stretching before them was vast and uneven, with wide stretches of sand and dirt broken by chunks and outcroppings of bare rock, all sprinkled with scrubby vegetation. Everything was painted in varying shades of gray by the starlight.

  The chill in the air surprised her; it couldn’t compare to what they’d faced on the other side of the mountains, but all the stories had described deserts as places of unbearable heat. For a moment, she considered digging out her furs, but decided against it. Once they were moving, her body would generate some warmth.

  Aduun’s feet whispered over the dusty ground, their sound mixing with the night songs of unknown, unseen creatures, as he came up beside her. “Which way?”

  Nina nearly cringed as she sought out the voices. That instinctual reaction came with a pang of guilt; these were her mates’ people she was trying to find, her adopted people, but there was just…something that made her uneasy about it. The voices had changed since she’d first heard their calls. Maybe it was simply their desperation to know freedom. Maybe they were running out of time. Either way, Nina couldn’t help but feel guilty for her hesitation in seeking them out.

  Raising her arm, she pointed at a spot in the distance where the dark shapes of rocky cliffs flanked a flatter, sandy area. “There.”

  When she turned her head toward Aduun, she found him running his gaze over her body, and immediately recognized the hunger gleaming in his eyes. Despite everything, her body reacted.

  “Not the time,” she said, as much to herself as to him.

  Aduun smiled, one corner of his mouth rising slightly over the other. He walked ahead of her. “Come, then.”

  “I already have, many times,” she muttered with a grin, her gaze dropping to his backside — only partially concealed by his tail — as she followed him.

  “I heard that,” Aduun said over his shoulder.

  “So did I,” Balir added as he fell into step beside her. “What do you mean?”

  “What did I miss?” Vortok asked from behind.

  “You didn’t miss anything,” Nina assured him, her skin heating at the double meaning of her words; he’d been integral to a several of the times she’d climaxed. She licked her lips. “In the human tongue, come has another meaning. It can mean…” Her cheeks warmed further as she moaned, mimicking the sounds she made during an orgasm.

  Aduun and Balir faltered midstride, and Vortok grunted. She managed to hold in her laughter until Aduun turned to stare at her with his mouth agape. His lips turned up into that wicked smile again.

  “Not enough times,” he said. “Never enough.”

  “Oh,” she said, her sex suddenly clenching with want in response to the promise in his deep voice.

  “I like the new meaning to this word,” Vortok said. “Come. Come. Nina, come.” He chuckled to himself, placed his hand on her backside, and gave it a squeeze before smacking it.

  “Vortok!” she gasped, turning her head toward him with wide eyes as she covered her ass with a hand. The smack had been enough to leave a small sting, but it was just enough to send a jolt of desire through her.

  Vortok grinned widely, unashamed.

  Balir’s face pressed against her neck. He inhaled deeply, and his chest rattled with a purr. “We will make you come again later.” He brushed his tail against her leg as he stepped away.

  Nina was thankful for the cool, crisp air against her flushed skin as they walked.

  Aduun maintained his position in the lead while Vortok and Balir remained to either side of Nina. Each step heightened her anticipation; she couldn’t wait to experience what her valos had in mind for her, and she couldn’t help but envision what she wanted to do with them — all three of them.

  Her internal clock — not that she could trust it after so many disorienting days underground — told her only about an hour had passed when color began bleeding into the surrounding desert. The sky gradually lightened, and the details of the landscape sharpened.

  “You should have woken me sooner,” Nina said. “I didn’t mean to make us waste the whole night.”

  “We woke you just after sunset,” Aduun said, brow creased as he turned his head, scanning the desert.

  The light strengthened rapidly, shifting from the muted gray of early dawn to a blaring red-orange as the sun crested the cliffs to Nina’s right. The cool air she’d enjoyed for a short time instantly warmed, hinting at what they’d be dealing with once the sun was fully overhead.

  “Perhaps more time passed than we realized,” Vortok said, though he didn’t sound at all convinced of his own words.

  “We know what this is,” said Balir. “We’ve known what all of this is since we began.”

  Their thoughts echoed, all four of them thinking the same thing at once — Kelsharn.

  They resumed their journey, refusing to slow. The sun seemed to have different plans; after bursting over the horizon and rising high over the desert with unnatural speed, its pace slowed until it seemed to hang there, a blaring orb pulsing increasingly hotter.

  Heat beat down on them from above, reflected up at them from the ground, and slithered through the air all around them. Sweat dampened Nina’s hair and dripped down her neck, back, and chest uncomfortably. She drank at Vortok’s urging, though only took a few sips at a time. When she told them to also drink, they refused.

  “There are things skittering around us,” Balir said after a time. “I hear their legs on sand and stone.”

  Something moved in Nina’s peripheral vision. She turned her head, squinting against the glare, to see small creatures crawling out from the dry brush, from behind rocks, and clawing up from beneath the sand. Many were insect-like, with segmented bodies, armored plates, and numerous limbs. Others appeared to have scales and claws, with short, broad bodies. Yet others had beaks and quill-like feathers that bobbed as they moved on two legs, bellies low to the ground.

  Several of the creatures were following Nina and her valos, maintaining a healthy distance but keeping their eyes on the group. She brushed them off as merely curious, paying them no more attention until Balir suddenly darted behind her. Something crunched.

  Startled, Nina spun around and dropped her gaze to see Balir’s clawed foot atop one of the bug-things. Its gooey insides oozed from between the broken segments of its squashed body, and one of its long pincers was extended, weakly closing on the air where her calf had been a moment ago before falling into the sand.

  The creature’s body was as long as her foot; twice that if she counted its pincers and tail. And it had been coming at her. At least a dozen more critters lurked just behind it.

  Vortok turned and lunged at the other creatures, releasing a booming roar that seemed to carry across the entire desert.

  The creatures scurried off into new hiding places with startling speed. But, less than a moment later, she saw them peeking out of their hiding places, watching as though to see if there’d be any follow-up to Vortok’s threat.

  Nina wiped sweat from her brow. “They’re waiting to eat us.”

  “They’ll be disappointed,” Aduun said. Nina glanced over her shoulder to find him much closer. His amber eyes narrowed as he watched the critters.

  When the group resumed walking, Aduun remained only a few feet in front of Nina, and Vortok and Balir dropped slightly behind her, creating a living barrier between her and t
he creatures.

  Nina closed her eyes briefly, lapsing into concentration as she attempted to send out a warning to their pursuers. She maintained her mental shields as she sent out a psychic pulse; after her experience with the worm, she had no desire to connect with the minds of these creatures.

  The critters’ leisurely pace faltered, and the distance between them and Nina’s group increased steadily. Eventually, the creatures thinned out, many abandoning the hunt in favor of shady spots in which to hide. Only a handful continued to follow, keeping far back from the valos.

  The desert heat intensified as they walked. Nina’s head was soon throbbing thanks to maintaining that psychic pulse to hold the critters at bay, and her skin was hot and had taken on a pinkish hue. She knew that being exposed for much longer would turn her minor burn into something far more serious.

  “Vortok, I need the cloak,” Nina said.

  “You will be even hotter with that on,” he grumbled.

  “My skin is burning. I need it for shade.”

  His grunt was expressive enough to tell her that he’d looked down and seen the truth of what she’d said. A few moments later, he handed her the cloak. She unfurled it and raised it over her head, pulling it down just enough to shade her face and chest. The hide seemed to grow heavier as they traveled, and, though she drank when her valos pressed her to, the heat came to be too much. Soon, all her mental energy was taken by keeping the creatures at bay and forcing one foot in front of the other.

  Nina lifted her gaze, gritting her teeth against the wave of dizziness that overcame her, and squinted to look over the desert.

  “There,” she said, pointing to a place along a nearby cliff where a large recess in the stone created a pool of deep shade. “We can rest there.”

  The valos made no argument. Vortok and Balir remained close at her sides, occasionally placing their hands on her arms to steady her as she staggered toward the cliff. The relief she found in the shade was instantaneous. She allowed her legs to give out and sank onto the cool sand, sighing when it touched her heated skin. She closed her eyes and let go of the projection she’d maintained.

  The sound of a gentle gust of wind over the rocks preceded a series of grunts, growls, insect chitters, and squishy, wet cracks. She didn’t bother opening her eyes again; she didn’t need to see how many critters her valos had just killed to make this place safe to rest in, didn’t care how many of the dead creatures had been following them or how many had been hiding in this precious bit of shadow.

  Someone brought the spout of a waterskin to her mouth; she sensed Vortok through that deep, subtle connection they shared through the heartstones. Nina drank gratefully.

  “We can get moving again in a minute,” she said. “Just need to rest my eyes for a little while.”

  “Rest, Nina,” Balir said from nearby.

  “We’ll rest here until nightfall,” Aduun said.

  Vortok snorted. “If it ever comes.”

  Nina dozed off, though her sleep was interrupted several times by cursing valos or pleading, disembodied voices.

  She opened her eyes when Balir brushed his fingers over her cheeks.

  “Drink, Nina,” he said, offering her the waterskin.

  She accepted it. The container weighed far less than what it had when they’d left the cave. “I’m going through too much, too fast, and you three haven’t had any.”

  “We will make do,” Balir replied.

  Nina laughed without humor and sat up, shaking her head. “I can feel your thirst, Balir. And Aduun’s, and Vortok’s.”

  “But we are changed, Nina,” said Vortok.

  “That doesn’t mean you should suffer!”

  “Our suffering will mean your survival,” Aduun said. “Your—”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” she said sarcastically.

  Aduun frowned before continuing. “Your suffering, Nina, will mean your death. There is no choice to make. We hunger, we thirst, but we will not die. If you hunger and thirst for too long, you will.”

  Nina sighed and buried her face in her hand. She wished Kelsharn were near, so she could wring his neck for all he’d put her valos through, for what he’d put everyone that he’d played with through — not that death by strangulation was as terrible an end as he deserved. She hated that her valos were enduring so much for her sake. They’d suffered enough.

  Her hands brushed over the vegetation clinging to the rock face as she dropped them to settle her palms on the sand beneath her. The dirt was cool and comforting, and she dug her fingers deeper into the moist ground.

  Moist.

  She twisted to look behind her. The plants here were green, a healthy, living green, unlike all the other plants she’d seen since they left the cave. Getting onto her knees, she tore up the plants, tossing them aside, and clawed at the dirt with her fingers.

  “What are you doing?” Balir asked.

  “There are living plants here, and the ground is moist,” she said, scooping away handfuls of wet soil.

  Vortok dropped down onto his knees beside her and gently nudged her arms away, taking over what she’d begun. His huge hands dug out piles of increasingly damp dirt, which occasionally landed on the other two valos as he tossed it back. Though she detected a prickle of curiosity from Aduun and Balir, neither approached; she guessed they were keeping alert for more of the creatures.

  Before long, a tiny pool of water had formed at the base of the hole. Nina reached down and dipped her finger in; the water was only as deep as her second knuckle, but it was a start.

  “Dig it out some more,” she said. She hadn’t heard such excitement in her own voice in so long, especially over something as simple as water.

  These are the struggles of my father’s people — of Aduun, Balir, and Vortok. Clean water, food, warmth… Orishok prepared me to provide for myself if necessary, but I’ve never wanted for any of these necessities until I fell down here.

  Vortok shoveled out several more handfuls of mud, widening and deepening the hole before sitting back.

  Nina looked up at him and grinned. “We did it!”

  His smile shone in his dark eyes. “I didn’t think there’d be water underground in a place like this. You did it.”

  She leaned closer and pressed a kiss to his muscled arm before dipping her hands into the water to splash her face. Its cold shocked her skin, sending a delightful shiver down her spine.

  They sat back and waited as water slowly filled the hole. There was no telling how much they’d get, but they couldn’t allow any to go to waste.

  Nina nudged Vortok. “Drink.”

  He leaned down, cupped his palm, and lifted a handful of water. Tilting his head back, he poured it into his open mouth. Rivulets ran down his lips and into his mane. After a second handful, he pushed himself up and turned to Aduun and Balir. “One of you come have some. It’s good and cold.”

  “Go ahead,” Aduun said.

  Vortok took Balir’s place as the pale-scaled valo moved to kneel at the edge of the hole.

  Balir’s long-fingered hands were ill-suited to scooping out water. He pressed the sides of his hands together to create a larger surface and drank several handfuls. When he was done, he turned his head toward Nina, his sightless eyes moving as though to seek her out. “Thank you, Nina.”

  “No more suffering.” Nina cupped his cheek and drew him closer, pressing her mouth to his.

  One of his hands settled on her leg as he returned the kiss. “We will always choose suffering for ourselves if it spares you.”

  Her heart constricted as she stared into his pale eyes, and the sensation only intensified when she turned her gaze toward Aduun and Vortok. These were her mates. They’d put themselves through hell for her, and she’d do the same for them. If it came down to it, she’d give her life for them.

  They were the blood pumping through her veins, the very beat of her heart, the undying flame she’d longed to possess. They were hers.

  She loved O
rishok and Quinn deeply. It was a child’s love for her parents, and it would go on until Sonhadra claimed her. But this love, this blazing, consuming love she felt for her mates, would continue long after, as intense as the sun and serene as the moons, with all the beauty and chaos of the boundless sky.

  Nina kissed Balir again, harder, willing her love into him.

  He brought a hand to the side of her face, brushing his thumb over her cheekbone. “I feel the same for you,” he whispered. Then he pulled away from her, moving to take Aduun’s place.

  Aduun kept his gaze on Nina as he approached, quills slowly rising and flattening. Even after she’d become so familiar with them, his amber eyes captured her, their gaze no less powerful than it had been that first time. He dropped to his knees beside her, and rather than quench his thirst, he grasped her upper arms and pulled her closer.

  “You are ours, Nina, and we will not let Sonhadra have you.” He dipped his head and caught her mouth with his, kissing her long and deep, claiming her, branding her with the heat of his lips.

  When he finally pulled back and released her, she watched, lips still tingling and mind fuzzy in the aftermath of his kiss, as he drank his fill from the hole they’d dug. She shook off her daze and helped him refill the waterskins once he’d finished, and then leaned down to drink her share. She savored the cold water, swallowing a little at a time to relish the feel of it sliding down her parched throat. It didn’t matter if there was a bit of grittiness to it. Water was life.

  They settled in to wait. The valos took turns sitting on the perimeter of their little rest site, frightening away any curious or hungry critters bold enough to approach. They all drank regularly, taking full advantage of their fortune. There was no way to bring all the water along, so it was foolish not to partake as they desired.

  Who could say how long the next night would last, if ever it came?

  Their conversation was sporadic but companionable, coming in little spurts between long periods of silence that were neither awkward nor uncomfortable. Nina felt like she’d been traveling with these valos for years instead of days, in the best way possible.