Unleashed

by Tiffany Roberts

  The huge doors at the end of the tunnel swung open in front of Aduun, spilling blinding sunlight into the passageway.

  Aduun kept his focus on the visions Nina had granted him and pushed forward. To dwell on anything else for long would only slow him down.

  Quinn and Orishok.

  Finding them was the priority. They were the only ones who might have means of healing Nina’s wounds. The only ones who could save her life.

  He dared not look at Nina again for fear that the sight would break him, would reduce him to a beast driven purely by rage, pain, and grief. His heart beat along with hers, but how long could hers keep going? It was so weak already…

  Hold on, Nina. Do not give in.

  Her voice pulsed in his mind. Still here… They’re coming. Close…

  He didn’t know who she meant; her parents? His people? Regardless, he continued onward.

  The huge doorway opened onto a wide bridge, its stonework dark gray in the sunlight. A cool breeze swept over Aduun as he led his people across. The air carried hints of mountain grass and coming rain.

  The open space beyond the bridge was the same as the one below, save for the vibrant green vegetation growing along the edges of the stone-paved ground and the lack of a statue overlooking the pit. For a moment, he allowed his gaze to drift over the mountain peaks in the distance. They were familiar. This was the Sonhadra he’d known.

  “Nina!”

  The shout drew Aduun’s attention to the road on the right side of the chasm ahead. Two people were sprinting along it toward him — one a tall, powerfully built male with gray skin, one of Aduun’s kind, and the other a slight female with pale hair and a long spear in one hand. A hoomin.

  “Nina!” the female shouted again, desperation apparent in her tone but not dominating her voice. Her eyes shifted to Nina, who was bloody and unmoving in Vortok’s arms, and widened for an instant before her expression shifted to something fierce. She took the shaft of her spear in both hands and aimed it at Vortok. “You put her down!”

  The gray-skinned male stepped in front of her. He held no weapons, but as he moved, his body changed. Armor plates formed over his skin, long spikes grew from his shoulders, and black blades extended from the tops of his wrists.

  Aduun met the male’s eyes.

  Orishok.

  He knew it in his heart, though Orishok had been so young when they’d last encountered one another more than a thousand years before.

  Then a lifeless, skull-like mask formed over Orishok’s face, blue-green light glowing within the eyeholes. He advanced quickly, surprisingly so for the apparent bulk of his armor. The scent of death preceded him.

  “Dad, no,” Nina said, voice strong despite the pain Aduun knew she was suffering.

  Orishok slid to a halt and turned his head toward her, keeping his armblades up. “Nina.” There seemed to be some relief in that deep, raspy, multi-toned voice. “What have they done to you?”

  “Not them. Kelsharn.”

  The name carried great weight, even here in the sunlight and open air; it crashed down upon the gathering and swept over them.

  Aduun took a step forward. Orishok looked at him, making no move to either relax or attack, and watched as Aduun tossed the bloody, horned helmet onto the ground. Orishok’s eerie gaze settled on the mask for a long while; Aduun could guess at his kinsman’s thoughts, though Orishok’s armored face was unreadable.

  Finally, Orishok straightened. The changes to his body reverted, vanishing into him, and within a few moments, he looked as he might have before Kelsharn had made him into a valo. He strode forward, stopping before Vortok, and held his arms out.

  “Give me my daughter.”

  Vortok’s shoulders rose and fell with heavy breaths. He glanced at Aduun questioningly.

  Aduun knew the struggle on Vortok’s face; it was a war of possessiveness and protectiveness, a battle of distinguishing what was right for her from the arrogance of thinking he knew what was best, that only he could keep her safe. Aduun nodded.

  Vortok looked back to Orishok and carefully passed Nina to him. She curled against her father as he drew her close.

  “Don’t hurt them,” she said softly. “They are my mates, and they are our tribe.”

  Orishok glanced at Aduun over his shoulder, eyes narrowed. He searched Aduun’s face before looking to the other valos. He turned away without a word and walked toward the female. The woman met him halfway. Her face was pale, and her wide eyes were mismatched — one blue, the other green and bisected by a scar from brow to cheek. She gently touched her fingers to Nina’s cheek.

  “What happened?” the woman asked.

  “It does not matter now,” Orishok said. “She is close, Quinn. Too close.”

  “No,” Quinn rasped, tears filling her eyes. “No. I won’t lose her. I can’t.”

  Aduun clenched his jaw. Nina had said Orishok was made into death; why wouldn’t he be able to sense how near to it she loomed? Aduun should’ve moved faster, should’ve fought harder, should’ve done something to avoid this.

  Orishok strode forward, and Quinn jogged alongside him, heading toward the buildings in the distance.

  “I should have talked to her about the serum before we left,” Quinn said. “I should have… Why didn’t I talk to her before? We could have lost her. We are losing her!”

  Vortok and Balir moved after them. Aduun followed, only to stop after a few steps. His responsibility was not solely to Nina. His clan was here, his people. He turned to face them. In the daylight, the full damage that had been done to their bodies over the years was apparent — wasted, leathery, discolored skin stretched over jutting bones, matted, ragged fur, hunched stances and pained faces.

  “I… I will not abandon any of you who wish still to follow. You are free now, to seek what life you will, but I…”

  “Go,” Gorvahl said from the front of the group. “We will await you here. Tend to your mate. We’ve endured this long. We can go a little longer.”

  The others nodded and voiced their agreement. Aduun swept his gaze over them and was overcome by humility, by love for these people he felt he’d failed so many times in the past. That they still looked to him with compassion, with respect… It was nearly too much to bear.

  “Thank you,” he said and turned to hurry after his companions.

  Orishok maintained his rapid pace as they entered the city. The buildings were familiar; Aduun had seen their shadowy likenesses belowground, but the streets up here were lined with healthy vegetation — grasses, vines, trees, flowers, all alive and bright, flourishing and well-tended — and many strange statues with vague features. They made only two turns before Orishok entered a building and raced up the stairs to the second level. Aduun, Vortok, and Balir followed closely behind.

  Quinn broke away and hurried down the hall, disappearing through a doorway as Orishok carried Nina into a large room. He brought her to a bed set atop a platform against the far wall and laid her down gently. Nina’s hands fell limply beside her. Her eyes were closed, her breath shallow.

  Balir moved to stand beside her. Orishok glanced at him, shifting slightly as though to avoid physical contact, and watched as Balir placed his hands over Nina’s abdomen and pressed down on the wadded cloth covering her wounds.

  Quinn entered, and Vortok stepped aside to allow hber past. She moved directly to the bed and climbed onto it. She held something in one hand. Settling down on her side beside Nina, she brushed her fingers over her daughter’s forehead.

  “Nina?”

  Nina opened her eyes to look at Quinn.

  Tears rolled down Quinn’s cheeks. “I need you to make a decision. You know what was done to me, what I am, and I… I couldn’t take that choice from you, no matter how much I wanted to keep you safe, and this isn’t how I wanted you to have to choose.” She lifted her hand and opened her fingers. A long, cylindrical object lay upon her palm. “Lucie was able to replicate the serum used on me on the Concord. I asked her to t
ry not long after you came to us.”

  Aduun stepped forward, legs bumping the edge of the bed. “What does that mean?” he demanded. “What will that do to her?”

  Quinn turned her face toward Aduun. “That she’ll heal…and live a long, long life.”

  His heart leapt. “So why waste time? Give it to her. Do what you must!”

  “It is Nina’s choice.”

  “What choice is there in this? Live or die?”

  “It’s not that simple,” Quinn replied, turning back to Nina. “You have to understand why we didn’t do this before. I’ve been on this planet for twenty years, Nina, and I haven’t aged a day. I cannot die. That might seem like a blessing, but we don’t know how long this will last. A hundred years, or ten thousand… Forever? We didn’t know what it would do to a child, didn’t know if you’d ever grow up.”

  Nina’s gaze flicked between Orishok and Quinn, then she looked at Aduun, Vortok, and Balir. She placed a trembling, bloody hand atop Balir’s. “I want more time with all of you. As much as I can get. Yes.”

  I love you all, Nina’s voice said in Aduun’s mind.

  His chest constricted, and his heartstone pulsed.

  Quinn closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to Nina’s. Her shoulders shook with a sob, and she sniffed when she lifted her head again, meeting Orishok’s gaze.

  Orishok cupped her jaw. “Sonhadra will not have her, my queen, just as it will not have you.”

  Quinn turned her head and kissed Orishok’s palm before looking at Aduun, Balir, and Vortok. “You will need to help hold her down. It is…painful.”

  Aduun climbed onto the bed beside Quinn and settled his hands on Nina’s left leg. Vortok stepped to the bedside and lowered his hands on her right leg. Orishok and Quinn each took an arm, and Balir maintained his place at her midsection.

  “We are here for you, Nina,” Aduun rasped. “We are all here for you.”

  “Okay.” Quinn drew in a deep breath. She hurriedly removed the belt from around her waist, folded the leather, and held it to Nina’s mouth. “Bite down on this.” When Nina clamped her teeth down, Quinn moved the object in her other hand to Nina’s neck. The device hissed as she activated it.

  No one spoke. Nina’s only reaction for several moments was a wince of discomfort. Aduun’s heart beat a little faster, and Nina’s breaths quickened. He felt her muscles tense beneath his hands. She twitched, yanked, and then writhed as she panted against the belt’s leather. Her eyes widened, and perspiration beaded her brow.

  Her heart raced, making Aduun’s feel like it would burst from his chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered. The sound pierced him; he knew it did not do justice to what she was feeling, to the agony that thrummed at the edges of his awareness through whatever deep, mysterious, powerful bond they shared. Her struggles intensified. Corded tendons stood out on her neck and arms.

  Quinn held Nina’s shoulder and arm down, leaning close to whisper comforting words to her. The woman’s expression was strained, haunted, worried, frightened; a helpless mirror of everything Aduun felt in that moment.

  He tightened his hold on Nina’s leg as she pressed her heels into the bed and fought to arch her back. Balir was forced to lean forward and use more of his weight to hold her down; the strength provided by her pain was startling.

  “I know it feels like fire coursing through your veins,” Quinn said, “but focus on us, our voices, our presence here with you, Nina. You are not alone.”

  “Draw from me what you need, heart of my heart,” Aduun said, opening himself to her, offering anything she wanted to take from him.

  “And from me,” Balir and Vortok said in unison.

  Orishok brushed the fingers of one hand over Nina’s cheek and swept her tousled hair out of her face. His other hand kept her arm pinned without any apparent strain. “Take from all of us, daughter. We are here for you.”

  Nina looked up at Orishok, then Quinn, and finally Aduun, Balir, and Vortok. She cried out but shook her head rapidly in denial.

  “We are with you, Nina,” Vortok said. “Open to us.”

  “You need not suffer alone,” Balir said. “You would not let us suffer. Let us feel your pain.”

  Nina thrashed beneath their hands, head whipping back and forth. She clenched her fists so tightly her knuckles were white. With a gasp, she threw her head back and screamed.

  Suddenly, Aduun felt her, felt everything; he recognized that it was only a small portion, that she hadn’t fully released her pain to him, but it was enough to understand her agony. Quinn’s words had been apt. It was like wildfire raging through his veins, burning him from the inside out. All his muscles tensed at once, locking so tightly that they immediately ached, and it became difficult to draw adequate air into his lungs.

  He lowered his head, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth, nostrils flaring with ragged breaths.

  I am here with you, Nina, as I will always be.

  Soft sounds of pain and heavy breaths from the others told him they were sharing in the burden. The intensity of her pain erupted, blasting through Aduun as her screams filled his ears. Black spots distorted his vision, and he swayed, nearly overwhelmed by the sensations tearing through him. But no matter how much he suffered, he refused to let go, lending her his strength, his will, his love.

  Aduun felt the others doing the same, weaving their love for Nina around her like a cocoon to shield her from the pain. He felt her battling the agony of the serum, felt her resolve and strength resonating beneath it. And as that resolve shined through, he knew she was strong enough to fight.

  Strong enough to live.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Aduun passed another sizzling piece of meat to one of his people. He was stunned at how quickly they’d shaken off their madness, how quickly they’d come to control themselves, and he did not doubt that Nina had something to do with it. She’d touched their minds while they were underground. More importantly, she’d touched their hearts — they were free because of her.

  He turned to Orishok. It was strange having to look slightly up at him, when Orishok had been only chest-high to Aduun the last time they’d met, and it didn’t help that Aduun’s bestial instincts recognized Orishok as a danger to be avoided at all costs. “We will do all we can to replenish your stores.”

  “I am not concerned about the food,” Orishok replied, keeping his gaze on the valos around them.

  The square was full of conversation, and the warm glow of several large fires cast away the gloom of night. Nina had fallen into a deep, exhausting sleep after her ordeal with the serum, and Orishok, Aduun, and Balir had gone to the waiting valos while Quinn and Vortok remained with her.

  The sun had made its trek across the sky as they’d relocated everyone to the square, prepared several cooking fires, and hauled meat from the strange, cold rooms in which Orishok had stored it. Night had fallen some time ago, and Nina still slept. Aduun couldn’t help his worry; he knew her body needed to recover, but until she was awake, smiling and laughing, it would be hard to shake his concern.

  Her wounds had closed. That was heartening, and it was all that allowed him to continue tending to these other duties; he’d have liked nothing more than to lay beside her, holding her in his arms, and wait until she woke.

  Silence fell between him and Orishok once again. So much had changed since Kelsharn’s arrival. What lives could they know here now? Orishok had built a new life with Quinn and Nina, but was there really a place for ninety-three more valos here?

  Now that everyone else had a portion, Aduun allowed himself to eat. He ran his gaze over the gathering. Interspersed in the crowd were the stone figures Orishok said were his tribesmen. Their features were indistinct to Aduun, but Orishok had put a name to each of them in the square without pausing to think, and some of those names were familiar.

  So much had been lost…but now there was this. Now there was hope for more.

  Now he had Nina.

  “You three ar
e mated to her?” Orishok asked as though reading Aduun’s thoughts.

  “We are. We performed the ritual according to the old ways.”

  “Our people never mated three males to a single female.”

  “She would have nothing less,” Aduun replied, smiling to himself. “And she deserves nothing less.” He glanced at Orishok again to find those eerie, glowing eyes on him. They were unsettling, but that would change in time, just as Aduun had come to accept what he’d been changed into.”

  “I remember you well, Aduun,” Orishok said, turning his eyes away. “You were a hunter to be looked up to, a leader worth following. I took great pride in being part of the same tribe, and greater pride that we were blood kin. I remember when your clan did not come to the spring gathering. None of us knew what to make of it, and the elders, concerned, sent out scouts. They returned many weeks later, having found only your abandoned camp.”

  “Kelsharn took us,” Aduun replied. His gaze moved from face to face amidst the crowd. They all wore the scars of the Creator’s attention in their altered, emaciated forms.

  “We knew of him, then, but even our rokahn did not think to question whether he was involved. He had given our people wondrous gifts. We did not conceive it possible for him to betray us. And then, years later, he came. And he did not take a single clan, he took our whole tribe. Though I was grown, though I was strong and skilled and true of heart, I could not stop what happened.” Orishok’s eyes settled on Aduun again, falling with great weight. “No one could have stopped it. Aduun…”

  “I know, Orishok. I understand. It—”

  “You do not understand,” Orishok said, voice low. “I watched our people waste away around me, watched them die one by one, all the while wondering when my own will would falter. I had to keep their vigil. I had to watch because no one else was left. I wandered this city alone for more than one hundred and fifty winters before Quinn came, but I felt alone long before that.