To Mate an Assassin: The Lost Alphars Series, Book 1

by Ceri Grenelle

  Shaking the pain of the wound off, Cimby focused her mind and vision on the women in front of her. They were deadly and skillful but she had a Beast inside her waiting to be let out and allowed to join the party. Cimby appealed to her Wolf for help and she felt the tingles in her muscles telling her the Beast was taking control of the human body her and her animal spirit shared. It was almost out, almost free.

  Cimby lunged again, chucking her gun and pulling the blade from a sheathe along her spine, quicker and with an agile grace that spoke of her years as an assassin, as her Alphar’s Incendiary. Their weapons clanged and the look on the Vryk’s face was that of surprise. It gave Cimby no end of pleasure. She parried, she thrust towards her and she dodged. On and on they did their dance. Cimby’s cries of fury for the humans needlessly murdered and the rising tide of rage within her provided the music to their fight. Eventually a recovered Carter came and took one of the Vryks to fight himself, giving Cimby a second wind and saving her ass. She really needed to make sure Kerrick didn’t kill him.

  Cimby’s wound began to ache furiously and she couldn’t keep her mind off the pain, it made her confused and difficult to focus on control. But she didn’t quit. The metallic bell sound of their swords hitting one another gave her the jolt she needed to stay motivated. She had a second of reprieve after she kicked the Vryk’s abdomen, sending her flying to the ground. Cimby used that time to survey the damage in her leg. She should have gotten a better look at the dagger before throwing it. This was not a normal gash. The flesh was literally hanging from her leg and it looked as though something was eating away at her skin.

  Cimby looked up at the Vryk, her smile was toxic. Just like the poison that must have been on the end of that dagger. She growled at the bitch, enflamed by the disgusting trick.

  “You cheated,” Cimby rasped, dragging herself up to full height.

  “Please. This is war, wolfy. Aint no such thing as cheating.” The Vryk brought her sword up to her face and licked some of Cimby’s blood off it, making a face. “A little gamey for my tastes but it will do.”

  “I am going to laugh when I kill you.” Cimby ran for her again.

  They fought for what felt like forever, but it didn’t matter as long as she kept them away from Zach. Her thigh burned from the acid eating away at her skin. That was twice this month she’d been attacked by some sort of poison. She needed a vacation. But the Vryk was right, this was war. There was no such thing as fair or unfair. Cheat or follow the rules. The game was death. And Cimby dealt in death. She could play this game.

  She dodged out of the way of a strike that aimed for her neck. Twisting on the ground she brought her foot up to her knee and kicked with all the power her strength and steel-toed boots had to offer. The Vryk shrieked as Cimby broke her kneecap, falling down to the ground. Cimby didn’t hesitate. She pinned her and pulled the safety from a gun in a hidden back sheathe, and shoved it in the bitch’s mouth.

  “How’s this taste? Still too gamey?” Cimby said, needing the last word on the chatty bitch, and pulled the trigger. She sat back on her heels and moaned with pain “Why didn’t I just do that earlier?”

  “Because you do not listen to your own advice.” Cimby turned to her right to see a scorched and bleeding Jeremiah approach.

  “Well, she called me gamey. I wanted to hit her.” He helped her to her feet. She ignored the searing pain in her leg and surveyed the battlegrounds. There were so many Vryks gaining on the Weres. They were losing. No, they couldn’t be losing. “Shouldn’t you be fighting?”

  “I’m supposed to be protecting you, actually,” he said, a grimace on his face as he put pressure on his left leg. It wasn’t bleeding very badly but something must have twisted or broken to make Jeremiah show pain.

  “Looks like you need a bodyguard yourself.” She gestured to his leg.

  “What is wrong with your thigh?” he asked, squinting at the way her flesh was beginning to curl and reveal the muscle beneath.

  “Nothing.” Cimby pulled away from him. They needed as many hands on the field as possible, and if Jeremiah saw the state of her now-charred flesh, he would take her away to safety. Cimby scanned the meadow and her heart skipped a beat.

  “Where is Kerrick?” she asked, panic lacing her voice. When Jeremiah didn’t answer fast enough, she sprinted onto the field, searching for her mate, forgetting her task of protecting Zach.

  She couldn’t find Kerrick or Mara anywhere and she wanted to scream. She ran through the small battles and scrimmages, shooting Vryks in the head as she went, trying to help any shifter that she could.

  Cymbeline should have felt them. That much power being used should have smoldered the morning air, making it almost hard to breathe from the thickness of it. A fog of power. But the air was clear besides the smoke from the burning building. Panic was well and truly on its way from her heart to her mind and that was never a good sign. Dread was a surefire way to lose control over her emotions completely, and that was a battle she was already worried she’d lose.

  Nobody, except the trainers and the Alphars, really understood what the Incendiary was. Why they were chosen. She’d been born to a blood-possessed human woman, as all Incendiaries were in the beginnings of their lives. The Vryk blood, aiding in the development of the fetus, changed her cells, made the baby stronger and more powerful than any human child had a right to be. It also made her slightly crazy. The insanity was balanced by Turning the child, making them Were. The animal spirit calmed them, but also gave them the potential to be even more dangerous. It was why they needed to be rigorously trained and cut off from the world before the Turn, so they could learn to control their emotions and keep the rage at bay. Cymbeline was a berserker warrior, that fury and craving for violence a constant hum beneath her skin.

  Cimby had never had a choice in what her life would be. She had been told what she was on her first day of training, her trainers explaining why she was dangerous and why she couldn’t play with other children. The Incendiary was just another term, a camouflage for a berserker warrior. Anyone could be taught how to fight, but it took years to master the control of her rage.

  When she mated with Kerrick she thought it would mean the failure of her control and the release of her berserker nature. But Kerrick didn’t inspire rage and pain, only love and lust. But not being able to feel him, see him, pushed her to the edge of her control. She wanted to use the mate link to find him but she didn’t know whether the poison in her leg was magic or physical. If it was magic, she didn’t want to risk it travelling to him via their link, so she kept it shut tight.

  “Cimby!” she heard Zach cry out above the panic swelling in her mind. “Cimby, come back!”

  She couldn’t find her mate, she couldn’t feel his power. He could be dead. Kerrick could be dead. Dead. No. She screamed and the berserker released.

  Kerrick used the small yet powerful charm Zach constructed to consume himself and Mara in a vacuum. They were invisible to the rest of the battle and her focus was for him alone. The ancient was powerful enough to spare magic for those around her, striking them down while simultaneously raging against him. He needed her to concentrate her will on him completely, as a simple touch from her twisted magic would kill any other shifter in his protection in an instant. He alone had the power to take the bitch down.

  Within the sphere, that could have been disturbed if one wandering soul crossed over the boundary, Mara and Kerrick ceased their physical battle and turned their power inwards to the mental plane. A physical battle between two beings with such strength and an endless amount of people to draw their power from could have potentially lasted for weeks. Mara knew what he had meant when he challenged her. A true test of the innate power that came with being a man born to be an Alphar, and a woman who had well over a millennium to amass her power.

  After they engaged mentally, Kerrick opened his mind’s eye to see the battlefield littered with
bodies. Aaron with his caramel skin so pale and a dagger sticking out of his heart. Rhiannon’s blonde hair dyed blood red in a puddle of her own viscera. Zach, consumed by the power of his own magic and turned into a creature from the young man’s darkest nightmares. Cymbeline…Cymbeline taken prisoner, forced to be caged like an animal, her wild spirit broken by the Vryk’s sadistic pleasures.

  He wrenched himself out of the nightmare, Mara’s cold beauty grinning back at him. Kerrick felt his heart stutter from the onslaught of visions, his power waning from the soul-crushing realization she was far more advanced than he. But a singular thought bolstered him. She may have had a millennia to gain her power, but he had thousands of people who loved and needed him, who respected him, willingly lending their power to his victory. It fortified him, and he shoved his mental fingertips into her psyche and pulled the darkest nightmare to the fore of her mind.

  This sort of battle was a mind game. They taunted each other, shoving image after image into one another’s mind, ripping the worst of nightmares from the depths of their subconscious, forcing them to watch. If hell was waiting for Kerrick upon his removal from this world, that would be what it felt like. Seeing his loved ones die, the people he had vowed to protect perish as he watched. Doing nothing. Useless. The terrified and tortured images of his friends, screaming for him to do something, to help them, all the while he just stood there, beleaguered with indifference.

  It hurt so much to see his people falter. So much so he nearly succumbed to the visions and could have sworn it was his reality. If Kerrick had capitulated to that line of thinking, Mara would have won. She would have forced him to become trapped in his own nightmares, incapable of escape, his mind becoming his prison.

  But then he had felt it. Something wrong with his bond, his link to Cymbeline. It no longer felt like the fierce radiance of her spirit. It was tainted with insanity, a craving for blood so pure he thought for sure she had been possessed.

  It brought him back. Reminded him to fight for his friends, for his people, for the young woman who would be his daughter. For his mate. He attacked with renewed fervor, ripping through Mara’s mental shields, tearing the worst of her memories from her mind and forcing her to watch. A thousand years was a long time to collect and bury bad memories.

  The scream that tore from Mara’s lips was gut wrenching, but he wouldn’t pull back, forcing her to see the atrocious things she had done. How she had turned from an innocent woman into a soulless creature bent on controlling those around her like pawns on a chessboard. Her stone-black eyes had seen through him at the start of the night, finding his weaknesses and using them against him. The tables turned, and all her eyes saw were the endless hallucinations he forced upon her.

  A memory flashed before Kerrick’s mind. It wasn’t his, but Mara’s. There was a large man. A shifter. Kerrick gripped the memory with his power and pulled it to the edge of her mind. Mara screamed in pain but grinned at the same time. She wanted him to see this. In the memory there was a stack of envelopes on a table between Mara and the shifter. The shifter was twitchy, and the nervous ticks almost looked familiar to Kerrick.

  “See,” Mara hissed through the pain and mental obliteration she endured through the onslaught of his power.

  Knowing she was all but done for, he looked closer. The shifter was Riddan and a thin line of magic pulsed between him and Mara. The envelopes, they looked like the envelopes Cymbeline received her orders in.

  “No,” he growled, pushing a hotter power into her, making her burn.

  “Yes,” she screamed, then choked, crimson blood running down her chin. She was dying, but Kerrick needed to hear what she had to say. “Riddan was my puppet and nobody but I knew about your little Incendiary. I was going to send that dog, that bitch, to kill all the Weres standing in my way. Some were tests. But once you settled in the Alphar seat I was going to have your own assassin hunt you.” Her laugh was choked out, the slop of blood in her lungs making her sound as though she were speaking underwater. Enough. Mara had caused enough terror and pain to last another millennia. Her time was over.

  “You’ll never touch her.”

  Heat struck his face and the sphere of isolation burst. Kerrick turned to see Zach, bloody but still fighting, directing the blaze from the facility toward Mara, and consuming her. Zach fell to his knees, exhausted but determined, his face screwed up into one of intense concentration. Kerrick borrowed what power he had left within and lent what he could to the man’s endeavors, allowing himself to smile angrily as Mara released her last breath on this earth with a scream.

  Kerrick offered his hand to help Zach up, clapping him on the back. His bones ached and the Beasts within him were all but asleep from the energy they’d drawn upon to fuel his strength. He observed the battlefield, shocked to see it empty of any bodies but those that lay dead on the ground, all save one. A lone figure stood, blood dripping from head to toe, hands curled into claws and fangs descended through her open-mouthed heavy panting. She was a glorious beast, he thought with a smile until he saw a shimmering purple substance leak from a gaping wound on her leg.

  “Cimby?” he asked, taking a step toward her as her knees gave out. “Cimby!” he yelled, catching her before she hit the ground, whimpering in pain and falling into a deep unconscious sleep. Kerrick pulled the last of his strength from within his soul and roared like a Lion into the morning sky.

  Kill. Attack. Bite. Claw. Kill.

  Her Wolf chanted in tune with their berserker nature, having also been taken over by the red haze. It was their pulse of life, their natural state of being. White noise in her mind. Cimby screamed again, the power and strength racing through her veins like a drug. Something like a whistle sounded and she could make out the forms of animals moving in one direction. She didn’t care. She only felt the sweet rush of adrenaline as the warrior within her took hold.

  The world was red. The monster looked out from the depths of her soul and observed the remaining Vryks, the ones who refused to surrender, with an organic interest. The berserker form was forged from strength and insanity, but it was not a complicated being. It needed one thing to be satisfied. Death.

  She spotted a Vryk searching for someone to attack. Alone in the field. The poison in Cimby’s leg was a thing of the past, a distant memory. Now there was only carnage and the Vryks she could see walking around, looking somewhat bewildered at the sudden retreat of the shifters.

  When the Vryk spotted her he smiled, heading in her direction, fangs descended. Cimby took that as her cue to let it all just fucking go. She advanced on the Vryk with her own smile, so genuine, so full of joy, only angels would have known the difference. The corners of the Vryk’s mouth had just begun to peak up when she dug her fingers into his throat and tore his esophagus out. The smell of the blood on her hands was dark chocolate dipped in sin.

  “Delicious,” she heard herself growl through the haze as she turned to the rest of the Vryks and charged. Her Wolf merged with the berserker and took over her body with partial shifting. She slashed and tore, using claws and teeth, knives and bullets. Any weapon she could find she used on the scattering bloodsuckers. At one point she ran out of weapons. She saw a dead body on the ground and tore a leg bone from the exposed meat, breaking the bone in half, and using the jagged edge as a dagger. Eventually the remaining Vryks recognized the madness inside her and ran, their leader nowhere to be found. But the chasing was part of the fun.

  Some of them didn’t run, they thought they could take her. None of these Vryks were over one hundred years old. They were babies, and the thing that controlled her as she raged across the battlefield, cutting Vryks down one by one, had no comprehension of age or power. It only cared for blood.

  She knew her body was tiring when she felt the pain return to her thigh and the flickering of control return to her mind. But it was no longer just her thigh that hurt, the pain had made its way to her ankle now. If she didn’t
regain control soon she could lose her foot. But she didn’t want to stop, she wanted to keep killing, keep hearing those last screams that pierced the fiery night sky.

  Eventually the creature controlling her body stopped and so did she because there was no one left to kill. The field was empty except for her and the corpses of Vryks and fallen Weres. As her awareness slowly returned, riding the rising pain thrumming in her leg, she knew she hadn’t taken any Were lives. They had fled the field at what she now recognized as Jeremiah’s signal. How he had known to warn the shifters away from her, she didn’t know, but she would be eternally grateful.

  But some part of her knew she wouldn’t have taken the Weres even if they had remained. She had been killing Weres for years—the Beast had known it was the Vryks’ turn.

  A scream of rage and pain sounded across the field from the direction of the facility. She ran towards it, her berserker nature hoping there would be another Vryk to put out of their misery or prolong it depending on how the fury felt when she got there.

  There was no one left for her berserker to kill, only a sight she needed to see in order to take back control of her mind. Zach had consumed the flames of the building and turned them on Mara, using his magic. Kerrick battled and attacked the woman nonstop, even as she burst into flames. Dying with one final scream of fury.

  They stood there, gasping and panting through the effort of the battle. Zach fell to his knees, his magic spent, exhausted. Cimby waited for Kerrick to see her. Once he turned after helping Zach up, and he smiled that beatific smile, she felt the fury leave her body, and the human bits take control once more.