by Leela Ash
She expected to see him soon after rising, but was surprised when the whole day passed and she didn’t hear a word from him. She was taken around by Krista throughout the day, and the kind woman taught her all she needed to know about living underground. She was worried by the time dinner was served and Zaden hadn’t been seen by anybody. Clayton narrowed his eyes at the head of the table where she had been invited to dine with his family when Janes reported that he hadn’t shown up for training, or even the mess hall, which he never missed.
“It seems Zaden is missing,” he announced, after having a thorough search done of the grounds. “He left unannounced. I can only suspect he is doing something rash and foolish.”
The news hit Kala hard. She knew, deep in her heart, that she was the reason he had left. He had probably been so ashamed of their night together that he hadn’t wanted to face her again. Perhaps he hadn’t really liked her at all and simply wanted to get some distance between them. Was she so repulsive that he would leave his home simply to get away from her? it seemed to make sense to her that he would. He was a rash and impulsive man, and if he felt like he had made a mistake, he would probably leave without thinking twice.
“Are you all right, Kala?” Krista asked kindly.
Kala nodded, surprised to be singled out and to have her feelings noticed so quickly.
“I’m sure he’s all right,” Krista reassured her. Kala was sure he was fine too, but she smiled politely and nodded again. He was probably fine, off traipsing around in the wilderness, kicking himself for getting entangled with the weird woman who had no memory. Kala sighed and excused herself from the table. She wouldn’t be able to eat anymore knowing that Zaden had left. There was no way she hadn’t factored in to his decision, and knowing that was one of the worst feelings she had ever had.
Chapter Sixteen
“What the-“
Peter, the Guardian who had been stalking Kala and Zaden, ducked as Zaden’s fist nearly reached his face. He ducked out of the way and Zaden grabbed him by the front of his robe.
“Where did you come from?” Zaden barked at him. His grip was tight, and Peter began to quiver in fear. The rest of the Guardians were busy rounding up the people in the city who had seen the lights of Kaldernon.
“Stuff it!” Peter said, jutting his chin out defiantly. Zaden growled and punched him hard in the face. The loud crack of his nose breaking echoed in the forest and Peter fell to the ground in a heap, tears burning his eyes. Everybody was so violent these days.
“Take me to your lair,” Zaden demanded.
“What do you want to go there for? You’ll be killed,” he said, holding his nose and glaring up at Zaden.
“Maybe you can help me then,” Zaden said, reconsidering. The last thing he wanted was to go into the devil’s playground.
“Why would I help you? You broke my nose!”
“I could do much worse than that,” Zaden threatened.
“What is it?”
“Tell me what you know about the girl,” Zaden said.
“I don’t know anything about her.”
Zaden kicked him hard in the ribs.
“How about now?”
“You’re messed up!” Peter wheezed into the dirt. “I don’t know anything.”
Zaden sighed. It looked like the only way he would get information would be the worst way imaginable. But he would do what he had to do to help Kala get her life back.
“Then take me to someone who does. Before I kill you.”
Peter groaned as he got to his feet and glared at Zaden.
“All right, if you insist. Follow me.”
***
Zaden looked around nervously as they approached the small cement building where the Guardians had made their fortress. He felt sick to his stomach thinking about all of the people who had been there, Kala most likely among them, simply to be tortured for who they were. None of them had chosen to come to this pathetic planet, and yet they were suffering for it, punished by this evil group of bastards and forced into hiding.
“Here we are, you foolish little man,” Peter said, grinning evilly. He seemed convinced that Zaden would live to regret his choice to come into the wolf’s den, and although he was nervous, the presumption pissed him off. He would do whatever it took.
“Peter, take me to a back entrance, would you?” he asked, gripping the serpent-like man by the back of the neck.
“Still pretty bold are you?” Peter chuckled. Zaden began to squeeze, until Peter was coughing. “All right, all right. Calm down. Let’s go this way.”
“No funny shit or I’ll kill you,” Zaden reminded him.
“I’ve got it,” Peter sighed, leading Zaden to the laboratory’s entrance. Inside, Zaden was shocked to see a group of men and women in a small cage.
“I’ve got to get to work!” one man shouted, pointing angrily at his wrist watch. “When are we out of quarantine?”
Zaden was startled to realize they were speaking to him. No, to Peter, who was walking ahead of him with his eyes to the ground.
“I’m sorry, but you will have to be patient,” Peter said, oozing false sweetness. It made Zaden sick to his stomach.
Peter pushed past their cage, much to their dismay. Their disgruntled shouts followed them throughout the laboratory. Zaden was horrified by the state of the subjects that the Guardians had collected. Many cells full of women and men were barely guarded. And why would they have to guard them? The people were as good as vegetables. Drugged out and oblivious of the world around them.
“What did you do to them?” Zaden hissed down at Peter, jarring him a bit with a shove.
“I didn’t do any of this,” Peter said indignantly. “This is all Richard’s business. We just help rid the world of otherworldly scum. It’s no good for our planet you know.”
“Yeah right. Who were those people back there? Why aren’t they zombies like the rest of them?”
“We just brought them in,” Peter said. He seemed eager to brag and spoke casually to Zaden. And why not? He figured Zaden would be killed soon enough and turned into one of the vegetables in the laboratory. And then he would surely have his fun with him.
“Why? They don’t smell like shifters.”
“You can smell other shifters?” Peter asked, raising his eyebrow incredulously. “I’m making a note of that. Richard will surely be able to use that information.”
“Don’t tell that scum anything!” Zaden exclaimed. “Why are they here?”
“They were able to see the lights of Kaldernon,” Peter said, his thin lips pursed so that they almost disappeared.
“That’s impossible,” Zaden said dismissively.
“Is it?” Peter asked. They stopped walking now, finally reaching the door where Peter was convinced Zaden would meet his doom. “Here we are. Right into the lion’s den.”
Chapter Seventeen
Kala breathed quietly, hoping that nobody would hear her as she crept through the forest. Zaden had been missing for long enough that she knew he wasn’t going to come back. And even if he did, she wasn’t sure she would be able to face him again. She hated the way he was able to make her feel. The clan had begun to feel stifling and scary without him there. She couldn’t handle the psychological effects of being underground without anybody she knew she could trust. She tried to trust Krista, but the fact was that they barely knew each other. She had to be nice because that was what was expected of the Lady of the clan.
She felt too vulnerable in the dark little room, and there was something strange about the people there. They were preoccupied with large, frightening creatures they called dragons, and it seemed as if they were hiding something. Every time she had walked into a room, the conversations would halt and their hushed voices made her feel like an outsider. It was a terrible feeling, and she wanted to get out of there as quickly as she could. There was no way they would be able to help her get her memory back. All she could really hope to do was go out on her own. She wasn’t afraid of an
ything. The worst had already happened. She had no idea who she was. She could just build a new life somewhere else.
She had forgotten how miserable it was to feel cold, but soon the chill in the night brought gooseflesh to her arms and she longed to be in one of Zaden’s comfortable camps. But he had made it clear that she wasn’t going to be his priority anymore. Not since he’d gotten what he wanted from her. He wasn’t even man enough to stick around and tell her to her face that he felt that she was no longer his responsibility anymore.
She was too hurt and angry to think any more about Zaden. There was still the almost nonexistent possibility that something strange had happened to him, but she knew that he had probably just taken off. Even Clayton himself had said it. He was doing something foolish. Ignoring his clan and his duties because of Kala.
“Stupid Zaden,” she growled out loud into the darkness.
“What was that, dear heart?” a seedy voice said into her ear. She gasped as a thick pair of hands grabbed her by the arms. “Look here, boys. Turns out this was easier than we thought it would be.”
Three men appeared before her and began to clamor.
“The Loni!”
“She is here!”
“At last, we have found her!”
Kala narrowed her eyes.
“Loni?” she asked.
“Come,” the first man said, ignoring her. “Let us take her to Richard. He will be pleased.”
And with that, the men bound Kala with ropes and pushed her ahead of them, taking her deep into the forest.
***
Her legs were sore by the time they reached the Guardian’s cement building. The settlement finally appeared ahead of them and she cringed as fear began to curdle in her breast. The men burst through the entrance.
“Richard! We got her! We got the visitor!”
Richard emerged from a hidden room, shuffling quickly toward them in his long brown robe.
“Yes!” he exclaimed, his eyes wild with excitement. “At last, all the secrets shall be revealed! We will finally know –“
“Let me go!” Kala exclaimed ferociously. Her voice was so fierce that it caught all the men off-guard for a moment. She had even startled herself. Perhaps she had been tougher than she thought in her former life.
Richard recovered and a sickening smile spread across his lips.
“Listen to the spunky little girl,” he cackled. “Come, bring her here at once. I must see her for myself.”
The men pushed Kala toward Richard, who began to stretch his trembling hand toward her. It was repulsive enough that she nearly vomited right then and there. Suddenly, a door burst open and a freezing cold wind filled the room.
“If you lay one hand on her, you will die.”
It was Zaden.
Chapter Eighteen
Kala watched in awe as Zaden burst into the room, flinging the limp body of another man in a robe to the ground from in front of him. But instead of the handsome Zaden that she had known and loved, (had she loved him?) he was larger, and fiercer than anything she had ever seen.
He was still morphing, his body and muscles rearranging and transforming until he had completed his shapeshifting. A dragon. The creature his clan was obsessed with.
Zaden was a dragon shifter.
And suddenly her mission became clear in her mind once again. The beautiful streets of Kaldernon. The Loni village, where the King of Kaldernon had called upon the bravest and most adventurous soul to willingly leap through space time to bring a message of hope to those who had been abandoned for so many years on Earth, a planet long presumed to be dead by the people of Kaldernon. It had been her own choosing to undergo the dangerous and experimental Loni magic that sent her reeling through the continuum. She had known it might scramble her brain, and it might even make it impossible for her to recover her memories of home. She was willing to adapt, she’d said. And so they had proceeded and sent her hurdling to Earth.
The Guardians must have sensed her arrival somehow. They were calling her ‘the visitor’, and acting as if she were the bridge in their gap of knowledge of the people of Kaldernon.
Kala was startled out of her thoughts by a ferocious roar as Zaden bared his fangs and unleashed an icy torrent of breath. Richard’s guards were frozen where they stood, unable to penetrate through the frozen air. Somehow, Kala and Richard alone were unaffected by his breath, and Zaden stared at the man with fire in his eyes.
“I injected myself with Loni blood transfusions,” Richard bragged. “So your ice shit won’t work on me.”
He lunged toward Kala, hoping to finally lay his hands on her, but before he could, Zaden intercepted them. His huge, golden body prevented them from touching, and Zaden, thinking of nothing but avenging his parents and protecting Kala, clamped his fangs around Richard’s tiny body, ending the evil man once and for all.
***
Kala and Zaden were still for a moment before he finally felt safe enough to return to his human form. Slowly, he shrank back down to his normal size. Kala ran to him and embraced him, despite his glaring nudity. It was nothing strange to her now that she had her memory back. This was the way of the shifter.
“Kala, we have to help them before the ice wears off. I could handle one at a time, but I’m exhausted. I don’t have the energy to shift again.”
“Help who?” she asked as he pulled her toward the door where he had emerged.
She gasped as the horror of the sight became clear. A laboratory full of Loni and Dragon Shifters, who had all but had the life drained out of them. There was a commotion further down the hall. Human voices, some more musical than others. Diluted Loni and Shifter blood.
Zaden was struggling with knobs and dials, cursing in frustration as he tried to open each cage, one at a time. The people inside were no longer conscious, and stared into the air at nothing.
“Zaden,” she said, touching him gently. He was frantic with the need to help, but her intuition was telling her to move on. “Zaden, these people are gone. They have found their peace. We have to keep them from harming anybody else. Please, it’s the only way to win this fight.”
Zaden roared in pain and anger, knowing that Kala was right. He didn’t want to leave anybody behind, but now that he knew they were there, he would never stop fighting for a way to release them.
“They’re going to unthaw soon,” she said gently.
“All right,” he said reluctantly.
“I’m going to get fired!” a man was shouting. “Why is he naked?”
Zaden raised an eyebrow at the man as he struggled to open the cage. Kala gently pushed him aside. She would be able to do this. She closed her eyes and concentrated, willing herself to find the combination and release the prisoners. After a few moments of silent button pressing, there was a hiss and a click, and the door opened.
“Get home,” Zaden said sternly to them. “Now. And get help for the rest of the people here.”
The group nodded. The man’s authoritative voice was convincing enough for them, and they took off running through the back door, which Zaden and Peter had left gaping open.
“I guess we should run, too,” Zaden said to Kala. And so they went.
Chapter Nineteen
“Do you think they’ll be all right?” Kala asked Zaden over the roaring campfire. It had taken a few hours for the events of the night to sink in. Zaden nodded.
“Humans are great at making a fuss. Did you hear them squawking about being late to work? As if they were purposely oblivious to the fact that their lives were in serious danger. They probably contacted the newspapers already and have had the place raided by police.”
“Thank goodness,” Kala sighed. Her lavender eyes filled with tears, and she dropped her head in her hands.
“Hey,” Zaden said, moving close to her and putting his arm around her shoulder. “Everything’s all right. We did the best we could.”
“I know; it was just so horrible.”
“Yeah,” Zaden said, holdi
ng her face in his hands. “But we made it. Richard can’t hurt you anymore.”
Kala embraced Zaden tightly, allowing his strong, masculine body to reassure her. She looked up with a gasp, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t told him.
“I remember who I am,” she said, her purple eyes serious.
“What?” Zaden asked, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Since when? Who are you?”
“I have to give a message to the leader of the Kersh clan,” she said dutifully. “I remembered back at the Guardian’s place. I’m a Loni, from Kaldernon.”
“What?” he asked, shocked. Suddenly, it made sense why she seemed so familiar. There had been a nearly pure-blooded Loni woman in the clan when he was small, but she had since been victimized by the Guardians.
“I came from Kaldernon, directly. And I need to speak with Clayton as soon as possible.”
Zaden was silent for a few moments, and pulled away from her a little bit. “So on Kaldernon…” he began. He seemed to be having some difficulty getting the words out.
“Yes?” she prompted.
“Did you have a husband?”
She laughed, a musical sound that brought a deep blush to his face. “No, Zaden. I had nobody. Nothing. I was an orphan, too.”
He looked up at her in shock.