by Loki Renard
Having removed the plastic device, Shanti moves up Pixie’s body and begins cutting with the elegance of a surgeon, slipping her bone knife beneath her skin and opening above the chip. It only takes a moment to remove, and then Pixie relaxes, as if a burden has been taken from her.
“There are two chips,” Shanti says.
“One will be the language chip. The other is the tracker. The language chip will be smaller. The tracker is bigger because it has to send data.”
Shanti nods and uses her tweezers to pull the chip from Pixie. It is a couple of inches long, but very thin and quite flexible.
“Are you ready, Dwight?”
“I am always ready," he hisses. “Cut me open and put it in.”
Shanti does as he asks. He refuses the brew, which is helpful because we don’t have to wait for him to wake up in order to find out what is going on. He barely flinches as Shanti slips the chip under his skin.
“I don’t feel anything,” he says.
“Give it a moment to work,” Shanti replies. “Very few things are immediate…”
Dwight twitches. His head slips from one side to the other in an eerie way. His face contorts as if he is fighting something which is trying to overcome him. This will be strange for both of them, both the entity hitchhiking around on that chip, and Dwight.
“Calibrating,” Dwight says. “Calibrating… Catlibrating…”
A few more twitches, a little more weirdness, and he makes a bold statement.
“Archon… is… coming!”
With that, Dwight collapses. Shanti rushes to his side and props him up on a cushion.
“What’s happening?” I ask the question. Nobody answers.
Shanti is doing her best to revive Dwight. She pulls the chip from his body and throws it into the fire. Whatever other secrets might be contained in it are forever claimed by the flames.
After a minute or two, Dwight comes around. He opens his eyes and scowls.
“My head is destroying me,” he complains. “What did you do?”
“We put the chip in, and we took the chip out,” she says. “It did not agree with you.”
“So where's the personality gone?”
“I don’t think that chip contained a personality,” I say. “I think it contained a message. They wanted you to take it out of her and put it into one of our own.”
Shanti frowns. I have not often seen her look confused. She usually seems to understand everything before it happens. “Why? Why not just have a soldier tell us themselves? Why bother to do all of this? It is so needlessly complex.”
“For the drama?” I suggest.
“Archon does enjoy drama,” Shanti admits. “And he can come if he likes. He will not like the reception he gets, I can promise him that.”
“Is it over?”
Pixie is waking up. She looks frightened, but more clear-eyed than ever. Her question breaks my heart. Is it over? All the torment? All the confusion? She is so delicate, and my desire to protect her overwhelms me. Damn right it’s over. From now until forever, I will defend her. She is my mate. She is my lover. She is my heart and my soul.
I cradle her in my arms and hold her close. “It’s over,” I tell her. “It’s all over.”
Epilogue
Shanti
It’s not over.
Because it’s never over.
I refuse to think about Archon, the city, or whatever evils might befall us. There are too many to count and certainly too many to worry about. I have seen much suffering and even more losses in these wilds. If I were to ruminate on them all, I would be utterly lost forever. Instead, I focus on the good. We have two new members to our tribe. We are two souls stronger.
I watch Scratch cradling his mate in his arms, the wound on her shoulder symbolic of the freedom she has just obtained from the city. There is no escaping Archon without pain, or without blood. Scratch holds her as if she is the most precious thing in any world, because she is.
He is also greatly valuable. Scratch is the only beast to ever slip Archon’s claws. Twice. He is duplicitous and entirely dangerous. Skoll stands in the corner of my antechamber, glowering at the grimalkin he will never trust.
Unlike him, I don’t need to trust any individual. I trust the power of this place. This location is not accidental, and neither are any of the souls who currently inhabit it. This place is not one to be settled from the outside. It draws those who belong here.
Whether Scratch and Pixie know it or not, they both belong in the wild with us. They also belong with one another. I knew from the beginning that fate had decreed they should be together. My interference in the early days was never to keep them apart, but to help them realize their connection. They were both too wounded to accept love for love’s sake. They needed an enemy to unite against, and I was honored to play the role. Any pain I caused was worth it a thousand times over. Scratch and Pixie do not doubt their love anymore. They are bonded more tightly than any couple in the tribe. That bond will serve them well over the course of their lives and in what is yet to come.
My boys are strong warriors, and my girls are faithful keepers of the tribe. But we will need more than that for what is coming. We will need our humans. We will need our renegades, and our rebels. We will need those who are not afraid to break the rules, whatever those rules may be. And we need those who are inventive, nature’s criminals.
We need them all, because I have my secrets. I know what is coming. I know that the day’s light always gives way to the shadows of the night, and there is nothing anyone can do but wait until the dawn.
But it does not matter what name evil bears, or what form it will take. It does not matter one bit, because in this moment we all have all anyone can ever ask for: family, and peace.
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Mine: A Possessive Alien Romance
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Human Pet Pound
Also, I would be legitimately remiss if I did not tell you about my Possessive Gods series, which is like Possessive Aliens, but with Gods. A blend of mythology, science fiction and hotness awaits! Click here to start reading!
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Loki