Sarazen's Hunt

by Isabel Wroth

  “That is not a sufficient answer. I cannot remedy whatever wrong I might have done, if I do not understand.”

  Alec growled and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, muttering something about him being so damn reasonable.

  Exasperation edged closer, but when it might have bled into true frustration, Alec huffed and uncomfortably crossed her arms over her chest.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. I just... it’s not...” she visibly struggled to explain.

  Kalix was uncertain if she did not have the words to do so, or if she truly did not understand her reaction any better than he did.

  At least this time she didn’t back away from him when he approached. Her spine straightened despite how she trembled in reaction to his hands on her hips.

  Her throat worked audibly when he slipped his fingers beneath her tunic hem to touch the raised lines of her father’s cruelty. Kalix desperately wished he could erase the pain her marks caused with his touch alone.

  “I have told you I cannot and will not deny my desire for you. You are the strongest female I know. Brave. You can speak to me of anything,” he murmured.

  Her teeth tugged at her lips, drawing his attention to the passion that had raged between them in his fantasy.

  So lost in the thoughts of the hungry way she had returned his kisses in their shared dream, he almost missed her admission.

  “I am not afraid of being your mate.” Alec hesitated for only a fraction longer. Her gaze tracked over his face as though testing his sincerity before continuing. When she did, Kalix nearly winced.

  “I am skeptical that this is real. Doubting you would even be here if Clary hadn’t insisted I go to the festival this time.

  “For all I know she or Tarek ordered you to come back, and if they hadn’t, you’d still be out there looking for the other two human ships.

  “And natural or not, I’m not interested in my first time being out in the middle of a Sarazen infested desert, where anyone could walk up and see me... us... mating.”

  Kalix drew in the breath needed to address her very astute concerns about the timing of his presence, but he stumbled over her last, hurried rush of embarrassed words.

  He struggled to keep his beast’s possessive growl contained. To keep the matching expression of hunger from his face.

  To not provoke his mate any more than he already had or make her more uncomfortable. But what she admitted, satiated him and his beast both on a primal, visceral level.

  “Your first time?”

  He must have failed to keep the pleasure of this discovery from his voice, because Alec scowled at him darkly and again, jerked free from his hold to head for the door.

  “Sex sort of took a backseat in the scheme of trying to stay alive,” she snapped sarcastically. But now he understood why she was reacting so oddly to a dream. She had no frame of reference to understand the feelings his fantasy had evoked.

  “Alec, we have not finished discussing this.”

  “We will. After I rip Jonas a new asshole.”

  “Why? It seems he wishes only to help.”

  “Because he doesn’t listen when I tell him I’m not ready and continues to push and pick at me even though I’ve told him about fifty times. I’m not ready to talk about Moika, I’m not ready to talk about Meg, and every time I turn around he’s there telling me how I should be processing my emotions.

  “That I’ll never get over what happened to me or move on with my life if I don’t talk to him. He doesn’t know the first thing about me, but seems perfectly willing to pass judgment on how I should or shouldn’t be behaving now that everything’s all sunshine and pretty flowers. I get it. He wants to help, yes, but I’m not ready and he won’t take no for an answer. Alright?”

  Alec stormed down the stairs, barely acknowledging him at her back as Kalix caught up to her. She went two levels down and banged loudly on the door of Jonas’s quarters.

  D’nora answered, the scent of the Sarazen female’s immediate dislike slapping Kalix in the face like a bitter winter wind.

  “Is something wrong?” D’nora asked tightly. Narrowing her yellow eyes on Alec in a manner, that had D’nora been male, Kalix might have taken as a threat.

  “I need to speak with Jonas,” Alec answered firmly.

  D’nora sniffed and looked down her nose at Alec. “He is occupied—”

  “I’m sorry, that must have sounded like a request. I meant, I need to speak to Jonas now.”

  The lash of power behind Alec’s words made D’nora flinch in surprise. It made Kalix blink as he focused on his mate and felt the irrefutable rise of her beast.

  Alec’s physical body didn’t change at all. Her pupils didn’t even shift shape, such was her control.

  It was Alec, asserting her dominance over the other female with her energy alone, influencing D’nora’s cat, displaying command in the same way Clary was able to do.

  When D’nora hesitated out of shock, the voice of Alec’s beast filled her mouth in a low, warning growl. D’nora’s eyes immediately dropped to her toes, her head tilting to expose her throat to Alec purely out of reflex.

  Jonas appeared moments later, shrugging into a tunic and looking between his mate and Alec with a frown pulling between his brows.

  “Good morning. Ah...are you finally here for a session?” The human hybrid queried, taking his mate’s hand to give her a comforting squeeze. D’nora shivered for some unexplainable reason.

  “No, Jonas. I’m not,” Alec snapped, drilling the hybrid with a glare so harsh, Kalix was impressed the male didn’t take a step back.

  “If you ever approach my mate to instruct him on how to handle me and my erratic emotions again, I will erratically and with great emotion shove my boot so far up your ass you’ll swallow and taste leather.”

  D’nora stiffened and opened her mouth to defend her mate. Alec’s short hiss made D’nora, with extreme difficulty, swallow her protest.

  “The only reason I haven’t done so already, Jonas, is that I know you mean well,” Alec went on ruthlessly. “But you have no idea how to handle me. You know nothing about me, and your insistence that I speak about what I went through on Moika, before and after we were rescued, only proves how inept you are to help me deal with the trauma.

  “When and if I speak about it, it will be with someone who can feel what I felt. Someone who has fought for his survival and the survival of others in combat situations and can offer insight due to his personal experience. Are we clear?”

  The rise in Alec’s energy grew until the air around the four of them was thick and crackling.

  Kalix felt his beast quiver in response, not like he was eager to change, more like he was preparing to defend Alec should either Jonas or D’nora lose control.

  D’nora was visibly struggling under the weight of Alec’s power. Jonas’s pupils had split and he was looking as plainly surprised as Kalix felt.

  Jonas looked down at his hands, obviously baffled to find his claws had slipped free from under his fingernails. The hybrid male swallowed thickly, taking in a shaky breath before speaking.

  “Alec, how are you—”

  “Are. We. Clear?” Alec enunciated tightly. The mated pair in front of Alec flinched as though she had struck them with each word.

  “Yes,” Jonas wheezed.

  The moment Jonas gave conformation, the heaviness of Alec’s primal energy vanished as though it had never been.

  Kalix now had an explanation for why Alec had not responded to Clary’s energetic attempts to rouse Alec’s beast in the marketplace.

  They were indeed equals.

  *****

  Acting like nothing was wrong as she walked out of the fortress and into the woods, was on the list of hardest things Alec had done since coming to this new planet.

  Kalix silently kept pace beside her, his legs long enough to match her angry strides though the trees. He didn’t ask her where they were going.

  Alec wasn’t sure she would have th
e words to explain even if he did ask, as her heart was currently lodged in her throat and attempting to wiggle free of her clenched teeth.

  By the time she gracelessly clambered up over the small rise to where the green lake waited, she was fighting the urge to panic.

  Facing down D’nora had been intense.

  Alec felt like her beast had totally filled her up inside and without having to change into her fur, had made her presence overwhelmingly known. There had been urges to rip out D’nora’s throat for daring to deny Alec anything.

  Urges to claw out D’nora’s eyes for daring to look at her with such blatant disrespect.

  Urges to maim and or kill until D’nora had submissively backed down under the pressure of the energy Alec had put off.

  Even now, she was fighting the need to slip her skin and run from whatever had just happened. She took unsteady breaths when she got to the flat plateau where this had all started.

  What a fool she had been, thinking that having a beast of her own was some great gift. This thing inside her was insane, urging her to rip out throats and finding delight in the idea of being stripped naked to have wild sex in public.

  “What the hell was that?!” she shouted, slapping at the comforting hand Kalix touched her with as the fear started to creep through her body.

  Kalix’s expression was terribly gentle, but his hands shackling her wrists when she would have slapped at him again were anything but.

  He jerked her close, using the stiffness in her body to pull her up onto her toes. Up until they were close enough for him to purr a deep sound at her, to rub his nose gently up alongside hers in that sweet, tender caress she had seen all the other Sarazen males do with their women.

  Alec tried to jerk her face away, wanting an explanation, not to be soothed or calmed.

  She didn’t get very far.

  “That was unexpected,” he rumbled, refusing to let her take a single step back from him.

  “No shit,” Alec snapped back, needing the anger, needing the protection of it to keep her from falling apart.

  Kalix sighed as though he was weary, his grasp eased so he could rub at her wrists. He stood over her as tall and strong as a mountain, unmoving as one too.

  “Come and sit with me.”

  “I don’t want to sit, I want to know what the hell just happened back there!”

  “Alec, please.”

  She utterly hated it when he used that calm, reasonable tone. It meant she was being legitimately unreasonable. With a huff, Alec stomped over to a little collection of boulders and sat with her back up against it, glaring at the peaceful lake.

  She was completely surprised by how Kalix dropped to his knees, grabbed her hips, rolled to sit with her astride his lap, and put his back against the boulder.

  He settled her, making sure she was comfortably seated before looking up at her, his hands still situated on her hips.

  “Is this necessary?” Alec’s voice was less than threatening. If anything, it was another one of those breathless murmurs.

  “It is. Give yourself a moment and breathe, mate. Your heart races so fast I can hear it attempting to escape your breast. Close your eyes, just settle.”

  Before she even thought to resist, Alec obeyed. She allowed herself to accept his instruction and soon found herself swaying forward for balance, her brow finding his as the silence stretched.

  The sounds around her intensified, the whisper of the wind in the trees.

  The hiss of the water moving back and forth on the lake shore.

  The slow breaths Kalix took to match hers.

  In no time at all it seemed like, her cat settled, stopped snarling and pacing inside her, the need to taste blood slowly ebbing.

  “I wanted to kill her,” Alec admitted in a whisper.

  “D’Nora? Yes, I know.” Kalix touched his lips to her cheek as though absolving her of that sin.

  “Why? My cat, it was so hard to control her.”

  Kalix touched another kiss to her temple. “I would never have guessed it to be so. Your power, your sway, was absolute. It was most impressive. As for the reason why, it is simple.

  “Your strength among the humans is unmatched, it is no surprise at all that your beast would share such traits. There are no more than a handful as strong, Clary is one of those few, but I fear even she is no match for you.”

  Her eyes opened to stare at the gray surface of the boulder behind his shoulders, certain she had misheard.

  “You’re afraid of me?”

  “Or course not. I fear, others will fear you.”

  “What others? This is a planet filled with shape shifting beasts. One more isn’t so scary.”

  Kalix’s laughter echoed out across the lake. His hands squeezed tight on her hips before moving up to scoop her hair back from her face, urging her to tilt her head so he could brush his knuckles along the shorn side of her curls.

  “Alec, little one—”

  Alec socked him in the shoulder, making him chortle and duck when she went to slap at him.

  “Little! I’ll show you little, you barbarian—”

  With his hands already in her hair, Kalix gripped tight to pull her inexorably into his kiss, effectively shutting her up. Alec couldn’t help the gasp that parted her lips.

  Neither could she help the moan that came when Kalix curled his tongue around hers and left her quivering on his lap, not sure what to do next.

  She felt like he was seducing her with his kisses. Drugging her into a state of dizzying arousal, yet keeping himself in check and allowing her to remain perched astride him. Allowing her to decide how much control she was willing to cede.

  On the cusp of confusion, warring with needs she didn’t understand, Alec felt a sharp pain stab down into her bottom lip and drew back with a yelp.

  It was on the tip of her tongue to accuse Kalix of biting her, but a quick lick across her teeth revealed that it had been her own fangs punching free of her gums.

  He hummed in sympathy, brushing her hand away from where she’d clapped it over her mouth. He carefully examined the torn skin, licking the throbbing hurt so gently Alec couldn’t help but sigh.

  “Are you alright?”

  Kalix reclined back against the rock, welcoming her with a smile when she wobbled a little and fell forward on his chest. His hands rubbed up and down her back, neither holding her nor forcing her to remain pressed against him.

  “Yes. It just startled me. I, um, wasn’t expecting my first kiss to be bloody. Guess I shouldn’t be surprised though, considering.”

  Alec waited for him to tease her, or to pull her back into another round of his debilitating kisses. He did neither.

  “You will learn to control your teeth soon enough. It will not always be so.” He touched her like he was savoring every caress she allowed him to take.

  Alec felt trapped by the sensual weight of his eyes as they too caressed her. His pupils had split, the predatory animal inside him staring up at her with lazy contentment.

  She stared right back, letting herself really look at him. Alec was unable to deny that like Brennaugh, Kalix was almost too beautiful to look at.

  Though beautiful wasn’t precisely the right word. Kalix had a hardness to his features that was undeniably masculine.

  She hadn’t allowed herself too much time to stare into Kalix’s eyes, thinking this whole time they were a smoky silver.

  In actuality, they were the palest purple.

  He would never be pretty or effeminate in any way; the scruffiness of his beard saw to that. But the deep chestnut of his hair, the brightness of his magenta colored glyphs, and the shine of his eyes were... well, they were beautiful.

  Otherworldly, strong, stubborn, unique among his kind, and he was irrevocably hers.

  Why did that make her feel such a potent mix of happiness and inferiority?

  If her conflicting emotions were showing, Kalix made no mention of it.

  “I have been given command of this fortress,�
� he told her seriously, coming back to their discussion.

  “In effect, Tarek has given me territory to govern. There are well over a hundred warriors here, seasoned and trained in battle, and the majority of them are mated with a human hybrid at his or her side.

  “Your people could not bear to live inside the confines of the citadel for understandable reasons, so the Asho’na commanded you and the others from Moika be situated here, where once our ruling clan lived. We are all loyal to the Asho, without question.

  “Yet we are in the most basic terms a clan, Alec. And what you have shown me this day, the control and command you exerted over two of our clanmates, you are strong enough, I am strong enough, to be considered a threat to Clary and Tarek’s place as pride rulers.”

  More than a little shaken, Alec shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  Kalix gave a grunt, wincing slightly when he shifted his weight. Shifted her off his groin like her weight was hurting him.

  “I can move—”

  He snorted, his hands clenching on her hips to keep her right where he wanted her.

  “No. My flight trousers and your nearness create an uncomfortable vise around my cock. It’s fine. What I mean is, you and your beast are powerful enough to be considered equal to the Asho’na.

  “Clary has the ability to pull the beast from within. She attempted to do it on a small scale at the market. You no doubt felt pressure, perhaps a discomfort along your skin. Maybe even nausea.”

  “That was because of Clary?”

  “It was. She was testing your beast, attempting to gain its attention to make you more aware of it. It was a dangerous thing to do in so crowded a place, but you gave almost no reaction whatsoever.

  “This means, were the two of you to fight for the right to rule, it is highly probable you would win. In fact, due to your years on Moika, I am almost certain of it. You and I together could take the pride.”

  Put in simple terms like that, Alec quivered with no small measure of uncertainty. “I have absolutely zero desire to take anything from Clary.”

  The heat behind her denial made Kalix smile. “Neither do I. Neither do I wish for you to attempt to repress your nature. But you see now the root of my concern?”