Kraev

by Sonia Nova

  Voices sounded in the staircase and they all came to a sudden halt.

  The doors on the floor below them opened and three Suhlik walked through.

  Olivia’s breath caught in her throat and, for a moment, she was completely frozen in fear. She glanced back at Naia, who likewise stood stock-still, her eyes fixed on the trio of lizards.

  Catching her eye, Olivia hissed as quietly as possible, “Go. Take your kids and go back up to the next floor.”

  Naia shook her head, her hand letting go of Fei’s and moving to the gun at her waist. Slowly, she took it in her hand and aimed at the closest Suhlik. The lizards still hadn’t spotted them. They seemed to be planning on heading downstairs.

  Naia’s hand shook. She wasn’t going to get a clean shot.

  “Go,” Olivia whispered, leaning closer. “Look, we’ll all go. They haven’t noticed us yet.” She was barely audible to herself; she didn’t know if Naia could actually understand anything she said.

  But Naia nodded and started up the stairs. When she moved, Mito started screaming in her arms.

  The Suhlik’s heads immediately turned in their direction, their yellow slit eyes trained on them.

  “Run!” Olivia shouted. “Think about your kids and run as fast as you can! I’ll hold them off!”

  She aimed her guns at the lizards, firing from both at the end of her sentence. She hit a perfect shot with the one in her right hand, felling one of the Suhlik to the ground. The one in her left, however, went wide and hit the wall. Her wrist snapped back with a painful twist and she gasped in pain.

  She’d never shot with her left hand and she immediately realized her mistake. The throwback of the gun was too much.

  She ignored the pain in her wrist, realigning the gun in her right hand. She fired at the Suhlik who were now fast approaching, but again, she missed. Her mistake of trying to shoot with her left hand had cost her. The element of surprise was gone and they had easily avoided her shot.

  And now, she was dead.

  Two Suhlik and her, much smaller, slower, and weaker than them.

  She turned on her heel and started to run.

  The one consolation in all of it was that Naia and her kids were nowhere to be seen. They must have done what she’d said and fled. She prayed that she really had held the lizards off long enough to allow them to escape, at least from these two remaining monsters.

  As terrified as she was, she couldn’t bring herself to regret the decision. If it meant that Naia’s kids got to grow up and have a family. If it meant that Naia got to live the rest of her life with her sons by her side. She would never regret laying down her life for that.

  She scrambled up the stairs as fast as her legs would take her, already knowing that it wasn’t going to be enough. She hadn’t let go of the guns even though she knew that they wouldn’t be much help against the Suhlik anymore at this point.

  One of the Suhlik gripped her foot, his claws biting deep into her ankle. She screamed, shooting at the lizard in quick succession. She was relieved when blood dripped from his body and he collapsed to the ground.

  But the other lizard quickly knocked the gun from her hand and grabbed her leg. Pain seared through her as he twisted her ankle. He tightened his hold and flung her backward like she was made of paper.

  She slammed into the wall and then the ground, falling the height of a whole flight of stairs. A loud scream burst from her lungs and the last thing she thought of before her awareness slipped was that she hadn’t bought enough time. She hadn’t been strong enough. She hadn’t gotten Naia and her kids enough of a head start.

  She hoped desperately that she was wrong.

  CHAPTER 20

  KRAEV

  Kraev pushed the ship as hard as its passengers could take it. His heart pounded in his chest and his palms sweated. The ship itself could have gone twice, three times the speed that he was currently flying, but he would have passed out long before that.

  It was still tempting. He needed to get back to Olivia as soon as he could.

  The rest of his crew were holding onto their seat handles equally as tightly. Although Gryp and Delyn were unmated, Cynto had four children, and the oldest was out fighting himself. He had been left to defend the volcano base.

  The fifteen-minute journey to the volcano seemed to take an eternity. All the while, Kraev’s imagination ran wild with possibilities – every single one of them worse than the last.

  They weren’t even difficult things to imagine. He’d already seen Olivia pushed up against a wall with a Suhlik cracking her head and nearly making her pass out. She’d been seconds away from death and he’d witnessed all of it.

  Anger coursed through his veins. That could be happening again right now and there was nothing he could do about it. He was too far out. Too far from his mate.

  He should’ve listened to himself. He shouldn’t have left her. Not now.

  But it was done and she was alone in yet another base that was under attack.

  How could he have let that happen? Would she even know what to do? The warning lights in the base would have started flashing, but there was no guarantee she would understand what those meant. She didn’t know anyone on the base, either.

  What if she headed for the hangar rather than the evacuation pods? That would be the central hub for the fighting, he was sure. She’d be walking into a sure death.

  Or, she might be hunkering down in his quarters. That would be the best option. She might manage to pass beneath the radar if she just stayed in their room and didn’t move. The Suhlik wouldn’t have the time to go through every single room, especially not as high as the sixth floor, until after the battle was over.

  He prayed that was what had happened.

  “Zevyk,” he said, gritting his teeth against the G-force. “Can you find Olivia on the cameras in the base?”

  Zevyk had always been good with technology. Even if he didn’t have strict permissions to view the camera feeds inside the base, Kraev was sure that he would find a way.

  “I’m already on it, brother,” Zevyk said. “Give me a moment.”

  Kraev waited, his heart nearly ready to burst with how fast it was beating. The Suhlik had never before managed to get near the volcano base, and now that they had, his mate was inside. The mere thought of it filled him with dread.

  Zevyk was silent for a long moment, but Kraev didn’t push him. He knew that when his brother found something, he would say it. Talking to him would only delay the process.

  A few minutes later, Kraev’s screen changed and projected the view of a camera within the volcano base.

  “Do you see it?” Zevyk asked over the comms. “I found them.”

  Them were Olivia and Naia, a woman Kraev recognized by name but didn’t know beyond that. There were two young children with them, most likely Naia’s.

  Kraev released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. They were safe, at least for now. He could also see guns in Olivia’s hands and another on her belt.

  “Does she know how to fire the weapons?” Zevyk asked.

  “She killed a Suhlik at the teleport base. Wounded another one,” Kraev replied, pride audible in his tone. “She knows what she’s doing with them.”

  Zevyk whistled, trying to keep the tone light even though he surely knew that Kraev felt ready to keel over with nausea. Kraev recognized that they were on the fourth floor. It was still so far away from the evacuation point. They were in grave danger.

  He kept watching the screen until they got back to the hangar and he had to actually guide the ship back into the base. A few Suhlik ships attempted to stop them, but Kraev maneuvered their ship around their missiles.

  Zevyk managed to isolate the cameras that were filming the evacuation pods and Cynto, too, saw his family being evacuated. His eldest son was in the middle of battle, but still alive, which eased the tension in the ship considerably.

  There was no way for Kraev to keep watch when they got back to the base, but he looked a
t the screen one last time before disembarking to join the fight. He could guess where they were going, to a staircase that would take them down to the bottom floor and just a couple of corridors away from where the evacuation pods were.

  It was a good route, and he silently sent thanks to Naia for finding Olivia and taking care of her. Using elevators in the middle of a crisis could have proven lethal for her. He would owe the Raewani woman for a lifetime if this all worked out.

  The second he stepped out of the ship, gun in one hand and knife in the other, it was chaos. Mahdfel and Suhlik were fighting everywhere. Ships were firing into the hangar from above and he knew he needed to get out of there as soon as possible before one of the stray missiles hit him.

  He dashed straight through the crowd, not bothering to waste the charge on his gun until one of the Suhlik looked like he was actually going to attack him. Then, he aimed and hit the bastard through the top of his thigh.

  It wasn’t where he’d been aiming, but it was enough to incapacitate the lizard at least. He didn’t turn around to finish the job, hoping another warrior would take care of him, and instead continued to power through the crowd of fighters, slipping past the preoccupied warriors and Suhlik.

  He’d expected the corridors to be less busy when he was out of the hangar, but if anything, they were worse. There were just as many people fighting, but in the smaller space, it was far more crowded.

  Stars, the Suhlik had really managed to get inside the base! The fight at the teleport had all been a ruse.

  A red haze of anger filled him at the realization. The bastards would pay for this.

  He tried his best to run through the corridors without being noticed by the Suhlik, but he regularly had to stop to fight the lizards.

  He’d never fought as well as he did now. Adrenaline pulsed in his veins and he was fluid and flawless, easily moving from running at top pelt straight into stabbing a Suhlik in the eye and pulling his knife out before continuing to run. Kicks and shots went exactly where he wanted. There wasn’t a second of hesitation because there was no time for that. He had to get to Olivia no matter what it took, and that meant no thinking, no second-guessing a single decision.

  He must have killed or incapacitated six Suhlik before he got out of the packed corridor and into a less populated one.

  Even though there were no Suhlik here, he didn’t take a minute to breathe and recover. He tried to work out how long he’d been fighting the Suhlik to get to this point. It was probably long enough that Olivia had made it to the evacuation pods. She was probably on a shuttle right now, heading as far away from the battle as it was possible to get.

  He wasn’t going to be satisfied until he knew for certain, though, so he still ran in that direction, taking the closest staircase down that he could. He would make sure she was safe, and if she hadn’t reached the pods yet, he would guide her safely there and send her on her way. Then, he would return to the fight and force the Suhlik from the base.

  Kraev’s heart pounded and his tail swashed anxiously as he ran. He reached the evacuation pods without Olivia in sight, but that didn’t ease his mind.

  The smaller hangar wasn’t busy like he imagined it had been when the alarms had first sounded. Instead, there were only a few stragglers and the warriors who were organizing the effort. Kraev hurried to one of those warriors, a male named Akren. He was the Warlord’s second, and currently held a tablet recording every person who went past him to be evacuated.

  “My mate,” Kraev said, his voice breathless. “Has my mate been through? She’s human.” He didn’t need to identify her beyond that. She was the only human on the planet and looked very distinctive compared to everyone else.

  Akren shook his head, his brows coming together in a slight frown. “There hasn’t been a human passing through here,” he said.

  For a moment, Kraev thought that he might pass out. His heart fell and his breath caught in his lungs as the horrifying reality hit him.

  Olivia wasn’t here. Olivia hadn’t made it to the evacuation pods yet.

  She should have been here by now, shouldn’t she? Or maybe his fight had just seemed like it had taken longer than it actually had? That was possible. She might be about to round this corner any second. He would retrace the way he thought she should be coming and meet her.

  Maybe one of Naia’s kids had caused some trouble and delayed them a little. Maybe they’d found more people who were evacuating and stopped to help. He was sure that Olivia would have done something like that.

  “Thanks,” he distractedly said to Akren and headed back along the corridor to retrace Olivia’s steps. He didn’t see anything amiss on the way. One woman and her three kids passed him, heading to be evacuated. He nodded but didn’t stop to make conversation or update them on the status of things.

  His mind was a single track: there was no way he was going to stop until he saw that Olivia was okay.

  But when he burst into a stairwell along her predicted path, safe was the last thing she was.

  She lay sprawled on the ground floor, completely limp. A Suhlik lay beside her, equally unmoving, while another lizard bastard headed down the stairs toward her. She didn’t seem to be moving at all.

  His heart stopped in his chest.

  They’d killed her. They’d killed his mate.

  His rage was immediate and overwhelming. He could feel nothing but fury as he unholstered the gun from his waist and shot at the Suhlik approaching Olivia. It was maybe risky to shoot with him so close to her, but he didn’t care.

  He said something, his voice roaring in the corridors, but it echoed in his ears and he had no idea what it was. Maybe they weren’t even words. He was just shouting. He knew he’d pressed the trigger more than once, even though the charge was long gone and the gun did nothing.

  He discarded it on the ground, snarling at the approaching lizard that now regarded him with a vicious grin full of sharp teeth. Before, he’d been able to stay rational, to think about a plan and consider his moves. Now, he was all instinct. If he didn’t give into his base rage, he would collapse on the floor beside his mate and the Suhlik would kill him in moments.

  He had to rely on what came naturally to him. And what came naturally to Kraev when the bastard in front of him had just killed his mate? Rip him to pieces and inflict as much painful damage as was possible.

  His tail lashed angrily. With his grip on his knives so tight he worried he’d snap the handle, he lunged for the lizard, shoving him into the wall and as far away from Olivia as he could get him. The fact that there was a Suhlik lying on the floor beside her, almost touching her, made him sick to his stomach already. There was no way he was going to let this one anywhere near her.

  Tackling the Suhlik left cuts all over his body from the lizard’s sharp claws and elbows, but the wounds didn’t even register. In the back of his mind, something was trying to tell him that it was a stupid approach, but he didn’t care. He’d done what he wanted. The Suhlik was away from his mate. The bastard was no longer hovering over her body with his mouth open and his claws ready to rip her already dead body to shreds.

  Now, he was going to rip this Suhlik to shreds. He pulled back just as the Suhlik hit the wall and moved his blades in a flurry. He hadn’t even realized he could move so fast as he plunged them again and again into the creature’s chest.

  The Suhlik seemed to be completely taken aback by the approach. It was so different from everything the Mahdfel had ever done before. It wasn’t a sound strategy, it wasn’t exploiting a Suhlik’s weakness and abusing a Mahdfel’s strength at all. If anything, it was the opposite.

  But the pure surprise of something so different appeared to have put the creature on the back foot. This allowed Kraev to get in far more attacks than he should have done before the lizard backhanded him and send him stumbling backward.

  Deep claw marks disfigured his chest and stomach, but Kraev barely noticed. He attacked as soon as the Suhlik lowered his claws, going for the neck thi
s time. He’d wanted to pierce the thing’s heart, to sink his knives into its core and feel as it beat its last beats, but he at least had enough sense to realize that was a stupid tactic.

  The neck would be more than good enough.

  He aimed for the chest, trying to fake the same blind rage that he’d had seconds before this slight moment of clarity, and then switched at the last second to plunge his blades into the lizard’s throat instead.

  The intensity of his strike meant that he practically decapitated the Suhlik, his knives going so far through the lizard’s neck that they scraped against the metal wall behind it.

  Kraev was breathing hard when he came back to himself, seeing the dead Suhlik and the blood covering his own hands. He wiped them hurriedly on his clothes, leaving his knives in the neck of the lizard even though he knew how irresponsible that was.

  Then, he turned immediately and crouched down beside Olivia, defeated despite his victory over the Suhlik. His heart clenched painfully in his chest as he stared down at his beautiful mate, her sunlight-colored hair swept over her eyes.

  He pushed the hair aside, almost afraid of what he’d see. But when a slight airflow brushed against his hand, he took a closer look at his mate.

  To his surprise, her chest was rising and falling.

  She was breathing.

  He stared, unable to move, his eyes rounding in shock. He pressed a gentle hand to her breast, seeking the feel of her heartbeat. It seemed fragile beneath his hand, but it was definitely there.

  His relief was so overwhelming that he almost dropped his head to her stomach and wept.

  But she wasn’t safe yet.

  He had to pull himself together and get her out of here, or else she would be as dead as he’d already thought.

  She was in his arms in seconds. He started running lightning speed to the medical bay.

  CHAPTER 21