by Lacey Savage
“I never thought…I mean, I knew there was something not right with him, but this…this is insane.” The captain’s voice had gone dangerously soft. Sophia wished she could see him, but judging by the confidence in his tone, she doubted he was quaking in his non-existent boots.
“Dante! Listen to me! You have to leave. Run. Get out of here! Understand?”
Her words seemed to fall on deaf ears. He turned his massive head and pierced her with those feline golden-flecked eyes, but there wasn’t a hint of retreat in his stance.
Her eyelids drifted closed momentarily as fear pressed in on her from all sides, more tangible and concrete than the metal bars keeping her prisoner. When she opened them, it was just in time to see all hell break loose around her.
Captain Jolen darted left, to the corner of the room where his armor had been discarded. Dante stalked him, moving slowly, but with a determined purpose.
Man against lion. It shouldn’t have been a fair fight.
The captain swung sharply around a six-foot statue of Saint Valentine and rammed his shoulder into it, bringing it toppling down a few inches from Dante’s head. Dante reeled backward, his paws slipping on the marble as another rampant roar broke free from his throat.
He shoved at the loose pieces of shattered bronze, clearing them out of his way. From her captive position, Sophia focused on the captain, who was rapidly tapping out a message on his inner wrist implant.
Her blood turned to ice as she recognized the pattern and the colors beaming from beneath his skin. A distress call. Reinforcements would be storming the Academy walls in ten minutes, if they were lucky. If the captain had thought ahead and brought backup, men who were even now awaiting his signal, they had perhaps two minutes. Tops.
“Hurry! He’s called for help!”
Dante heard her this time. He spun around, claws grasping for purchase on the slick marble. He skidded toward the captain and clocked him hard with a back-handed paw across the chest.
The captain went flying toward the far wall, where he slammed with a loud, bone-crunching crack. He slid down the length of the wall and came to a grinding halt at the base, his right leg twisted beneath him at a skewed angle.
“Damn it!” she snapped. “Get me out of here. We don’t have much time!”
Dante ambled toward her, moving with that same slow, deliberate speed. He neared the cage and sniffed, his nostrils flaring as he took in her scent. Before she could urge him to hurry once more, he swept the tip of his rough tongue out and trailed it over the edge of her jaw.
A shiver born of exquisite sensation ambled up her spine. Sophia’s heart beat faster, but this time the panic was a fleeting impression at the edges of her mind. Lust clouded her vision, hazing her common sense with flickers of the sudden need to shift, to join him with the same wild abandon and show him she was right for him.
Show him that maybe, just maybe, she was meant for him.
Such an absurd thought. She knew better. She was a priestess. She’d dedicated her life to Saint Valentine, giving up the idea that she might one day meet her Alpha mate. And yet ‑‑
A sudden shaft of blue light split the crimson illumination in the room. It crackled with energy, tearing through Dante’s left shoulder a moment before the scent of scorched fur and flesh reached Sophia’s nostrils.
Dante pitched forward, his head making contact with the edge of the cage, his weight propelling the metal enclosure to skid across the marble floor until it slammed against the opposite wall.
Sophia didn’t wait for the enormity of what had happened to register. The flash of a small weapon no larger than the Captain’s palm, gripped tightly in the man’s hand, made a brief impression on her senses, but a split-second was all it took for her instincts to kick in.
She’d been denying her birthright for years. In the blink of an eye, it all came rushing back with the fierce ferocity of an ability that had never really been far away from her psyche, only pushed to the side and ignored for much too long.
Her skin rippled as her bones twisted, elongating and thickening as the shift overcame her. For once, she didn’t fight it. Her tongue scraped against lengthening canines. Her vision became sharper, more acute. The metal bars groaned beneath her expanding mass, squeaking in protest.
Her breath halted in her lungs, squeezed by the tight constraints of her cage. The antique handcuffs snapped first, popping with a loud snap. The hinges gave way next, scraping and grating against the metal as they fought to contain her growing bulk. Even the nipple clamps slipped away, no longer finding the same type of purchase in her flesh.
And then she was free, and soaring through the air. Another blue flash pierced the space mere inches from her left ear. Adrenaline poured through her veins, hot and insistent. It drove her forward, her prey frozen in the span of a split-second in her field of vision.
The protective nature of her inner lioness had been unleashed, and she’d be damned if she denied it again. The children were in danger. She was in danger. Her mate ‑‑
Saints, this wasn’t the time to think about it.
Blood pounded red-hot in her field of vision. Captain Jolen was still down, holding the weapon with his left hand, steadying his aim over his left wrist. He fired again, faster than she’d expected, but she swept out of the way at the last moment. She was quicker than Dante. Sleeker, too, despite the feral muscles she wasn’t used to having.
The laser missed her, though it grazed the tip of her tail as it swept aside. No matter. The scent of scorched fur only added to the wild fury already streaming through her veins.
The captain tried to rise. The weapon shook in his hand. He said something to her ‑‑ not a scream, not a plea ‑‑ she didn’t know what. Couldn’t hear him past the roar of blood and fury in her ears.
And then, he did something wholly unexpected.
He threw the gun down.
Stunned by his unanticipated action, Sophia’s center of gravity flowed forward. She landed with a thud, half on top of him, and kicked the weapon across the floor with her hind leg.
The breath flew out of the Captain’s lungs. He gasped for air, but she was stronger, pushing down on his chest, letting her momentum and fear for Dante spur her on.
He struggled, flailing and bucking against her, clawing at her leg with his fingernails. Her claws extended and she pressed down on his windpipe, but stopped short of scoring his flesh. After what seemed to Sophia like an eternity, his body went slack.
She held him there for a moment longer. The wild, untamed part of her urged her to kill him, to end the threat. She might have, too, only she knew the threat wouldn’t be over with the demise of this one man. If anything, the danger to her and anyone the Academy sheltered would only grow worse if she murdered a Central Command official in cold blood.
Her body teetered on the edge of metamorphosis. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, leaving behind a sizzling wave of dizziness. She sucked in a breath and rode out the pain of the transformation, until she found herself once again in human form, kneeling over the Captain’s body, her hand gripped around his throat.
She released him and staggered to her feet, then rushed over to where Dante lay, crumpled against the side of the cage. He’d transformed as well, his chest gleaming with rivulets of sweat. A raw, circular wound marred his left shoulder and blood trickled down his arm.
“Dante? Oh, Saints.” She knelt beside him and pressed two fingers to the side of his throat, her other hand instinctively grabbing his inner thigh as she leaned over him.
“How many times do I have to get shot for you to touch me just a little higher?” he rumbled, his voice throaty and hoarse.
A relieved laugh bubbled up from her throat. She wanted to hug him, kiss him fiercely, leap into his arms and never let go.
And she would, she vowed. But not now.
“Can you walk?”
He nodded, wincing as he lifted his arm a couple of inches. The wound bled again, and Sophia thought she could m
ake out the jagged white edge of a shoulder bone.
“Damn it.” Fighting back a shudder, she grabbed his other elbow and helped him to his feet. “Let’s go.”
He leaned against the cage as she retrieved his pants. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked as he slid them on.
Sophia swallowed hard. “What would I have said? That I’m just like you and I get along on Earth just fine ‑‑ and, oh, by the way, would you like to stay here forever and ever?”
He fixed her with a piercing green gaze. “You want me to stay?”
She turned away and picked up her robe. “We can’t stay. Officials are on their way even now. They’ll take this place down brick by brick. It’s not safe any longer.”
She tied the sash tightly around her waist and ran for the door. As it slid open, Dante grabbed her wrist and turned her to face him. “But if it was…you’d have me stay?”
Sophia debated with herself for only a moment before truth won out. She’d done enough lying, enough hiding from what she really was. Standing on her tiptoes, she brushed a brief kiss across his lips. “I need a Flame. Not just for a one-time ceremony, but forever. I think that’s what Saint Valentine had been trying to show me. I’ve chosen Flames for years, and they’d never been…” She cleared her throat before continuing. “Like you.”
He opened his mouth to reply, but she stopped him by pressing her index finger to his lips. “Whatever you need to say to me, it can wait. The children can’t. We have to get them out of here. We have to get everyone out of here.”
He nodded his assent and together they ran down the way they’d come, toward the children’s quarters.
“Where will we go?” Dante asked as they came to a halt in front of the double doors and Sophia began the security scan to unlock the seal.
“Faye’s house. For now. She’ll shelter us for a while, but then we’ll need to find a way off-world.”
“All of us?” Dante raised an eyebrow, looking skeptical.
Sophia swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Can you think of a better plan?”
“My plan involves keeping us alive for as long as possible. Beyond that, I don’t tend to plan too far ahead.”
She shook her head as a smile made its way to her lips. Why didn’t that surprise her? Worse yet, why didn’t it frighten her half to death? She’d lived her entire life always knowing what the next day would bring. For the past forty-eight hours, nothing had gone the way she’d intended.
Most of the kids were down for their afternoon nap. Sophia filled in the priestess assigned to the ward for the afternoon on what had happened, leaving out the gory details of the acts that had transpired in the Sanglant. The woman’s face drained of color and she ran out to tell the others, while Sophia and Dante began scooping children out of their beds.
“Where are we going?” Charmaine, a little black-eyed, blonde-haired girl clung to Sophia’s neck, her soft baby smell permeating the air.
“Somewhere safe,” Sophia whispered. I hope.
The vid-screen blinked to life as Dante lifted Benji, one of two little boys in the room, on his shoulders. He winced at the pain from the wound, but didn’t let it deter him from hoisting the kid up and letting him hold tight to his curly hair.
“You can’t come here,” Faye said, her voice booming through the room.
Sophia spun on her heel to face the wall-length screen. “Why not?”
Faye’s face looked drawn, worried. She’d aged a decade in the last day. “You’ll never make it. Officers are storming the Temple as we speak.”
Sophia’s breath halted in her throat. Around her, children began to cry. First one, then another, then all of them.
“Where do we go?” she whispered. “There’s nowhere else.”
“A friend of mine lives in the mansion across from the outer Temple courtyard. You know the one I mean?”
Sophia nodded.
“Good. He has a craft. It’s small. A private, T23 model. The two of you and the children will all fit, but it’ll be cramped.” Faye narrowed her eyes and stared beyond Sophia, her limpid blue gaze focusing on Dante. “You’ll need a damn good pilot to get off this planet. Luckily, you have one.”
Sophia spun on her heel. Dante could pilot? He hadn’t told her. Then again, he hadn’t had much time. There were probably thousands of things she didn’t know about him.
“I ‑‑” His face had gone as ashen as that of the priestess who’d scurried out of the room. “No.”
“You don’t know how to pilot?” Sophia asked, feeling the last vestiges of hope begin to flitter away.
“No ‑‑ yes.” He shook his head. A muscle twitched in his jaw. “No.”
“That’s not what Vance told Quinn,” Faye said. “Moment of truth, Dante. Will you save them? Or will you let them die, like the others?”
Chapter Eight
Dante was never, ever ‑‑ ever ‑‑ sitting in a pilot seat again.
He’d promised himself. Vowed. Sworn to every Saint he didn’t believe in, and a few he did. And yet here he was, running through the thick foliage of the outer garden, scrambling for the back wall he’d climbed to get into the Academy property in the first place, all with the intent to make his way to the T23 model and get Sophia and the six frightened children off the ground.
He had to be insane. No, worse than insane. He’d had to have lost every marble that had ever rattled around in his thick skull.
He knew what happened when he got behind the steering device of a craft. People died. Horrible, flaming deaths filled with the stench of smoke and burnt flesh.
Images flashed behind his eyes as he ran. The boy gripping his hair threatened to pull the strands out by the roots, but the pain in his scalp and shoulder were preferable to the sheer terror that made his knees buckle every time he allowed himself to think of the past.
He’d been young, then. Not that he was old now, at the age of thirty, but he felt old. Killing twenty-four pleasure servants did that to a man.
As a fighter pilot ‑‑ a captain, no less ‑‑ in the Mars General Alliance Space Squadron, he’d been sent on dozens of missions, each more dangerous than the last. He was used to things getting a little out of control. He just hadn’t imagined how quickly events could take a turn for the worst.
The mission had been simple enough: fly a military general into foreign territory. Set him down safely on unfriendly soil and accompany him to meet with the dignitary who owned every living thing on that planet. He even remembered the dignitary’s name. Lacrombie. Darsus Lacrombie.
The man was a pompous jackass. Dante thought that from the moment he’d met the guy, and his initial impression had only intensified the longer he stayed on the scumbag’s planet. While the general schmoozed Lacrombie, Dante had a chance to wander the grounds and see Lacrombie’s “collection” of sex slaves. Each created on Earth, all subservient and demure, one more battered and beaten than the next.
He’d never come across such cruel conditions for sex servants anywhere. They lived in squalor, getting a ration of half a loaf of bread and some watered-down broth each day. When they were unlucky enough to be chosen to grace Lacrombie’s bed, they returned with joints popped out of their sockets, eyes bruised, teeth knocked out.
When Dante reported what he’d seen to the general, the man had agreed not to allow Lacrombie’s tiny planet into the General Alliance. They didn’t have the authority to pull the servants from Lacrombie’s home, but they could teach him a lesson by denying him the economic and security benefits that came with being a part of the Alliance.
It would have ended there, Dante supposed, had Lacrombie not decided to fire upon Dante’s ship. Despite Dante’s best attempts, the craft had come crashing down. Dante and the general had evacuated, but the ship had collided with the outer quarters, killing most of the sex slaves in the explosion that ensued. Those who survived were injured badly enough to no longer be of use to Lacrombie, who had them killed by his own men.
“We have t
o climb that wall,” Sophia said, jerking Dante out of flame-filled thoughts of the past.
He nodded and lunged at the wall, his claws leading the way. The boy on his shoulders gasped with surprise as they soared through the air. At the top, Dante crouched down and scanned the street. It was empty, but he could hear the buzz of a craft nearby, as well as the clatter of armored men in the distance.
He reached down as Sophia handed him one child at a time. She came up last, then helped the kids climb down to the other side.
“You’re sure you can fly?” Sophia asked him, skepticism slipping into her tone.
“No.” He winced against the pain as the boy kicked his tiny foot against the raw wound in Dante’s shoulder. “But I’m sure I know how to fly.”
The T23 model craft was still there, exactly where Faye had said it would be. The same place Dante had last seen it when the Central Command officer had warned him away.
Saints, that seemed like a lifetime ago.
They kept to the side of the street as they ran then swerved around the back of the gleaming black craft. Dante punched in the security code Faye had given him and the far door slid open, revealing a sleek two-seat interior cab and a bench in the back.
The children, perhaps too stunned to protest, climbed into the back. Sophia buckled them in, two to a safety-strap.
“Hop in. We’re leaving,” Dante said, hoping he’d imbued his tone with more confidence than he felt.
Sophia hesitated. He turned to face her, wondering if she’d heard him.
“I’m not coming.”
He stared at her, propped his right hand against the side of the craft, and leaned in close. He couldn’t have heard her right. “Say that again.”
She blew out a breath that caused her bangs to ripple over her eyes. “I said I’m not coming with you. I belong with them.” She pointed in the direction of the Academy walls, where the rattle of armor had turned into frenzied screams. “I should be there. Fighting.”
“Dying, you mean.”
She lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug and smoothed her face into a mask of indifference. He wondered if she practiced that look, or if it came naturally. Like that stubborn streak and this newfound death wish.