The man cringed in terror at having the mighty Voltarrean Warlord roaring in his face. “It is Aurelia,” he cried, air whistling around his strangled words as he spoke. “Daughter of Aziros, of Aeldor.”
His gaze darted sharply to his surprised brother then to Cogar, who had an equally stunned expression on his face. They were both watching him, awaiting his determination.
“He speaks true,” he announced grimly.
“She has been sold to the Sovnic King,” the Ophig worm dared to advise, his wheezing worsening with each gasped word. “He is on his way to collect her. There will be hell...to pay...if she is not here... when he arrives.”
“You are either brave or incredibly stupid to fear the red devil more than the man who has his hand around your throat, ready to crush your trachea if you so much as blink and anger me further.” Although he didn’t need to prove his ability, Darios lifted him higher and shook him with the flick of his wrist. “How did you capture her?”
“We tracked her caravan traveling north...” he sputtered, quickly turning blue around his lips and eyes. “And overtook her snow cruiser just outside of Last Point.”
“On Aeldor? Impossible,” Iyo exclaimed. “You lie!”
“He cannot,” Cogar reminded him. “Not with the warlord scrying the truth.”
Darios released his grip, uncaring that the man fell hard onto the floor in a groaning, wheezing, stinking heap. He wiped his hands on his sleeve while stepping around the pile of Ophig refuse and quickly gave his orders to his men. “Basra, take him aboard for further questioning.”
Nicknamed the behemoth for a reason, the hulking soldier who towered over even his warlord, bent and grabbed the prisoner by his collar. As if he weighed no more than a feather pillow, he dragged him to the hold where the air lock between the two ships stood open.
“Lord Darios is being benevolent,” he advised matter-of-factly. Though he spoke softly, Basra’s deep bass rumbled down the corridor. “You’ll live another day.”
They disappeared from sight, but the big man’s resonating words came back to them, when he added, “It gives you more time to make peace with your god before your execution.”
High-pitched squeals for mercy followed but were ignored by everyone who had already moved on to other business than a walking dead man.
“Cogar, Iyo, Ravern, you are with me. The rest of you get the women safely aboard the Atagan and prepare to disengage immediately upon our return.”
“No, it’s too risky,” his brother Daryk called from his place at the door, boldly contradicting his order. “I will go in your stead.” He jerked his head at the man closest to him, prepared to hand over his injured wife.
“You will see to your woman,” Darios commanded firmly as he strode toward him. “She is the reason we’re on this dilapidated rust bucket in the first place.” His hand came up to stroke Callae’s bruised cheek. Her light-brown eyes opened. He read pain in her stoic expression and had the answer to his question before he uttered it. “How do you fare, little sister?”
“I’m well enough, Overlord,” she replied with a weak smile that looked more like a grimace.
Though Callae and those closest to him usually called him by name.
He frowned down at her, seeing the strain on her face, and a great deal of pain. It worsened when she coughed harshly, grabbing her side and still wheezing when it subsided. The cause, broken ribs from a boot, most likely. She, or any female of Voltarre, would not have gone docilely into enslavement.
His gaze rose to his brother. “She’s hurting. Standing around discussing who does what when I have already given the order is a waste of time.”
He and Daryk were close, friends more than leader and follower. He was also his confidant, staunchest supporter, and most trusted man. Darios could tell he felt torn between duty to his overlord and caring for his wife and unborn child.
“This is not up for debate, Brother,” he warned sharply, taking the decision out of his hands. “Go now.”
With a curt nod, and Callae held securely to his chest, he led the others from the room. Once his men had filed out, each carrying a woman, two from Voltarre and over a dozen other alien females they had rescued from the slavers, a tremor shook the destabilized vessel. More smoke billowed out of the broken terminals and cracked seams in the interior walls.
“I need a breathing mask,” he growled, searching the area for the one he had earlier.
“Here, my lord.” Ravern, who could always be relied upon to anticipate his leader’s needs, held one out to him.
The four of them slipped on their helmets and locked the face shields in place. When they secured them to their silver flight suits, a hiss signaled the oxygen had begun circulating. The equipment was cumbersome but necessary in the smoke-filled ship, and the fireproof material would protect them from the heat and flames, as well as any radiation and toxic gases accumulating in the crumbling ship. Nothing, however, would save them if the fuel tanks ignited.
“Let’s go,” came his muffled order.
Chapter Three
MIRED IN MISERY, AURELIA struggled to draw air past her parched lips and the rawness of her throat from near-constant coughing. Exhausted, she had long since given up trying to extinguish the growing fires with her ineffective powers. When a hissing sound filled the room, she lacked the strength to open her eyes and identify the source. It started low then grew louder. Only when a cool mist settled over her hot skin did she crack open one eyelid.
Unlike the thick gray caustic smoke from the fire, a white, hazy vapor swirled between the bars. She thought she imagined it, and the pair of black boots that emerged from within it, but the misty spray against her hot skin felt very real.
Squinting at the boots as they approached, she noted how they differed from those the Ophig slavers wore. They were much larger and attached to long, thick legs encased in metallic silver.
Alarmed this was a new threat, perhaps sent by the horned red devil from the auction, she tried to move to the back of her small cell. Her muscles wouldn’t cooperate, however, nor would her lungs, which contracted in another spasm of coughing. She could only stare helplessly at the being on the other side of her cage.
While craning her head back, she let her gaze travel past narrow hips and a broad upper torso, also covered in silver. It had to be a protective suit of some kind because affixed to it, atop incredibly wide shoulders, was a helmet with a dark, impenetrable face visor.
Blinking rapidly, she tried to clear her burning eyes to be sure it wasn’t a hallucination brought on by the lack of oxygen. She’d heard visions and aberrations of the senses often occurred when close to death—this would explain the mist. But her doubts vanished when he moved forward, his legs nearly brushing the bars.
He appeared huge from her place on the floor. She couldn’t tell for certain, but she judged him a head taller than her brother who stood taller than most of her people. The black shield covering his face prevented her from seeing who or what he was, and reflected only her image. Lying defenseless, her face flushed from the heat, with lungs heaving as she quivered fearfully in the awful cage wasn’t an image she’d soon forget—at least in what little time she had left.
His legs bent into a squat, and he ran his fingers over the bars. Since he didn’t recoil in pain, she surmised the mist had cooled them enough to touch. Aurelia reached for them as well, intending to pull herself upright, but the metal burned hotter than before, and she cried out in pain.
The being spoke sharply, but the words were muffled by his helmet. While she cradled one burning hand with the other, he gripped the bars and pulled.
“I tried that,” she muttered. “They’re solid. You’ll have to cut them...”
Her voice stopped altogether when the now brightly glowing metal bowed outward.
“Impossible,” she whispered, batting her eyes to clear them, convinced she was delusional.
Whether real or imagined, it appeared that the being had used his inc
omprehensible strength to create an opening wide enough for her to squeeze through. Apparently satisfied, he let go, and reached for her through the opening.
Though encased in silver like his suit, rather than fur, the gloved hand extending toward her too closely resembled when the Ophig abducted her from her caravan. She recoiled, fear inciting a burst of energy, at least enough to roll beyond his grasp.
A grunt and some muffled words were all she could make out as he curled his fingers in a come here motion.
Filled with uncertainty, she considered his hand one not dissimilar to her own. Did she trust him, or would she be making an unbearable situation worse?
Before she could decide, a loud bang and a violent shudder from what could only be another explosion toppled her would-be rescuer onto his backside. Tossed around inside the cage, she rebounded like a rubber ball slamming into first one side of unforgiving bars then another. The force jarred every bone in her body and, as her luck would have it, snapped the chain securing it in place. The entire thing went careening into the wall. When it stopped, she landed on her back on the bottom of the cage, also made of unyielding metal.
Aurelia lay moaning in agony, unable to move and hard-pressed to pinpoint a single spot on her entire body that wasn’t bruised and aching. When sparks suddenly rained down in a shower from the ceiling and the lights went out, she didn’t flinch. She also wasn’t surprised when the fire, which had dissipated some with the cooling vapor, flared to life once more.
“What could I have possibly done to deserve such a fate?” she sobbed raggedly.
“I don’t know, Princess, but now is not the time to debate it.”
Hearing her language spoken quite clearly, she jerked her head around.
Squinting through burning eyes, she saw his face shield remained in place. He must have switched on an external speaker and was perhaps using a translator too. “Who are you?” she rasped. “How do you know me?”
“Both are topics better left until we get out of here.” He extended his hand through the opening once more.
Aurelia froze. It was big, with long fingers, and the veins on the back stood out like ropes. She didn’t hesitate because of his size or strength—though she still found it hard to believe he’d bent metal—but rather from his hand, now bare like her own. She hadn’t seen him remove his glove, but skin to skin, with nothing to act as a buffer, she would feel his every emotion.
Could she bear it in her weakened state?
Her choice was no choice at all. Take it and suffer immeasurable pain or stay there and die.
After all she’d been through, she didn’t want to die, not today. She chose option A. Except, when her brain told her arm to move, and clasp his hand, it didn’t cooperate.
“Come to me,” he ordered, his tone rife with unyielding authority.
“I can’t,” she replied, both sobbing and groaning in pain.
“You must. The fire barrier I’ve created won’t last an eternity.”
Her eyes shifted behind him amazed to see a floor-to-ceiling wall of flames held the smoke and sparks at bay. His ability to bend metal bars suddenly made sense. He’d heated them to make them more pliable. Only one species she knew of had the ability to manipulate heat and fire.
“Now,” he ordered sharply, his patience quickly waning.
Her gaze swung back to him. Very near her breaking point, if not past it, she returned with a sharpness matching his own, “I didn’t say won’t, I said can’t, as in I’m unable to move.”
Another grunt, and he grabbed hold of the bars again, pulling them wider apart. Comparing the opening with his upper body, her hope fizzled. No way would his shoulders fit through the narrow space.
The ship shuddered and, this time, listed sharply to the right. The cage ripped from his grasp and slid across the floor, heading dead center toward the wall of fire.
Aurelia screamed, unable to do anything to stop it.
With a hard jerk, it came to an abrupt halt. The cage, not her. Nothing kept the momentum of her body from tumbling forward. This time, instead of slamming up against the bars, which she would have welcomed, she went through them.
Head and shoulders first, her upper body flew through the opening he’d made. When her arms scraped the sides, she tried to grab hold, but they slipped through her grasp.
She closed her eyes, unable to watch the end of her life.
From nowhere, pain seared into the back of her head. It took her a moment to sort through her terror and this new agony to realize his fingers had fisted in her hair and brought her unchecked descent into the fire to a halt. The next thing she knew, a band of steel encircled her waist, and she was pulled clear of the hated cage.
When it fell with a crash and became instantly engulfed by flames, she could only stare at it through watery eyes while quaking over what might have been.
“I’ve got her,” her rescuer called to someone behind them. Or was it above? She couldn’t tell anymore in the listing, rolling ship. “Throw me a line, and let’s get out of here.”
“And go where?” she asked in alarm as he caught a cable sliding down the tilted floor toward them.
“My ship.” With his feet braced against the wall and her body tucked into the curve of his, he grabbed the line, looping it around and around his thick forearm. “Pull us up,” he shouted.
Slowly, they ascended, but a thought occurred to her.
She didn’t know him or his intent. They had battled the slavers but could have reprehensible plans of their own. Ransom came to mind first, or they could intend to use her to force her father’s hand over something else. If they were Voltarrean, as she suspected, she wouldn’t put anything past them, truce or not. She could be going from one horrible situation into another. He could have horns under his helmet like the red devil for all she knew.
As her fears mounted, along with her uncertainty, they brought with them a surge of strength, and she struggled to get free.
“Release me,” she cried.
“Would you rather stay here and burn to death?” he growled in disbelief.
“Maybe,” she shot back as her panic increased. “I don’t know you.”
“I mean you no harm, Princess.”
“You could be worse than the slavers, or the awful beasts who took me from my home,” she cried, twisting in his hold and clawing at the rope, trying to pull herself up, but getting nowhere.
“You can trust me,” he replied, through what sounded like gritted teeth.
“Why should I believe anything you say?” She found his thigh with her heel and inched upward, but it slipped, and she lost the ground she had gained. Her body slammed into his, her nose in his chest, which made it easy to hear when he grunted from the impact.
He recovered soon enough and delivered two sharp cracks across her bare behind at the same time he admonished, “Because I’m the only thing standing between you and a fiery end. Now, be still or we’ll both fall to our deaths.”
The sting of the spanks snapped her out of her rapidly escalating panic. The fight went out of her as quickly as it had surged to life. Though she should have been outraged by his high-handedness, or, at the very least, curious how he’d managed to spank her while clasping the rope with one hand and holding her at the same time, instead, she sobbed pitifully. “I can’t take any more. I want to go home.”
“Hush, now.” For the first time, his voice was soothing rather than brusquely demanding or brimming with impatience. “We’ll set things to rights, but first we must get you to safety.”
He was right, of course, and her resistance made no sense whatsoever.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered as she clutched his shoulders and held tight.
“You’ve been through an ordeal. Think nothing of it.”
His understanding response reassured her.
They had reached the door, now on the ceiling as the ship rolled upside down. Two other silver-clad men reached for her and pulled her through. When they set her on he
r feet and went back to assist the man still dangling from a rope in a room engulfed by fire, she realized they had witnessed her less-than-gracious rescue.
Without a doubt, they’d heard every word of her patently ridiculous protests, seen their cohort smack her bottom, and listened while she’d wept hysterically like a high-strung female. But after the day she’d had, which hadn’t ended yet, her nerves were beyond frazzled, and she felt she had a valid excuse for being emotional.
To top it off, she stood there stark naked. She dipped her chin to her chest letting her hair fall forward—it didn’t hide nearly enough. If there was a corner not filled with smoke or fire, and if she could move, she’d crawl into it and cry an ocean of tears.
The men said nothing untoward, which would have been the last straw for her; instead, they focused on their task and pulled the big man up behind her.
A terrible tremor shook the floor beneath them, and the smoke in the corridor became darker and thicker. Once on his feet, he reached for her where she slumped against the wall. Or was it the floor? She couldn’t be sure in the chaos.
She thought he might take her hand and lead her, but he lifted her by the waist and flipped her facedown over his shoulder.
“I can walk,” she protested, mostly because her naked backside pointed up in the air.
“You can’t even stand,” he correctly refuted. “The ship is badly destabilized. It’s rolling and highly unpredictable. If you want to survive this flaming crucible, you’ll stop fighting me at every turn.” He paused to let that sink in, which it did. “Are you going to do as I ask, now?”
What choice did she have?
“Yes.”
“Good,” he replied, half praise, half relieved grunt, and the hand spanning the back of her thighs gave a light, reassuring pat. “Everything will be fine. Just put your arms around me and hang on. I’ll need both hands on the guide rope to get us out of here, and we don’t have time to waste.”
Without hesitation or further protests, because she really didn’t want to come to a fiery end, she rested her cheek against his back and encircled his body. When her hands wouldn’t meet enough to clasp, she curled her fingers into his flight suit.
Claimed by the Warlord Page 4