“Good thing I’m head of security then, isn’t it?” he replied.
When someone finally came to lead them to the back, Drakkal’s holocom had marked four hours and twenty-six minutes since their arrival, and Leah had already woken from her nap.
“About fu—uh…reaking time,” Shay muttered, glancing sheepishly at Drakkal and Leah as she stood up and accepted the baby from him. She held her daughter up to eye level and grinned. “Mom so didn’t cuss. Nope. I caught that one.”
They followed the terran who’d come to fetch them through a door and along a hallway with offices on either side. He left them in a room with an examination bed, medical equipment, and a tired-looking female terran behind a desk who introduced herself as Misses Levitsky.
Misses Levitsky walked through her duties with an odd sort of jaded warmth; it was clear she’d done this enough times for it to be almost automatic for her, but she somehow remained personable despite that. She asked a series of questions about Leah, her birth, and Shay’s arrival on Arthos, and followed up those questions with a few quick tests, including a full body scan of Leah. But it was the final two steps that caused the only issues—the first was a quick blood test to confirm Shay was Leah’s biological mother, which resulted in tears from the cub, and the second was the implantation of Leah’s ID chip in her wrist.
Drakkal couldn’t be sure if Leah even felt the chip implant, but she was already so upset by having her finger pricked that it didn’t matter. He collected her in his arms once it was done, and she grasped his fur with both of her little hands, tugging on it as she cried and hiccupped. Drakkal winced at the sting of his fur being pulled, but it was nothing compared to what seeing Leah’s pain made him feel. When he looked at Shay, her eyes were watery, and she was frowning helplessly toward their daughter.
“All done,” Misses Levitsky declared.
Drakkal checked his holocom; they’d been in the exam room for only twenty-one minutes. He patted Leah gently and followed Shay out of the room and back to the lobby, not allowing himself to consider the disparity between the amount of time they’d waited versus the time it took to conduct their business.
Leah Audrey vor’Kanthar was officially a citizen of both the United Terran Federation and the city of Arthos—and Drakkal was on record as her legal father, if not her biological one. That was the only matter of importance right now.
Leah finally settled as they rode the elevator down to the parking area. Her bright smile paired with her teary eyes was one of the sweetest, saddest sights Drakkal had ever seen. He gently brushed the teardrops away from her cheeks.
When they reached their hovercar, Drakkal opened the back door and carefully strapped Leah into her seat.
Shay took gentle hold of his arm, calling his attention to her. Her eyes were still a little watery. “I’m going to ride in back with her, okay?”
The vulnerability on her face pierced straight through Drakkal’s heart; for all her considerable strength, for all her self-control, seeing her cub in pain was almost more than Shay could bear. She rarely showed that side of herself. He suspected that no one save himself and Shay’s parents had ever seen it.
Drakkal leaned down and pecked a kiss atop her head. “That’s fine, kiraia.”
She placed her hands on his chest, stood on her toes, and kissed his lips before climbing into the car to sit beside Leah. Drakkal made sure his mate was buckled in before he walked around to the front of the car. He pulled off his jacket, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and got into the driver’s seat. As he powered on the engines and fastened his seat straps, he finally allowed some relief to flow through him; they’d accomplished what they’d set out to do. Now they could go home and be at peace. The way forward would be a long one—lately, he and Arcanthus had been discussing ways to convert their operation into a legal one and whether they needed an operation to begin with—but Shay had been right.
This was a first step in a new chapter. Leah marked a new beginning.
They were traveling through the Undercity—about halfway home—when alarm signals and warnings flashed across every holo screen on the dashboard. Drakkal’s brows fell low. A moment later, the controls seized.
“Fuck,” he growled. He struggled against the unresponsive control wheel with one hand as he frantically tapped the screens with the other, trying to override the alarm, trying to take control somehow.
“What’s going on?” Shay asked, restrained worry in her voice.
The vehicle pitched down, dropping out of the flow of hovercar traffic. Shay gasped.
“Lost control,” Drakkal said through clenched teeth as he took the controls in both hands again. His muscles strained against the wheel, but it refused to move—and the foot pedals were locked in place, as well. “Hold on.”
The hovercar plummeted, and Drakkal’s insides rose up into his throat. His family was in this car, his mate and child, and they were at risk, but the fury that poured into his blood didn’t help against the locked controls.
After falling at least a hundred meters in only a second or two, the hovercar leveled out over a busy street. Leah was crying in the back seat, her voice almost swallowed up by the blaring alarms. Tilting and pitching wildly, the hovercar made a series of sharp turns along several side streets, moving farther and farther from the main street they’d been flying over.
“Someone is controlling this thing!” Shay turned to Leah and spoke to the cub in soft, soothing tones; Drakkal could barely hear her over the other noise.
The hovercar made another sudden, tight turn, this time into an alley. Its rear end swung out and slammed into the side of a building. Though its external energy shield prevented the vehicle’s body from making physical contact, the impact was jarring, and Leah’s cries became terrified screams.
Drakkal’s rage surged, staining his vision red. He needed to fight, needed to protect his family, needed to destroy whoever or whatever was threatening them. But how was he going to destroy the vehicle in which they were traveling?
You know this isn’t the hovercar, Drakkal.
The vehicle righted itself and darted down the alley, gaining speed rapidly. Drakkal dropped a hand to the throttle and tugged it back, but the speed kept increasing, and the alley only narrowed, causing the vehicle to bounce and jitter as its energy shield struck the walls. It wouldn’t hold out long at this rate.
“Oh God,” Shay said, voice trembling.
Drakkal glanced back to see her half out of her harness and leaning over Leah, enveloping the cub with her body like a living shield.
The hovercar dropped five meters in an instant, making Drakkal’s stomach lurch. Before he could recover, it dropped again, and again, and the ground was suddenly much too close. The vehicle’s nose pitched down.
Drakkal turned toward Shay and Leah, driven only by his instinct to protect them with his own body.
The hovercar hit the ground with a slam that jolted through Drakkal from head to toe and made his teeth crack together. The vehicle bounced up; when it came down again, the shield had failed. The hovercar’s metal underside hit the ground with a deafening crash, thrashing the vehicle’s occupants violently. Drakkal’s head struck something—he couldn’t tell whether it was the window, the dashboard, or something else in the chaos—and his world became a blur of flashing red alarm lights, screaming metal, and cries from his cub.
When the hovercar finally slid to a halt, it took Drakkal several seconds to blink his vision clear. His body ached vaguely, but that ache permeated him, and his head felt both too light and too heavy. He twisted slowly to look into the back seat as he fumbled to release his harness; the latches refused to come undone.
Shay was slumped to the side, her forehead leaned against the cracked backdoor window.
Drakkal’s hands froze for an instant. “Shay?” When she didn’t respond, cold, slithering dread gathered in his gut. “Shay!”
Shay groaned and slowly sat up, leaving a smeared streak of red on the window. Blood oozed from a gash
on her forehead. Furrowing her brow, she reached toward the wailing cub beside her. Her eyes were concerned but despite her wound. Relief eased some of Drakkal’s fear.
As much as he hated the terror in Leah’s desperate cries, as much as he hated to see her face so red, it was heartening in a way—she was well enough to scream. That was something.
A bright light came on somewhere in front of the hovercar. Drakkal turned toward it, lifting a hand to shield his eyes from the glare. A dark figure seemed to materialize from the light, clad in black from top to bottom, and sauntered toward the vehicle.
Drakkal knew that walk. He knew the sway of those hips, knew the self-importance in that stride. He knew their assailant despite the helmet obscuring her face.
Vanya stopped at the front passenger side window and lifted a bulky, gun-shaped device to the glass. When she flipped a switch on the side, a spike punched through the window, creating fractures all around the point of entry.
Drakkal wrestled his seat harness, but it still wouldn’t come undone. He growled and formed the hardlight claws on his left hand. There was a hiss from Vanya’s device. Drakkal glanced at it to see thick, white gas swiftly flowing into the cab.
“Drak? What’s going on?” Shay asked, the pitch of her voice rising with every word.
He glanced back to see her struggling to free herself from her remaining shoulder strap. The concern on her face deepened as awareness lit in her eyes. Leah continued to scream, taking in shallow, shuddering breaths.
“Cover your mouth, kiraia.” Drakkal sliced away the strap over his right arm and shifted forward, pulling on the remaining strap. The gas, pungent and bitter, filled his nostrils as he drew in breath, making his head swim. He coughed and bent his left arm, hooking his fingers beneath the strap. The hardlight claws sliced into his skin as he tore the strap; he barely felt the pain.
Behind him, Leah’s cries had given way to a coughing fit, and Shay was coughing along with her. Finally free of the harness, Drakkal tugged on the door handle, but the door wouldn’t open—it was stuck against the alley wall. He gritted his teeth against the aches in his body and swung his left fist at the windshield. It struck with a heavy blow, but only a small chip appeared in the glass. The gas, which had made the air in the vehicle hazy, stung his eyes, making them water and further obscuring his vision.
“She stopped crying,” Shay said between coughs; Leah had gone silent. “Oh my God…Drak. She…she stopped—” By the time she, too, fell silent, her words had been heavily slurred.
Drakkal twisted to look back again. A sudden wave of dizziness threatened to overtake him, but he forced his eyes to stay open, forced himself to see. Shay was slumped over, one arm stretched out with her hand on Leah’s belly. The baby’s head was tipped to the side, eyes closed. Neither were moving.
“Shay!” he roared as a wave of panic, protectiveness, rage, and terror blasted through him. Instinct overtook conscious thought, leaving only a simple list of issues to address—air, Vanya, family.
He turned back to the windshield and struck it again, this time leading with his hardlight claws. The hardlight pierced the blaster-proof glass; he swung his arm aside, opening long cuts across the center of the windshield. When he drew his hand back and struck the glass again, it exploded outward.
Drakkal’s head spun. His vision cleared for an instant before blurring again. He grabbed a hold of whatever was in front of him and hauled himself out of the cab, ignoring the chunks of hard glass on the hood beneath him as he emerged. The white haze wafted out around him and began to disperse, caught on a barely perceptible air current in the alley.
Shaking his head sharply, he struggled to get his feet beneath him and turn toward the second item on his list—Vanya. She was still standing beside the hovercar, hands no longer on the device she’d planted in the window, her hidden face turned toward him.
“You always were stubborn,” she said. The speaker on her helmet made her sound digitized.
Drakkal roared. Rage flowed up from his chest and clawed its way out of his throat, and his hazy vision took on a crimson tint again. He dropped his left hand to the mangled hood of the hovercar, buried his claws in it, and used it to launch himself at Vanya.
She dodged him, and Drakkal slammed into the alley wall. He faintly registered pain on his face, head, and shoulder as he crashed to the ground, but he shrugged it off and grabbed the side of the car to haul himself up again. He shook his head sharply, but it was like the gas had gathered in his brain to blanket his every thought in a fog.
“I really wanted things to go different this time, Drakkal,” Vanya said with enough acid in her voice to melt bone, “but you let this ji’tas get in the way.”
His legs wobbled, unwilling to support him for much longer. He lunged toward Vanya anyway. Drakkal’s claws slashed through the air as he pushed himself forward, and Vanya danced backward. He poured all his remaining strength into his every swing, but each time he swung, she seemed to be a second ahead of him.
It was only a few seconds before he overextended himself, and his missed swipe threw off his balance. He fell forward and barely caught himself on his hand.
“I gave you another chance,” Vanya continued, “and you chose a terran. A fucking terran! People pay small fortunes to own them, but for what?”
Drakkal forced his head up and settled his gaze on her. She’d backed away a couple meters, and he had to concentrate to clear his vision enough to make her out clearly. There was a long weapon in her hands—a shock staff, crackling with a beam of white energy from one end to the other.
Vanya’s tail lashed back and forth behind her. “They’re small, soft, and weak. Ugly, useless animals. And you chose one of them over me! You chose that over this?”
Breath ragged and burning in his lungs, Drakkal staggered to his feet and growled, “Fuck you, zhe’gash.”
“Soon enough you’ll be begging to,” she snapped.
Drakkal’s body swayed unsteadily, but he wouldn’t stop, couldn’t let her win. He slid his left leg forward, meaning to charge at Vanya. But when his weight came down on his knee, it buckled. He lashed out with his left hand, burying his hardlight claws into the nearest surface—likely the alley wall—to halt himself. He lifted his gaze in time to see Vanya swinging her shock staff.
He had no chance to react, no chance to think; there was only his driving need to protect his family, to save them from this threat, and then a flash of white and a burst of pain that seized his every muscle.
Drakkal’s world went black, and he knew no more.
Twenty-Three
Shay’s head was going to explode. She was sure of it. Pain radiated from the base of her skull, pulsed in her temples, and stung her eyes. But her suffering didn’t end there—her shoulders screamed, and her entire body felt like one big bruise, like she’d been strung up and beaten with a bat for a few hours.
Or had been thrashed around in a crashing car.
Memories of the crash flooded back to her; the most vivid of them were the terrified cries of her baby.
Leah!
Shay started, lifted her head, and opened her eyes. She immediately regretted it; a spear of pain pierced her skull at the swift movement. She closed her eyes again, panting softly and willing away the nausea turning her stomach as she assessed the situation.
She was standing up, her body weight hanging by her arms and head bowed. She twitched her fingers; her wrists were fastened to the wall behind her by a set of thick, metal manacles, and something just as cold, hard, and terrifyingly familiar was clamped around her neck.
No. Oh no, no, no, no.
“He certainly takes his time,” growled a rough but feminine voice.
“So do you,” snapped another voice—one that Shay knew well. The rage that voice sparked inside her fought back some of Shay’s terror.
Nostrus.
“A hunt takes as long as it takes,” the female replied. “But you’d think he’d be eager to get his hands on them
by now.”
Shay slowly openly her eyes and peered through the curtain of tousled hair hanging in her face. Her heart sank and nearly froze with dread when she caught sight of Leah lying still—so still—inside a box on the floor about a meter away. The box’s sides and top were clear, with a few airholes on each. The only thing that kept Shay calm was the subtle rise and fall of Leah’s little chest.
“Master Foltham takes as long as he takes,” Nostrus replied. “You’ll have your pay soon enough, azhera. I’ve no wish to see you here any longer than necessary.”
Azhera?
Vanya?
Was that why the female’s voice seemed familiar, too?
Shay lifted her head slowly. Her hair fell away to either side of her face, allowing her to take in her surroundings. She was in the back of some sort of transport—bigger than what would’ve been considered a van back on Earth, but along the same lines. The two doors at the back were open, and Vanya and Nostrus were standing just outside of them. Manacles lined the walls, the same kind that Murgen had used on Shay—they didn’t physically attach to anything but could be manipulated to allow different lengths and ranges of movement. Drakkal was standing beside Leah’s box, head slumped forward and body held up only by his wrist bindings.
Vanya snorted. “The feeling is mutual, volturian.”
Drakkal drew in a sharp breath and winced, lifting his head slightly. His ears flattened, and his nostrils flared. When he exhaled, it came out in a groan that stretched into a low, pained growl.
“Seems the marks are waking,” Vanya said.
“Drakkal,” Shay said, keeping her eyes on her mate. “Drakkal, wake up.”
He grunted, brows dropping low as his eyelids fluttered open. His pupils expanded from slits to large circles and back again before his eyes finally met Shay’s and focused. “Kiraia?” he rasped.
There was a snarl from the back of the transport. She turned her face toward the sound to see Vanya step into the transport. The azhera stalked over and backhanded Shay across the face. Shay’s head whipped to the side, the sharp pain—caused primarily by the inner flesh of her cheek breaking against her cheek—receding quickly to a tingling numbness that was somehow even worse. The irony taste of blood washed over Shay’s tongue.
Untamed Hunger Page 32