Blood at Stake (Warriors of the Krieger Book 2) (12 page)

Lastly, Harlow. This male was just as
scarred as Rowland, but his demeanor was totally different. The
servants avoided him, and the women scurried away when he was near.
Harlow’s dark green eyes looked unearthly. Long brown hair was
pulled up in the same manner as Dante wore his, and the gnarled,
puckered skin of his neck was exposed. It looked as though he’d
been mangled by a beast in his human life. He was already marked as
a
Krieger
and had been handpicked by Dragus to be attached
to our station in Port Royal.

“Alright, men,” I announced, but fumbled for
words as I rubbed at my heart. “It’s time to…time to head out. Load
your…things.” My voice faltered, and my left knee buckled from the
pain radiating through my chest.

“Ashby,” Dragus growled, as he lurched
forward to catch me before I fell, righting me back on my feet.
“What is it,
Krieger
?”

I felt pain, in my legs and arms. My
neck…and my
chest
!

Lydia was calling out to me through our
bond. She was…hurt. Hurting!
Pain…Help me! Ashby…please! I need
you….find me! Help!

“Alydian!” I gasped, clutching my chest, my
knees finally giving out as I slumped to the ground. Warriors
readied for battle around me, but I couldn’t breathe or even speak,
feeling my mate in danger. Knives and guns were produced. The
others made a protective circle around my body. I lunged forward,
knocking two of them out of my way.

“Grab him!” I heard Dragus order. “In the
vehicle! His mate is in danger.”

The recruits sprang into action, two of them
grabbing me under my arms and forcing me inside the vehicle. My
eyes bled red, my fangs elongated, and I had death in my mind’s
eye. Someone had hurt her.

That someone was going to die.

“She’s not at
Nights
?” Dragus
asked.

“Just drive,” I growled, venom on my tongue.
A shot of pain in the crease of my arm caused my body to convulse
in my seat. I heard her screaming in my head. “They’re
hurting
her!”

“Where?” Dragus demanded. His phone was to
his ear as he barked orders to the others back in town. We were
thirty minutes away from Port Royal and three hours away from
dawn.

“Outside of the town limits,” I said, trying
to feel the pull of my mate. “Shepherd’s Forest to the west…hurry.
She’s…she’s dying!”

As Dragus relayed my message, I closed my
eyes and pulled at our connection. This was something that Dragus
could do with Charity, but I had yet to connect solidly with Lydia
this way. When I’d done it in the past, it was only a few moments
at a time. I had to concentrate. I had to pull everything inside
me…the magic that kept us alive, and I had to
find
her.

“Turn here!” I pointed to a road up
ahead.

“It’s not a road,” Zin said.

“She’s there,” I snarled. “Turn!”

I threw my head back and howled when I
connected to her. “They’re draining her blood!” An anger built
inside me, a foreign feeling of vengeance. I wanted blood…

“Fuck,” a recruit said from the
backseat.

Finally seeing through her eyes, I called
out what I was seeing, “A small hunting cabin…only a table in the
middle of the room. They have bags and needles. There are three
men…humans. Lydia is helpless. They have her tied down with
enchanted chains. Dragus…she’s screaming.”

“We
will
save her,” he said, making
his way through the forest, cutting the headlights to keep our
presence unseen and hopefully unheard.

“Stop!” I barked. Dragus halted the vehicle
at my words. “She’s close.” I tore myself from the vehicle and
headed out on foot, moving so quietly my feet didn’t make a sound.
My mate was being tortured.

I stalked through the forest, my skin
crawled as I silently moved in the direction of the cabin. The pull
on my chest eased with each step, but her fear only increased as
the seconds ticked by.

As I continued the connection with her, I
saw the men closing in on the table where she was chained. I
couldn’t hear what they said, but from the lustful looks on their
faces, they wanted more than just her blood. Lydia’s head thrashed
from side to side. Her screams echoed, not only in my head, but
into the darkness surrounding us.

“There!” I pointed to the north of where we
were standing. Up ahead, a cabin sat. A small amount of light
filtered through the cracks in the side of the planks that made up
the walls to the building Lydia was being held prisoner. The moment
I heard her clothes tear, my mate scream out in pain, and I scented
her blood, the beast that lived inside all warriors burst forth. A
mate was being harmed.
My
mate was in danger.

I knew not what I did.

Chapter 15

Lydia

I woke from being drugged and found myself
laying on a wooden table. I hissed when I tried to move. There were
chains draped across my wrists and ankles. One was across my bare
waist. A needle was in my vein, and blood slowly drained out of my
arm and into a bag to my left.

“She’s awake,” a gravelly voice said.

“Let me go!” I cursed when I saw my three
captors. They were dressed in black, their faces covered with ski
masks. I scented the air and recognized none of their scents.

“We want to play with you, sweetheart,” the
second man said, stroking my cheek with the back of his hand before
stepping away.

“Taking my blood will not change you into a
vampire, you idiot,” I growled.

“Ah, see,” the third one laughed. “Our
friend here says otherwise. He can make it work.” The man sounded
so sure of himself. The problem was…I didn’t know what the second
guy was, but I knew he wasn’t quite human. He smelled almost like
our friend Kai, a witch. Her scent was super sweet, like a kid’s
candy treat. His scent was like a witch, but with a hint of earthy
musk. The two scents together wasn’t very pleasant.

“She’s a beauty, Myles,” the first guy said.
“Can we have her before you drain her?” The man laughed and grabbed
my shirt, ripping it down the front as the other men gathered
around me. The bag attached to my arm hit the ground, and Myles
cursed when it began to leak my blood onto the floor. I screamed
out in hopes that someone would hear my cries. I couldn’t let these
men touch me.

An unearthly roar sounded from somewhere
outside of the cabin. The humans who were hovering over me paused
as the sound vibrated the clapboard walls. Dust rained down from
the shelves nailed to the flimsy walls. Only I knew what was coming
for them.

“Blood is the essence of our life. Beware
how you proceed from here,
humans
,” I threatened, because I
knew my mate was coming, and I knew he smelled my spilled
blood.

The cabin exploded inwardly. I tried to turn
my head to keep from being hit with the slivers of wood raining
down throughout the small area. The three human males screamed in
terror as a blonde warrior tore apart the cabin with his claws.
Tears filled my vision as I saw him for the first time since being
captured, and what I saw stunned me.

Ashby had grown in size, his hands turned
into claws and the bones on his face reformed into some type of
monster. His beautiful skin was stretched taut over his now larger
cheekbones. His eyes were a deathly shade of blood; not the yellow
of a mated male.

“Lydia,” Dragus called, causing me to turn
away from my mate. “Look at me. Not him, please.” I wondered why
Dragus would call out such an odd request, but not come forward to
help me out of these restraints. When I went to disobey him and
look toward Ashby, I heard another male say, “I wouldn’t do that if
I were you.”

Closing my eyes, I heard the humans
screaming and begging for their lives, but the sound cut off, and
all I heard were the wet sounds of flesh being sliced by deadly
claws. It was then that I knew…I knew my mate was avenging me. I
started to shake and cry uncontrollably. Ashby had come. He also
had let his beast out.

“
Vatakas
,” I whispered in
disbelief.

I’d only heard of this happening in old
stories of the
Vatakas
. A vampire with the ability to shift
into a creature who seeks vengeance against those who’d harmed
their mates. It was said that they would tear their enemies to
pieces and dance on their flesh.

As the wet sounds and the deathly smell of
freshly spilled blood reached my nose, my fangs elongated, and my
body convulsed from the need to feed. My chest arched up off of the
table, and I moaned as the pain raced through my arms from the
enchanted chains draped across my wrists and ankles. The humans had
taken most of my blood trying to save it to turn themselves once I
was dead. The evidence was nothing more than a splash of red liquid
strewn across the floor.

Dragus watched Ashby as I kept my eyes on my
mate’s brother. The other men in the room, who I didn’t recognize,
made a semi-circle around the table I was shackled upon, not once
trying to free me. When the sounds died, the only thing I could
hear was the heavy breathing of the monster that was once my mate.
After every inhale, his beast growled with every expelled
breath.

“A…Ashby,” I cried. I’d lost so much blood
that I couldn’t even produce tears. My clothes were shredded from
the men ripping my blouse and tearing at the waist of my pants.
Thankfully, I was still somewhat covered. It was hard to admit, but
all I wanted was for my mate to hold me, to tell me everything was
going to be okay.

“You must be quiet, Lydia,” Dragus
commanded. “Let him calm.”

“
Krieger
,” another voice warned. “You
must calm yourself before you touch your mate.”

The monster’s roar filled the pre-dawn air
as Ashby lunged for me, breaking the restraints at my wrists and
ankles. The chains did nothing to his hands when he touched them as
if they were a thin piece of rope.

One second I was strapped to the table, the
next I was in the arms of a man that was half vampire and half
beast. The cool wind rushed by me as he ran us away from the
others. Dragus called out for him to stop, but Ashby was not
slowing down.

“Ashby,” I said, lifting my hand to brush
against his hardened jaw. When he was far enough away from the
others, my mate slumped to his knees, hitting the ground hard
enough to make the sound echo in the darkness. His face was covered
in my enemy’s blood and there were pink tears that leaked from his
bloody eyes. He’d been crying for me while he took those men apart
to save me. A sob wrenched free from my chest, and Ashby’s eyes
grew wide.

“
Feed
,” he growled, pulling my face
to his neck. “
Feed, my mate
!”

My body was too weak to do it on my own. I
couldn’t lift my head enough to strike his vein. Raising his hand,
Ashby sliced the claw on his thumb across his neck making the blood
pour from the wound. “
Feed
!”

When he pressed my face to his neck, I
weakly latched onto his vein. The blood hit my tongue, and I moaned
from the taste. Ashby, still in his larger form, curled his body
around mine protectively, allowing me to drink from him. His blood
tasted different…stronger.

As I fed, he lifted my right arm and licked
at the wounds the humans had made on my wrists and the inside of my
elbows. The puncture wounds healed almost immediately. Ashby’s
chest rumbled with approval.

Footsteps approached, causing him to roar
out a warning. Dragus was a brave man and walked forward, but kept
his hands out in front of him.

“
Krieger
,” he began. “Your mate is
safe. Come back to us.” I noticed how Dragus called him
Krieger
and not
Vatakas
. I’m not sure if there was
any meaning behind why he did that, but whatever it meant, I felt
Ashby stiffen and let out a heavy sigh.

Ashby panted heavily as his body relaxed,
his face returning to normal along with his body. I breathed a sigh
of relief when I blinked and he was somewhat normal, but there was
something in his eyes that told me his beast was close to the
surface.

“What happened?” he asked, looking confused.
“Where am I?” He shook his head from side to side as if he were
trying to remove a haze. His eyes widened as he took in my
appearance. Strong arms held me tighter against his body.

“You don’t remember?” Dragus asked, moving a
bit closer, but froze when the
Vatakas
growled a
warning.

“Some of it,” he paused, shaking his head
again. He quickly pulled my shirt tighter over my chest. The
Nights
cotton shirt I wore was ruined and soaked in blood,
mine and probably some of the men who held me captive.

“We will talk about this later,” Dragus
said. “Let’s get you and your mate back to the estate.”

Ashby carried me so that I didn’t have to
walk. It was welcomed, because I still did not have the strength to
move on my own.

“You smell like those men,” Ashby snarled,
still rubbing his face along my neck trying to transfer his scent
to my skin.

“I know,” I whispered, hating he’d have to
live with that scent for a little while longer.

Inside the SUV, I didn’t protest when he
kept me in his lap, pressing me close to his body. I yawned,
feeling dawn approaching. “Tired.”

“We’re hurrying,” Dragus commented from the
front seat.

“I want to bathe you,” Ashby said, now
rubbing his face into my hair. He was attempting to calm his beast.
“I have to get their scent off of you.”

“I know,” I replied. A male mate was
protective, but a male
Krieger
mate was completely unstable
when their females were injured, harmed, or even touched by another
male.

Dragus pulled up to the front of Ashby’s
home, throwing the locks on the vehicle. I was whisked into the
house. He didn’t stop as he reached the bathroom. He turned on the
shower and proceeded to rip the remaining clothes from my body. At
no time did I speak, because I wasn’t sure what to say.