Claimed (9 page)

He shook her like a rag doll, sending spikes of pain through her neck and down her spine.

“If my son dies because of you, I will tear you to shreds myself and send the pieces back to your precious planet to prove to them that they are too weak and pathetic to be of any use to the people of Morgath.”

He squeezed his hand, and Tina gasped and struggled. One day she would take him down a notch and prove to him she wasn’t weak, that
humans
weren’t weak. The only way to deal with a bully was to stand up to them. Another hiss blew his putrid breath into her face. Then he dropped her to the ground like a sack of potatoes. She landed with a jarring thud, her legs collapsing underneath her.

“Pathetic,” he growled before turning away. “Kartoc, Derkah, put her in the dungeon. She can enjoy Tardic’s hospitality while I wait to see if my son will survive.”

Tina’s heart seized in a painful clench only to resume at a frantic pace. Oh, hell no! She hadn’t broken any laws. She wasn’t some child deserving punishment.

She stared at the back of Sorvar’s father. Over her dead freaking body would he put her in a dungeon. She pushed herself up off the rough ground, climbing to her feet. Two males walked towards her, their wings held tight. Tina glanced around, taking stock of her surroundings. The trees were close enough she could make a run for it. Right. She could work with that.

She shot a quick glance at Sorvar lying on the transport and pushed down a surge of emotion, then turned and ran. She’d worry about feeling guilty for leaving him later. She streaked across the roughly paved surface of the spaceport—if that was what it was. It wasn’t like the spaceport on Earth. It was more a hole cut in the jungle. A vehicle couldn’t get in or out unless it flew.

The irregular rough-cut stone pavers stuck up all over the place, jagged and waiting to trip her up. The rough surface wouldn’t matter to the Morgath with their clawed feet, but Tina stumbled as she raced for the edge of the clearing and the thick cover of trees—a cover of trees she could use to escape the males who were intent on locking her up.

If she could just make it to the tree line, she could slip inside. She hadn’t figured out what she was going to do once she escaped, but damn it, she wasn’t about to let that arrogant asshole shove her in a dungeon for god knew how long.

Sorvar could be in a coma for days or weeks. Hell, he might
never
wake up. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life locked up. She’d spent enough time locked up as a child.

A shout went up behind her, followed by the rolling growls of more than one male. Claws clicked and screeched on the stone pavers and heavy wings beat at the air.

Tina pushed herself, forcing her legs to move faster, and pumped her arms. She was close. Only a few dozen yards stretched between her and the dark shadows of the tree line. She gasped in breaths, her lungs burning, her heart beating in her throat as she forced herself to keep running despite the pain shooting through her.

The scent of the jungle thickened the closer it came, pungent and damp like the rainforest she’d visited once with a college boyfriend. It beckoned her closer with the promise of safety.

A gust of air swept over her back, and she choked back a gasping sob. Oh, god! She couldn’t look back. Sweat beaded on her brow in the heat, the temperature rising from uncomfortable to scorching with her exertion.

Another gust swept over her. No. No. The forest was
right there.
Just a few yards away. She could do this. It couldn’t end this way. She couldn’t get so close that she could feel the cooler air on her face just to have it ripped away.

A shadow fell across her, and before Tina could scream rough hands grabbed her around the waist and ripped her off her feet.

“No!” she screamed, struggling and twisting in the hands grasping her around the waist, but the ground grew further and further away as they rose straight up.

The heavy beat of wings swirled the hot humid air around her, whipping loose strands of hair around her face. Claws dug into her sensitive scales in a fierce grip.

Oh, god. She had to get away. She wouldn’t—
couldn’t
—let them lock her up. It would destroy her. Darkness closed around her, memories of a tiny cupboard swamping her. The hot stale air, the muffled sounds she’d spent years trying to forget. Tina sucked in a breath, forcing off the memories and the chill that had closed around her body.

“Let me go, asshole!” she yelled.

They gained altitude, rising higher and higher over the clearing until they were above the tree line. The male remained silent as Tina continued to wriggle, pulling at the sharp claws digging into her.

Damn him, damn them all, and damn Sorvar for putting her in this mess. Well, she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. If they wanted to put her in some hole in the ground, they were going to have to force her every step of the way.

The canopy of the forest spread for miles in every direction, a carpet of green so dark it was almost black she could get lost in. Only the occasional bright green splotch broke up the endless darkness. A hot wind whipped Tina’s hair back off her face, her captor picking up speed, his powerful wings beating like a drum in the air.

She wiggled, kicking her legs and twisting in the male’s grasp. She pulled at his claws and earned a drop of a few inches bolstering her determination. Even the sting as the sharp tips of his claws scraped over her scales didn’t stop her from continuing to struggle until all at once she managed to pry his fingers loose. She dropped like a lead weight, screaming as the trees rushed up to meet her.

Oh, crap! She
really
hadn’t thought this through!

Dying was not the goal. She wasn’t ready for her life to end. She wanted babies and the chance to study the Morgath and their ability to change their chosen mates. She had too much to live for.

She pin wheeled through the air, her heart in her throat as the air rushed past her ears, the whistle almost deafening. The trees rushed closer, the hazy blur of green becoming clearer and clearer. A leaf, and another and another took form. Hadn’t the trees been closer? Why was it taking so long?

Oh, God, this was going to hurt!

She was such an idiot. Really, spending a day or two in a dungeon wasn’t that bad. Was it? It couldn’t be worse than crashing through the forest to end up in a broken bleeding heap on the jungle floor.

Tina’s scream cut off with an
oomph
as something hit her from the side. Her ribs felt like they’d been pulverised by the impact, and her breath locked in her chest, her lungs screaming for air.

“Gods above, Princess. If you die, Prince Sorvar will kill us, and I don’t feel like dying anytime soon,” a voice growled above her.

Tina wheezed trying to draw air into her starving lungs, but he was holding her too tight. She dragged in another agonising breath, pain ripping through her lungs. “Too tight. Can’t breathe,” she gasped.

The male relaxed his hold with a mumbled apology, and Tina dragged in a breath.

“Please, Princess. The safest place for you is in the palace. Without the Prince to protect you, another male could steal you and overwrite the Prince’s imprinting, and you don’t want to be in the jungle on your own. You wouldn’t last an hour.”

She ground her teeth together, tears stinging her eyes. Damn him for being so reasonable. Right that second, she wanted to hate him, this unknown male who had just saved her life, but she was too logical, and what he said made perfect sense. Falling through the sky, her death imminent, had forced her to acknowledge that she didn’t want to die, wasn’t ready for death. There were far too many things she wanted to do with her life to just throw it away.

Tina was still deciding what to say to the male that didn’t make her sound whiny and pathetic when he added, “I would petition King Nardoc to take you as my mate, but if Sorvar doesn’t wake up or he dies, the king
will
kill you. He never makes idle threats.”

Great. Just great. What a brilliant way to start a relationship. One mate in a coma and the other locked in a dungeon. What else could go wrong?

Chapter Seven

Tina.
Sorvar couldn’t feel her gentle warmth beside him. She’d been with him at one stage. He’d been able to feel her through their bond, her concern, and fear, her frustration, and anger. Now only a distant sense of misery was all he could feel. Where was she?

Sorvar struggled to open his eyes. His eyelids were glued together. He flexed his wings and groaned as pain seared through his body.

Holy Ninvah,
what had happened to him?

“Prince Sorvar, it is excellent to see you waking up.” Bavric’s voice came from right beside him.

Sorvar jerked—he hadn’t even noticed Bavric closing in on him. With his senses dulled by whatever had happened, he was vulnerable, and that was a position he couldn’t afford to be in. He couldn’t protect Tina from the other males like this. When he tried to open his eyes this time, the light almost blinded him.

“How long have I been out, Bavric?” Gods, was that his voice? It sounded nothing like him. His voice had never been that rough.

“You have been home for five days after being unconscious on the ship for thirteen hours.” Bavric stood right beside him with a scanner in his hand.

Tina! No wonder she was feeling miserable. He’d left her alone to meet his family—a family that didn’t want her here and were no doubt treating her like shit.

If he knew Tina, she would be driving his father up the wall. A surge of warmth pulsed through him. She was everything he’d wanted in a mate and some things he hadn’t even been able to imagine. He almost chuckled remembering her teaching him about their bodies and all the pleasurable ways they could come together.

She would make a wonderful mother to his sons, and he had no problems imagining spending the rest of his life with her. She would keep him guessing about what she was going to do next. His heart clenched, and Sorvar gasped at the not entirely painful feeling. Damn, he’d fallen for her already. She’d wormed her way into his heart in a day. She was firmly entrenched, and it didn’t worry him one little bit.

He pulled his wings in tight, biting back another groan, and pushed himself up to a sitting position on the padded examination bed. It took him a moment of panting to work through the pain.

“Where is my mate?” he asked as Bavric scanned him.

But Bavric ignored his question as he moved away and studied the console on the other side of the small room. “What do you remember, Prince Sorvar?”

Sorvar bit back a curse and shoved his hand through his hair, only to find it wound into a long rope. Why wouldn’t Bavric just answer the question, and why did Tina feel so far away? She should be here in the palace, by his side.

“I remember everything,” he replied to the medic. “I was on the bridge of the
Erins Dal
listening to that piece of shit Crasgich tell me he was going to take Tina and use her as his next breeder, and I exploded. Or that’s what it felt like.” He shuddered, remembering it like it had just happened. “I thought the change was painful, but this... this was excruciating and intensely pleasurable at the same time. It was almost as exhilarating as the first flight, better even than sex.”

“How do you feel now?” Bavric stared at him, his golden yellow eyes intense.

Sorvar flexed his wings and stretched his arms and back. There was something... something different about him. Something that hadn’t been there before he’d bitten Tina for the second time.

“I feel achy and sore. All my muscles feel like I’ve been training and not stretched properly afterward, but there’s something else. I feel... caged, like a part of me wants to burst out.”

Bavric tapped a few times on the console in front of him, before picking up a small container off the desk and coming towards Sorvar. “With your permission, I would like to attach these sensors to you. If we can take a reading before and during a transformation, we might be able to discover exactly how the mutated DNA is affecting you.”

Sorvar stared back at him.
Mutated DNA?
What in Holy Ninvah was he talking about?

“Have you checked Tina for this mutated DNA? Has it affected her? Can she change into something else?”

It would explain why she was feeling miserable if she, too, had developed the ability to transform. If all the males who took human mates developed this ability, it would give them a significant edge in the ongoing war with the Crasgich. A war that would now be in full swing again. Damn them—if they were at war, the Coalition would never accept their bid to join.

Bavric rustled his wings. Sorvar zeroed in on the movement. Bavric was nervous, but that didn’t make any sense.

“I have not seen your new mate, Prince Sorvar. No one has brought your mate here for me to complete the initial scans and tests to check for any residual problems with her change. There have been no Medical records forwarded by the ship, either, so I do not even know if Seklan ran any tests on her.”

That couldn’t be right. Every male brought their new mate to the nearest Medical centre for scanning and testing to make sure the change had completed successfully and to check for breeding compatibility. His father or brothers should have brought Tina straight to Bavric for an evaluation. His son’s life might depend on early intervention. Sorvar growled. Only his father could intervene in something so important.

The insane fury he’d felt just before he changed on the ship started to build inside him again. If Tina was hurt, or his son’s life was endangered by his father’s actions he was going to kill him. Sorvar’s wings snapped out before he managed to control them, then he drew them back tightly to his body.

“Put the sensors on me, Bavric, then you better tell me where my mate is or you will get firsthand experience of what happened on the ship.”

Bavric just nodded and set about placing the small squares over Sorvar’s chest, on his temples, and down his spine. Then he hastily escaped to the other side of the room and remained silent.