Primal Heat (20 page)

What she hadn't expected was that the link between her and her One would be severed in that moment of betrayal, and her mind would be once again her own. Once her purpose was served, and it was obvious fucking her,
hurting her
no longer tormented Kyber, Arthur had shipped her back to her parents as a media show of how dedicated he was to protecting Earthans. Who would have believed her if she'd told the truth about him? Everyone thought she'd been brainwashed by the Kith.

It wasn't until Farid and Bren's fast-growing intelligence ring had found Jana and brought her to the
Vishra
that she'd learned how big a fool she'd been. Arthur hadn't let Kyber go. She was just another tool in the general's war games. Bile rose, coated the inside of her mouth, and she swallowed the bitter self-reproach. She stuffed the horrible emotions deep, deep down in the darkest crevice of her soul. Just as she'd been doing for years. Since her brother died. She had plenty of experience in convincing everyone that everything was just fine. This was no different.

That Kyber thought she'd stayed with Arthur for
months
, that she'd
enjoyed
what he'd done to her in bed made her ill, made her angry. She hadn't slept through the night since Arthur, hadn't been able to escape the nightmares. Enjoy it? It was everything she could do not to wretch when she let herself think of it. Hell,
let
herself? Those memories didn't stop. Not ever. She'd like to
let
herself think of something else for once, and familiar despair bubbled up inside her.

She clenched her jaw and quashed all those feelings, too. She rolled her head against the wall and focused on the task at hand. Her grip tightened on her gun, her hand steadying.

“The pattern of their step says they hunt something. Us, no doubt.” Kyber's tone was detached, almost disinterested as he shared that fact with her.

He peeled himself away from her to position himself at the mouth of the hallway, preparing to spring at his approaching prey. Jana swallowed and crouched behind him, praying harder than she'd ever prayed before that they'd all get out of this alive.

The muzzle of a machine gun came into view. Kyber froze until the rest of the man was within arm's reach. Stepping forward, he slammed his fist into the man's throat, who gurgled and choked, twitched and went silent. Dead. Kyber swung his body around and used it for cover as the second man opened fire. The sounds exploded in the silence, jolting Jana forward. She lifted her weapon and pulled the trigger, catching the second man in the leg. He screamed and went down in a spray of blood. Kyber swung his pistol around and put two bullets in the soldier's head.

Then it was over. Kyber gently lowered the first guard to the ground. Jana's hands trembled, her palms slippery with sweat. “I've never shot anyone before.”

The comm. in her ear fuzzed for a moment before Bren's voice came through. “We're taking fire on the ground floor, southeast corridor.”

Jana tried to slow her heaving lungs, adrenaline ripping through her system. The light
rat-tat
noise in the distance finally reached her ears. Gunfire. She transferred her weapon to one hand and cued her comm. “Same here. We just took care of two guards and we weren't discreet. We'll come to you.”

“Roger.” The comm. clicked and Bren was gone.

Kyber wavered on his feet and Jana grabbed his bicep to keep him steady. Her heart thumped hard and she checked him over for bleeding. Had he been shot? She hadn't seen anything. Oh, God. She tugged on his arm. “Are you all right?”

He shook his head. “The squealing noise…and the drugs they gave me…they slow everything down, fog my senses. Nothing is as it should be.”

“We just need to get you away from the noise, and the medics can handle the drugs when we get you back to the ship.” She said it as much to reassure herself as him, but they'd come too far to fail now. “Can you walk or should I tell them to come get us?”

He snorted and straightened, arching one regal brow. “If it means getting out of here, I can
run
.”

That sounded like the Kyber she knew. A wide grin flashed across her face and she shifted her grip on his arm, shoved her fingers into his silky black mane and yanked him down for a hard, quick kiss. If she was going to die, she wanted the taste of her One on her mouth to be the last thing she experienced. “Just in case.”

For a moment, he looked dumbfounded, and a flash of old desire streaked across his face. Before he could figure out how to respond, she dropped his arm and skipped back. Checking her weapon, she nodded to him and turned to lead the way down the hallway. She'd spent more hours than she could count memorizing the layout of this facility. She could probably navigate it in her sleep. Of course, the schematics didn't include guards with guns. She ignored the way her belly clenched at the memory of the shocked look on the soldier's face as he'd landed, howling, in a pool of his own blood. She'd do whatever it took to get her One free. She'd already done much worse than shoot a man in the leg. She'd failed that time, and it was far from the first time she'd failed someone she loved. She had to succeed this time. She
had
to.

Maybe then the night terrors could stop, and she could finally lay the past to rest.

The heat from Kyber's body enveloped her from behind as she paused at a corner and peeked around to see if anyone awaited them.

“There is no one. Let's go.” His voice was terse, angry, and she knew he was pissed that she'd made him want her with a simple kiss. That was how it was supposed to be with your One, but he didn't want to be her One anymore, did he? He'd cut the connection between their minds.

She'd had a little over twenty-four hours to share his thoughts, emotions, memories, but the connection had been so deep, so instantaneous, that she hadn't known where he ended and she began.

Now the only person in her head was
her
. Alone, echoing, and empty after the intensity of being One with him. She had no one to blame but herself, she reminded herself with ruthless force. She'd been a fool, made the classic, stupid mistake, and played right into General Arthur's hand.

And it cost her everything.

She hadn't even managed to save the man she loved from torture and imprisonment. But she wasn't that girl anymore. She'd sold herself, her love, and her freedom short in the past, and now she needed to right the wrongs her naiveté had caused.

She had to make everything all right again, so she didn't have to work so damn hard to pretend it was. The horrible, strangling pressure that built inside her like a volcano might ease for once. It would be too devastating to bear if it ever erupted. So, she couldn't let it. Not ever. She had to keep it all under wraps.

They ghosted down hallways and up two flights of stairs to get to the ground level. Every time they reached a door, she used the tiny handheld Sueni imager Farid had trained her to operate to override the locks and security systems. The problem with trusting technology too much, he'd said, was that someone with better technology could annihilate your defenses. Jana was just glad her hands didn't shake too badly while she was using the contraption. She tried to suppress the reaction from too much adrenaline surging within her veins but knew her success was limited.

A tiny spurt of triumph flashed through her when they finally met up with two Imperial Guardians on the other side of the last door. Of course, that also meant the exchange of bullets she'd heard two floors down now boomed like cannon fire. She tried not to wince as the roar bombarded her ears. Now she knew why they hadn't run into any more soldiers. Bren had kept them occupied up here.

The Guardians gave Kyber brief salutes and he nodded in return. “You're both new.”

“Yes, sire.” One stepped forward. “I'm Natheem, and this is Dhalesh. The Guardians needed replenishing after the battle…when you were taken. We transferred from the fleet.”

Dhalesh glanced at her. “Bren says reinforcements will be on their way, so we need to extract the emperor
now
.” An incredulous smile flickered over his face for a moment. “She says this mission has turned into a ‘SNAFU and a complete clusterfuck.'”

Yep, that sounded like the army-speak Bren used when things got tense. Jana nodded and stifled a grin. “Well, let's un-clusterfuck it, shall we?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He spun and led the way, the second Guardian taking the rear of their little party. They moved at a fast clip, and Jana looked back to make sure Kyber was keeping up. He was. He didn't so much as spare her a glance but held his handgun at the ready and his long fangs protruded from his mouth. Perspiration rolled down his face, so she knew he wasn't holding up as well as he pretended.

Her heart hammered and she tried to focus on everything at once. Every shadow was a threat, and the white noise scraped at her nerves. The bursts of machine gun fire grew louder and louder as they raced toward the rest of the rescue party…and the exit.

Jana's little group turned the last corner and all hell broke loose. The Earthan soldiers were now sandwiched between them and Bren. But,
fuck
, there were a lot of them. For an insane split second, Jana considered standing there and letting them end the twisted misery inside her, but Natheem shoved her, propelling both of them toward the far side of the corridor's mouth. She lifted her weapon and fired blindly as she dove for cover. A man screamed, went down, and Jana's shoulder hit the wall as she crouched behind the corner. Kyber knelt while Dhalesh stood above him so they could both return fire down the hall. Jana just hoped like hell they didn't hit Bren's group on the other side.

The door to freedom stood wide open, twisted and warped by some kind of explosion. So close, and yet so very far away. “Shit.”

Fear curdled in her belly, making it heave as the stench of blood and smoke flooded her nostrils. The screams and whimpers, the swearing, the crack of bullets. Sweat stung her eyes along with tears as she gasped in little sobs of breath. It overwhelmed her, made her hands shake, but she didn't stop, didn't pause. She ran through the bullets in her clip and fished an extra out of her backpack, jamming it into place, and kept firing. They picked the humans off one by one, but it was obvious that both sides were going to run out of ammunition before anyone had an upper hand.

The sound of gunfire petered to a halt. The humans must have decided Jana's side of the hall was most vulnerable because what remained of the soldiers launched themselves toward her. The blood froze in her veins when her weapon gave the distinctive click that said it was out of bullets. The sound was echoed by Natheem's machine gun. He growled and shoved her back behind the corner as the first human reached them.

“Stupid piece of Earthan—” He slammed the butt of the weapon against a man's face, toppling him to the ground with blood gushing from his nose and mouth.

Jana jerked to her feet to escape the dark crimson spray only to be confronted with a soldier of her own. He swung his fist at her and she reacted on pure instinct, on the training she'd demanded Bren hammer into her for months. Blocking his punch, she brought the heel of her hand up to connect with his nose. The sickening crunch of cartilage sounded too loud to her ears, but she didn't have time to think about it before the next man was on her. She shifted her weight, slamming her boot into his groin. A shriek whistled from his throat as he dropped to his knees. She kicked the side of his head and he went down, too.

A third man launched himself at her, dragging her to the ground. Her screech was cut short when they hit the linoleum hard. Her breath wheezed out of her lungs, and she choked for breath, panic setting in. She looked to Natheem, but he dealt with two soldiers of his own.

A hard fist connected with her ribs and she groaned, her boots squeaking on the tile as she scrambled to get out from under the human. Her nails raked down his face, stabbing for his eyes. He yowled and jerked away but didn't ease his weight enough for her escape.

She hit him but couldn't get enough leverage to make much of an impact. He slapped her hard and the coppery taste of blood filled her mouth. Terror exploded through her. A man on top of her, holding her down, hurting her. It was too much like Arthur, a realization of the waking nightmare her life had become, and suddenly she couldn't draw breath. A scream tangled in her throat and she froze. He drew his hand back and she saw the dull gleam of a long knife. She knew it was over. Closing her eyes, she felt a wave of resignation roll through her.

The man's weight jerked away from her suddenly, and her eyes flared open to see Kyber's claws slicing through the soldier's stomach. Crimson sprayed everywhere, the heat of it soaking through Jana's clothes. A deep roar ripped from the huge Kith as he shook his flailing prey and then threw the soldier's lifeless body against the wall.

Scrambling to her feet, she wiped the back of her hand over her bloodied lip. “Thanks.”

He hissed at her, baring his fangs, and whipped around to leave her there. She swayed, taking in the carnage around her. Somehow she'd ended up halfway down the hall toward the exit, and Bren and her group of Sueni Kin were helping take down the remaining humans. Jana slipped in a puddle of blood and had to catch herself against a wall to remain upright. Some distant part of her mind realized what she was feeling was shock, but she just staggered for the exit and the pure, clean air that would be outside.

Her two Guardians fell into step beside her, Dhalesh swinging his handgun like a club on a last standing human as they passed. The Sueni grunted and tossed the empty weapon aside. “Empress, next time anyone says we should sneak in somewhere and therefore have to leave our razers behind, say no.”

She sputtered on a giggle, stunned that she could laugh at all. She caught sight of Kyber's large form passing through the doorway ahead of her. He stopped, threw his head back, and stared at the brightening dawn sky.