Sarazen's Vengeance: Book 1.1 (2 page)

His entire body froze with furious disbelief. What she was saying, he could barely understand. He had heard terrible stories of the brutality visited on females. The atrocities visited on the ones taken and sold as slaves by the Adiveeze, brutalized and debased. Ohlen never had he thought to ever know such horror. Never thought his mate would know, let alone have experienced it.

       “It was my birthday the first time. I was sixteen. I hadn’t ever even kissed a man before and he was so handsome. Paying attention to a little nobody like me.” Andi’s voice broke with her pain. He bent over double as bile crept up his throat. His beast even stunned into silence.

“I look back and can’t believe how stupid and naive I was. I bled for days afterward, too ashamed to go to medical. I was worried they wouldn’t believe me. Ethan was a lieutenant then. He cornered me a few weeks later in the engineering bay. No one could hear me screaming over the noise of all the machinery.

      “I lost count of how many times that year. Then he stopped coming around for a while. I thought he’d forgotten about me and I was so grateful. Even if it was because he’d found someone else. When I turned seventeen, Ethan found me in engineering again. Said he didn’t want me to think he’d ever forget my birthday present. Every year on my birthday, he came back. The worst part was that no one cared. So long as I kept my tiny part of the ship running, no one cared. I didn’t pass the genetic or intelligence tests, so as far as command was concerned, I didn’t matter. None of us did.”

Ohlen forced himself to breathe, to stay still. To listen to the story his mate might never have told him because she was ashamed. And as painful as it would be, he would hear it all before he left and made the filthy male who had dared put hands on his mate, scream. Ohlen would break every bone in his body and make him beg for death before Ohlen gave it to him.

    “This year I was going to do it. Kill myself on my birthday so that when he came for me, all he’d find was a corpse. But then those snake things attacked us and for some ungodly reason I survived that whole fucking mess. I didn’t get the chance.”

The breath heaved from him in horror to think he might have lost her. His one, his only one, and he would never even have known it. Ohlen would have gone on alone for the rest of his life, because of the brutality of another male.

     “When was your birthday?” he heard Clary ask. Her voice was tender and gentle, making his eyes burn and his beast give a sad purr. Tarek’s mate held such kindness in her heart for someone she claimed not to know.

         “Today. And surprise, Ethan told me he hadn’t forgotten. That he wouldn’t miss giving me my present later.” Andi hiccupped around a sob.

It was then that Ohlen lost control of himself.

Rage, unlike anything he’d ever known, burned through his blood. It ate away at his control like acid. His vision blurred because his beast was clawing and raking its way through his body. Viciously digging its way towards freedom. He would give it soon, but not yet.

Two

Andi sat in a miserable huddle on the lounge, frustrated tears streaming down her cheeks unchecked. She couldn’t even find the will to wipe them away. She was a coward, weak. Waiting for the right day to just end it, but the truth was, there was no right day. Even with her birthday looming over her head she couldn’t do it.

Then those things, those hideous snake things had come and her instincts had taken over. Her humanity had reared its ugly head and forced fear through her veins. Made her will to survive supersede all else. Even when she’d been wounded, almost there, she still hadn’t died.

Because Ohlen had saved her.

She couldn’t bear to let him touch her. Terrified that with his superhuman senses he would know how dirty she was. Smell it. Maybe even feel it. Yet at the same time, Andi wanted to fling herself at him and let him hide her away from the others. Let him protect her and keep her safe. But she wasn’t safe. She would never be safe so long as she shared the same air with Ethan.

Andi nearly pissed herself at the vicious, hair-raising snarl that echoed through the large room. Almost flung herself to the floor in surprise. Whirling to see Ohlen’s huge body filling the doorway.

He visibly vibrated with rage. All trace of kindness gone from his features. His eyes glowed an unearthly yellow, the lovely violet completely gone. Her stomach twisted. Curdled with sickness. Ohlen had heard.

He knew. Oh 
God
.

He knew how dirty she was.

He knew and now he was looking at her like he couldn’t bear the sight of her.

The immediate feeling of despair was so overwhelming it pulled a ragged little wail from inside her. Andi saw the tips of fangs when he spoke. Where he hadn’t had fangs before. Saw the blood that dripped from his clenched fists. How his arms and shoulders bulged with his quivering muscles. His body betraying the depth of his fury.

“You will never, fear this day again.” Ohlen’s voice was deeper. Vicious, every word ringing with promise.

Before she could process what he’d said, before she could digest and accept that it wasn’t disgust for her that showed on his face, he was gone.

“Wait,” her voice came out as a strangled whisper. She lurched to her feet to throw herself at the door. Shouting for him to wait, but the door wouldn’t open to matter how hard she slammed her hand to the controls.

All of the sudden it opened with a whoosh. Tarek stood there, imposing and immovable. Looking down at her with a gravity that made her throat close up.

“This is our justice, little one.” he told her. His tone so gentle despite how big and gruff he was. Her bottom lip threatened to give a quiver.

“Ohlen has claimed you as his mate. He goes to earn that right. You may witness what comes next, but understand it will be brutal. Ohlen chose to confine you here to spare you from it. From witnessing his beast claiming vengeance for its mate. I believe he wishes to spare himself your fear of him. Of thinking him a monster if you see him in such a state.”

Andi stubbornly shook her head. Choked down her tears and lifted her chin to look up at the commander. She was angrier than she’d ever been in her life. She would 
not 
be denied the opportunity to see that piece of shit, who had ruined everything good and clean inside her and left only pain and filth behind, die.

“If he’s going to kill Ethan, I don’t care if he changes into a fire breathing dragon. I want to see it happen.” she said it firmly. With conviction even though her bottom lip trembled. After a heartbeat, Tarek inclined his head and moved out of the way,

“Then I will take you. Come.”

Andi heard the sound of screaming long before they got to the barracks. It made her blood pound with eagerness. Eagerly needing to see what was being done to make such agonized sounds. She ran into the room where a monster was circling the already bleeding lump on the floor.

The creature was beautiful in a, turn your knees to jelly, sort of way. Oddly enough, Andi wasn’t afraid. Not even when he roared and blood dripped from the fangs as long as her hand. Andi watched in horrified amazement as the enormous ginger and black beast, slashed and clawed at Ethan while he begged. While he screamed for mercy. Cried out in pain and bled on the floor.

No one helped him.

No one did anything.

In a bit of a daze, Andi walked forward. Someone asked why nothing was being done to stop this. She paid them no mind. Fixated on the sight of the savagery unfolding in front of her. Fixated on the way the blood had splashed and spattered across the white floor. How it was starting to pool right there in front of her toes. She could feel the impact of the wet splat of blood across her skirt.

Her heart pounded harder and harder. Until she worried it would pound right out of her chest to land at the beast’s furred feet. At Ohlen’s feet.

Ohlen was the thing causing such carnage.

Andi could hear Tarek speaking over the crunching of Ethan’s bones. Could hear his commanding voice, but not the words themselves. Not until one scream in particular made her shudder and break from the macabre trance she had fallen into.

The beast that was Ohlen had bitten off Ethan’s left hand. The crunch of bone hideously loud. Andi felt a knot of ugly fear unravel in her chest at the sound.

Ohlen brought it to her, carefully, purposefully depositing the severed appendage at her feet. Ethan’s left hand. The one that so often had knotted in her hair. Held her face against a wall. Closed around her throat until she passed out from lack of air. Covered her mouth and gripped her cheeks until his nails cut her skin.

Ohlen brought her Ethan’s right hand. The hand that had torn her flight suits open. Grabbed at her breasts and cruelly twisted her nipples. Dug and scratched between her thighs until she bled.

Now they looked so harmless lying on the floor. Lifeless. Innocuous.

Tarek’s voice rolled over her like cleansing water. Drew her from the numb contemplation of the dismembered hands. Made her check back into reality to notice the hulking beast was covered and dripping with Ethan’s blood. Standing right in front of her waiting. Staring at her with concern.

Ohlen. She reminded herself that the creature was Ohlen. She stared back at him. The yellow of his eyes bleeding slowly back to violet as his rage eased. His head tilted in an unspoken question. Whiskers twitching while he waited.

Tarek’s words reverberated off the cavernous ceilings.

“Your mate brings you the hands that harmed you. You are not expected to keep them. They are his promise that never again will any other hands touch you in harm. No other hands will cause you pain. No other hands will threaten you, not even his own. Whether you accept him or not, Andi of the Starsong, Ohlen is your mate and he will protect you always.”

Her throat worked. She opened her mouth to speak but words wouldn’t come. Thankfully, her body reacted to her true desire. Andi reached out. Brushed her trembling fingers along one of Ohlen’s silvery whiskers. Testing the shape of the silky filament. Coming away with a crimson droplet of blood.

It was already cold. Already sticky. Wasn’t that odd?

Ohlen’s tongue snaked out to clean her finger. The rough texture of it was startling enough for her throat to open up and a little sound to come out. She had expected his fur to be coarse or abrasive against her palms. To her surprise, it was fluffy. So soft that her hands sank into it like it was made of clouds.

Andi was amazed by the thrill it brought. The thrill that such a powerful creature, one that stood eye level with her, would lower its head and press into her hands. She stroked his ears to the very end of the tufted tips. A purr vibrated from his blood-soaked muzzle. Andi swallowed thickly, licking her dry lips.

“You’ve pretty much shredded everything else. If it’s not too much trouble, could I have his heart too?
”

Ohlen chuffed like he was laughing. After a quick lick to her hand, he spun away to pounce on Ethan. Ohlen positioned himself so that she wouldn’t see the heart being clawed and chewed out of Ethan’s chest. Allowed her to see only Ethan’s face. See the terror in his eyes as she watched the last few moments of his life.

A grotesque squelching sound was the last sound that came from Ethan’s body.

After one good whack of his paw to what remained of Ethan’s corpse, Ohlen turned to come to her. Carefully laying down the red, oozing organ at her feet.

It looked so normal. Not blackened or oozing toxic sludge. Not abscessed or half rotted away like she’d thought it would be. Andi picked up the hem of her dress and poked at the still warm, slightly rubbery feeling organ with her foot. Tempted to crush it under her heel,

“I thought it’d be black, or covered in festering sores or something.”

Andi stepped over the gruesome tokens Ohlen had brought her and threw her arms around his furry neck. She didn’t even care that he was covered in blood. He made a weird sound in his throat, but she was too busy crying silently against his fur to identify it
.
He wrapped a leg around her and pulled her closer. Tucked his chin down over her back with a soft purr. She felt his body shift and begin to change. Not even the popping of bones and ligaments reshaping, or the weird slither of muscle reshaping under his skin, made her let him go. Soon it wasn’t a furred beast cradling her. It was an alien warrior with strong arms and a deeply comforting voice.

“You will never fear this day again, my one. Let me take you to our quarters and wash away the last of your grief, please,” he whispered into her ear. Achingly soft.

Shaking with silent sobs like she was, all she could do was nod.

It was over. She was free.