Grumpy alien boss, p.3
Taken by the Horde King, page 3
Powerful.
Her steps toward me were hesitant. Though her last one, which brought her within a hand’s span of me, seemed purposeful. The fog closed around us, though it didn’t touch me or her. Like a cocoon.
The top of her head came up to the middle of my chest, though she was tall for a human female. Up close, I saw swirls of gold in her eyes. Kakkari’s gold. She’d been blessed by the goddess. Dark lashes rimmed those eyes, long and thick. A smattering of small, brown spots were dotted across the bridge of her nose and the tops of her cheeks.
Enthralled.
I didn’t want to look away from her, especially when her eyes captured mine so completely.
“Who are you?” I murmured, though my voice had softened considerably, an edge of wonderment creeping into my tone. My hand flexed. I needed to touch her.
“Lo rune tei’ri,” she told me, those full lips forming those perfect words.
I am yours.
My blood throbbed at the rightness of those words. They broke something free inside of me. Something forbidden, something ancient and ancestral that continued to course through my blood, after all this time.
A knowing, a rightness.
I wondered if this was what the Vorakkar of Rath Kitala felt when he stole a human female from her village and made her his queen. His kassikari. His fated one. A gift from the goddess herself.
Ever since, I had thought him undisciplined and weak. He’d chosen his selfish needs above what was best for his horde. For what did a human female know of being a queen to the Dakkari? I had decided long ago that I would not bind myself to a female for love or pleasure or temporary madness. I would only take a Morakkari for my horde who would strengthen it, who would bear me strong heirs that would continue to rule the wildlands long after I passed into the next world.
So why was I so incredibly tempted by the human female before me, who offered herself to me in the old way, with words that made my cock rise and my strength leave me?
Like the fog, she was making it difficult to think. Like the fog, she was feeding off me. That was my first clue that something was wrong.
She’s not real, I told myself. Only a fantasy. An imagining.
I shook my head, feeling the fog creep closer.
Nik. This was wrong. It wasn’t right. I only needed to clear my mind and—
Her touch was cool and electric. Her fingers grazed the back of my hand, tracing the thick veins that ran across it, mingled with the scars.
I shivered, a rough guttural growl falling from my throat. Her touch made my tail twitch, made my deva pulse.
“Lo rune tei’ri, Vorakkar,” she said again in a whisper.
The fog began to shroud my vision once more. She guided my hand to her waist, and the warmth of her flesh heated my blood. Instead of pulling away, my palm gripped her tight, as if I was afraid she’d disappear entirely, as quickly as she’d arrived.
Her touch found my other hand, and I watched with hooded eyes as she brought it up to her lips. With gentleness, like I was a beast that needed taming, her lips brushed a scar I’d received during the Vorakkar Trials, and I felt my cock throb with that softness.
She took a step backward, but since I was loath to release her, I followed her. My grip tightened. Was that a flare of alarm I spied in her eyes?
“What are you doing to me?” I demanded, though my tone was as gentle as her kiss as I followed her every step. I couldn’t look away. Nothing could pull my gaze from hers. If she took it from me, I would do anything to reclaim it.
Again, she didn’t speak, though her lips parted as though she was about to.
“You are mine, you say?” I rasped, my voice darkening. “Then give me your words again, kalles.”
I tugged my hand away from her grip and cupped her jaw, tilting her small face up toward me. She felt real enough, warm and soft. But I still felt like my mind was swirling, like I was deep within a fog.
The fog…
What was I supposed to be remembering? The buzzing was starting again, though not as loud as before.
Nik, this wasn’t right, this wasn’t—
“Will you help me?” she asked, that goddess-like voice drawing my rapt attention.
She spoke in the universal tongue this time, and my brow furrowed in confusion. She saw the small movement and reached out to grip my wrist, stroking over the golden cuffs that bound my wrists. My Vorakkar cuffs.
“What is it that you need, kalles?” I asked. “Tell me, and I will give it to you.”
“Take me back to your horde,” she murmured, her eyes glowing. An expression flashed over her face. Surprise? “Please?”
Lysi.
Take her back to the horde. Back to my furs. And keep her there, came the thought, primal and so vokking right.
“I will,” I vowed to her. Something nudged forward in my mind, just as the buzzing grew to dizzying heights. “I swear it to you, kalles. I will keep you safe.”
Vok, how long had I been within the fog?
My head snapped up, though the movement felt slow, and I peered around us. A thin barrier of clear air kept the red fog at bay, but I realized…I realized I had gone too far inside it.
“This way,” she whispered, stepping back again. My legs felt heavy, but I followed.
I shook my head. “Nik. Nik, kalles, my horde lies to the west.”
“That is where we are going,” she replied, her voice so beautiful to me that I nearly accepted her words as complete truth.
My brow furrowed. My temple was beginning to throb, even as my blood ran hot in my veins for this female, thickening my cock, making it hard to think, to breathe, even.
Nik.
My instincts rose, and I began to pull my hands away from her, disentangling myself from her enthralling touch. I heard her breath hitch.
“Nik, kalles, my horde is behind us, and we must hurry to—”
Her lips met mine.
Soft and warm and full and sudden.
Her kiss momentarily paralyzed me.
Then my hands returned to her, a savage groan pulled from my throat, as I crushed her to me, gripping her hard. Something was happening. Something I didn’t have control over. Something I didn’t understand.
All I knew was that she—whatever or whoever she was—was the cause.
I heard her shuddered gasp as I took what she freely offered me—no matter how foolish—lapping at her tongue as I felt her tight nipples drag against my chest. This was right. The feel of her in my arms, her warmth against me was perfection itself. Sublime.
My hands moved, pulling her closer. One hand slid into her wavy hair, tugging her head back so I could kiss her harder. I heard her gasp. Her heart raced against my flesh as I cupped my hand over her breast, squeezing and stroking, as I succumbed to my desire, as mad as it was.
“Lysi,” I growled against her, my voice thick, sounding far, far away. “Vok, I want you, kalles.”
A rush of cool air came.
My eyes snapped open, and all I saw was red.
In the next moment, the roaring of the voices returned and my head felt like it would split wide open. Stunned and groaning, I stumbled back from the female, my legs finally relinquishing their strength.
They buckled underneath me, pain scraping me from the inside out, my lungs so tight that I couldn’t breathe.
And yet my gaze never left hers. Even as more figures appeared on the edge of the fog. Dark figures. Males.
Human males.
In the fog.
Near her.
Mine.
I growled, trying to reach for the hilt of my sword. But my arm didn’t move. I had no strength left.
“He’s not out yet,” one of the males said, hesitant, fear evident in his voice.
I snarled, trying to kick out with my useless, unresponsive limbs.
One of the males tossed the female a dark cloak, and I watched as she drew it around herself, shielding her body quickly.
Realization shot through me, just as the edges of my vision began to blur.
“Don-Don-Don’t h-hurt him,” I heard her say, though her voice was changed. Tinged with fear and hesitation, nothing like the calm, gentle words she’d spoken before.
She’d done this to me, I realized. Enthralled me with something unseen, until all I saw was her. Until all I could think about was her.
Sorcery.
I roared with the last of my strength, enraged with that knowledge. Enraged with my own weakness, a weakness I had never known I possessed.
My father had been right. Females brought about the downfall of males. Females were the most powerful beings in this universe.
And I had walked straight into one’s clutches, turned my back on my horde—and everything I had worked so hard to build.
Gone in a moment. A single moment of madness.
As I glared into the female’s eyes, I watched her take a step back, as if she saw my hatred, my loathing within. Her lips were still reddened from my kiss, and the thought made my belly roil, that she had had her claws so deep into me.
With my remaining breath, I vowed, “I will make you regret this, sarkia.”
Witch.
“I swear it on Kakkari.”
Her eyes widened.
“We don’t have time for this! Take him,” came a dark voice. “Now.”
Something heavy crashed against my temple.
Those luminous, fearful green eyes were the last thing I saw.
Chapter 5
I was shaking, my heart thundering in my breast, so quick and hard that I feared it would beat right out. Was that possible? Was that a thing that could happen to humans?
I was about to find out.
“Grab him on the other side,” Kyl ordered Jacques.
The men could barely lift the horde king from the ground. The Dead Mountain still lay a distance away, and they were running out of time to bring him there. Before the fog wove into their own bodies and began to feed.
Kyl, Jacques, Emmi, Taylor, and Benn all crowded around the horde king. They managed to get him up—Kyl slinging one of his arms around his shoulders, Jacques taking the other side. With the others’ strength, they managed to begin moving him, though his long, heavy legs dragged across the rough terrain behind him. He was bleeding from his temple where Taylor had brought the blunt end of his spear down to knock him unconscious.
His head was rolled back, his eyes closed, though his expression was still fearsome.
“Shit,” Emmi murmured in disbelief. “We actually have a horde king. We actually did it.”
“And we better hurry to get him chained up before he wakes,” Kyl growled in annoyance, especially since he was bearing most of the male’s weight. “Or else we’re all dead.”
Those words sobered them all. I stood rooted in place, still clutching the cloak around my body, feeling my heart in my throat. The fog swirled around me, and I watched them disappear into it.
I realized I wasn’t alone when Benn’s footsteps crunched toward me. He held a cloth over his nose and mouth but those eyes were rapt on me, and I could see that he was pleased.
“Perhaps you have your uses after all, Mina,” he said. I barely concealed my flinch when he ran his fingers over my cheek. “You nearly got him all the way to the Dead Mountain.”
My lips felt swollen from the horde king’s kiss. My skin was so sensitive that I could feel the rough scrape of the old, ratty cloak against it. My senses, despite the fog, felt overstimulated.
And underneath it all, I felt a deep sense of shame. Of dread. Because in that moment, I realized that I had set something into motion that I wasn’t entirely certain was the right path.
“I wonder what it is he saw in you,” Benn continued, his voice a rumble, and I tensed when his fingers loosened my cloak. I felt the tendrils of the fog rush in, over the transparent dress I wore. A rough sound emerged from Benn’s throat as his gaze roved over me. “I think I know, however. The mind of a child and the body of a woman.”
I saw his hand move.
In a rush, before he touched me, I began to ask, “Can I-I-I go ba-ba-ba—”
With a sound of impatience, of disgust, he withdrew his hand from the edges of my cloak, and I wrapped my body tight once more. Benn hated when I spoke. It was why he’d never touched me, not in the way he touched some of the other women. And mostly Tess.
For that alone, ever since Benn had taken over leadership of our group, there was a part of me that was thankful for the way I spoke. I saw a blessing there that I’d never seen before.
And yet when the horde king touched me, I spoke more clearly than I ever had before, I couldn’t help but recall.
I didn’t know what that meant. Or why, considering my nerves had been jumbled and my fear had been high during those moments with him. At least at first.
Benn turned to leave, back toward the mountain, and I waited briefly before I followed.
When I reached the entrance, my head tilted back. I saw the yawning open mouth of the Dead Mountain with red fog billowing in and out. There was no soul in sight.
As always, a chill raced up my spine when I looked up at the mountain looming before me. It had been at the Dakkari witch’s insistence that we keep the horde king here. She claimed it was where this all began and it was here that it needed to end.
Benn had been worried about the Ghertun when we first entered. But none within the mountain had survived. The fog had roamed the land for many moon cycles now. It had killed Ghertun in the upper levels quickly. The ones who’d gone below, where we all now resided, had been taken by hunger and thirst and darkness.
It might not be long before we suffer the same fate, I thought.
And I didn’t want to die in a place like this.
Not with fear and horror constantly curling in my veins.
Quickly, I rushed inside, drawing the cloak around me tighter and tighter, as if it could make me disappear. The Dead Mountain was a kingdom of mazes. The upper floors were labyrinths of long, tunneled hallways, which all led to a vast throne room, where we’d found piles and piles of decaying Ghertun.
The lower levels were connected by chiseled stairways, some impossibly wide, some so narrow I couldn’t imagine Ghertun squeezing through them. This place was littered with them, and it had taken a few days to remember the correct pathways down to where we lived, where the fog did not reach. It was there that we would keep the horde king until the Dakkari witches arrived.
I wound my way down, the darkness overwhelming as I didn’t have a torch with me. When I descended the fifth set of stairs and stopped on the landing, I saw a glow of light at the end of the hallway and I hurried toward it. The medicine room. Now it would be a prison.
Tess found me first. Her eyes were wide and worried, though relief shone in them when she saw me unharmed. She’d been waiting for me, it seemed.
“You did it. Oh, I’ve been so worried,” she whispered, taking my hands in her own, rubbing warmth into them. She frowned. “You’re shaking, Mina.”
I hadn’t been able to stop.
My eyes didn’t leave the doorway of the medicine room, where a vibrant, golden glow from the torches shone within.
“Is…is h-he all right?” I whispered quietly.
Her brow furrowed.
“The horde king?” she asked carefully, peering at me closely.
In the next moment, Benn strode from the room, and Tess stepped back from me quickly. Dangling from his grip was the horde king’s sword, though I didn’t linger on it. I didn’t meet Benn’s eyes either. Instead, I directed my gaze to the floor, at the smooth, softened edges of the stone.
“Is he secure?” Tess asked, stepping toward Benn. I didn’t know how she did it. I didn’t know how she smiled as she touched him, how she sighed as he kissed her.
I rubbed my lips with trembling fingers, remembering the horde king’s heat there, remembering my gasp meeting his deep groan. Then I clenched my fist, lowering it back to my side as I shivered.
Foolish girl, I thought, my jaw tightening.
“Yes,” Benn grunted, just as the other men trickled from the room, Kyl sagging against the wall, trying to reclaim his breath. “Kyl, go inform the others we have the horde king. Emmi, take the first watch.”
“Now comes the hard part,” Emmi grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest, leaning against the wall.
“You,” Benn growled, and I knew that his eyes were on me. When I lifted my chin, he said, with a slight tone of delight in his voice, “When he wakes, you will tend to him.”
I froze, remembering the hatred I spied in the horde king’s eyes, just before Taylor knocked him unconscious.
Jacques shifted in the hallway, straightening, and I sensed Emmi exchanging a look with Taylor.
Jacques said quietly, “Perhaps another of the women, Benn. You heard him—it sounded like he wanted to kill her where she stood. Once he wakes, he will remember her.”
“The rest of the women have other duties,” Benn said. “Most of them are on the hunt, regardless. I forbid Tess from going near him. And I don’t think you want Kaila going near him either, do you, Emmi?”
Emmi’s lips pressed together tight at the sound of his lover’s name. His pregnant lover. He looked at me…and then looked away, down the darkened hallway, acknowledging Benn’s words without saying anything.
My wild eyes met Jacques’s. His lips parted before he raked a hand through his graying hair. “I’ll look after him, Benn. The women shouldn’t be so close to him anyway, and—”
Benn stepped toward Jacques, cutting off his words abruptly. Though Jacques was only a few years older than Benn, he was no match for his height and strength.
“I say that she goes to him,” Benn said softly, the quiet words deadlier than any curse or shout. Jacques’s jaw clenched. “And if he kills her, then that’s one less mouth to feed.”
“And what about her immunity to the fog?” Jacques asked. I was surprised he dared to speak again. “We might need her again.”
“You were perfectly fine with letting her walk right up to the horde king not long ago. We were all fine with it. He could have killed her in a single moment. So what’s changed now?” Benn asked, opening his arms wide, his face taking on an expression of careful confusion. The tip of the horde king’s sword dragged across the stone, making a scratching sound that made my spine tingle. “She’s expendable. The other women are more valuable to us than she is. And soon the fog will be gone, so what use is she, really?”
