“I don’t see why the other guards are so afraid of you,” he sneered, his dark eyes boring into my own. “You’re nothing but a pussy, after all.”
I slammed my knee into his crotch, then smashed my foot into his face when he doubled over and sent him skidding across the stone floor. Battle-fever rushing through my veins, I grabbed the blade and yanked it out of my shoulder, then made another dash for the door. Somehow I cleared the entrance, but I didn’t make it more than two feet into the hallway before the remaining two guards tackled me to the ground. I grunted as my cheek smashed into the stone floor, and several ribs cracked as the weight of both men slammed into me.
“You’re going to pay for that, bitch!” One of the men rolled me over and straddled me – I wasn’t sure which one, because my vision was blurred with tears of pain and fear. I held my arms above my face as he rained blows down upon me, his huge fists smashing into my forearms, my neck, my chest. Tears streamed down my cheeks, from the utter agony of two hundred plus pounds sitting atop broken ribs pounding against my neck and chest so hard I couldn’t breathe. But I clenched my teeth, refusing to give him the satisfaction of so much as a whimper.
Unbelievable, I thought dimly through the crashing waves of pain. I’m a shifter hybrid who incinerated a rhino yesterday, and I’m going to die in a cold, dark basement at the hands of a human.
Roanas would be disappointed if he knew I’d failed so quickly.
That thought galvanized me, and I reared up, pulling strength from a reserve I didn’t know I had to flex my claws. I wrapped my bloody, torn fingers around the guard’s neck, taking satisfaction as I dug into his meaty flesh. His eyes bulged as I squeezed, my claws tearing into his skin, and I held on tight as the other guard rushed forward to kick me.
If I was going down, at least I was taking this bastard with me.
“What is the meaning of this!” a deep, familiar voice shouted, and the guard who was about to kick me in the head froze. I froze too, my hands still wrapped around my attacker’s neck, as a tall, bearded man dressed in dark clothing descended the basement stairs, his yellow eyes glowing in the darkness of the hall.
It was Fenris, in human form.
The breath I was holding left me in a rush of relief, and I collapsed. Unfortunately, so did the lout I was choking to death, and it didn’t appear that he was going to move any time soon. Groaning, I attempted to shove the guy off me, but my arms might as well have been feathers – they had absolutely no strength left in them.
“Sir,” the guard who was still standing began. “We heard screams and came down here to find the hybrid –”
“Don’t call her that,” Fenris growled, dropping to his knees beside me. He shoved the guard off me carelessly and pressed his fingers against my neck to feel my pulse. “Sunaya, what happened here?”
Tears blurred my vision all over again at the compassion in his voice. Finally, there was someone here in this forsaken place who wanted to help me, who didn’t look at me with suspicion and malice.
“I just came down here for some bread and fish,” I croaked, the tears sliding down my cheeks faster now that nobody was there to beat them out of me. “That’s all I wanted.”
“Resinah forgive me,” Fenris muttered, sliding his hands beneath my shoulders and my knees. “I should have seen to this.”
An alarm bell went off in my head – Resinah was the female goddess mages prayed to, and not one that shifters ever referenced – but then Fenris lifted me into his arms. Pain screamed throughout my entire body, and I forgot about everything except the agony. My vision blurred again, a dull roar filling my ears, and I wasn’t sure what happened after, but the next thing I knew I was being laid out on a table.
By Magorah, I thought, a sharp burst of panic ripping through me as the Chief Mage’s face swam into view. They’re going to experiment on me now!
But when his hands touched me, they were surprisingly gentle. I stilled as a sense of peace stole through me, washing away the panic, and looked up dreamily into Iannis’s face. And as he looked down at me, his brows drawn together, lines bracketed around his mouth, I could almost imagine that he cared.
“Sleep,” he said, his deep, slightly musical voice like a balm to my battered soul, and I went under without another thought.
Chapter Seven
A knock on the door disturbed me from a deep, dreamless sleep. I sat up, disoriented as I looked around the small, round room with its chest of drawers and single, barred window. It took me a moment to remember that I was in Solantha Palace, and that I was kept here so the Chief Mage could study me like a lab rat. My stomach tightened as I scoured my brain for memories of last night, but all I could dredge up was a sense of agony, and the image of the Chief Mage’s face hovering above my head, backlit by a bright, white light. Had he started experimenting on me already?
“Sunaya?” the knocking on the door persisted, and my right ear twitched as I recognized Fenris’s voice. “Are you awake?”
Another memory tickled the back of my mind at the sound. “I’m coming,” I called, swinging my legs from the side of the bed. It was then I noticed I was dressed in a simple white nightgown I’d never seen before in my life.
Someone had definitely tampered with my body last night, even if it had only been to change my clothes.
But if the Chief Mage had drugged or spelled me in some way, my body didn’t know it. Energy sang through my muscles as I got to my feet and crossed the room, and I felt like skipping.