A Guardians Passion (27 page)

Fenris healed but not as quickly as Birathan, and while her alpha inflicted some truly horrid wounds on the asprega prime, it was Fenris who was covered in blood.

Pain seemed meaningless to both but especially to Birathan, and that worried Freya to no end. She couldn’t take her eyes off the battle.

Birathan was slow and calculating whereas Fenris was insane and swift. There was no skill to Fenris’s attack. Her lover was fueled by blind rage. He was making mistakes, using his power to little avail, attacking a masochist in every way but the way that mattered. Then it dawned on Freya that Fenris didn’t know how to kill an asprega, or even if he did, in his crazed state that knowledge was unattainable.

Despite her better judgment, she moved toward the fighting titans. It was dangerous being so close to the snarling, lethal opponents. One of the fighters might have been her mate, but being close to Fenris required just as much caution. In the armor of her own wolf form, Freya flexed her claws and was prepared to jump in and aid her mate no matter what the cost.

As she took another step toward the maelstrom, Birathan thrust his claws into Fenris’s belly. Her lover roared as the asprega lifted him up. Birathan threw Fenris off him and scrambled on top, taking the dominant position.

Beginning as simple nodules along Birathan’s side, the fleshy protrusions grew outward, fast shaping themselves into two sets of new arms.

Birathan quickly withdrew his original limbs from Fenris’s belly and clamped them around Fenris’s throat. The second pair aided in pinning Fenris to the ground while the third and final set began pummeling Fenris’s sides.

Birathan turned to Freya knowingly, appraising her claws and proximity. “This is no match for you, love. Strong, yes. But no match. You deserve better than a berserker, but I will show you—for days upon end,” he promised with a wink.

Freya froze, the threat chilling her veins and causing her fur to recede.

“Freya,” came Rayne’s shriek.

Freya saw her beta bounding into the room on all fours. A pale gold wolf, Rayne leaped up and shifted from full wolf form to man-wolf, arms and legs thickening in midair. He fell upon Birathan and latched on to the fiend’s back.

Rayne clapped his paws on Birathan’s temples and closed his eyes. Birathan snarled and thrashed, trying to throw Rayne off, but her beta held tight.

Freya had no idea what Rayne was doing, but Birathan suddenly set Fenris free. Snarling loudly, in the first true display of pain, Birathan bolted upright, all six arms flailing. He swatted both overhead and under. He grabbed hold of Rayne’s legs and yanked hard, but Rayne would not free him.

Freya started forward, renewed by the sight of her males fighting for her. She burned with the need to join the battle, to help. Birathan’s blood needed to be on her as well. Yet even as she stepped forward, Fenris came to his feet and snarled at her to stay back.

There was no challenging his command. She had to obey. The glint in his eyes insisted, and Freya stilled. It was their turn to play, not hers. Her hands went to her belly, where her responsibility lay.

Birathan fell backward on the ground, using Rayne for a cushion in a desperate plea to cease whatever Rayne was doing.

Then Rayne released his hands.

Fenris moved back to Birathan, who had a look of disbelief splayed across his features. He reached down and grabbed Birathan by the throat and lifted him off Rayne and up into the air.

Birathan’s mouth was open, his jaw working, but no words or sounds came from him. Rayne stood. He was trembling, and his fur was receding. He reverted to human form, glossy with sweat. His arms hung at his sides, but he used a canting nod to signal to his alpha. “Destroy,” he sighed.

Immediately and on cue, Fenris attacked with a renewed ferocity. He fastened his vicious jaws around one limb and ripped it from Birathan’s body. It did not grow back. Fenris’s talon separated flesh upon the fiend’s face and chest. The wounds did not heal. And when Fenris opened the asprega prime’s belly to yank bowels free, there was nothing Birathan could do but suffer.

“What? What have you done to me?” screamed the asprega prime, his voice pitiful and broken. He was void of all his former arrogance, failing to heal through Fenris’s attack.

Rayne stepped in front of Freya and wrapped her in his arms. It wasn’t difficult for her to turn her attention from the horror show of seeing Birathan torn to shreds. But Rayne looked horrible. Dark circles were under tired eyes. His skin was far paler than normal, and he looked as if he were going to faint. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good. I’m good,” she repeated, determined to believe it even if it wasn’t wholly true. She reached up to cup Rayne’s face and gazed at him in examination. “Are
you
all right?”

Rayne nodded, but Freya could sense the lie as she noted his body leaning heavily upon her, rather than holding her. She tightened her hold on him just as his eyes began to flutter. “No, you aren’t,” she stated. “What did you do, Rayne?”

Rayne forced his eyes wide and shook his head as if he could get some clarity. He gave a paltry smile before laying his head down upon the swell of her breast. His hands dropped around her. “I took his strength away. H-he can’t heal.”

Freya had suspected her beta of delivering an advantage to Fenris but had never thought of the toll that it would take. Seeing him so weak scared her. “Tell me that
you
can. Tell me you’ll be fine.”

“Yeah. Of course I will.” He sighed just before going completely limp in Freya’s hold.

Alarmed, Freya lowered her beta to the floor. She tried to rouse him, but he didn’t stir. His chest rose and fell gently, but his body was cold to the touch. Freya had never seen him ill. He was the healer, never the wounded. “Rayne? Rayne, babe. Rayne, wake up,” she demanded but to no avail.

Fenris roared, and she turned to the sound. Where she might have expected to see Fenris standing victoriously over a pile of steaming flesh, Freya’s blood went cold at the sight before her. Fenris stood over Birathan’s severed leg, but the rest of the demon was in the hold of its own kind. Two of Birathan’s minions held their leader suspended in their arms.

Freya blinked, and just like that all three were gone.

She was breathless, the brunt of her disappointment making her swoon. If there was anyone that she wanted dead, it was Birathan. Fenris too seemed agitated by the theft, searching broadly for the asprega lord as if there would be a visible trail that would lead him to his target.

Freya clutched Rayne tightly to her body. She tried to share her warmth with her beta, even as she struggled with the horror stirring within her. Birathan would have time to heal, time to formulate revenge, she feared. Still, she had to draw some satisfaction from his loss. Her males were with her, had come for her. Most importantly, they had bought her time.

She would need it to recuperate just as much as they would.

Freya buried her face in the crook of Rayne’s neck, attempting to block out all that had happened beneath the guise of protecting her beta. When she laid eyes upon the asprega prime again, she would have weapons upon her. She would be prepared.

Freya found solace in the darkness behind her eyelids, at least until she was nudged by a feverishly warm snout.

She raised her head and met the black-blue sheen of Fenris’s eyes. Freya easily saw past the mask of madness, the viciousness of tusks, and the compressed snout. She raised her hand to stroke the line of his powerful jaw, seeing only her alpha. Freya knew that his comprehension of the situation was minimal at best, but she didn’t need words as he lowered his nose and began to sniff her from her head downward.

Gripping Fenris’s head as he worked through his scan, she tried to deter him. “F-Fen. I’m fine, Fenris. So is Bun. We’re both fine, my alpha.”

But Fenris did not stop, his snout moving lower to her thighs. His nose brushed over the mound of her sex, and Freya cringed, knowing the message that her body had forcefully conveyed to his animal mind.

Fenris scrunched his nose and glared up at her with a sorrowful look. He turned and stared back at the area where Birathan had vanished. His angry roar shook her down to her bones. He whipped his head back and forth and pawed the ground. His fury was looking for his original target, she knew. His anger was fueled by Birathan’s scent where it should never have been.

“Fen. Calm…calm down, baby. I’m okay.” She tried to get his attention, wanting to let him know that she was okay. Easing Rayne to the ground completely, she stood, aching for her mate more than herself.

Fenris turned away from her, and for a moment, Freya stopped breathing. Believing that his response was to shun her, she realized that his gaze was upon those who had just entered the hall, his anger finding several targets.

Freya could see familiar faces spilling into the room, but Fenris obviously did not, growling viciously at those he should have known. The fur upon his back stood rigid as he hunched down like a ram about to charge.

“Freya! Girl, are you all right?” her mother demanded to know, her arms lifted to prevent the others from taking another step forward. Geraldine’s gaze was locked knowingly on Fenris.

“I’m fine,” she yelled back, more concerned with her mate at the moment than any measure of truth. She placed her arm around her alpha and wove her fingers into his thick fur, praying the entire time. “Come on, baby. Please. They mean no harm. We need help. Rayne needs help, Fen.”

Fenris’s growling did not stop, focused as he was on the intruders. Even when his own mother came to Geraldine’s side, Fenris still remained tense and wild.

“Stay back,” Freya warned, shaking her head at Gaea.

Even across the room, Freya could feel a mother’s worry for her son, her desire to help him. Yet she maintained her distance, gesturing solemnly to Rayne. “What happened?”

Freya didn’t know what. She was in wholly new territory, her beta lying limp upon the ground. “He drained the asprega prime and fainted and…”

“The cub probably had nothing left. He was already taxed during the flight over.”

Freya looked over to the tall, dark wolf who had spoken. She immediately assumed him to be Vaegar Sohon, the alpha of the Sohon pack. She had heard stories of him—“the brute in a suit,” many described him as being. They were not wrong, it seemed. He looked anxious to fight, to kill. Freya noted his eyes. They were the same steely gray as Helena’s. Surely they had to be related.

Freya’s gaze slowly drifted to the destroyed monitors, the overturned tables, and the fallen matriarch. She focused on what remained of the once regal were and sighed. The others couldn’t see Helena’s remains, but they would if they came farther into the room.

Freya knew they were anxious for details, ready to get inside the hall, investigate, and begin the hunt. Seeing Helena’s remains, knowing about her death would incense them, but with Fenris ready to tear the throat out of the first one foolish enough to enter, she pressed her lips closed and looked away.

Fenris moved before her, barring her way when Freya tried to take a step forward.

“Fenris. They are friends, family,” she stressed, turning into her mate’s line of sight. He may have looked like a chimera from some icy level of hell, but Freya met the fearsome gaze without flinching.

“That’s your male, girl! Calm him down.”

Freya ran both hands along the lines of the powerful jaws. “Ma. I
am
working on it.” Leaning forward, she kissed her mate upon the snout. She had seen Rayne bring Fenris out of his Luna state several times but recalled the basic component of that act being attention, and she just barely had his. “Come on, Fen. Let’s sit. Keep Rayne warm,” she suggested, sweet but firm.

Fenris was reluctant to move at first. His attention kept slipping to the side of her shoulder and the eager bunch crowded by the opening.

“Be firm with him! The lovey approach ain’t gonna do shit in the state he’s in.”

Freya wanted to tell her mother that she had everything under control, but she did not. The subtle approach wasn’t helping. She dropped her arms to her sides and stepped away from Fenris and his overprotective posturing. She had to trust in her mother’s advice as she returned to Rayne. She sat beside her unconscious beta and pulled his nude body into her lap. Rayne was the gentle one. She had never been. Perhaps her weakness had been exposed in the past night, but that didn’t mean that she had to revel in it.

“Fen! I need you.”

His left ear twitched at her demand, but he did not move.

“Listen to me, wolf,” she snarled louder. “Get your ass over here. You want to protect me? Then get your ass over here. Keep me warm. Cover me.”

He still didn’t budge.

Rolling her eyes, Freya didn’t know what to do. She was so tired she could hardly think straight, yet a broken keyboard nearby gave her an idea. She stretched out her foot and snagged the trailing cord with her heel. She pulled the cord close enough to grab and reeled in the keyboard before tossing the instrument toward Fenris’s flank.

He turned then.

“I said come! Get your fucking ass over here,” she shouted, using all the force she could muster, calling on her anger, confusion, and desperation. She met the fire of his gaze with her own fury, tears burning at the corners of her eyes. She refused to blink even as one cool drop spilled down over her cheek.

Fenris cocked his head and turned toward her. He gazed at her for a moment, and his composure faltered. He hung his great head apologetically. He had understood.

Freya saw in that moment the sign that Rayne had often mentioned to her when he spoke of Fenris’s Luna state: the spark of cognizance that Rayne claimed to use in order to bring Fenris back to himself. As Rayne often put it, he had to fish for that look and then reel Fenris in hard.

And when she ran her hand over her belly, she could see his eyes widen with concern. She had him!

He padded to her side as softly as his heavy weight would allow. Looming above her, he looked down at Rayne. Fenris bent down and sniffed at his beta’s hair, chest, and face. He then began to lick Rayne’s cheeks.