Mauled by Destiny [Tales of the Citadel 17] (4 page)

“Does the Citadel know of this?” Rhanos was fixing her a plate with a variety of foods.

“Yes. I told them the day my mother told me that the government had requested an additional pregnancy. They don’t normally do that if you have two surviving children.”

She took the plate and nodded as he described the bits. There was a lot of meat and none of it varek. She liked the food better than she did the beverages. “This is all Drevvin?”

“It is. Do they hurt?”

She looked up in surprise, and his gaze was fixed on her forearms. The scars were hot pink against her normal flesh. “No. Not usually. I still have nightmares though. The minder at Thoola was giving me therapy sessions, but she couldn’t take my memory or I would lose what control I had over the transformation.”

He nodded and reached out but paused before he made contact. “May I?”

She extended her arm to him and let him touch the claw marks. “You may.”

He ran his fingers over the ridges. “I should have killed him.”

“It wouldn’t have made any difference. My varek clawed through the stone on my side over generations. I am guessing that your male did the same when it heard the beasts scratching at the wall.”

He trailed his fingers up her forearm and around her elbow to her bicep. Her skin tingled under his touch, so she shifted away from him.

“And that is enough of that.”

Rhanos smiled and filled a plate of his own.

“Well, I am glad you retained use of your limbs and nerves.”

“What did happen to him, the one who attacked me?” She licked her fingers and blushed as she noted that his gaze was focussed on her mouth.

He cleared his throat. “He was judged by the clan council and shunned for five years. He re-joined the clan last year, and his family tithes ten percent of all earnings to your upkeep.” Priina choked and spluttered. “What?”

“It is his family that paid for your Citadel training and medical care. The Danyik clan deeply regret the incident and hope to one day express their apologies in person.”

“They paid for everything? Including the suit that I have to wear?” She felt peculiar about that.

It didn’t feel right.

“Yes, including the suit that you will be given.”

“Suit? How will a suit fit me if I have to transform?”

“It will shift with you. I have a battle suit as well, though it isn’t as fancy as the one you will be wearing.”

She perked up. “You have seen it?” Rhanos stroked the controls in the couch, and he brought up a data file that opened under his direction. The image of a gold suit with red accents slowly rotated on the screen.

“How does it fit?”

“It expands and contracts as you shift. What do you think?” He raised his brows in query.

She frowned as the image of the lovely armour continued to rotate. “I hope it doesn’t get caught in my fur.”

Rhanos choked and coughed as laughter spilled out of him. “You know, I hadn’t thought of that.”

P
riina stared at the spot in the wall where Rhanos had exited. Their rooms were adjoining, and she hadn’t even guessed.

After seeing her armour, they had watched a Lyran documentary that covered the Drevvin population and countryside. She had watched with fascination as she saw a view of her home world that she had never imagined.

Now, alone in her bed, her heart pounded sluggishly against her ribs and her skin felt hot. It was strange to think that she was alone in a huge building with a man she had met once six years earlier.
What were the odds that we would be in the same place at the same time?

She restlessly turned over and thumped her pillow. Dawn was only a few hours away, and she would need what sleep she could get if she was to track him at first light.

* * * *

Rhanos shook her awake. “Come on, Priina. A bit of breakfast and then time for a hunt.” She sat up, holding the covers to her chest.

“Why are you in my room?”

“I am here to make sure that you eat something before you take after me in the forest.” He turned and put a tray with a meal of eggs, cured meat and crisped bread on her lap.

She blinked. “Thank you. Did you eat already?” He nodded. “I did.”

She rubbed her eyes with one hand while fumbling for her eating prong with the other. With bleary concentration, she worked her way through the food while Rhanos tidied her room.

She mumbled. “Why are you tidying?”

“I like things in order, and I haven’t given you time to settle in.” He hung her robes up and brushed at her suit from the day before. “You don’t need to wear this anymore.”

“If we are out in public, I prefer not to be stared at.” She sighed and shifted restlessly. She wanted to get up, but he was still in her room.

“I will give you a bit of privacy.” He disappeared through the door between their rooms, and she set the tray aside and darted for the lav. Going to bed with a full selection of teas in her belly did not make for a slow rise from the sheets.

Her hair was wild as she washed her hands and made faces at herself in the mirror. It was a tradition that she had begun as a child and there was no reason to stop it now. The faces made her feel more centred for some reason, as if she could see herself the way others saw her for a few moments, a monster.

Priina knew that on the exterior she looked like a victim, but inside, she had always been something different than the other Cial around her. Her spirit of adventure had not been suited to living behind the wall. She had been more alive in those few seconds she was outside in the wild than she had ever been living on the farm.

Now that life was beginning to take steps in a whole new direction, every inch of her was humming with energy and that energy could change direction with a moment’s notice. To say she had become moody since the transformation was a gross understatement.

She snarled at her reflection and was unsurprised to see her fangs out. It was a grim mood that she was in, and she was going to have to use that intensity to her advantage.

* * * *

Down at the edge of the forest, she stood next to Rhanos as he explained the exercise. “I will run.

You will wait until the timer rings and then come after me. You can either take me down or trap me, but you have to render me immobile before you will be declared the winner.”

“What do I win?” She took the timer and noted the manner in which it worked.

“A future favour of any nature.” She chuckled. “Well, with that dangling in front of me, I would have to say you had best get going.”

She raised the timer and started it.

He muttered to himself, took off his wrap and headed for the woods, shifting as he moved.

Priina looked at the timer and watched it. At the one-minute mark, she draped her wrap over the nearest branch and daintily picked up the timer. She scented the air, picking up the unmistakable scent that marked Rhanos and focussed on it. The timer went off, and she carefully attached it to the fur near her ear before she began to follow the scent of her companion.

She ran through the woods at high speed, testing the age of the scent and smirking inwardly as she got closer. Her ears perked as she began to hear the occasional rustle or minute crackle of the underbrush.

Priina kept her muzzle tightly closed as she approached him. She could hear his soft panting only a few metres from her current position.

Her instinct told her to tread cautiously so that is what she did. The tripwire was a shock. He must have placed it before he woke her. She moved over it and kept an eye out for the next one.

Her caution paid off. Two more trip wires were strung across the path. He was a sneaky bugger.

She took the added precaution of playing birdsongs from home through her mind. She had always enjoyed the birds that flew over the wall.

They had such lovely songs.

Priina circled his location, and when she was sure that she was free of traps, she moved, tackling him and rolling with him in the brush.

He snarled and snapped as she fought with him, but her hands got a grip right where she wanted it. She let him fight his way free, and as he bounded out of the small clearing, she gripped some light saplings and started to twist them into a snare. She had five minutes, so she worked as quickly as she could.

When she heard the timer go off, she barked a laugh. He let out a howl of surprise, and she used that howl to locate him.

Snickering silently, she followed the scent of his confusion. Surprise always caused a jolt of hormones that came out in pheromones. It wasn’t quite fear, but it made him easy to track.

She moved past him and howled. The noise felt so very
right
that she wanted to do it again, but as it was, it did what she wanted him to do. He ran back to the clearing and through his own snares.

There were yips and barks before he thrashed back into the clearing. The yelp from there made her bare her teeth in triumph.

She entered the clearing and stopped at the sight in front of her. Rhanos was hanging from his ankles and swinging gently, his claws rending the air.
Do I win?

How did you…

The timer fits nicely just below your shoulder blades.

I know this from personal experience.

So, that first tussle?

Was simply to get the unit in position. It is quite loud, and I thought it might throw you off. I was right.

She reached out with her clawed hand and swung him lazily back and forth.

You win. Let me down.

As you like.
She walked to the tree and climbed until she was even with his bound feet.
Brace for landing.

She sliced through the twisted saplings that were standing in for rope, and he dropped to the ground.

He tucked and rolled to his feet rather gracefully. He bared his teeth at her before lowering his head. She took it as a sign of submission, but with the rest of his posture being tense, it was hard to tell.

She sent him a final thought,
Race you to the Citadel.

He didn’t have a chance to respond, she was on her way through the woods, and the leaves and branches seemed to bend out of her way.

Instead of getting dressed, she hooked her wrap on one finger and kept moving. She was on the flat of the plateau before she heard the steps of Rhanos behind her.

She ran for the Citadel entrance with everything in her and quite a bit she didn’t know she had. She cleared the doorway and Zenina-Balen was standing inside with her eyes wide.

“Hello, um…Priina?”

Priina bowed low to the Avatar. With her gaze as enhanced as the rest of her, it was easy to see the tremendous power that the other woman was wielding. It radiated from her in heat-like waves.

“Well, you had better get going if you are racing Rhanos to your chambers. He seems to have gotten the jump on you.” Zenina-Balen’s grin was encouraging.

Priina bobbed her furred head once again and took off from ground level, skipping upward over several steps in huge bounds that she didn’t know she could manage until she drew even with Rhanos and finally passed him on their way to their quarters.

Her momentum was her downfall, and she was forced to grip the doorway in an effort to stop.

Claw marks gouged the wood, but she managed to haul herself into her rooms.

She shifted to skin and dropped over the bed, lying on her belly. “I win again!” He entered the room a moment after her and froze at the edge of her bed, staring at her back.

He shifted forms swiftly, and his expression showed his shock.

“He clawed you as you were trying to get away. May I see all the injuries?” Rhanos knelt at the end of the bed.

“I thought you saw them all when I stripped the first time.” There was something intense in his gaze that he hadn’t had before.

He smiled slightly. “I wasn’t looking at your scars before. I want to see how bad it was.” She debated getting up or hiding in the sheets.

With a grunt, she stood up and let him look. He moved over to where she stood and slowly ran his fingers over the gouges and raised skin.

She knew exactly what he was seeing. Her attacker had been toying with her, trying to make her scream. Her hunting instinct had told her that much. If he had wanted to kill her, she would have been dead. One swipe of his claw across her throat and she would have been dead.

“I will kill him.” The certainty in Rhanos’s tone was unmistakable as he took in the extent of the damage. “There is no way you should have survived this.”

“They thought I was dead until I called for help.”

“You remember it?”

“Of course. I remember it all. I crawled out through the hole in the wall and went looking for my varek. I found their bodies and started to return home when I saw the red eyes. Pain followed in endless strikes until you arrived. I crawled back under the wall and sealed the hole before I set off my beacon. Help arrived, and they were staring at me until I asked them to help me.

The rest is light and pain until they put me under.”

She shivered as his fingers followed each gouge and slash.

“How is it that the healers weren’t able to smooth out the marks?” The frown on his face was fearsome.

“The Cial don’t have healers like the Citadel does, and by the time I was at Thoola, my body fought the healing according to the medics there.

They could only keep me stable and watch over me as the transformation ran its course.” He nodded and got to his feet. In that moment, his nudity went from casual to intriguing, but she suspected that her body was now an object of disgust or pity to him.

She slumped her shoulders and turned away an instant before he gripped her arms and kissed her.

She was held in place by his hands as his mouth and tongue duelled with hers. Her instincts roared within, and she followed them, twisting and tackling him to the bed.

The wildest moment in her life began, and she had to admit that instinct was a powerful teacher.

P
riina was unsure of how to begin a conversation after they had spent hours exploring every inch of each other. She slid out of bed and crossed to get a pot of tea from the dispenser.