Chapter 13

Chapter 12

A moment later, the door swung open, revealing Sy's imposing figure, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

"Sy! Thank god it's you," she managed. "I was worried I had the wrong place."

He blinked down at her, surprise flickering across his rugged features. "Doc? What are you doing here? Is something wrong?"

She swallowed hard, her throat suddenly dry.

"I wanted to talk to you," she said, keeping her voice level and even with effort. "About Tor."

Something flickered in Sy's eyes, a flash of pain quickly masked by wariness. But he inclined his head and stepped aside, gesturing for her to enter.

She did, her gaze sweeping over the sparse but comfortable room. A few personal touches lay here and there—a soft blanket thrown over the back of a couch, a handful of wooden carvings scattered on a shelf—that would all give her insights into the guard with the mismatched eyes, but she barely noticed them as her gaze went instantly to the figure on the couch.

Tor.

He was curled up in the corner against the cushion, curled in on himself like a child seeking comfort. He looked so small, so vulnerable in sleep, his sandy hair tousled and his face smooth and untroubled. But even from a distance, she saw the dark smudges under his eyes that spoke of exhaustion and strain.

She also saw the bruises, marks of violence, that decorated his skin. It looked like he'd been beaten. Badly.

A wave of fury washed over her, and she turned on Sy.

"What the fuck did you do to him?" she demanded, her voice low and harsh.

The big Izaean flinched, his gaze skittering away from hers.

"I had to," he said, his voice rough with emotion. "His Rage... it was out of control. He would have hurt himself or someone else."

She stared at him, her stomach sinking as the true horror of Tor's situation dawned on her. Sy hadn't beaten Tor out of cruelty or anger but to subdue him. To stop him from hurting others. Her eyes widened. Tor and Kal were responsible for a group of younger children. What if Tor had hurt them? She'd known him long enough to know he would never forgive himself.

But it didn't make it right. And it didn't ease the ache in her chest at the thought of the teenager suffering… of the pain and fear he must have felt as his cousin turned on him.

She stepped forward, her finger jabbing into Sy's chest.

"There has to be another way," she said, her voice shaking. "Beating him, hurting him... that's not the answer. You're better than that, Sy."

He winced at her touch, his hand coming up to grip her wrist. But not before she saw the flash of pain that crossed his face, the way his jaw tightened as if he were biting back a groan.

"What the hell…"

Frowning, she pushed his hand aside and grabbed the hem of his shirt, yanking it up before he could stop her. Then she gasped, her eyes widening in horror at the sight that greeted her. Sy's chest and abdomen were a mass of bruises, dark and mottled against his tawny skin. Some were old, fading to a sickly yellow, but others were fresh, the imprint of fists and feet stark and damning. Not adult-sized fists and feet, but smaller, like those of a teenage boy—the teenage boy passed out on the couch behind her.

"Oh, Sy," she whispered, her anger draining away. "What happened?"

He shrugged, the movement stiff and pained.

"Tor's strong," he said simply. "Stronger than he looks. It took everything I had to keep him from..."

He trailed off, his gaze distant and haunted. Her heart ached for him, trying to look after his younger cousin in a place like this.

Gently, she tugged his shirt back down making sure not to hurt him more.

"I'm sorry," she said in a soft voice. "I shouldn't have assumed..."

Sy shook his head, a wry smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "It's okay, Doc. I get it. You care about the kid. We all do."

"No, I care about you all," she corrected him and made her way over to the couch, sinking down to her knees beside Tor's sleeping form.

He looked so peaceful and innocent asleep, his dark lashes fanned out against his cheeks and his lips parted slightly. Gently, she reached out and brushed a lock of hair back from his forehead.

"He's so young," she whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. "Too young for this, for any of it."

Already she could see signs of the change that was coming. Black tendrils snaked over his bruised knuckles, covering and protecting the damage that must have been there—the first hint of the feral armoring that would one day encase most of his body.

Sy sighed, the sound heavy and weary.

"They all are," he said, his gaze distant. "Tor, Kal, all the others... they're just kids. Kids who got dealt a shitty hand in life."

She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face. He hadn't said anything about himself, and nothing in his expression suggested that he was looking for sympathy.

"There has to be a way to help them. To stop this before it's too late."

But he just shook his head, his expression bleak. "Don't get too attached, Doc. Not to any of us. We're all on the same road in the end. Some of us might be able to hold out longer than others, but we all end up in the same place."

He nodded toward the far wall, his gaze fixed on some distant point beyond the stone and mortar. "The northern continent. That's where we go when the madness takes hold. When we're too far gone to be around normal folk."

She shuddered, her mind flashing to Banic, to the wildness she'd seen in his eyes, the barely leashed violence that simmered beneath his skin. If that was what awaited Tor, what awaited all of them...

But Banic had come back. There was hope.

"No," she said, her voice ringing with conviction. "I won't accept that. I can't."

Sy stared at her, his odd eyes wide with surprise. "Doc..."

But she shook her head, cutting him off.

"I'm close, Sy. Close to a breakthrough. Close to understanding what's happening to you, to all of you. And when I do..."

She looked back to Tor's sleeping face. "When I do, I will find a way to help you. To help all of you. I swear it."

Sy was silent for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Then, slowly, he reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder, his touch gentle and warm.

"You're amazing. You know that, Doc?" he said with a soft smile. "And just for that, just for those words, every male in this place would gladly give their lives for you."

Tears burned in the backs of her eyes, and she blinked them away.

"Well, hopefully it won't come to that," she said with a smile, covering his hand with hers. "When he's awake tomorrow, bring him into the lab, and we'll start running tests. Okay? If there's a treatment to be had, he's getting it first."

Right along with Banic, she vowed. Because she was going to save them if it was the last thing she did.

?

Banic lay on his bunk in the cage, staring up at the stone ceiling above with unseeing eyes. The access pad Beth had given him lay forgotten on his chest, the romance novel he'd been reading still open on the screen.

He'd thought the books would help. That they would give him some insight into human courtship and mating rituals so he could understand Beth and her reactions to him better. And in some ways, they had. After reading them, he knew that human females liked males who were soft and gentle, who spoke pretty words and made grand, sweeping gestures of love and devotion.

In other words, males who were absolutely nothing like him.

He was draanthed. Utterly draanthed.

He'd been a warrior all his life—a killer, a beast on the battlefield, and that was before the monster in his soul had woken and started whispering in his mind. He'd risen to the top of the brutal hierarchy of the northern continent through sheer strength, savagery, and a willingness… no, a need to do whatever it took to survive, dominate, and conquer.

And now, faced with the delicate, beautiful, and brilliant female that was Beth, he was at a loss. How could he court her, woo her, win her heart and her trust, when every instinct screamed at him to take, to claim, to possess? To own.

He'd tried to be gentle with her, tried to rein in the fierce, primal urges that surged through his blood like fire. But it was like trying to hold back the tide, like trying to stop the moons from rising in the night sky.

In other words, draanthing impossible. The effort was enough to drive him mad.

Well, madder in his case.

He closed his eyes and let out a sigh. Even the voice in his head had no comment. That was how bad it was.

But he had to try. For her sake, he had to find a way to be the male she needed—the male she deserved. Even if it meant going against every instinct, every hard-won lesson that had been beaten into him over the long, brutal years of his life.

He grunted as he rolled onto his side and stared at the blank wall at the back of his cage.

She'd called his birth clan. The voice of Raavn, his old training master, rang in his head, cold and dismissive. The male had been the one to help him walk and talk, hold a weapon for the first time and had trained him to be the ultimate weapon of war, yet he'd denied any knowledge of Banic. Claimed he'd never even existed, as if he were nothing more than a ghost, a figment of Beth's imagination.

After all he'd been through, all the betrayal, that denial shouldn't hurt. But it did. More than he'd expected… more than he'd thought himself capable of feeling anymore. Because as much as he hated his clan, as much as he resented them for casting him out, they were still his blood. His kin. His family.

And to hear them reject him so completely, so utterly, was like a knife to the heart, a twisting, thrusting, serrated war dagger that left him bleeding and raw.

He hadn't thought anything could possibly be worse than that. But he'd quickly been proven wrong. Something was worse—the look of confusion and disbelief that had flickered across Beth's face. As if she couldn't understand why his own family would turn their backs on him, why they would deny his very existence.

But she didn't understand, not really. How could she? She was human, soft and sheltered, untouched by the harsh realities of life in the empire. She had no idea of the brutality, the savagery that lurked beneath the surface of their society, the dark, primal forces to conquer that shaped their every waking moment.

She didn't see him as something defective, though. She looked at him and saw a person, a male with thoughts and feelings and dreams of his own. But his clan, his family… they had looked at him and saw only a weapon—a tool to be used and discarded when it was broken, an expendable pawn.

Maybe they'd been right. He'd thought Beth was his salvation, an angel sent to lead him back to the light, but reading the romance books with a human female's ideal mate in them, that fragile hope shattered. He could never be what she needed.

Maybe he was nothing more than a beast, a monster wearing the skin of a normal male. Maybe he didn't deserve love, tenderness, or the soft, gentle touch of a female's hand. Maybe all he deserved was blood and pain and death, and this endless cycle of violence and suffering that would only end when he finally met his match, when he finally fell beneath the claws and fangs of a stronger, fiercer predator.

Perhaps that was all his destiny held… all he deserved.