Chapter 8

Chapter 7

Banic froze, all his muscles coiled tightly as Beth and Zeke talked in low voices. He didn't need to strain his ears to hear them, his hearing far enhanced by the darkness that hid in his blood.

Chimerism. The feral voices.

He closed his eyes, leaning his head back against the wall as he waited for her to tell Zeke everything he'd told her… the secrets he'd entrusted her with in a moment of vulnerability, of desperate need to connect with the only person on the planet who saw him as something other than a monster.

But now he was waiting for her to betray him, just like everyone else in his miserable, blood-soaked life. His family, who'd shipped him off to Parac'Norr like unwanted trash the instant he'd shown signs of the Rage, and his litaan, the brother he'd shared a womb with, who'd abandoned him to the wilds of the northern continent when the madness had taken hold, not wanting to be tainted by the darkness that consumed him.

Everyone he'd ever cared for or trusted had turned their backs on him in the end, leaving him alone and shattered in the ruins of his own broken mind, prey to the Rage.

He grunted. He should be used to it by now, should have learned to expect nothing but betrayal and pain from the world and all the draanthing creatures in it.

But not her...

The idea of Beth turning her back on him, of her looking at him with the same fear and disgust that shone in everyone else's eyes, hurt worse than any knife, claw or fang that had torn his skin.

He knew without thinking about it that it would break him, finally shatter the last fragile shards of his sanity into dust, leaving nothing but the monster that lurked within his skin.

He couldn't look at her, taking the coward's way out and staring at the ceiling as he waited for the moment when she would rip his heart out and leave him bleeding on the cold metal floor.

He hadn't asked her to keep the mind-reading to herself, but he prayed to any deity who might be listening that she would realize how much he'd trusted her. How much he'd wanted her to keep his secret, to keep it as safe as he wanted to keep her.

Please, he thought, his eyes shutting as he sent a silent prayer to whatever gods might be listening. The first time he'd prayed since he'd arrived on this miserable hellhole. Please, let her be different. Let her be the one to look beyond the beast to the man beneath. To see me.

Then he heard her voice shift, her tone changing to one of concern, and looked around.

"Zeke, you look absolutely exhausted," Beth said, her voice softening as she looked up at the big Izaean. "Why don't you get some rest? I've got Maeve's comm code here, so I can go ahead and set up a call while you're sleeping."

Zeke hesitated, his yellow eyes darting toward Banic in the cage. "Are you sure, Doc? I don't like leaving you alone with him."

She waved off his concern. "I'll be totally fine, Zeke. Banic won't hurt me, and he's in the cage anyway. You've been up all night. You need to rest. You won't be any good to anyone if you collapse from exhaustion."

Zeke sighed, his broad shoulders slumping. "All right. But if anything happens, if he so much as looks at you wrong, you call me. Understood?"

"Understood," she agreed, her lips curving in a reassuring smile. "Now go. Get some sleep. Doctor's orders."

With a final, warning glare at Banic, Zeke turned and strode out of the lab, the doors hissing shut behind him.

Banic's lips curled in a fierce, savage grin, a rush of primal triumph surging through him.

He'd sensed the lie in her words even as she'd spoken. She hadn't revealed his secret to Zeke, and it was obvious she wanted him out of the way while she spoke to the other human female. His clever little female, so cunning and sly, finding a way to get what she wanted without tipping her hand. It made him want to roar with triumph, to beat his chest and howl his pride to the uncaring stars above.

Beth turned to the console, her fingers flying over the keys as she initiated the call to Maeve. The screen flickered to life, revealing the human female's face, her eyes wide and curious.

"Hello?" Maeve greeted, a somewhat confused smile lighting up her features. "This is a surprise. What can I do for you?"

"Hi, Maeve. You don't know me, but I'm Doctor Beth Godwin. I'm a genetics researcher working on?—"

"Blood Rage," Maeve butted in and nodded toward Banic in the cage. "I recognize him. Good to see him still breathing. Raalt… did a bit of a number on him."

Beth nodded. "I know. I saw the medical report. I'm surprised he survived to be honest."

He couldn't see her expression from here, but he saw the tension in her shoulders and smelled the way her scent became sharper. She didn't like the fact he'd been injured. Interesting.

"Yeah…" Maeve's expression twisted a little. "I'm glad he did, though. Raalt didn't need that on his conscience. But… be careful, Doctor. He's dangerous. Like… real dangerous."

He chuffed in the back of his throat. He was dangerous, to others. Never to his little female.

Beth leaned forward slightly, her attention on the screen. "Maeve, I need to ask you about something. About your experience with Raalt's... darkness."

Maeve's smile faded, her brow furrowing. "His Rage, you mean."

Beth nodded. "Yes. I've been studying Banic, trying to understand the feral mutation. And I think... I think there might be more to it than we realized."

Maeve was silent for a long moment, her gaze distant.

"When Raalt attacked Banic," she said at last, her voice soft and pained, "it wasn't him. Not really. It was like... like something else had taken over. Something dark and primal and utterly alien."

"The Rage."

Maeve nodded. "I tried to talk to it, to reach Raalt through the darkness. And it... it understood me. It responded to what I said, what I asked it. It didn't talk, not like the other one, but I got the feeling it was like a separate being with its own thoughts and feelings."

"What do you mean… ‘the other one'?" Beth asked, making notes on the pad on the table in front of her.

"Before Raalt caught up with us," Maeve began haltingly, her throat moving as she swallowed.

He could sense the female's distress from here, but despite that, his interest was piqued. What did she mean the other one talked? Jaldon had been utterly in Rage. He shouldn't have been able to talk.

"Another one was chasing me. He nearly caught me, but he wasn't an Izaean. Something was looking out of his eyes. It… it said stuff to me. It was horrible."

Beth's pen paused on the paper, and she looked up at the screen. "What kind of things did it say?"

Maeve shook her head, a visible shudder running through her at the memory. "Well, it was weird. It talked about itself in the third person. At first I thought he was just crazy, you know? But then I realized it was talking about the body like it was a different creature. It said that ‘the creature' had had a translation matrix but it had stopped working a long time ago."

Beth inclined her head. "A lot of the reports say that something about the mutations render the translation matrixes inoperative. We're not sure why yet."

"But it was speaking to me in Terran standard," Maeve replied. "And it said that it had been an easy language for it to learn. Not the Izaean?—"

"Jaldon," Beth murmured, and he saw her flick a glance to the chiller cabinet that contained the remains.

"Yeah, him. It wasn't Jaldon who had learned the language, I don't think, but the Rage thing inside him." She looked directly at Beth. "I mean, I'm no scientist, but could we be looking at a parasite, maybe, or a symbiote? Something that lives inside the ferals, influencing their actions, their thoughts?"

Beth nodded, turning a little to look over her shoulder at him.

"It's possible," she said softly. "And if we can understand it, if we can find a way to communicate with it... maybe we can help them. Maybe we can bring them back from the darkness."

She straightened up. "That is very helpful, Maeve. Thank you for speaking to me about it. If you think of anything else that could be important, please let me know?"

Maeve smiled. "Of course. Good luck with the research!"

And with that, the screen went black.

Beth didn't move, her pen poised as she looked down at her notes on the pad. He slid off his bunk to approach the front of the cage, his eyes narrowed. Was she okay? He hadn't seen her so still before.

Before he could open his mouth to ask if she was okay, the doors to the lab slid open, and two young males rushed in, their eyes wide and faces ashen, with the guard a half-step behind them.

"Tor, Kal," Beth greeted, her face lighting up with surprise and delight as she slid off her stool. "What brings you down to the lab today?"

The guard grunted in the back of his throat, glaring at the two younglings with a fond expression. From the similarity in features between him and one of the young males, it was obvious they had a family connection. "These two have been pestering me to let them into the lab ever since they met you in the mess. Begged me to bring them down here, even though they're both scared pissless of your boy there in the cage."

Banic growled low in his throat, a reflexive sound of possessive fury at the males surrounding his female. But there was no real heat behind it, not when he saw the way she looked at the younglings was more maternal glow than anything else. These younglings were no competition to him.

Tor shuffled his feet, his gaze darting nervously to Banic's cage at the warning growl.

"We... we want to be scientists," he blurted out. "Like you. We want to help understand the Blood Rage to find a way to make things better for our people."

Beth's eyes shone with pride and approval, her smile warm and encouraging. "That's wonderful, boys. I'm so proud of you for wanting to make a difference. Okay, come with me. Let's get you started on something that will really help me."

Beth smiled at Sy and herded the two younglings across the lab to some workstations. As she set them up with screens full of numbers, gently explaining their tasks, Banic watched with a pang of fierce, aching need.

She would be a wonderful mother, strong and loving, guiding their young with endless patience and wisdom. The vision of her heavy with his child, her belly round and ripe with the promise of new life, filled him with a swell of pride and satisfaction that made his chest ache and his blood sing.

As he lay back on his bunk, listening to the soft rise and fall of her voice and the eager questions of the younglings, he dared to imagine a future he'd never allowed himself to dream of before—a future where he was not a monster but a male, a mate, and a father, with Beth by his side.

?

Beth stared at the screen in front of her. She'd been going through the historical data for any mention of the voices the ferals were hearing.

The same name kept cropping up in the files, though. The commander of the northern garrison had already done a lot of research. His notes were extensive, far more detailed and specific than she would have expected from anyone who hadn't spent a lifetime in scientific research. Quickly, she pulled up Kraath's personnel file, interested in learning more about another scientist on the planet.

But when she opened the file, it was blank. It had no details, apart from a single image that had definitely been taken when its subject wasn't expecting it. A dark-haired, dark-eyed Izaean male scowled back over his shoulder out of the image, his expression hard and his eye unreadable.

"Well fuck it, you couldn't have given a girl anything to go on here?" she murmured under her breath, frustration welling up inside her.

"It's not that easy on Parac'Norr, little one." A low chuckle behind her made her jump and her face heat. She'd forgotten she had an audience…and her test subject obviously had freakishly good hearing.

Glancing over at Tor and Kal to make sure they were still absorbed in the tasks she'd given them, she approached Banic's cage.

"You know that man?" she asked, keeping her voice low.

"Uh-huh." Banic nodded, his jaw tight. "Kraath. He's responsible for keeping ferals like me caged."

The bitterness in his tone made her heart ache.

"He's been compiling information on the Blood Rage," she said, looking back toward the screen. "I thought maybe he'd had scientific training or something."

Banic shrugged. "I don't know. He was here before I got here. Before we all did, I think. Including Raalt."

Her eyebrow shot up. "Raalt's been here a long time. Hasn't he?"

"At least since his son was a babe, yes."

"I can't believe they send you all here to suffer," she murmured, her throat tight. "Much less send children. Was Isan diagnosed that early? As a baby? Can they even test for it that early?"

He leaned against the bars, smiling at her.

"You've had far too much information for free," he said, his voice low and rough. Almost like a warm purr.

She blinked. "What do you mean?"

He shrugged. His eyes bored into hers so intensely she couldn't breathe. "You want more, you have to give me something in return."

She stared at him, her thoughts scattering for a moment at the look on his face. She knew exactly what he meant. She could see it right there in the heated look in his eyes.

He wanted her.

She bit her lip. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't felt the pull between them since that kiss, before that kiss, the electric crackle of awareness that danced over her skin whenever he was near.

She couldn't, though. That one time when he'd surprised her was one thing. But this… this was a deliberate decision. She was a doctor, he was her… Well, a subject counted as a patient. Didn't it? It wasn't right for her to act on her attraction to him. Was it?

But, then again, was it right for her to help keep him in a cage?

And something about him… something called to her on an instinctive level, a primal level.

"What do you mean?" She swallowed hard, her mouth suddenly dry. She might be wrong. "What kind of something?"

His lips quirked in a predator's smile. "You know what I mean. Something personal. Something...real. And I'll tell you something else about ferals. About the process that turns us mad. I won't even pound that yellow-eyed draanthic to dust if you tell him."

Her heart stuttered in her chest. Was that…

"You're jealous of Zeke?" she blurted out, stepping closer to the bars.

He growled in the back of his throat and then gave a reluctant nod. "He gets to be around you outside of here," he murmured in a low rasp, watching her expression like a hawk. "He touches you. You smile at him. It drives me crazy when you're not here… thinking of you with him."

She blinked but then shook her head. "But… we don't. I haven't."

"Oh, I know, kelarris. I would have smelled him on you if you had, and he'd already be dead," he murmured, reaching through the bars. He could have touched her if he wanted to, but he didn't, waiting for her permission.

"You realize that threatening someone else, one of my friends, is not a good way to get me to trust you. Right?"

She stepped closer to the bars, close enough to feel the heat of his big body on the other side and the electric thrill of his nearness, and looked up. She watched as he reached out to touch her hair, a look of reverence on his hard face behind the thick beard.

"It's so soft," he said in a low voice, running the curls through his fingers. She gasped as his grip tightened, and he pulled a handful closer, his eyes closed as he buried his nose in it and inhaled.

"Beautiful," he rumbled, opening his eyes to look down at her. They glowed a soft red. "You're beautiful, kelarris. Thank you."

Beth pulled away from Banic, a shiver running through her. That touch had rattled her more than she wanted to admit. Even to herself. All she wanted to do was get closer, to run her hands over his hard, muscled body… to test for herself how sensitive the skin was where it changed to black.

"What else can you tell me about the transition from Izaean to feral?" she asked, doing her best to keep her voice level.

Banic watched her face like a hawk. She wasn't sure what he was looking for, but then he nodded.

"It starts with uncontrollable Rages that a normal Izaean can't snap out of, lasting for days at a time." His voice was unemotional and flat as he began to speak, like he was describing something that had happened to someone else. "Then you come back, but your body doesn't feel right anymore. Your skin feels too tight in some places, not tight enough in others."

He leaned closer to the bars, his eyes burning into hers. "You get screaming headaches because the light hurts your eyes. Then they go red and you see better at night. The daylight hurts, so you avoid it, sleeping in the day."

Her stomach churned at the thought of such agony. She glanced over to see Kal and Tor had drawn closer, their eyes wide and faces pale in the harsh light of the lab.

They seemed enthralled and horrified by Banic's vivid description, unable to look away despite the gruesome details he painted with his words. Tor's hands trembled where they gripped the edge of the worktop, his knuckles white with tension. Kal swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing in his throat.

"The pain..." Banic's gravelly voice pulled her attention back to him. "It's like a fever raging through your blood, making you want to peel your own skin from your flesh. Your joints feel like they have shards of glass buried within them." He paused, his expression darkening.

"But the worst is the voice. It's incessant and unescapable. It whispers. Whispering, whispering, whispering in your ear. All the time, until you're not alone in your own head anymore."

A choked sob made her spin around, her heart lurching in her chest. Tor stood frozen for a moment, his mismatched eyes wide and haunted. Then the young Izaean whirled and bolted from the room.

"Shit… Tor!" she called after him, but the youngster was already gone.

She raced to follow him, her heart twisting with concern, but Sy's large, callused hand on her arm stopped her. His touch was firm yet gentle.

"Let me," the guard said, his mismatched eyes filled with understanding. "Tor's had Rages that lasted days before he could break free. I know how to handle him."

Her jaw clenched as she fought the urge to shake him off and chase after the distraught teen. Her gaze flicked to the doors he'd disappeared through, wishing she could offer him some measure of comfort, even as her mind whirled with a torrent of unanswered questions about the Rage mutation.

Then she nodded abruptly.

"Look after him," she ordered, reaching out to touch Sy's arm. He looked down to her fingers and she withdrew them quickly. The look of disappointment and longing hit her in the center of her chest. Shit, not only were these men on the edge of a madness they couldn't control, but they were starved for touch and affection as well. It was enough to make anyone crack.

"Bring him back if you can," she said softly. "If he wants… we'll run tests. See what we can do."