A Love Untamed (21 page)

Fox's heart clenched.

Melisande resumed drawing in the dirt. “Castin handed me over to them, a lamb for the slaughter. And with me, the women closest to my heart.” Her voice turned bitter. “I was so naive. I could not conceive of anyone's intentionally trying to harm me, especially one with whom I'd shared so much laughter, so much pleasure.”

Fox felt a stab of jealousy among the fury, even as he ached to pull her into his arms. But she needed to get this out, and he needed to hear it. Instead, he clasped her knee and held on, hoping his touch might ease the awful truth of her words.

“When I awoke . . .” She pressed her lips together, digging deeper with her finger as if she would dig herself a hole in which to escape the past. “I found myself staked to the ground.” Her words caught. His chest ached. “The chieftain was the first to rape me, torturing me as he did so, but he was far from the last. I lost count and lost track, but the brutality went on hour after hour, day after day, for weeks. Perhaps months.”

It wasn't until her hand slid over the one he'd curled around her knee that he realized how tightly he was gripping her.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“You don't want to hear this.”

“I . . . do. But no, I don't, because I
hate
what they did. I'm going to flay the skin from Castin's bones before you kill him.” He lifted her hand, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Don't stop, Mel. I need to know the rest, angel.” He snorted softly. “You really are one, aren't you?”

“Was. Not anymore.” When he released her hand, she returned to her digging in the dirt. “Castin never found the guts to face me again after his betrayal. I'm certain he was first in line with my sisters, instead. I'd been isolated from the rest of the Ilinas and could neither see them, nor communicate with them. But for days I heard them scream. And, one by one, I felt them die.”

Without warning, she leaped to her feet as if unable to stand the misery of her tale. But as she paced the small cave, she continued. “The first two were killed within hours of our captivity.” She whirled on him, horror in her eyes. “They cut out their hearts and ate them, Fox. They
ate
them. Then they told me all about it, and I prayed they'd do the same to me because at least it would put an end to the pain.”

Crossing her arms, she stared at the fire, rigid. “I don't know how long it took the others to die. Days, weeks perhaps. All I know is that my screams echoed long after theirs went silent. And then mine went silent, too, because they left me. I think they believed I'd died. Even an immortal body can only take so much, and I knew I was close to the end. I believe I tipped over, turning gray. I may even have remained like that for some time. Most Ilinas will never return from that ashen state, but I was not most Ilinas. I was a Ceraph.

“With the last of the Ilinas believed dead, they left. But I wasn't dead, and they'd left me staked in the dark, bound by moonstones and a warding that made it impossible for my queen or sisters to find me.”

Fox stared at her with horror.
“How long?”

She looked up slowly, blinking as if she'd been back in that cave. “Three years.”

His jaw dropped. His gut cramped.

“My need for sustenance became a torture in itself, but eventually even that left me. Slowly, everything inside me died but a hatred so cold that it turned my heart to ice. The Ceraph was gone. Everything I'd been was gone—all the goodness, all the gentleness, all the love. All gone.”

Fox held out his hand for her, unable to watch her standing so alone. “Come here.”

She blinked, her rigid stance softening as she went to him. He pulled her down onto his lap, wrapping his arms around her, pulling her close to his heart. The scent of wild heather wafted over him, a sweet scent, her natural scent. And he tried to imagine the sweet, graceful
angel
that she'd been. Abused. Tortured. Left staked to the ground for
three years.

Skinning wasn't good enough for Castin. He'd shift into his animal and chew off the male's limbs first.

He rubbed his chin against her silken hair. “How did you get free, pet?”

She pressed her cheek against his shoulder blade, tucking her head against his neck, accepting the comfort he needed to offer. “A couple of human kids found me. Their father freed me, draped me with his cloak, and carried me out of the cave. The sunshine on my face after so much dark woke me from my comatose slumber. I tore at the cuffs, tossing the moonstones aside, and misted away.” She grunted. “I've never stopped to wonder what he must have thought when the woman in his arms disappeared.”

“It's a wonder you survived with your mind intact.”

She snorted. “Some might argue that I didn't. I'd think you'd agree.”

Pressing his mouth to her head, he kissed her hair. “What I think is that your strength of mind and will is remarkable, Melisande.” He held her tighter. “After you escaped, you got your revenge?”

“I returned to my queen and demanded vengeance, and she granted it. Truthfully, I think she was afraid of me, afraid of what I'd become. It took me five years to find the cheetahs—they'd moved in the interim, probably afraid they'd eventually face Ilina retribution. And I cut them down, one after another, digging their hearts out of their chests with my blades.”

“Except for Castin's.”

“He wasn't with them, and no one knew where he'd gone. I never found him.”

“He dies.”

She pulled back far enough to meet his gaze, her own flint. “But not at your hand. He's mine, Feral. Mine alone.”

Fox cupped her face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the mouth before pulling back. “I'll give you the killing blow. If you want me to, I'll even let him heal first before you take him on. But he's going to feel my wrath, angel. Allow me that. I need to make him suffer for what he did to you.”

She watched him with fathomless eyes. “Why?”

Tracing her lovely eyebrow with his thumb, he told her as much as he understood. “Because . . . you've become important to me. Precious to me.” And, goddess, it was true. He'd never wanted to care too deeply for another, having always known that caring . . .
loving . . .
only led to heartache. But he was absolutely falling in love with Melisande.

She turned and pressed her cheek to his shoulder again, a sadness in the move that made him hurt. “I've done some terrible things, Fox.”

He stroked her head. “Nothing you didn't feel you had to do. Or that you hadn't been driven to do.”

“Perhaps, but you don't understand. When I was . . . dead inside . . . when I was the woman you first met, I couldn't feel remorse. I couldn't feel guilt, grief, love, joy, any of it. Just anger. And hatred. And duty. After a thousand years, I knew right from wrong, but the end justified the means. I wreaked my vengeance on the cheetahs. And when the world believed us extinct, I eliminated the threats to my race so thoroughly, so thoughtlessly, that I left a nine-year-old orphaned.”

Fox stroked her back, aching for her. “We all do things we regret.”

She pulled away from him, standing. “The thing is, I want to go back to being that person.”

He stared at her.
“Why?”

“Because I can't live like this, Fox. I
feel . . .
And I'm tired of feeling. I
won't
live like this.”

“What are you saying?”

Sadness and determination drenched her eyes. “I'm saying that when this is over, when Castin's dead, and we're home again, I'm going away until I stop feeling again, until I've reclaimed that coldness for good.”

And he'd likely never see her again.

Chapter Fifteen

F
ox stared into the fire, thinking about Melisande's words. When this was over, and they were free of the labyrinth, she meant to leave him, meant to turn herself back into that cold, unfeeling warrior.

Anger built inside of him until he thought he was going to have to awaken her to help pull him back down. It was well past midnight, he suspected. Outside, he heard the wind howling and knew the storm had yet to abate. Inside it was warm, now, Melisande curled into a ball beside him, asleep as he remained on watch. Protecting her.

She was his, dammit.

He shook his head at the thought. He didn't want her to be his . . . did he? He ran his hands over his face. Goddess, he didn't know what he wanted.

Melisande. He wanted Melisande.

Deep inside, his fox made a low, rumbling sound of agreement. Then growled, as if it didn't know what it wanted any better than he did.

What she was suffering was his fault, the fault of the connection between them that had somehow made her feel again. If he'd never come into her life, she'd be stronger.

That was all he wanted for her, to be strong and whole. To never suffer as his sister had. The thought of her like Sheenagh, in too much pain to live, killed something inside him. As did the thought of living without her, but there was no help for it. He was going to have to let her go, as hard as that was to accept. All he could do was hurt her. In a different way, perhaps, but just as surely as so many shifter males had before.

How could Castin have betrayed her like that?

He hadn't known the male long—they'd worked together for a handful of months about 130 years ago in the north of England. And he hadn't known him well. His memory of Castin was of a serious and focused warrior not interested in the pranks Fox and some of the others had enjoyed playing on one another. He supposed he could imagine the male so focused on reclaiming his animal, back in that dark time, that he'd willingly tortured helpless females. Damn him to hell.

His time to pay for that crime had come. And once Melisande's vengeance was complete? It wouldn't change anything. He knew, both from Sheenagh's experience and from watching other revenge killings over the years, that vengeance never solved anything.

Still, Castin had to pay for his crime. A man who would visit such torture on a woman was not a man an animal spirit would willingly choose. Castin wasn't the one meant to be chosen. The worst, not the best.

His brothers wouldn't be happy that he'd taken matters into his own hands. They'd just have to get over it.

The more immediate concern was that they were, for all practical purposes, trapped in this cave. He was torn between staying where they were, letting the fight come to them, and leaving the cave come sunup. If he could figure out when the sun was up. If they could even dig their way out through the snow.

It was cold out there, and while he could shift into his fox and probably be fine, Melisande would be miserable. The worst of it was, there was no place to go. Unless he was mistaken, the labyrinth would not spit them out of this world until they'd sprung whatever trap it had set for them. Would walking away be the equivalent of springing it? Or would it only delay the inevitable while Melisande froze?

He glanced at her, the firelight dancing over her soft, sleeping features. His heart tightened, so full that he thought it might burst. On some level, he'd known she was meant to be his the very first time he saw her standing beside Ariana at Feral House. She'd been so full of spit and anger, but some part of him had recognized her as his mate. He knew that now. Even if he didn't want a mate. Even if she needed to get away from him for her own survival.

When she was gone from his life, he was going to suffer.

As he gazed at her, she began to move fitfully, her head shaking back and forth.

“No!” The word tore from her lungs, low and tormented. “So many dead.
So many dead.
”

The anguish in her words clawed at him, drawing blood. He'd thought he'd heard misery in her tone as she'd told him about the brutality of the cheetahs, but she'd not told him everything, he knew that now. So many dead? Who? Her sisters? She'd said seven. Or the cheetahs she'd killed in vengeance. He'd sensed no great guilt in her over that.

As he watched, she curled into herself as if the pain were too great to bear, and he couldn't stand it any longer. He reached for her and stroked her head with a featherlight touch. “Angel, it's over. It's just a dream.”

She calmed slowly, her eyes trying to flutter open and failing. “Fox?”

“Go back to sleep, pet.” He stroked her arm, all the way to her hand, squeezing it gently. “I'm here.”

She nodded ever so slightly and settled back into sleep, but he remained at her side, stroking her hair for a long, long time.

Until the flashback hit him with all the delicacy of a cleaver to the skull. He doubled over, gripping his head as his vision turned black, then bright with lamplight, revealing a room he didn't recognize. A room in bright color, not sepia tones. The Cub's flashback, then, not Sly's.

The vision flickered and disappeared, then returned only to flicker out again. Deep inside, he felt the desperation of his animal, as if it tried to reach him. As if it were trying to show him something. The flashback? Was it his animal who'd been sending them to him?

A snarling sounded in his mind.
Two
snarlings. As if there were two fox spirits in his head about to duke it out.
What the feck?

Was this the reason he sometimes thought his fox hated Melisande and other times adored her? Two animal spirits. Or perhaps not. He'd seen people infected with dark spirit before. Both Grizz and Lepard had struggled to fight past the darkness, to act as they willed, not as the darkness wanted. What if
this
was the result of whatever Inir did to his fox spirit after he separated it from Sly? What if this darkness was trying to subjugate the good animal spirit?

The vision reappeared, solid this time, and he saw a woman, a pretty redhead in a slinky green dress, cruelty in her copper-ringed Mage eyes.

“Why, Zaphene?” the Cub asked, his youthful voice rich with betrayal.

The woman moved to him, sliding her hand up his chest. Fox sensed the Cub's muscles bunching in a desire to push the bitch away, but he couldn't move. Mage enchantment?

“Because the trigger Inir placed within your animal spirit didn't work,” the Mage witch said.

“What trigger?”

The woman smiled, pure evil. “Inir separated your predecessor from his animal, then attached a dark enchantment to the animal that should have controlled you both. But it didn't work. It's lain dormant for two years while every attempt Inir has made to trigger it has failed. So I came to trigger it for him.”

“I thought you loved me,” the youth said.

The witch laughed at him silently. “You're too young to recognize true love.” She shrugged. “The enchantment didn't work even when triggered. All it's been able to do is affect your natural gift, sending you false intuition.”

“False? But . . .” The Cub tensed. “The shivers. My intuitions never made me shiver before.” He looked at her with disbelief and rising fury. “My animal spirit's working against me?”

“Not enough. The spirit fights the darkness. Which is why Inir decided more drastic action had to be taken.”

The Cub scowled. “What action?”

“Inir is going to cut out your soul, young Feral. Once he's done so, the dark enchantment will have full control of both you and your animal. The beauty is, you won't know it. You'll be the boy you've always been.”

“I'm not a boy,” he growled.

The witch ignored him. “The darkness will control your actions now, leading you to compromise the Ferals and free the Daemons.”

“I'll never hurt the Ferals!”

“You'll have no choice.”

Fox could feel the young man's anguish, his fury.

The flashback shorted out with a burst of pain, leaving Fox reeling even as his mind spun from all he'd learned.

The shivers, the Cub had called them. And with a slam of understanding, he knew the same thing had happened to him. Always before, he'd felt goose bumps lift on his forearms seconds before his gut delivered him a truth. He'd thought the sudden shivers were merely a change in his gift thanks to his becoming a Feral. Now, he knew better.

He wished he remembered which of his intuitions had been preceded by shivers. But he knew, didn't he? The ones that had led him, or tried to lead him, into traps. And almost certainly the one that had led him into the warding with Melisande and Phylicia behind him.
Bloody hell.

And, unless he was mistaken, the flashbacks were the doing of the fox spirit, the good one who struggled against the dark enchantment. It was his way of warning Fox, of teaching him what had gone before. And the flickering and shorting out? The darkness trying to stop him.

All this time, he'd thought himself lucky that he hadn't been marked by one of the infected seventeen animal spirits. Now, it seemed, his own animal wasn't just a carrier of dark infection, but in a battle of its own.

Just a few days ago, the Shaman had checked him for dark infection and found nothing. But perhaps the Shaman hadn't been able to sense the darkness in the animal spirit. Fortunately, his animal didn't have any real control over him. The darkness could only send him false signals from his gut. Signals he'd already learned to ignore.

The animal spirit should not be able to harm him any longer.

But goose bumps broke out over his arms, presaging a true moment of intuitive insight. One word.

Wrong.

K
ara woke to find Polaris striding through the doorway of her small cell. She pushed herself up, her hand going to her damp forehead. Yeah, still not feeling good.

“Come, Kara. There's another new Feral to be brought into his animal.”

Oh, hell. And now she felt a hundred times worse. “Ewan,” she began, using his real name, praying the good man was still in there somewhere. “Help me get out of here. You know how evil Inir is. And I know you're a good man.”

As if to refute her claim, he grabbed her roughly by the arm and hauled her to her feet. “I am Polaris,” he said coldly. “Inir is my master until Satanan rises. Until the High Daemon rules us all.”

His grip on her arm too tight, he led her out of the prison block, down the long hallways, and up the stairs to the main castle. Inir's stronghold was simply, but richly, decorated with high ceilings, wood paneling, and an abundance of leather and dark woods. Servants scurried through the castle as if they feared for their lives, while Mage sentinels walked with the cold-eyed calm of the soulless.

Ahead, Inir stood talking to half a dozen of his soldiers, his voice ringing clearly through the great hall. “Four more have breached the warding. You will bring them to me once they are caught.”

Kara's pulse sped. New Ferals? Or
her
Ferals? While she prayed it was the latter, the thought terrified her, too. The more new Ferals she brought into their animals, the less the good Ferals' chances of defeating Inir and his evil army. How could she live knowing she'd helped turn the tide against those she loved? How would she ever survive without Lyon?

Inir looked up and saw her, then turned and headed for the back door. Polaris steered her after him. Together, they followed Inir down to the large rock where she'd performed the last Renascense, and found five men waiting—Croc, Witt, and Lynks, along with the wolverine and a man she'd never seen before, one who had the dark good looks of a Spaniard.

The sound of a child's moan had Kara's gaze flying to a rocky ledge off to the side. As she stared at the little girl Inir had cut earlier, she sickened. The child lay on the rock in nothing but her panties, her abdomen stitched with a hundred stitches. The girl watched them with eyes dark with pain and bright with fear. Kara lurched and only remained upright thanks to Polaris's too tight hold.

“Refuse this time, Radiant, and I'll take off her ears, one at a time, then her nose, then her lips.”

The little girl began to cry with panicked, gulping sobs.

Shaking with horror, Kara jerked her arm free of Polaris's grasp. “I won't refuse.”
Lyon, forgive me.
He would understand.

As she went radiant, Polaris told the new man, “Stay back, Estevan.” Minutes later, the ritual complete, Estevan, stood on the rock, a black bear.

A wave of sick pain rushed over Kara, making her tremble and sway as her flesh suddenly felt cold and bruised, her knees too weak to stand. Her vision narrowed to nothing. And she went down.

S
ometime later, perhaps an hour later, Fox shivered. The prelude to a false intuition. He tensed, waiting. Wondering. Moments later, his “gut” told him they had company waiting for them outside. To remain hidden.

Which meant, contrarily, that there was no one outside and the safest thing for them to do was to leave the cave. Now.

“Melisande,” he called quietly. She woke instantly at the sound of her name and, three seconds later, was on her feet, her hand on her sword hilt, her eyes only slightly hazed with sleep and confusion.

“Are they here?”

“No. I don't think so. We're leaving now, while we have a chance.”

“Are you sure that's . . . ?” Her words cut off as the ground beneath them began to shake, violently. A large slab of rock crashed to the cave floor right in front of the entrance, blocking their escape.

Goose bumps rose on his arms at the same time that he shivered. And then his gut was shouting at him.
Run! Climb onto that rock slab. No! Run to the back of the cave!

Bloody hell.
What did it want him to do?

Loose rocks and chunks of ceiling rained down upon them. He grabbed Melisande close, shielding her from the falling debris as he lunged toward the door, determined to push the slab away from the cave's mouth.