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I remember kids. Laughing at me. Poking at me. I didn’t fit in with them and they knew it. I remember pain, both old and new. If they didn’t want me there, I didn’t want to be there.
—Nyssa’s Journal
When we got back to my house, Landus took my keys and opened the door for me. I walked silently to my bedroom, stripping. First my shirt went, then my shorts. Then my undies. I was naked by the time I made it to my room. I crawled in underneath the cover and hugged my pillow.
Landus slipped in behind me and pushed up against my back, his arms wrapping around me and holding me close. He was naked too. I wanted to turn around and fuck him, make him help me forget, and at the same time cry and get mad. There was too much going on and I didn’t know how to handle it. I only knew one thing for sure. This was all Baron’s fault.
“I want him dead. So very much dead.”
Landus didn’t ask me who I meant. He didn’t need too. He nuzzled my neck and pulled me closer to him. His leg slipped between mine, his knee close to my most intimate spot.
“Go to sleep,” Landus said into my neck. “I got you.”
My body relaxed despite all my whirling thoughts and I dozed off.
~*~
The ground shook and I fell over. He was behind me, coming closer. I could feel him. I could feel his eyes on the back of my neck, his energy reaching out to me. I screamed and scrambled to my feet. My small feet didn’t want to work right, but they needed too. I needed to move.
The ground shook again and this time I rolled down a hill.
“—sa! Nyssa!”
A branch came up at me and I lifted my arms to protect my head.
~*~
“Wake up!”
I jerked away and my hand connected with something hard. Someone took in a sharp breath and I rolled off the bed, landing on my feet and into a crouch.
The house shook and I could hear people outside as they worked to tear my house apart, plank by plank.
Landus was on the other side of the bed, holding his side. He was the something hard that I had hit.
“Oh shit, are you okay?” I came over to his side to assess the damage. He shrugged me off.
“Now isn’t the time. We are under attack.”
Glass shattered downstairs to prove his point. I shoved on a pair of pants that were on the floor and a shirt that was hanging off a chair. Probably neither was clean, but now was not the time to be picky.
I went to my closet and grabbed a bag, yanking it open and loading up on some of my blades.
“Ready?” Landus asked. He was at the door, peeking down the small hallway. The stairwell was on the same side as my bedroom, so we might have a heads up when they came up the steps. He had put his jeans back on, and only that.
I nodded and followed him out. He crouched down, his senses working overtime to be aware of what was going on. Landus would know the enemy was coming before they knew we were onto them. I palmed a blade, ready to throw at a moment notice.
“Now,” he said and I let loose. The blade flew, and in the next moment, it hit its target in the chest. The man looked down at his chest in shock before tumbling down the stairs. I followed him because the moment he fell to the bottom, they would know where we were. I was only a beat behind the falling body, already charging at the closest person.
Landus roared a battle cry and jumped down from the top of the stairs, landing on top of another man. The intruder never held a chance.
“They’re attacking us,” someone yelled, and more men poured into the room. I opened up to my senses and even to the thing inside of me. My phoenix form stirred, recognizing the danger. She moved against my skin, searching for a way out that didn’t exist.
My energy levels kicked up, the temperature rose a few degrees, and I knew my normally brown eyes were green from the intense emotions I felt. The energy of the men around me pressed against my skin, and I used that to help me fight. I could feel what they were doing and easily defended myself while still taking them down with well-placed kicks and punches that ended with me unburying my knife from their dead bodies only to bury itself into another.
Someone flew passed me, and I figured Landus had thrown him. He smashed against the wall and against one of the pieces of art I had hanging on the wall. Glass shattered against the thud of his body, and I inwardly winced as I kept fighting. Paintings, even if they were the only ones, were replaceable. I wasn’t a materialistic person.
Two more came at me and another stayed behind with a gun. He raised the gun and aimed. I jumped to the side as the bullet whizzed by and embedded itself into the wall. I stared at the bullet wide-eyed. It wasn’t a bullet but a long thin dart with red tufts at the end. A tranquilizer. They wanted to kidnap me.
My anger flared and I danced. I fought with a smoothness even shifters struggled to achieve. Every movement I made fluidly went from one action into another, taking out as many guys as I could. The now familiar wind of energy whipped out around me and I used it to give me an edge, pushing against them at just the right moment to put them off balance and to delay their attacks to give me room to execute my own.
The practice I’d been doing to control the wind I created finally paid off as I fought against the baddies.
Of course, it was all going great until something slammed into my back and I tumbled forward. I felt a stinging in my leg. I rolled over and tried to stand up and stumbled instead. One of the tranqs was sticking out of my damn leg, mocking me, telling me it won. I growled and yanked it out, flicking it away.
My vision blurred, but I fought through it and kept moving. Sluggishness dragged at my body, my limbs not working how I wanted them to. I shook my head as an arm wrapped around my body, tugging me away.
Shit.
Was I actually losing?
No. No fucking way.
I called even more on my beast, but she was just as sluggish as I was. The late-night air brushed against my skin and I knew I was outside. They were actually getting away with taking me.
Shit. Double shit.
Something roared and the ground shook. Tingles of energy washed over my skin and I shivered. I needed to do something. Like now.
I pulled on more of the energy and did something I probably should never do. I turned it against me, pushed it through my bloodstream. I screamed in pain but kept doing it.
I was not a damsel in distress. I was not weak. I was not helpless. I was not that stupid little girl.
Never again.
This pain was nothing.
Nothing.
I gritted my teeth and grunted through the energy, letting it burn away the drugs as it burned me away.
Slowly, my vision cleared to see another body fly out the door, closely followed by Landus. His eyes were pure mercury as he raged on. When he focused on me, he bellowed and exploded.
Yes, exploded. Literally.
Energy burst from his body, his jeans shredded, and he turned into the mysterious beast I’d been trying to figure out since the day I met him naked in his bathroom.
The beast was taller than me on four legs, with a massive chest and sharp claws. Striped fur painted his body, which was a mixture of leanness and pure power. He looked like he could swipe at a tank and destroy it. I would have just said he was a tiger, but he was so much more. His powerful jaw widened and he let out a ferocious roar that shook the ground while his overwhelming presence drowned the air. What really set him apart from a tiger were his incisors. They were as long as my forearms, ready to tear into the man holding me.
He was a goddamn saber-toothed tiger.
They were said to have gone extinct over a thousand years ago, but apparently not.
I was just as shocked as the idiot behind me who had tried to take me.
The beast stalked towards us, the shadows created from the automatic outside lights dancing against his golden fur and reflecting his eyes. The man behind me shook with fear. I would have too if I didn’t trust Landus so much. I finally decided it was time to stop being so defenseless. I brought my elbow back hard into the body behind me and then pushed away, diving to the side.
When I landed, I rolled, ignoring the sting against my side from hitting something.
The saber-toothed tiger pounced, covering the rest of the distance in a matter of moments. The man screamed as the tiger landed on top of him, and then Landus made use of his pointed teeth and obliterated him.
He quickly turned to the rest of the men who were too stupid to run and continued to attack.
They never stood a chance.
Finally, they scattered but not after a few were killed, either crushed by Landus’ strength or torn about by his giant maw of death.
When there were no more enemies, Landus paced back in forth in my backyard. He would disappear into the darkness only to come back into the light moments later. The tranquilizer wore off and I stood there, watching his lithe body move. His energy pressed against me, overwhelming me with his presence, nearly drowning me. I wanted to get on my knees and lower my head. If I were a lesser creature, I would have. Now I knew why it felt like his body couldn’t contain all the energy within him. He was truly rare. Not a myth like me but still rare. And extremely powerful. This was the reason why he was the Prime and the Alpha of the largest territory in the United States.
“Landus, hun?” I called out cautiously so as to not get him worked up. “Are you okay?”
He snorted and shook his head. I settled down on the ground, crossing my legs and watched him for a few more minutes. After he worked off his excess energy, he approached me and stopped when he was only inches away. I had to look up at his deadly jaw and teeth because he stood so tall. Seriously.
Massive.
“Hun,” I said. “You have blood and bits stuck in your teeth.” I bravely pushed his face away from me. He snorted and backed off.
The energy crackled around us and it was like watching a reverse explosion. An implosion. All the energy was sucked in, and before me stood the man I knew to be Landus. His eyes were still very much mercury as he pulled me up into his arms and tucked his face into my neck, drawing in a deep breath.
His heartbeat pattered against my chest, and with each breath he took, I felt it settle down.
“Fuck.” His voice was deeper than normal, husky. It did warm things to my body and I tried to not squirm closer to him. This was about giving him comfort, not giving in to my libido. “I’m so sorry. You were hit with a tranq and I couldn’t get to you and they were dragging you out the door and I fucking lost it. Are you okay?”
I laughed and turned my head so I could kiss his cheek. “More than okay.”
“Did I scare you?”
“Hun,” I pushed him away and smiled. “There is only one thing that scares me and that isn’t you.”
His face softened with my words. I let him hold me for a few more moments before I pulled away.
“Are you okay? How are you not out cold right now? Did it not work?”
“No, it was working, but I reacted fast enough. I used energy against it.”
He was silent for a beat. “The scream.”
I nodded. “Yeah, the scream.”
I whacked him on the arm and scowled. “I can’t believe it takes me getting nearly kidnapped to finally see your damn beast.”
Landus blinked a couple of times before letting out a burst of roaring laughter that shook me as he drew me back in his arms. I growled at him. I had just spent the last two damn weeks guessing at his form because he didn’t shift often, didn’t need to, actually, and no one would tell me. I thought it was some damn top-mission secret shit.
“Seriously, if I knew this would have been the way to do it, I would have done it sooner.”
This time he growled and drew me in closer, crushing me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. I patted his arm before he finally let me go, and I smirked as he scowled at me.
We didn’t say anything else as we went back inside. Landus walked further in and stood around a large pile of dead bodies.
“They were almost as good as those elites we fought off last time,” he said.
I looked around him and raised an eyebrow, giving him a small smile. “Doesn’t look like you had any trouble with them.”
“I’m a super elite, they’ll never beat me.”
“Uh huh.”
He eyed my victims. “You look like you didn’t have any trouble with them. At least until you got hit.” His voice got growly at the end, but he took in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“Well, I’m practically on par with Baron. Do you think that was why he sent so many, to try and overwhelm me?”
“He really wants you.”
I sighed and looked over at the tranquilizer that was sticking out of my wall. “I don’t think he wants me dead, but he definitely doesn’t want me for anything good.” I pointed to it.
“He wants you alive.”
I nodded.
Landus growled, the rumble coming from deep within his chest. I walked over and patted his chest in hopes of calming him down. His beast was amazing but meeting it twice in one day just might be a little bit overwhelming. His energy as his beast nearly drowned me. Landus wrapped his arm around my waist and drew me closer to him. “I won’t let him have you. You’re mine.”
I smiled up at him. “I don’t want him to have me either. He’s crazy and that isn’t my cup of hot chocolate.”
“Glad to know I’m not crazy.”
“No, crazy is my job. Your job is to make sure I don’t go too crazy.”
I wrapped my arms around his neck and drew him close to give him a kiss. He paused for only a moment before deepening our contact, sending tingles deep within me to the thing inside of me. She purred and I purred and Landus pulled back.
“You know, I’ve been meaning to ask. Why do you purr? And I mean really purr, as if you’re a feline.”
I shrugged. “Probably something I picked up in the Woodlands.”
He kissed my forehead. “That’s okay. I love knowing I can make you create that sound.”
I pushed him back with a laugh and then sobered up as I took in all the carnage. A dark shiver ran down my back, and I swear my paranoia was letting me know that Baron was there and probably watching me.
Landus was looking at the tranquilizer again, his expression dark. “He wants you.”
“That he does.”
“Do you know why?”
I shook my head. I wished I knew how his perverse mind worked. Actually, I didn’t want to know. At this point, I just wanted to see him crumpled on the floor with one of my daggers buried in his throat as he bled out. “I’m not you guys,” I rubbed at my chin. “He seems to find that interesting. He wants to know what I am?”
“And do you know what you are?”
“I already told you I don’t.” Though I might know now.
For some reason, I couldn’t get myself to tell him I might be a phoenix. I had tried once or twice but then I clammed up. If I told him, what was going to happen to us? And to admit I was a phoenix was to admit he had the power to kill me because he could be my mate. If a phoenix’s mate dies or the bond breaks for some reason or another, the phoenix slowly wastes away and dies. Many other beings die too when they lose their mate but that was by choice. If I was a phoenix and Landus died, I’d die. I couldn’t admit to that kind of weakness. Hell, he could just decide to break it off with me and I’d die. So damn sensitive.
And right now, it was so believable too, making it harder to ignore. I could feel our bond strengthening between us every day. I should go away, put distance between us, but every time I looked at Landus, I didn’t care. I wanted to be with him.
Needed to be was more like it.
