Ravenous (Taint of the Gods #1)

40. RIEKA

40

RIEKA

M ercy felt like a foreign concept when it came to Bloodhounds. But what Rhydian was doing, there could be no other way to explain it.

The way he spoke to them, his voice soft and gentle, the manner in which he soothed them, held their hands and cradled their heads. This was beyond mercy.

Not a single Blessed refused his offer.

The moment the last one had left this sphere for the Dark, I saw him waver. The elbow that rested on the rail of the bed slipped and he lost balance.

He played it off as if he hadn’t just ended the lives of over a dozen people.

Fleeting was the glance I received as he turned to leave. He’d crossed the now silent room, and paused at the desk, his fingers perched on the edge as if they alone were keeping him upright. The scent that I had come to associate with him had faded, replaced by something reminiscent of warm butter, a tinge of exhaustion in the air.

He called out to Wade.

The disguised Runner still looking so unlike himself in that military uniform entered the room, Sal at his side. The gasp she expressed as she entered was nothing short of relief.

“The bodies?” Wade questioned

“Same way we treat any Runner whose body we were lucky to find.” Without another word, Rhydian straightened and walked out the open door.

Why I followed only the gods might know, but no sooner had his feet passed through the door did mine press forward. In silence they carried me down the corridor, his pulse pounding in my ears, a trail for me to follow as he slowly made his way down to the end where he disappeared around a corner.

I found him standing in the middle of another corridor. Just as empty as the last.

“Why didn’t you let me do it?” I found myself asking.

“Better me than you.” He wasn’t lying. At least—he believed in what he said.

“Why Rhydian?” I needed him to tell me. I needed to know why he didn’t just let me do it when I already had so much blood on my hands.

“Blood is my blessing. Remember.” He suddenly staggered, his arms bracing the impact as he collided with the wall.

I rushed forward, my feet once again having a mind of their own and attempted to bear his weight as his legs collapsed out from under him. We both slid down the wall where Rhydian slumped against me.

“What’s wrong with you?” My voice was more alarmed than I expected as I tried to ease him into a sitting position.

Through ragged breaths he replied. “It’s the cost of my mercy.”

“Are—” my voice caught in my throat and I swallowed. “Are you dying?” My mind raced at the thought, and not in ways I’d imagined.

He rolled onto his back beside me, using the wall as support. Rhydian smiled and chuckled into his words. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Without me, who’d ever find out your secret.”

I abruptly removed my hands. For some unfathomable reason, his words felt like whips.

“Why did you follow me Rieka?” Rhydian asked, his words much slower, his voice breathy. I met his gaze, a turbulent ocean I wanted to drown in, a blue so bottomless, so deep there was no end. I wanted to throw anchor, tethering myself right there and hope no one ever found me.

Why had I followed him?

I quickly looked away and stood and felt his eyes on me even then, as though that anchor had somehow attached to me instead. “I thought you could use my mercy right now. I was mistaken.”

My feet didn’t object that time. I left him sitting there without speaking another word, turning the corner for the other corridor. Why I kept my senses on him as I left that monstrous building was just another thing I couldn’t understand, and would probably require an entire day of baking to process. Which I wasn’t likely to get. Yet as I arrived out in the fresh morning air, the sun just cresting the tree line, I heard him.

I heard Rhydian break down crying.

Part of me wanted to turn around. To go back around that corner and take him in my arms and comfort him. To let him, at least in that moment, not feel alone. I knew what it felt like to take a life, to have their blood on your hands. I knew the cost it took, the claim on your spirit. What I would have given to have just one person hold me after it had happened?

My feet made the smallest of moves to turn, that anchor pulling so hard my chest felt like it could cave in at any moment.

The tether snapped when I realised where I was.

The main courtyard of the compound had been a dank and depressing space to cross through. Mud from a recent rain had turned the dirt a dark brown, the footprints of all those soldiers scarring the soil as they carved paths to avoid the pens they’d imprisoned Blessed in. As though the idea of being close to my kind was a health risk.

Catching myself avoiding those same scars, I watched in dismay as a group of Runners pulled a soldier from one of those pens, placed a collar on their neck and then moved them to another pen.

They were letting the soldiers live?

Eleen’s scent drew me over to the edge of another building where she still wore the face of a woman nearly twice her age. Mal and Jordry stood with her, both still wearing strangers faces. Curiosity and fury raged inside. I marched over there and demanded to know what the soldiers were doing alive, the wolf in me seeing red.

“Why wouldn’t they be?” Eleen replied sarcastically, which simply fuelled my anger.

“You’re just collaring them, how is that punishment for the atrocities they’ve committed.” I knew I was out of line, but the words just came out.

“Number One Rule of the Resistance, White Wolf. Kill only in self-defence or the defence of another.”

I scoffed at Jordry’s response. “And whose idea was that?”

Calmly, as though my condescending tone had not hit the same nerve I saw reflected in Eleen’s face, he replied with, “Your husband.”

Mal, ever the stoic voice of reason amongst the Runners must have scented the tension in the air and attempted to rationalise their words. “They may not be innocent of the acts that have been committed, but the soldiers are no less as indoctrinated as a Thrall. Collaring them simply inhibits them from leaving this place. We’ll leave them enough food and water for them until their generals find them.”

I glanced over to the pens. The soldiers looked so meek in comparison to the larger more robust Blessed who escorted them from pen to pen. How had an entire nation become so twisted, so deformed as to enslave another sentient species? Blessed loved, they laughed, they cried, they grieved. We cared and lived no differently to them, how had they grown to see us in such a vile way? I knew it would take days for my mind to suppress the expressions of the soldiers’ faces every time they came close to one of the Runners. Such hate.

Eleen’s scent suddenly changed as she spotted to figures over my shoulder. Two collarless Thralls in grey smocks were approaching the group, and as they came closer the overwhelming sense of familiarity fell over me.

I knew both men. By sight and by scent. The short one. He was a Smith, and the tall one with the dark birthmark over his eyebrow, he was a Kindling. I recognised them from the night I was captured in the slave camp.

They were the Blessed Rhydian had sold to the slavers.

“Is that all the Thralls located and accounted for?” Eleen asked the tallest, the Kindling.

“Yes,” he responded in a deep baritone. “All the sickly ones are being mended by the Medic.” He indicated over his shoulder in the gestures only a native of the train would know. I glanced to where he’d signalled.

Kodee, the young Organic from earlier was tending to a group of Blessed in drab clothes in a small stone building, the large doors wide open. It must be serving as a medical tent since the actual facility was now no better than a morgue.

They continued talking amongst themselves going over details that didn’t concern me. I just continued to stare at them, wondering about everything that had gone on since that horrible night in the slave camp. What I had seen, or rather what I thought I had seen and who I had seen doing it?

The words just escaped me.

“He sold you to the slavers. I saw you unconscious that night.”

The two men looked at me like I’d grown a second head. They regarded Eleen and Mal, scents cautious, expressions of confusion. Jordry spoke up, his choice of words careful due to those in earshot. “She is Red's other half.”

Their brows rose. “When did that happen?” the Smith replied giving me the once over.

“Were we gone that long?” the Kindling asked Eleen. The comment got a smile from her. An actual genuine smile.

“Long enough,” Mal interjected.

They were Runners—it made sense. Rhydian was a Hemopath. Rhydian had used them to find the compound. All he needed was one drop of their blood, if the rumours were to be believed. They would simply have to be placed in one of the slave camps and he could track them anywhere. Though they likely weren’t aware of this little fact about their leader.

I studied their faces, wanting to find anger there for the position they had been placed in, but I knew I wouldn’t. Runners’ missions were always voluntary.

How could I have been so wrong? How had I misjudged so much so quickly?

Those thoughts permeated every part of my mind on the drive back to the tracks. The Runners had commandeered three vehicles—it was all that could be spared since the rest were being used to transport the freed slaves to some unknown safe haven I wasn’t privy to the location of. So the quarters were quite cramped.

Forced to sit astride Rhydian, in a position so uncomfortable as to avoid making excessive contact with him, that the moment we drove over a bump in the road my body slid further into his. I resolved myself to stay there.

I blamed my exhaustion.

The unfortunate thing about this particular position was the fact I had to sit facing him on account of the giant electronic detection device mounted to the passenger dash. My legs and his would not have fit if I’d been facing the other way. So not only did I have to face this man who’d spurned my genuine desire to support him a few hours ago, but I was also unable to stop the thoughts of the actions this particular position could entail.

I braced one hand against the door frame but was unable to support myself any other way than with the other hand on his chest. A chest which rose and fell quite heavily under my touch.

We went over another bump and I fell into his chest, both hands now bracing his body for support. As I rose off him wanting to apologise, the part of me that still had my mother’s voice in my head urging me to do so, I hesitated.

Rhydian was staring at me. Intensely. Desirously. His heated gaze dropped to my lips and remained there. I caught the motion of his throat as he swallowed and something low in my stomach itched and crooned at the action.

His hands which had been motionless on his legs a moment ago, trailed identical paths up my thighs and slowly settled on my lower back. Whilst one hand braced me, the thumb of his other hand stroked the base of my spine. His eyes dropped to my lips where I had begun to bit my lower lip.

In an instant, his lips were on mine. Long and slow, he drew the kiss out as though it were a test of some kind, an experiment from one who had never kissed in his life. A fact about Rhydian I knew not to be true. Comparatively, I would say this was our first real kiss.

But that thought was as dangerous as the game I was playing with him. I had known it was going to be difficult, winning over this man, convincing him my life was worth preserving, worth saving over the thing he was willing to sell me for. But surely I had not succeeded already?

I let the feeling in my gut enjoy its win, even if it was fleeting. I relished in the softness of his lips as the bristle of his regrowing beard tickled my skin. A sensation I would never admit aloud again that I thoroughly enjoyed on a man. And even after his lips had departed mine, I found myself lingering in that contact with him, our heads resting against one another for support, as though the kiss had utterly exhausted us. Rhydian’s pine and earth scent enveloped me until nothing else existed in that space but him. But us.

How had I waited so long to share scents with another, was it always like this?

I could sense even the most incremental of changes to his scent, one moment fear the next utter elation. Proximity to another being had never felt so intoxicating, so—terrifying.

“Are you two going to make a habit out of this?” a voice said, cutting through my reverie. I finally opened my eyes to find Rhydian already staring at me in utter awe.

A crunching noise finally pulled us apart and drew our attention to Amida who’d wedged herself through the middle of the seats. She placed a nut in her mouth from the pile in her hand. “I mean I don’t mind watching, but others might find your affection for one another obnoxious.”

I looked over at Eleen, her gaze focused on driving. “I couldn’t give a shit,” she defended herself without looking at me.

When I finally looked back, Rhydian was still staring at me.

“What was that for?” my inner voice asked, trying not the think about the expression his eyes still held.

“An apology.”

“You apologise in kisses?”

The smallest of smirks quirked up the corner of his mouth, enough to allow that godly gift of a dimple to peak through his stubble.

“And what damage do you have to do to warrant a different kind of apology?” I asked, sliding my hands lower down his chest, my thighs clenching against the fabrics of his pants, which was more than enough for him to gather my meaning.

His scent changed dramatically, and it was intoxicating. Enough that it was my turn to lean in.

“I’m sorry about earlier.”

I stopped instantly.

This man must have the control of a god.

I pulled back attempting to return to my original position, but his hands held me in place. Distance had not been his intention. And since his hands were warmer than the night air that was invading the space from the windows Eleen insisted on keeping open, I let him.

“Go on,” I said, keeping my eyes on his, not caring that the others would undoubtedly know that we were having a private conversation.

“You were only trying to be kind and I was an asshole.”

“A right horse penis actually.”

“Horse penis? That’s a new one.” His laugh garnered a few stares from the others. “I just wanted to say that. And to thank you. For protecting Sal and for procuring all the medical supplies. It means a lot to me.”

“I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Lily. Even I know how dangerous pregnancy is.”

His brows furrowed as if to ask, “You?”

“My mother. In Celestisum we are taught to believe that interfering in the reproduction cycle, even to aid a woman through the birthing process is to believe oneself a God. Cellshaping, except to make something more beautiful is forbidden in Deos. An Organics’ civic duty is to manage agriculture. My mother needed help because we were not the same breed so my father broke the law.”

“And here I thought your country was the better out of the God Territories.”

“It had its moments. I’m just glad I could help Lily.”

“You mean that don’t you.”

“Condescension doesn’t look good on you Rhydian.”

He smirked, his eyes caressing my lips. “But you’d look good on me.”

My pussy tightened not only at his words but at the way his eyes darkened as he gazed down at me. I wasn’t short by any means, but sitting on his lap, I felt meek and I didn’t like it.

I slid my hand back up his chest beneath the leather of his red jacket resting it just over his heart. “Is that an invitation?”

“Isn’t it what you’ve been after this whole time, to get me in bed with you?”

“You have been in bed with me.”

“Must I spell it out for you?”

I let my inner voice croon. “Would you?”

A low grumble reverberated through his chest in frustration, the sensation tantalizing beneath my hand. “I desire to sleep with you Rieka, in the most carnal fashion so that I might hear you scream my name in raw pleasure.”

“I would absolutely love that—” I hesitated. Intentionally.

“You’re doing this to vex me,” he drawled out. I returned a smile of my own, one where I took my bottom lip between my teeth as I stared at his lips. “I have one condition.”

He breathed a sigh. “Of course you do.”

“You started this. Now would you like me to scream your name in pleasure or not?”

“Do go on.” His grip on my back tightened pleasurably.

“Only when I want.”

He bristled, his eyes widening. In the back of the truck, a female voice mumbled in amusement. “Someone hit a nerve.” Perhaps I had.

“Let me get this straight. You are withholding sex from someone you’re not actually having sex with?”

“Was that not clear?” Sarcasm laced my words, a mask of innocence plastered to my face. If he wanted me, it would be on my terms not his. I cocked my head slightly and ran my lower lip through my teeth.

“Then I want something in return?”

“Sex. You’re getting sex in return,” I said, utterly bewildered by his request.

“No. If you are withholding, I’d like to make you regret it.”

It was not a threat. It was far, far from it. And judging by his dramatically changing scent, if I did not agree to something soon, he was likely to strip me naked right here in the truck.

I ran a finger gently along the line of his jaw. “I’m listening.”

“I want to taste you.” When my eyes fell to his lips he shook his head with a small smirk.

“I want to fuck you with a kiss. To feel you move and tighten around my tongue. I want to tease you, to strip every morsel of that wolf-sharpened armour from you, until you come undone in a raptured breathless mess. I want to have you, whenever, wherever I want.”

Who was I to turn down a man willing to shove his head between my legs. “I can live with that.”

Eleen forced the truck to an abrupt stop. She slammed her foot on the break so hard, if it wasn’t for my quick reflexes, my head would have smashed into the windshield.

Rhydian had only just opened his mouth, likely to ask why she’d stopped when we both realised that the truck ahead of us had stopped as well.

Anika who had been scouting overhead, landed by the side of the truck where she ran to the window seeking out Rhydian.

“A patrol up ahead. They are heading straight for us.”