Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Jonus
Every instinct I have goes to war.
Thirty seconds ago I was holding Sloane’s hands across the breakfast table, telling her I loved her in front of my entire family.
Aldar’s alert still rings and the room has gone cold.
“Ellie, take Zoe upstairs to the safe room. Now.” Garlen’s voice is unrecognizable. The professor is gone. Whatever is left is an Irontree male who has been through this before and knows exactly what’s coming.
Ellie doesn’t hesitate. She scoops Zoe off the floor in one fluid motion, cradling the little girl against her chest. Zoe’s confused face peers over her mother’s shoulder, the tablet still clutched in one hand.
“Laurie, go with them,” Dane orders.
Laurie is already moving toward the stairs. This woman has weathered threats with this family before and she doesn’t waste time on fear.
I turn to Sloane. She’s standing by the couch on her own feet, the feet she walked on this morning for the first time. Her face is pale but her eyes are sharp. She’s assessing, not panicking.
“Go with them,” I tell her. “Safe room.”
She holds my gaze for one beat. I can see her weighing it — the part of her that survived twelve days in a pit, crawled out on her own, and wants to stay and fight.
But she nods. Sloane turns and follows the others toward the stairs.
I watch her climb on her own, with no help, each step steady on her healing feet.
Loki races up after her, nails clicking on the hardwood.
I can hear the safe room door close above us. The heavy lock engages with a solid click.
Now I can focus.
Garlen has already brought up the weapons from the basement. Rifles, handguns — everything we’ve kept secured since the surveillance photos arrived. He hands me back the rifle I used in Colombia. The weight is familiar in my hands, like greeting an old friend I wish I didn’t need.
Aldar is at his monitors. “Interior cameras still active. I count seven hostiles, tactical gear, body armor.”
“Same playbook as the attack on Keric and Anna at the commune,” Dane says grimly.
“Worse,” Aldar corrects. “I believe this team has learned their lesson from that debacle and this time they are better equipped and organized.”
“Fucking hell,” Garlin curses.
I growl in agreement. Aldridge spent real money on this team. These aren’t cartel thugs from a Colombian jungle. These are trained operators sent to silence one journalist and everyone protecting her.
Dane positions near the back of the house, covering the rear entrance. Garlen takes the front — the most likely breach point. Aldar monitors and coordinates from the hallway, calling positions from his camera feeds. I take the side entrance.
Aldar and I lock eyes across the kitchen. No words needed. We’ve done this before — not here, but in Colombia, and before that through the worst winter frenzy in modern orc history. We know what Irontrees do when someone threatens our family. The good, the bad and the ugly.
They all know what to do in case something goes sideways and I turn ugly.
The glass shatters first. Front windows and side door simultaneously. A coordinated entry, exactly what Aldar predicted. Mercenaries pour through the openings in tactical gear, with weapons up, moving fast and disciplined. They fan out in practiced formation, covering each other’s angles.
But they made one critical miscalculation. They’re attacking a house with four Irontree orcs inside.
I engage the first hostile at the side entrance before he’s fully through the door.
Training takes over, the same muscle memory from all those years as a hunter for my commune, from mt time in Colombia.
I’m not feral, not even close. I’m controlled, focused and precise.
This is the version of myself that pulled Sloane out of a jungle.
There’s gunfire from the front of the house.
Garlen is something else entirely in combat.
In reality, he’s the biggest of all of us.
The gentle, composed professor who flips pancakes and reads textbooks with one eye on his family is completely gone.
What’s left is a wall of green fury who moves through mercenaries like they’re furniture in his way.
This is the orc who broke steel chains and tore through a reinforced cage door.
In a normal fight, without the chemical amplification of a scent bomb, he’s even more controlled and lethal.
Aldar fights with cold, technical efficiency. He calls out positions from camera feeds while simultaneously engaging anyone who gets past the front line. His tech knowledge translates seamlessly into tactical awareness — he knows where every hostile is before they know where he is.
Dane is the oldest and the slowest, but every strike he lands is decisive. His experience shows in economy of movement. There’s a reason he was sent as the patriarch when the Irontrees moved to Truckee.
The kitchen table where we ate breakfast together twenty minutes ago splinters under gunfire.
Zoe’s coloring book — the one with the drawing of me and Sloane and Loki — slides across the floor through broken glass.
Garlen’s mixing bowl tips and pancake batter splatters everywhere.
The platter of pastries Laurie brought from the bakery this morning is on its side, crushed under a mercenary’s boot.
Bullets fly. Furniture explodes. I take down two more hostiles. Garlen handles three more. Aldar and Dane each manage one.
“We’ve got the last of them,” Aldar shouts.
The remaining hostile turns and runs for the shattered front door, retreating.
I scan the wreckage of the first floor. Broken glass is everywhere. Bullet holes stitch across the living room walls. The couch where Sloane sat this morning has a hole through the back cushion.
My shoulder took a graze but I’m barely bleeding. I notice that Garlen has a cut above his eye, Aldar is untouched and Dane is rubbing his shoulder but standing strong.
“Clear?” I call out.
Aldar checks his monitors. “All hostiles down or retreating. Perimeter is—”
He stops.
“What?”
“One more.” His eyes are locked on the tablet. “Interior camera, front entrance. He’s not retreating. He’s coming in.”
I spin toward the ruined front of the house ready to take out this last enemy.
A figure steps through the shattered doorway, calm and deliberate, picking his way through the debris like he’s got all the time in the world. He’s not carrying a rifle like the others.
He’s carrying something small and cylindrical.
Time slows to a crawl.
I’ve read Kelt’s briefings about what happened to Keric and I’ve heard Garlen describe in great detail the scent bomb that was attached to Loki’s harness and detonated in the basement — a timed device that combined Ellie’s scent with synthesized distress pheromones.
I’ve heard Keric describe the canister thrown directly at his face at the commune, the mist that turned his world red and made him grab Anna and run for the mountains.
A scent bomb.
The third one. The same weapon that someone keeps manufacturing and someone keeps getting into the hands of humans who want to use them specifially against Irontrees.
I try to reverse course. “NO—”
The mercenary’s arm is already in motion. The throw is accurate and aimed directly at my face. The same delivery method they used on Keric. It’s already flying through the air.
The canister hits and explodes on impact.
Fine chemical mist sprays into my nose, my mouth, my eyes. It burns as it enters my lungs, my bloodstream, my brain. For one second, nothing happens and I think maybe it didn’t work, maybe the formula was wrong, maybe—
Then Sloane’s scent hits me.
But it’s wrong. Twisted. Corrupted.
My female’s natural warm sweetness, the scent I breathe in every night, is laced with something acrid and artificial. Synthesized terror pheromones that speak directly to the most primitive parts of my brain.
The scent tells a story that bypasses all rational thought. My mate is in mortal danger. She’s hurt. Afraid. Calling out for me to save her.
The rational part of my mind — the educated, civilized orc who had a conversation about consent in a basement six hours ago — tries to assert itself. This is an artificial chemical weapon. Sloane is safe behind a steel door upstairs. She’s fine. She’s protected. Don’t—
But that voice is immediately drowned out by something far older and more powerful. Ten thousand years of orc evolution cannot be denied.
The change begins at my core. Heat spreads outward like molten lava through my veins. My heartbeat doubles, triples, pumping superheated blood to every extremity. The careful mental barriers I’ve built crumble like sand.
Red haze fills my vision.
My bones stretch and thicken, adding inches to my already considerable height.
My arms and legs grow bigger, heavier. Muscle mass increases exponentially.
My shirt tears across the shoulders and my pants strain at the seams before splitting apart.
Tusks elongate into something wicked and sharp, longer than they’ve ever been.
My horns grow, curving into dangerous points that scrape the ceiling. Claws extend from my fingers.
Steam rises off my skin despite the cool morning air. My vision sharpens until I can see individual dust motes floating in the shafts of light through the shattered windows. And my hearing amplifies until I can distinguish the different heartbeats of everyone in this house.
And above me, behind a steel door I can hear her heartbeat. Fast and scared.
My female is scared.
“Sloane,” I roar. “Sloane.”
I turn on the mercenary who threw the bomb who has been standing with a smirk on his face, recording my transformation with a cell phone. What happens next takes less than three seconds as my claws tear through his tactical vest like paper.
I throw my head back and let out a thunderous roar and call out her name yet again.
“He’s been hit!” Aldar’s voice, somewhere behind me. Distant. Irrelevant. “Scent bomb! He’s going feral! Grab the chains.”
Then I’m moving. Not toward any remaining threats who might be outside, instead I stomp upstairs, toward Sloane.
Her scent pulls me upward like gravity reversed.
My mate is above me, behind a door, and she is afraid.
I must get to her and take her somewhere safe.
A cave. A mountain. Anywhere away from this blood and danger.
I will take her and keep her and fill her with my seed and no one will ever threaten her again.
“Sloane!” Garlen’s voice, louder, urgent. “Stay in the safe room! Do not come out!”
A hand grabs my arm. Garlen is trying to stop me. I throw him off without looking and he crashes into the wall. The enhanced strength is enormous — normal Jonus could never toss his cousin like that.
Aldar moves to block the stairs. I shove past him like he’s nothing.
I take the stairs three at a time, each step cracking under my increased weight. Her scent is so close now. Her heartbeat thundering. She’s right there, behind that steel door, and I can hear her breathing.
The feral part of me screams to break the door. Take her. Keep her safe. Make her mine.
“Sloane,” I shout.
I reach the top of the stairs and the safe room door is ten feet away. My claws are extended and my fist draws back, aimed at the steel—
The door opens.