Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Sloane
Jonus screams my name.
It’s not remotely said in the way he says it in bed, low and warm against my hair.
Not the way he said it twenty minutes ago at the breakfast table, rough with love.
This is something else entirely. A roar that shakes the walls, vibrates through the steel door and into my bones.
Primal and barely recognizable as a voice I know.
It’s the anguished call of a male who will tear the world apart to reach his female.
“Oh no,” I whisper, meeting Laurie’s troubled gaze. “Jonus has been hit by a scent bomb.”
We’d been listening to the sounds of combat for what felt like hours but must’ve been minutes.
Gunfire, crashing, the grunts and roars of orcs and men fighting.
The muffled sounds of a household being destroyed.
I suspect Garlen and Ellie are going to need the whole downstairs remodeled when all is said and done.
Then we hear Aldar’s shout from below, “Scent bomb. He’s going feral.”
And Garlen’s voice, loud and directed up the stairs, “Sloane. Stay in the safe room. Do not come out.”
And then that sound. That roar.
Ellie is holding Zoe, the little girl’s face buried in her mother’s neck, whimpering softly. “Mama, what’s happening?”
Laurie stands near the door, face white but composed, one hand on Ellie’s shoulder. Loki whines and paces in circles at our feet.
I put my palm on the door. “I know what a scent bomb does and I know Garlen means well, but I think I need to get out there.”
“Sloane,” Ellie cries, “he said not to go out.”
I look over at Ellie, who told me everything.
I know the entire story of how Garlen was in the basement of this very house, the chemical mist combining her scent with synthesized distress pheromones.
His body transformed into that huge orc-beast we all saw that went viral on social media.
Bones stretching, tusks extending, muscles growing until the chains that were forged specifically to contain him shattered like cheap metal.
He busted through a reinforced steel cage door the ran barefoot in the snow, across town to the school because his brain told him Ellie was in mortal danger.
The whole town watched as he charged across the parking lot.
Anna also told me how a canister was thrown directly at Keric’s face.
The red haze, the instant transformation.
He grabbed her, throwing her over his shoulder while she screamed, running for miles into the mountains to a cave.
She calmed him by touching his chest and speaking his name.
And even feral and out of his mind, he stopped and asked for her consent before mating.
Shaking with the effort. Because modern orcs don’t kidnap.
Even when every cell in their body is telling them to take.
I shake my head. “I know the danger. The feral state strips rational thought. The orc’s body is flooded with the need to protect, to claim, to take. And the feral doesn’t ask for consent. That’s why Garlen stayed chained all winter.”
Heavy footsteps are on the stairs. Three at a time. The whole staircase shudders under his weight.
“Jonus, stop.” Aldar’s voice from below, strained.
A crash. Someone being thrown aside.
More heavy footsteps. He’s at the top of the stairs. I can feel his presence through the steel door. Heat radiates through the metal, warming the surface under my palm.
I think about Ellie at the school parking lot.
Everyone else ran. The teachers, parents and children were screaming and scattering.
But Ellie walked toward Garlen, she stepped between him and the chains his family brought and said “He doesn’t need chains.
He needs me.” She took his hand and walked him home.
I think about Anna in the cave, pressing her palm against Keric’s burning chest. Saying his name calmly and without fear, trying to bring him back.
Both women walked toward the feral. Not away from it.
If I stay behind this door, what happens? He breaks through eventually.
But if I open the door—
“Don’t.” Ellie’s voice is strained, tears streaming down her face. “Please. Stay here.”
“Honey, he’s not himself right now,” Laurie adds.
I look at Ellie. “You walked toward Garlen at the school. When everyone else ran, you walked toward him.”
Her face crumbles. “That was different. I could see him. I knew—”
“You knew he wouldn’t hurt you.” I hold her gaze.
“I know the same thing about Jonus. I think Garlen wants me to stay in here because he’s worried that if I let him in he might accidentally hurt one of you.
” I reach for the lock and look back at them.
“So I’m not going to let that happen. Once I’m out I want you to immediately lock the door behind me and leave me out there with him. ”
“No,” Laurie wails. “Sloane…
“Yes,” I hiss. “Do it. Lock this door. He won’t hurt me.”
And then, I open the door and step out.
Holy crap. Jonus fills the hallway, barely recognizable as the orc I’ve grown to love.
He’s grown several inches taller, his muscles swollen to impossible proportions, his clothes hanging in shreds.
His tusks jut from his lower lip like ivory daggers, longer than I’ve ever seen them.
His horns have grown into wicked curves that scrape the ceiling, scoring the paint.
Steam rises off his green skin and his eyes are completely black. No white remaining.
Claws extend from his fingers, gouging the walls where he’s been bracing himself.
An enormous erection strains against what’s left of his torn pants.
He’s everything an ancient orc from ten thousand years ago would have been.
The thing human mobs with pitchforks hunted in the mountains.
The monster mothers warned their daughters about.
I hear the door lock behind me.
He looks down at me with those black eyes and lets out a mournful roar. Jonus takes a step toward me. The hallway floor cracks under his weight.
“Sloane, no,” Garlen’s voice from the bottom of the stairs. He’s followed up by Aldar. Both are bruised from being thrown aside. Dane is holding chains.
I put a hand up. “Wait,” I order. Then I don’t look at them. I look only at the wild orc who I want to be my husband. “Jonus?”
I say his name. Not soothing or scared. I try and use the careful, measured tone someone uses with a dangerous animal.
I step toward him.
One step. Two. Three.
Heat radiates off his body from three feet away, like standing near a furnace. His concentrated scent hits me, amplified by whatever the bomb did to his chemistry. It goes straight to my head and makes me dizzy. Heat blooms between my thighs, involuntary and startling.
“It’s me. It’s Sloane.” Another step. “You know me.”
A shudder runs through his enormous body. The growling stutters.
He’s vibrating with need, his massive chest heaving, every muscle coiled toward me.
But he hasn’t grabbed me. He stands in this hallway, shaking.
Waiting. The scent bomb brought him up these stairs to break through that door but now that I’m here in front of him, some tiny part of Jonus, buried deep beneath the chemicals, is holding back.
I reach for his jaw. My palm presses against his skin and it’s burning hot. The muscles beneath are rigid, like he’s holding himself back by sheer force of will. His body shudders at the contact.
For a moment I think it’s working. His black eyes flicker and brown bleeds in around the edges, just a sliver, and I see Jonus in there, fighting to come back to me.
“That’s it,” I whisper. “Come back. I’m right here.”
But then the black swallows the brown again.
His nostrils flare and a new growl builds in his chest, deeper than before, and I can see it — the chemical is too fresh and overwhelming.
When Garlen was hit by the scent bomb, he had to run across town to reach Ellie.
That distance, that time, it took the sharpest edge off the feral.
By the time he reached the school parking lot, there was enough of Garlen left inside for Ellie to talk him down.
With Jonus, like with Keric, there was no distance. The bomb hit and his mate is right here in front of him and the chemical is screaming in his blood that I’m in danger and he needs to take me somewhere safe right now.
“Oh shit,” I whisper. I’m not going to be able to talk him down. Not yet. Not here. “Jonus, listen to me. I love y—”
He moves. Faster than I can process. One massive arm hooks around my waist and I’m off my feet. The world tilts sideways and then upside down as he throws me over his shoulder the way Keric must’ve thrown Anna over his in that cabin.
The air is knocked out of my lungs. His shoulder is hard as iron against my stomach and I’m staring at his broad, steaming back, my hair falling in a curtain around my face.
I do not scream.
I make this choice deliberately, in the half-second I have to make it.
Anna told me she screamed and fought when Keric grabbed her.
She told me later she wished she hadn’t because the struggling lit up his chase instinct even further.
Ellie told me that Aldar once explained if she’d run from Garlen at the school, it would’ve been worse — it would’ve ignited his worst instincts and he would’ve chased her down and kidnapped her to his lair in the mountains.
Instead, I grip the back of his torn shirt and hold on.
“Jonus,” Garlen roars from the bottom of the stairs. I hear the clatter of chains and heavy footsteps charging upward. Dane shouts something.
But Jonus isn’t heading for the stairs.
He’s going the opposite direction, across the loft, toward the large window at the far end of the hallway.
Oh no.
Oh no no no.
“Jonus, wait—”
He crashes through the window.