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“Kael!” she yelled. “They’re coming!”
The files were uploaded, and he stuffed the communicator into his cloak. He then rushed for Sarah, pushing her aside, and unclipped his weapon from his belt.
“I got this, Sarah. I want you to stay here. No matter what you hear. Okay?”
His hand was at her waist again. It seemed like a natural place to hold her. He wasn’t satisfied when she shook her head.
“You know I can’t do that. I came to help you. Not watch you die.”
Kael could have taken her right then and there, making love to the apocalyptic sound of their enemies descending. She was so beautiful in her dedication to him, in her stubbornness to fight against all odds.
No one but Petal had made him so irrational.
“Damn,” he whispered.
The footsteps were booming. Kael raised his weapon, with Sarah tucked under his arm, doing the same.
He mulled over what he had found in the evidence. There was an organization, one so deeply woven into the council that not even the King himself knew of it.
And, surprizingly, it was run by none other than Aric himself.
TWENTY-ONE
SARAH
Sarah had never held a gun before in her life. Back in her country on Earth, Americans favored them greatly. She had grown up in a far more genteel community with parents who feared them as opposed to admiring them. She had always respected that about them.
But as she stood in what seemed to be a control room, gripping the cool, sleek metal of the weapon with both hands, her body tense to keep the pointed end from shaking, she began to wish she’d at least brushed up on the basics.
The truth was that Sarah was scared. She knew that Kael could see that, not only in her body language but in her eyes. Drakonians didn’t seem to have the same taboo about eye contact that many humans did. It wasn’t rude to stare without speaking. In fact, it was encouraged. And when Kael did, she felt like her entire body was being put through a lie detector machine. There was no way she could deceive him, even if she tried.
They both stood at the entryway, weapons aimed and waiting. Was she going to obliterate these men? The alien race she had grown close to, whose customs she was merely starting to warm to? She had no idea, and there wasn’t much time to negotiate. Kael was focused, and despite the agreement that he would let her fight, his body was slowly but surely pushing her aside, out of aim of the doorway.
“Kael!” she shrieked at him.
He snarled at her. She knew it was out of care, but she still desperately wanted to fight for the man and little girl she had felt herself falling for the moment she laid eyes on them.
“Get back,” he said in a gruff tone.
They couldn’t argue. The door slid open, the hum reverberating like a broken doorbell, and weaponry instantly went off.
It wasn’t the sound of bullets that hit Sarah’s ear as Kael shoved her aside, sending her stumbling sideways and skidding under a table. It reminded her of the crackle of thunder from a distance, the kind that you hadn’t seen coming. With it, there was something like the scent after lightning strikes, but in this case, it was an inorganic fusion of wires and plastic.
The weapons were just as high-powered and relentless as Kael had described. Streamlining out of the muzzle were bolts that rocketed forward in a pale green glow and crashed into the chests of the men who clearly didn’t know what was coming.
And they were then eradicated from the face of the planet. Well, the ones that were hit head-on, anyway.
Sarah had seen a handful of violent films, but they weren’t really her cup of tea. She had a fleeting thought during the gunfire that she wouldn’t possess that craving ever again.
The wounds burst open like a popped balloon, pieces of bone fragments and organs hitting the ceiling and floor, and even slapping Sarah across the face with the ghastly remnants. The ones who managed to miss direct impact had their limbs sent airborne, or at least thick piles of muscle forcibly shredded from their bodies.
Sarah rose, utterly terrified, praying as she moved toward the door that the mercenaries’ weapons weren’t as magnificently destructive.
“Sarah!”
He was screeching. It was a sound Sarah never wanted to hear again.
She didn’t look at his face. She went behind him, meeting him halfway as he blasted his way through.
