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Dark bruises mottled her arms, and a nasty burn from a pain stick marred her left shoulder. Just seeing her injuries made me react, every part of me, down to the bones. I could practically hear my Wulfaen snarl. The slavers did this. Ripped her from her home, tormented her, then somehow she escaped and made it this far through the worst jungle on the planet. Even with the Omthryx’s help, she must be formidable to have managed.
My breath caught in my chest again as the change in my circumstances sank in. I was no longer doomed. My true mate was right here, in my arms. What horrible irony that I had the slavers to thank for it.
Thank all the Omthryx of both our worlds. I can go home to my pack.
I can reclaim Alpha and finish my work protecting females like her. I can mate with her and calm my Wulfaen and become a mated elder like the other Alphas.
I can live.
I’m going to live.
I will not turn into a mindless monster. Delven won’t have to put me down.
Her soft weight sank into my arms, the feel of her gentle curves pressing against me making my heart race. My tremors stilled, and I cradled the unconscious stranger against me, stroking the stray curls back from her face. A sense of peace filled me. The world made sense again. My salvation had come stumbling up to me in the wilderness just as I had given up all hope.
But she was in terrible shape. Flecks of dried blood dotted her chapped lips. Through her tattered foot covers, her feet looked painfully battered and blistered, leaving smears of blood on my legs as I held her. Gently laying her on the ground, I tugged off her shoes, then removed the scrap of fabric binding a bloody foot. That’s when I saw the wound at the bottom of her feet with the telltale jagged red lines coming from the puncture site, which meant the nightshade vine’s thorn was still inside and venom was spreading. If I didn’t get the thorn out, the puncture site and surrounding skin would die and begin rotting away because of either venom toxicity or severe infection, creating a wound that wouldn’t heal. That could lead to blood poisoning.
“I am sorry,” I said, “but I will have to clean out the thorn and infection. It’s going to hurt.”
I strode away, seeking the feathered leaves of the drawleaf plant I knew grew nearby. Its scent always reminded me of new rain in my royal gardens. The nectar beads glimmered under the lavender sunlight through the canopy.
Removing several unblemished leaves, I gently crushed them before her wound, activating their inner magic. Carefully I packed the leaves into the angry hole torn through her silken skin, allowing their secret essence to draw out the foreign nightshade thorn. I waited moments before pulling the leaves away and then pressing my fingers against either side of the wound; I started to squeeze and push. She stirred a bit but didn’t wake up. I squeezed harder, and the thorn and a cloudy white liquid oozed from the opening in her skin.
She groaned in pain and shifted, but I whispered soothing words, keeping her as calm as I could. I rewrapped her foot with leaves. The bleeding soon ceased. In time she would heal, her flesh knitting whole once more. I brushed the damp locks back from her face, marveling at her strength… and fragility. I would teach her, when she woke, what other secrets this planet held to harm her. And protect her from it now that she belonged to me alone, to guard and keep. For the moment, I simply held her, breathing with her, matching the rhythms of our hearts until hers found a calm cadence once more.
I winced, feeling my quiet rage increase as I thought about what the slavers—the Omers—had put her through. It was a wonder she’d trusted one of my kind enough to even approach me.
Chaser got up and snuffled at my mate, who made a face in her sleep as his broad, wet nose kissed her cheek. “Back, old boy, let her rest,” I urged him, petting him with the one hand. “She’ll be all right.”I will make certain of it.
The firelight danced over her hair and cast a warm glow across her smooth, dark brown skin. My Wulfaen’s rage had eased in her presence, but its urge to mate swelled in the anger’s place, leaving me staring at her hungrily. I breathed in her sweet, earthy scent, now mixed with the acrid odor of pain stick burns. The codpiece of my armor skin had turned into a tight and painful restraint as my staff swelled against it.
“No,” I murmured to my beast’s longing. She was unconscious, helpless, traumatized, wounded, and didn’t even know me. There was no excuse to mate under these circumstances. The very thought of pushing sex on her now cooled my ardor. Disgust worked better than cold water.
There was time to prove to her I was a worthy mate.
Like most Gladiators, I was out of practice in wooing females of any race, but I would manage despite what the slavers had done.
I would win her heart and do whatever I could to make her happy and keep her protected.
She had just saved my life, and now it was time that I saved hers.
CHAPTER6
AMARA
I was warm. Still hungry, parched, bruised, and hobbled by pain, but warm.
My thirst was winning out over my exhaustion, though I could have slept for a week.
As my head cleared, I grew aware that I was being held against warm skin, in warm arms, with the crackle, smell, and heat of a fire a few feet in front of me. In front of us. Shifting, I felt my cheek against a muscled chest with a fast heartbeat inside it. I registered that there were four arms holding me, not two. Looking up into the face of an alien, I yanked my body away, scrambling to press my back against a tree.
His slate-blue skin looked smooth and hairless compared to the rough complexions of my captors. His black eyes were piercing yet soulful, lacking the cruelty that lurked in Boran’s orange gaze. He also didn’t have horns, and his ears were as rounded on top as a human’s.
“You’re awake.” He sounded relieved. It wasn’t the response I had been expecting. I remembered stumbling into his camp with the last of my strength, and his reaction. His concern.
Or had I misread things in my exhaustion?
Was he simply nursing me back to health because he meant to sell me back to the slavers or keep me for himself? That’s probably it, that second one. He doesn’t have a woman and can’t afford a slave, so he’s trying to be nice to get me to fuck him.
