Kept by Luna Voss
Chapter Seventeen
Barion
The amount of love and affection I feel for Melyta now almost shocks me. This was always an obsession. Since the day we met. My biological attraction to her guaranteed that.
But I didn’t expect to love her like this. I didn’t expect that she would become the only thing on my mind, the only thing that mattered. I didn’t expect that I would come to crave her willful submission to me more than food, more than air.
I’ve never been in love before. Women were always fun, but they were never important. Not to my life. Not while I had money to make and a Vostra family to climb the ranks.
This time with Melyta on Gerbbbexai IX has been like a dream. I’ve gotten to know her so much better. And since we’ve been here at the Zog Royal Resort, everything else has just melted away. For these glorious days, I’ve had entire hours where I wasn’t thinking about Sarizor. Where I wasn’t worried about what would happen to me, or to my mate. It’s been clarifying. For now, I’m allowing myself to relax. But when we return to Tarsheb 8, I’m going to claw and kill and do whatever it takes to make sure the leader of my Family never hurts anyone who matters to me ever again.
“Where’s your head at?” Melyta asks me.
“Huh?” I blink, turning to her.
“You’ve been staring blankly at the sunset for about the last five minutes straight. I just wondered what you were thinking about.”
I do my best to shake the thoughts from my head. “Nothing. Just… the future. Our future.”
She takes my hand. We’re walking on the beach now, at just the right time of day to catch the brilliant purples of the Gerbbbexai IX sun retreating below the horizon.
“Anything you’d like to share?” she asks me sweetly.
I sigh, then force myself to smile and be more present. “No, not really. Sorry, I guess I was brooding more than thinking. I’m done now.”
“What’s something positive you’ve been thinking about?”
“It’s cheesy.”
“Say it anyway.”
“How much I love you.”
“That’s not cheesy. It’s romantic.”
“Fine,” I grumble.
She grins and hugs my arm. “You’re cute.”
I laugh. “It’s the first time anyone’s ever said that.”
“Really? I don’t believe you. I’ll bet your mom said you were cute.”
My answer doesn’t come immediately. “I never met my mother.”
Melyta nuzzles me. “Oh. I’m sorry. What about your dad?”
“Died when I was young. Don’t remember him much.”
“Aw, Barion, I’m sorry. I can’t believe I didn’t know that about you. You never talk about your upbringing.”
“It’s not a big deal,” I grunt. “The Dultaz Family took me in when I was young, kept me off the streets. I have everything because of them.”
“This must be really hard for you,” she whispers, as though finally understanding something.
I cock my head. “What do you mean?”
“All of this. Lying about me. What happened with Gurt. Rescuing Jenyta. All the… you know, everything with Sarizor. The Dultaz Family means a lot to you, doesn’t it?”
I lead her closer to the water, enjoying the feel of the cool seafoam on my bare feet. “Yeah, it does,” I tell her honestly. “Until I met you, the Dultaz Family was my life.” I find her gaze and she returns it, and I take both of her hands. “But you mean more,” I growl. My hand moves up to her neck and I place it over her throat, extending my fangs. She keeps looking back at me, not afraid, trusting. Excited, even, by the smell of her. Her breathing gets faster, and her lips part slightly. “You mean everything to me, vulta. I’d kill every last one of them before I let them take you away from me. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you as my woman, breathing in the scent of your heat.”
I hold her by the throat for another moment, looking into her eyes, then I retract my fangs and put my hand on her waist as we keep walking.
“We should probably turn around,” I say to Melyta, glancing at the resort in the distance behind us. “It’s already going to be a long walk back.”
“Just a little farther,” she says, splashing through the foam. “It’s so pretty out here by the water.”
I’m about to answer her when I hear another pair of footsteps. Instantly, I go on full alert. We must be a mile from the resort. Who else would be out here?
Turning, I see a figure stumbling down the beach behind us. I exhale. It’s just some drunk human, probably off from the resort for a moonlit walk the same as we are. I should probably learn to chill out a little.
“Okay, we can turn around now,” says Melyta, taking my hand. We start walking back down the beach in the direction of the Zog Royal.
“How are you folks doing?” the human slurs, changing his trajectory so he’s walking toward us. “How are you— hiccup —how are you enjoying this beautiful evening?”
“It’s lovely, and yourself?” Melyta answers him brightly, a smile on her face.
“We’re great, have a good night,” I say, instinctively putting myself between him and my mate. I’m sure he isn’t dangerous, but there’s no such thing as too careful when it comes to Melyta.
And then, all of a sudden, he lunges, his drunken lurching forgotten. A knife appears from his belt, gleaming in the moonlight.
I don’t even think. I shove Melyta away from us and catch his arm, miraculously doing so without running his blade through my palm. We struggle for a moment over the knife, and then I let go with one hand and fire my elbow into his face with all the force I can muster.
He stumbles, grip loosening, and the knife falls to the sand. Snarling, I grab onto his collar and use it to control him as I keep slamming my elbow into his head, once, twice, three times, four times. I’m pretty sure I hear something in his face crunch with the last impact, and his body goes limp. I release his collar, letting him slump to the ground.
Close to me, Melyta is picking herself up from where she fell on the beach. “Stay down!” I yell.
Not a moment too soon: a burst from a plasma weapon hurtles at us from higher up on the beach, screeching over Melyta’s head and sizzling into the ocean. I dive over to her, covering her with my body as we take cover on the sandy ground.
“What the fuck?” she whispers, looking terrified. “I thought we were supposed to be safe here!”
I don’t have the headspace to answer her as my mind races, trying to figure out how we’re going to get out of this. Whoever is shooting at us has the high position on top of the beach, pinning us down. We may be hard to hit in the dark, but unless we’re able to move, he has all the time in the world to keep taking shots until one of them finds its target.
More plasma fire screams past us, just above our heads. It’s so close that the air feels warm. And then something funny happens: one of the plasma bolts deflects into the sand in front of us, as though bouncing off of some invisible wall.
“Did you—” I start to say, turning quickly to Melyta, and then I interrupt myself as she nods, a look of concentration on her face. It’s her. She’s using her power to put up a shield.
“I can’t do it for very long,” she whispers, her voice strained. Then her shoulders slump, and the plasma bolts stop deflecting. “I need to conserve my energy or it will run out.”
“Can you do that higher up the beach?” I ask. “Create the barrier, I mean. What if you tried to deflect one of his shots right into him from like five feet away?”
Melyta nods. “I’ll try.”
I squint up the beach, trying to make out our attacker in the darkness. All I can see is a dim silhouette, occasionally illuminated by the red glare of his weapon firing. Next to me, Melyta’s eyes narrow with intense focus.
And then, in an even more impressive display than I had hoped, the bolts of plasma begin to bounce off of thin air, reflecting back toward their source. I hear a scream of pain, and the shooting stops. Melyta drops her head into her hands in exhaustion.
Kill time. I jump to my feet and sprint up the beach, kicking up sand as I run. Crouching behind some bushes is a very tall human man, grunting and clutching his side, a plasma pistol on the ground next to him. He looks up and reaches for the gun as I approach.
With a growl, I stamp down hard on his hand holding the pistol, crushing it into the sand. My other hand launches forward, claws extended, and before I’ve even had time to think, I’m tearing his throat out and blood is gushing everywhere. I let out a primal roar, flicking my claws and painting the sand with red streaks.
Melyta rushes over to me. “Barion, are you hurt?”
“No,” I tell her, my voice coming out as an animalistic grunt. “Are you?”
She shakes her head. “Just tired from using my power. What the fuck just happened? Who are these guys?”
