Minotaur: Blooded (The Bestial Tribe) Read online

  “Hand me your dagger.” He turned toward her.

  Aldora studied his face, trying to read it and find the strength she usually saw in his expression. She handed him the blade, still warm from the fire. It slipped from her fingers to his with her stomach in her throat.

  “You’ll need to trust me,” Vedikus said.

  She licked her lips. Vedikus took her hand that still had her sleeve wrapped around it and peeled it off. He raised the blade of the dagger to her palm and held her hand tight within his grasp. She braced herself for the pain she knew would come, barely aware of the fighting going on around them and the creatures that wanted to eat her. Aldora closed her eyes and gave herself up to what he wanted, but the blade paused, as if awaiting something from her. I can take it. She gritted her teeth and nodded.

  It sliced across her flesh and an agonized moan rose from her throat. Just as swiftly, the cloth was back, soaking up her blood, and the howls rose back up from the ranks of the barghests. She flinched when Vedikus pulled back the cloth and replaced it with mud from below, caking her hand and wrist. The dirt filled her wound, and a stinging sensation replaced the heat.

  The creatures surged in renewed frenzy, braving the firelight and rushing toward her. She was pulled hard into Vedikus’s chest, and for a moment, the thundering of his heart matched her own and overtook all else. He threw the bunched up cloth across the clearing and howls intensified.

  “Run!” Vedikus commanded.

  She wasn’t ready for it but had no choice as she was dragged back into the mist. It opened up as they sped through. The golden light from the bonfires vanished, and a rapidly darkening swamp met them on every side. She tripped, but Vedikus caught her, keeping her upright as they fled from the carnage, and the stifling heat quickly replaced with a humid chill as the mists pressed inwards. An uncomfortable hug that reminded her of a cold corpse.

  Her lungs spasmed with pain, and murky water clung to her boots, making each step heavier than the last, but she kept going despite the ache, her wrist clutched in Vedikus’s hold. The sound of barghests in pursuit followed.

  They stopped suddenly and she was thrown to the ground just as something whipped past her head. She saw Vedikus whirl and slam the blade of his axe right into the barghest’s head, filling her ears with a wet thump. Another one pounced as the first lay dying feet away. The second dropped immediately after, twitching next to the first when more appeared. One by one bodies fell around her and she jerked away, their snapping jaws still after her flesh even at the moment of death.

  “We need to keep running,” she yelled, bringing Vedikus’s attention back to her and away from the current body he was hacking. He rounded on her and offered his hand. She grabbed it and they took off with more beasts snapping at their heels.

  Green lights appeared before her and she aimed for them through the tears in her eyes. Make it. Please make it. She lost her hold on the minotaur as she pumped her arms, fighting the air, the muck under her feet, and her screaming muscles. The first light blurred past her and she kept going. She pushed on until the howls lessened and were replaced by dying squeals.

  Vedikus was no longer beside her.

  Aldora fell to her knees and shook, feeling the frenzy burst through her and release with every gasp of breath. Sweat streamed from every pore. When she lifted her gaze, Vedikus was approaching her from the mist, axes dripping with gore. His eyes were on her in the same way he looked at an enemy.

  She lowered her gaze just as his caked hooves entered her line of sight.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, still breathless.

  A hand gripped her chin and raised it, tilting her to face up to him again. “As am I.” He took her wounded hand and brought her palm to his mouth. His intensity pinned her as he licked the cut clean.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ***

  They made their way into Prayer, exhausted, dirty, and determined, following the eerie lights that led them to it. Somewhere in the darkening hours prior she had lost what was left of her reserve, and a riveting, guiltless freedom had taken its place. The sheer volume of blood she had seen was staggering: barghest, centaur, minotaur and her own. Spending so much time a moment away from death had changed her, and she didn’t know if it was for the better or not. Regardless, she was alive, Vedikus was alive, and at that moment, nothing else mattered.

  I’m alive.

  Aldora rubbed her chest while half-stumbling under Vedikus’s weight.

  He leaned into her every now and then, head bowed and weakened. She wrapped her arm under his shoulder and tried to lend him some of her strength. I’ve been using yours for too long.

  Before long, the lights expanded into a cluster in the distance, and she could see the outlines of huts. They grew in size with each step forward to reveal crude symbols painted with a brown sludge over rotting wood. Beings moved within their haphazard wooden logs.

  “Are you sure it’s safe here?” she asked under her breath.

  “No.”

  Aldora tensed under his arm. No one came out to greet them, but she knew they were there. Whatever they were. She could sense them and wasn’t sure why, but they were nothing more than an obstacle in her mind. As long as they stayed away, she could pretend they weren’t there.

  The mud turned to dirt under her boots and after a short time of walking through the outskirts of the haven, she and Vedikus were trudging over rotten pallets risen slightly above the ground. They creaked and groaned with each step, some giving way under the minotaur’s bulk.

  They had made it to the center of the settlement, and she stopped before a stone building that looked more like a temple in Savadon than it did a structure set in the middle of a swamp. Vedikus breathed heavily at her side and she worried that he’d toppled against her at the building’s steps. As they continued, she was unable to hold him upright, and he went down at her feet into a kneeling position with his horns pointed toward the dirt, his breaths growing heavier with each inhale.

  Aldora grasped his shoulders and moved her hands up to cup his face, lifting it. “Vedikus,” she strained before her voice went hard. “Get up.” He was cold under her touch and had gone deathly pale. “You need to get up now. We made it after everything you’ve put me through—us through—if you leave me now...”

  His beady black eyes stared back at her through a wet glare. Old and new blood coated him, and when she let go of his face, her hands came away coated with it.

  “Get up,” she snapped, feeling faint herself. A slow smirk spread across his lips, and she couldn’t help but smile back with relief.

  “You’ve brought me a gift.”

  Aldora tensed, her eyes trailing away from Vedikus as she turned to see who spoke at her back. She moved to shield him from whatever adversary might strike next. She felt him stand, shakily, using her shoulder as leverage behind her. She reached for her weapon when a young childlike woman covered in brown rags stepped from the shadows of the temple.

  Her hand stilled at her side. The girl moved toward her, stopping a short distance away, just out of reach. She wore a sullen expression that bordered indifference and looked far too old to belong to her face. Aldora was at a loss to the girl’s real age, and despite her appearance, she didn’t seem entirely human.

  But there’s a girl, standing before me, alive, in the middle of this horrid place. Her mouth watered with questions.

  “Do not trust her appearance,” Vedikus breathed in her ear before she felt him lean slightly against her back.

  “A gift?” the girl asked, glancing from her to Vedikus and back again.

  Aldora shook her head. “We need your help.”

  “You need a cure.”

  “Yes. And sanctuary,” Aldora amended.

  “You brought a group of warrior centaur studs to my border, then a pack of barghests to sow chaos for your escape. I do not like chaos so close to Prayer, human,” the girl spat. Aldora opened her mouth to ask her how she knew, but the girl continued. “Bring
your human breeder inside, Minotaur, and make it quick before I decide that the price of your inconvenience is your lives.” Without waiting, the girl walked back into the chilly recesses of the temple and disappeared within.

  Aldora bristled, feeling her hope waver, but slid her arm around Vedikus, shaking under his weight.

  ***

  Her gaze had adjusted to the darkness right as the stone walls glowed with the same pale green light from outside. She followed them to a nearly empty room with shriveled, long-dead vines hanging from the stone ceiling, and a sunken pool that took up half the floor. The water within was the same as the water from outside: murky with algae around the random thick stalks of grass that shot up from below. The only difference was it appeared deep and undisturbed.

  There was a folded cloth next to it, and a charred pile of wood.

  The girl was nowhere to be seen.

  Aldora staggered to the edge of the bath, uncaring where the hag was and helped Vedikus sit. His hooves scraped across the floor. She took the offered towel and dipped it into the water, using it to clean both of them. The dirt sloshed off their bodies in rivulets to seep back into the pool.

  She brought her still-bleeding hand to his lips and he licked at it without speaking. A ticklish shiver shot through her. Her body reacted more for him than it ever had for a human man. She was beginning to like the power it lent her.

  “Thank you,” he grunted, strength and life returning to his voice.

  She frowned. “You’re not a thankful being.”

  “Even bulls know when to give a little to gain a lot more.”

  “I see.” Aldora sighed and leaned her forehead into his arm, exhausted. She found comfort in the flex of his muscles. “You’ve gained little with the way you are, everything else you’ve taken.”

  His fingers tugged at the ends of her hair. “There is nothing easy about living in the labyrinth. I do what I must.”

  She nuzzled, seeking comfort. “I’m learning.”

  “You are. What hell entered your mind when you decided to claw your wrist open?”

  “You,” she said, lifting her head to face him.

  “The thought of me made you want to kill yourself?” His voice darkened.

  “The thought of you made me do what I had to, to try and escape.”

  “Death is not an escape, female. Not here in this place. I’ve told you once before that there is no escape, and if you had died, I would have brought you back to this place screaming.”

  Aldora sat back, her energy waning. “I wasn’t trying to die. I had no idea whether Alepos and his men had killed you or not, and I did not dare pry further in case they hadn’t. There was little I could do but try to seduce them, or create more chaos. Chaos seems to follow me wherever I go.” She shook her head. “I couldn’t...” She shuddered thinking of the centaur’s massive cocks. “I couldn’t let them touch me, and then I remembered my blood. I only hoped for the best so I had a better chance at running.”

  He grunted, the tension expelling from his frame. “You can’t outrun me, let alone a stud who wants to breed you.”

  Her stomach clenched. “I’m always willing to try.”

  Vedikus eyed her, and she knotted her fingers in her lap.

  “I won’t run from you,” she amended.

  “I would catch you. And it would hurt.”

  “I know.”

  She could feel his eyes trailing over her grubby clothes and dirty skin. The heat of his stare reminded her of their time together, how he’d cared for her wounds, and how he’d attempted to conquer her body. She tried to ignore it, the prickle of unease, the quick stab of want, the hollow, relentless ache, but whenever her life wasn’t in immediate danger, those sensations came flooding back.

  Everything about it was unsettling, more so that neither one of them was in any shape to ease the lust that lingered and bloomed, oftentimes bursting between them. Lust. She could almost taste it on her lips. It was consuming when it exploded. She moved to sit on her legs, pressing the heel of her boot hard against her sex.

  Vedikus continued to watch her, reading her, and she skirted her gaze away to the shadows. If I can pretend he’s not here, I can pretend the tension is an illusion. She wanted to laugh at her absurdity.

  “Human,” he said, his voice grave.

  “Are we safe?” she asked, trying not to drown.

  “Female,” Vedikus warned lower, deeper, wrong. His presence grew to encompass her space.

  “No.”

  He grabbed her, dragging her toward him, grasping what was left of her tunic. His arms came around her, caging her against his body. She pushed away from him.

  “Your wounds,” she gasped, feeling the stab of his cock against her side. “They’ll open!”

  Vedikus grabbed her hair and forced her head back, making her mouth part and her legs kick out. Her pulse hammered. He forced her to look at him.

  “Answer me this, Aldora, and I may let you go.” She dug her nails into his chest. The warmth had returned to his body. “Why did you risk your life to escape? The centaurs would have protected and guarded you.”

  She licked her lip. “I told you already.”

  His gaze narrowed darkly. “You told me you were going to run.” He paused. “Not what you would have done afterward.”

  Her palms fell flat on his chest, and her throat constricted. She wanted to keep her secrets inside, hidden away from being released into the world. Her motivations had changed so abruptly she had yet to catch up. Aldora wondered when she had come to accept her life here on the other side of the wall.

  He’s inside me. I swallowed his name. Vedikus’s presence had filled every hole and hidden place she had left, Following him to Prayer hadn’t been about survival, it had been about curing her illness, about extending her life. And for what? To expunge the mist from her body so she wouldn’t lose herself to mindlessness?

  To spend more time with the beast?

  A small part of her hoped that by curing it, she’d be free of him. That he was part of the curse and just needed to be banished. Another, stronger part of her focused on that tendril of hope despite the lie beneath.

  He warned me from the beginning. There’s no escape.

  No cure for exorcising him.

  “I would have—” The words that came out were heavy. “I would have looked for you.”

  “Why?”

  “To know if you were dead.”

  “And would you have finished me off if I were not?”

  “No,” she answered. His lips twitched, bringing her attention to his mouth.

  Vedikus drew her closer until she lost sight of it and his breath drifted through her own parted lips. An almost kiss. “Why?”

  “Because I cared! I care.”

  His mouth twisted up into a smile. The first wisp of steam drifted up over his face to caress his blunt features. She licked her lower lip, wishing she could taste the salt of his sweat against them.

  “I wanted to be with you,” she said gently.

  Vedikus pulled her away, and with strength she thought he no longer possessed, moved her over him until she straddled his hips, never releasing her hair. There was a look of triumph on his face, and it made her confession all that much harder. Aldora lifted off him only to be jostled back into position. A blush stung her cheeks as his shaft pressed and moved against her.

  His other hand lingered on her lower back, slipping under her tunic to settle over her skin. She was afraid to place her own on his body, unable to see the extent of his wounds under the bandages, and settled to touch only where he was exposed.

  “I am a warrior. Pain is nothing,” he said as if he read her mind. “Mount me.” Vedikus pushed his hips up.

  “No.” Aldora tried to look over her shoulder at the shadowy entrance, but he kept her anchored his way.

  “You’ve already admitted you have nothing else to live for, female. Don’t stop yourself now.”

  “I never admitted such a thing,” she snapp
ed. “You think too highly of yourself. I would never—” His hand wrenched her hair back and a gasp escaped her lips. His mouth crashed onto hers, claiming the shallow space between.

  She jerked under the pressure and parted her lips further, succumbing to his unspoken demand. Like everything about him, the kiss was rough and greedy, taking every intimate space she had left and claimed it for his own. His overly large hands roamed her body, warming her through her ruined, wet clothes. She melted into him, seeking his heat, and a strange sense of comfort overcame her.

  She found it hard to breathe, hard to find her bearings with his focus solely on her. It happened every time Vedikus touched her with intention, with crude, unsolicited want that he laid bare before her. She was forced to acknowledge it, being captured at his side whether it was by rope, by his grip, or his will, she was always within the reach of his desire.

  I can remember his smell. Vedikus cupped the back of her head and reared over her, bending her back and feasting on her mouth. I can’t taste him. Aldora imagined it was brimstone and oil, filled with the hottest spices from south of the capital. The only thing that belongs to his heat.

  She kissed him back at last and took his phallic tongue with her teeth, trapping it in the way she felt trapped, drawing a low hum from his throat. It shot through her and built the hollow ache between her legs. The stretch and burn from his abrupt taking hours prior teased her core, waking it back up despite the horror, drenching her undergarments with her essence.

  His cock stabbing its way through her pants was her only relief. Her sex constricted, dying for his prick to penetrate her deep and hard. She undulated what she could of her hips, rubbing her swollen, needy self all over him.

  His groping hands moved up her chest, skimming over her nipples before he gripped the collar of her tunic. She released his mouth when his violent fingers shredded her shirt down the middle, not even leaving her thin underwear to cover her chest.

  Vedikus cupped her breasts and squeezed, rubbing the pads of his thumbs across her beaded nipples in torturous circles. Aldora rocked her hips helplessly.