Page 73 of Venomous Heart
Arlen’s eyes went to Ava. She was just out of his reach, holding the child in her arms, utterly defenseless. Fear shone in her purple eyes, her pupils shrinking and dilating to the rhythm of her breathing. Her fear tore at his insides and he felt the rage blooming from deep within him. The same rage that had kept him alive on the Frontier, the same rage that he had embraced like a lover for longer than he could remember.
Because Ava was everything. Everything his soul had starved for since that terrible summer when he’d fallen for Maral’s treachery and taken her as mate. He had been blinded by rage ever since he understood that he would never find happiness, that the love he had witnessed in his parents’ eyes would never light his own.
Only after walking through a lifetime of darkness had he found a light to guide him back, to make him feel what he had long thought dead.
And this human wanted to take it away from him. Wanted to destroy the very source of the only beauty he had ever found in the world.
Arlen embraced the rage as it grew, allowing the bloodlust to flower like a maleficent blossom within his chest. Because there were times where violence was a virtue, and mercy a deadly weakness.
Luckily for him, Arlen had none for the likes of Will Harl.
His body tensed as Arlen glanced around the room, assessing the distance between himself and the human. He was just a tad out of reach, but not by much. Arlen inched closer, slowly, almost imperceptibly.
“Don’t even think about it, alien scum.” The human spoke with bile in his voice. “I’ll shoot through both the abomination and the boy if I so much as see you move a muscle.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw Ava flinch at the use of the word, but she didn’t answer. Instead, she slowly coaxed the small human from his death grip on her neck and put him down at her side. The little boy was weak, and he faltered, only saved from falling when Ava gripped his shoulder.
“Please, let us go.” Ava pleaded. “Derek is one of you. He’s going to die if I don’t bring him back with me to the main compound.”
“Like I care about that little turd.” Will Harl spat on the ground in Ava’s direction. “We’re done, all of us. So one more death is nothing to me. Knut tricked us, but I know how to get out of it. All I need is to get my hands on his favorite little abomination and I’m sure he will be grateful. Grateful enough to let me leave here with the fortune he promised Ben. Only I won’t waste it on all those fuckers. No, I’ll buy myself a nice ship, then I’ll grab a piece of ass and I’ll stay out there, among the stars, fucking and eating until I’m too old to get it up anymore.”
Rage boiled inside Arlen, deep within him, coiling with the fabric of his very soul. It numbed his fear for Ava, numbed the horror of the bigger fight to mere remote facts in the back of his mind. The bloodlust, that state of mind that lurked in every Eok’s soul, barely contained by the veneer of civilization, rose up and up as Will Harl kept talking, taunting Ava with everything he intended to do to her. All the humiliating, painful fantasies his sick mind could conjure up.
Rage took a biting hold in Arlen’s soul. It wasn’t burning like most people thought it was. No, the rage that came with the bloodlust was as frigid as the heart of the one who fell under its control.
Mercy and honor fell flat in Arlen’s mind. Only death and pain could cure him now.
He became a predator in the night, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He stood silent and unmoving as the human took a step closer, his focus and hatred solely on Ava. Then, like he suddenly remembered the Eok’s presence, Will Harl moved his ionic gun from Ava and pointed it at Arlen.
That was his mistake.
If he had kept on threatening Ava, Arlen would have never risked it, but the human’s assumption that his own life held any value for Arlen led him to underestimate Arlen’s resolve to save his mate. No matter if he lost his own life in the process.
Arlen leapt, his talons out and at the ready.
Will turned to him, his mouth lifting in a giddy, almost joyful grin as he pressed the detonator. The ionic gun fired as Arlen twisted in midair. Pain shot through his side, blazing hot and white. Arlen dismissed it. The bloodlust rendered all pain irrelevant, nothing but a mere fact in the myriad of information his brain was able to process at speed.
He landed just in front of Will Harl, then slashed.
The human stood still, blinking, as he looked down to where his arm used to be. The ionic gun dropped to the floor along with his hand and half his limb with a sick, wet sound.
“You cut my hand! You cut my fucking hand!”
“I told you I would kill you if you ever threatened Ava again.”
Arlen felt the smile spread across his lips as he slashed wildly across the human male’s chest. Three-inch deep cuts ran from his collarbone to his navel, opening to wide wounds as his guts spilled out to the floor in a waterfall of gore. Will Harl screamed mindlessly as he lost his balance, falling into the remnants of his ruined body.
His screams faded to a whimper, then stopped altogether.
He was dead.
“Arlen?” Ava spoke, her voice full of fear. Fear of him.
He stood with his back to her, fully aware of what he looked like. He looked like the monster he felt inside; like death itself.
“Look at me.” Ava’s voice was closer, much closer. A tiny hand closed on the blood-stained skin of his arm, and he allowed her to turn him around.
Arlen closed his eyes. He couldn’t see the horror in her eyes. Couldn’t see the disgust and rejection on her face.
