Page 76 of Venomous Lust
“Khal will never help you. He’s stronger than any of you.” She heard the devotion in her voice, the absolute confidence. Because it was true. No one was as strong as Khal, as loyal. “No matter what you do to him.”
Knut laughed, then clapped his long, fine-fingered hands together in a repulsive display of hilarity. “My poor, poor dear.” He was still laughing. “It’s not what I’m going to do to him that will make him break. It’s what I’m going to do to you.”
Cold slithered inside Hazel’s veins, choking the oxygen from her lungs. An urge to scream mindlessly grew from deep in her belly and rose to the surface. Because she knew Knut was right. Khal could withstand anything. Anything except whatever was done to her.
Khal was their only hope, and she was his only weakness.
* * *
Khal
He raged against the bars of his cell, but it was just to vent his feelings. The bars were made of Allurium, they wouldn’t even budge. His mind was laced with fear; fear for Hazel, for what Gerkin was going to do to her now that she was under his mercy.
Mercy? Gerkin had none.
Khal’s eyes scanned the long rows of cells, all in darkness. The cells were in a basement of some kind, the floors made of barren dirt. Whoever had designed the plans for the jail didn’t plan on keeping anyone alive in there for very long.
As the only other prisoner in the jail moved, Khal tensed. Anger spilled over again inside him, his instincts getting harder and harder to control. His fear for his bloodmate would push him further down the slope to madness in a matter of hours, he knew that.
Just thinking about how terrified Hazel had been made it worse. He had to stop, had to focus his mind to find a solution out of this jail. With a supreme effort, Khal brought his mind to the present.
The prisoner in the other cell moved again, turning on the raw dirt floor. As a broad-featured Cattelan male looked back at Khal, his dark yellow, almost brown eyes gleamed from behind long black hair within a scarred, mottled green face.
“Roohl,” Khal called out, confused. “What are you doing here?”
“Same thing that happened to you.” Roohl moved slowly, his scarred face twisting with pain. “Knut outsmarted me. I came to him after Gerkin gave me the invitation to join him. I was supposed to be one of his generals, one of those who would rise to power once Prime Councilor Aav was overturned. Turns out I was just as much of a fool as you.” The tone was derisive and hostile, but there was a wound in Roohl’s voice, something broken Khal knew would never be repaired.
“What happened to the Mother?”
Dark yellow eyes glittered, sharp and full of anger. “You’re not asking what happened to my crew. No. You want the Mother because you think it’ll help you escape Knut, but you’re a fool twice over.” Roohl chuckled, but instead of being abrasive, the sound was broken and full of despair. “There is no escaping him. Knut killed my entire crew. He just told Gerkin to kill them all, even after we all pledged our allegiance to him. He didn’t even bat an eye.”
“That’s a thousand bounty hunters, hardened to combat.” Khal frowned, the pieces of the puzzle falling into place, finally making sense.
Roohl lifted his lip in an ugly sneer. “My bounty hunters gave him the fight of his life. Twenty of mine for each one of his. Not more than fifty of you blue warriors against a thousand of mine.” Roohl’s sneer faded. “But in the end, it didn’t matter. They’re dead now, and Knut has my ship.”
“Fifty?” Khal frowned. The garrison of Garana had a hundred Eok warriors. “Where were the rest of them?”
“Dead, most likely.” Roohl sniffed, then spat on the dirt floor. “That’s what I would have done if I’d planned on taking over. Find out who’s with you, then get rid of the rest.”
Roohl turned his back to Khal again. He was a defeated creature, just waiting for death.
Khal’s thoughts ran at a thousand miles per second. This was a lot of information, information he needed to use to figure a way out.
Why keep Roohl alive? What was Knut hoping to do by keepinghimalive?
And Hazel. Where was Hazel?
The tangles of Knut’s devious mind were too thick, the plot he had no doubt laid out in front of all their paths too cunning. All Khal could hope for to foil him was that Knut had overlooked something. Something alien to him that he would not even think about.
Khal’s thoughts were cut short by the sound of footsteps. An Eok warrior—the same as before, the one named Affek—was walking toward him, stone faced and silent. He was flanked by two Ilarian guards carrying ionic guns.
“You are coming with us, Captain Roohl,” the Eok warrior said. “Looks like you’re going to be reunited with your ship after all.” Then the Eok looked at Khal. “You, too, Commander Khal. And do not resist. I do not want to have to kill you.”
There was a darkness in the way Affek looked at Khal, a coldness that he hadn’t seen before, not even in Gerkin. Where Gerkin was perverse and mean, this Eok seemed completely devoid of feelings altogether.
“How can you betray your nation like this, Affek?” Khal moved to the edge of the cell, his fingers closing around the bars. “Tell me what happened to your brothers on Garana.”
A cloud passed over the other Eok’s eyes, some deep, unfathomable grief that Khal didn’t understand.
