The Ultimate Series Book 2: Rabid
Автор
A. K. Glandt
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Daylin lives in a world at war, but her fiercest fight isn't on the battlefield—it's inside her. Violence comes easy, but love? Trust? That’s where it gets messy. Especially when Sarakiel enters the picture with his maddening charm and sharp secrets. Their bond is as tangled as the politics and assassins chasing them. With new allies she didn’t ask for and enemies she can’t always see coming, Daylin must decide if opening her heart is worth the risk. Can she protect herself from danger and her feelings? One thing's clear—letting people in is a whole lot harder than taking them down.
Chapter 1
Book 2: Rabid
The droning hum of overlapping voices faded entirely into the background. I focused solely on that thumb, its nail bitten down to the cuticle, as it pressed the pen repeatedly.
Click, click, click.
The sound was the only one I could hear. It wasn’t a nervous clicking or a restless one, but rather an unconscious movement.
The clicking was slow, only occurring every few seconds. Then the pen rotated in his hand, the tip facing up as the end was pushed against the table to open and close in the same irritating cadence.
I put up with it for a while, my annoyance prickling with every further click. I willed it to just explode.
Click, click, click.
Each click was a tick on my countdown. My sharp nail dug into the wooden pencil I had been fiddling with when I felt the light smack from the back of a hand on my thigh.
Turning sharply to my consort, expecting to see him and everyone else staring at me in silence, I was momentarily confused to see he had never taken his attention away from the males at the table. Surely, he hadn’t just done something so childish as to pretend he hadn’t just hit—I glanced down at my lap where his hand lay open.
I stared at it, wondering what on earth he was doing. Then those fingers beckoned me, demanding I hand something over.
In my hand, the writing utensil had transformed into a potentially deadly stake. My lap was littered with thin wood shavings.
I rocked forward, my chair landing back on four legs. The sudden thud drew glances my way, which just as quickly returned to the male who was speaking.
Straightening from my reclined slouch, I placed the fundamental element of my plan to silence the pen clicker into Sarakiel’s palm. My consort’s hand withdrew and placed it on the table to his left, away from me.
His movements were stealthy, not drawing attention away from his words. However, it wasn’t long before the others began to notice it.
I didn’t think any of these males were particularly bright, but they were perceptive enough to connect my put-off expression to the whittled-down, jagged pick of a pencil that had suddenly appeared next to the One.
Skeptical looks were tossed my way, those wary faces wondering once again why Sarakiel had brought his barbaric pet with him to this crucial conference.
To tell the truth, there really wasn’t a need for me to be here. With the World Council slowly rebuilding, the next plan of action was to take the Western Axis.
And by the look of things, that was going to end in a resounding victory. Before Sarakiel and I had annihilated the World Council, most of the western Ones had sided with Errol Falkor.
But with the council gone, their loyalty shifted. Self-preservation outweighed their old grudges against Sarakiel and me.
They knew defiance meant death, likely at the hands of Sarakiel’s feral consort. Now, over two-thirds of those who once supported Falkor were plotting his downfall and preparing to crown Sarakiel as head of the Western Axis.
The rest clung to their pride, unwilling to aid a male who had humiliated them or to align with the deranged female who had brutally slain Myrin Redith, the male who’d held their utmost reverence and fealty. I was still skeptical of allowing cowards to join in, since their allegiance changed like the wind.
However, Sarakiel was leaving the takeover in their hands. It was a test for them to prove themselves, and failure would end in the loss of their life.
They were cowards who had already proven their desperation to live, willing to lick whichever boots stood to crush them. Sarakiel was the one in those boots now.
In the end, I understood Sarakiel’s reasoning for handing the reins over to this group of sycophants and had to admit it was a rather devious plan. Honestly, this meeting was not as important as those who were in attendance thought it to be.
The real plotting took place in a much smaller room with a select few people. That was when I found it worth the effort and discomfort of moving my lips to speak.
The entire left side of my head was wrapped in gauze. I was frustrated at how slowly I was healing.
My stitches still had yet to be removed. Although the gashes still twinged in pain whenever I spoke, it was nothing compared to the constant burning of the mercury in my veins.
The gauze was more to keep me from picking at the stitches than anything else. There would be no escaping the scars I’d come out with, though.
The thought didn’t bother me. I had never been particularly beautiful to begin with, and Sarakiel hadn’t picked me because of my face. The disfigurement would make me more menacing. I was shorter than most males, and my plain face and narrow frame didn’t paint me as a vicious, crazed beast.
My first impression often made people wonder if I could be everything the rumors claimed me to be. I sighed, stealing a glance at the confiscated pencil.
I was ready to damn the consequences if only to dispel the boredom that was slowly killing me. My consort took my lingering gaze as a signal to quickly wrap it up.
His hand gripping my thigh told me not to move as the others slowly trickled from the conference room. I sat there obediently as some of the males approached Sarakiel to make small talk before quickly retreating when my consort showed no interest in doing so.
When we finally had the room to ourselves, the stormy-eyed male picked up my crudely carved weapon and rolled it between his fingers, deep in thought. His hand remained on my thigh, his touch warming my skin instead of making it crawl like anyone else’s would.
That served to both irk and fascinate me. Why him? Why was he the exception?
Obviously, it had to be a mental block that only didn’t apply to him. What had he done to be excluded?
I had mulled over it extensively, and in the end, concluded that it must have something to do with the contract we had made.
“Do you think what I am doing is ill-advised?” my consort eventually asked, breaking the long stretch of silence.
I twisted in my seat, tossing my arm over the back of the chair. I took a moment to just observe him and see if I could discover why he was asking me.
Did he believe I was ignorant of the intention behind his actions? Or was he simply concerned that even if he had intentions behind it, he was making a mistake?
I did my best to phrase my answer in a way that addressed both of those possibilities. “I cannot say it is foolproof, but either way it goes, you will have gotten what you need. Either Errol Falkor will die, or you will know to cut your losses sooner rather than later.”
Sarakiel’s thumb pressed down on the sharp tip of the pencil. “So, you believe that I should kill them all?”
“Eventually.” I took back the pencil. “Those who are fickle are impossible to trust.”
“So, you mean to tell me to use them and then dispose of them after they’ve fulfilled their immediate use?”
It wasn’t really a question he needed me to answer, so I responded with the phrase that had been chanting over and over in my head since I had sat down at this table. “In their stomach grows a seed. It grows and grows, filled with greed. The plant in their bellies will swallow them whole, the well-fed greed taking its toll.”
Well accustomed to my obscure verses, he prompted me to elaborate. “Meaning?”
I shrugged. “They’ll get what’s coming to them. One way or the other, they will be dead before long.”
I pressed my thumb down on the lead pick, watching, mesmerized, as my skin held out. Just like those western bastards who were still struggling to hold on as they were slowly crushed.
They’d all had a good time poking fun at me when I was in chains and drugged, but now look at them, shifting and sweating because it was their turn to fear for their lives, and they hadn’t even been broken or beaten yet.
I felt the irritation I had been trying to suppress for weeks. The true feeling had been greatly diluted from rage to annoyance.
I couldn’t allow it to be anything more than irritation. Not yet, at least.
If I let it become the consuming wrath that actually filled me, I knew I would only be causing more work for myself and Sarakiel later.
Still, it was hard to resist the urge to slaughter them. One at a time, I wanted to subject them to the torture I had suffered under Myrin’s care.
The more I thought about it, the more I wanted it.
If I did it one at a time, it would take me months to get through all of them because of the slow, drawn-out, gruesome fates I had planned for them.
Really, I saw no reason why Sarakiel wouldn’t at least give me one to play with.
Not that I had actually asked him. I was convinced he would tell me no, and I hated being told no.
That would only end in an argument between us, which was not something either of us needed. Well, maybe that was exactly what I needed. I needed to vent my frustration.
I wanted to engage in a chaotic, heart-pounding massacre again, where I could mutilate anyone I desired without having to even think about it.
I missed the iron tang filling my mouth. I missed the feeling of the thick wetness on my flesh, of itchy skin pinched in some places from dried blood. The gnawing hunger inside me became all too prevalent at times, when all I could think about was tearing into a warm body.
It worried me if I thought about it too long.
I knew that I wasn’t whole, but knowing it wasn’t too far from the truth when they called me a feral troubled me.
Everyone knew about the depraved ferals who lost all reasoning to a primal hunger that controlled them.
I hated being controlled, especially by something that I could never escape from once ensnared in it.
Maybe that was the reason I let the western shits continue to breathe.
They weren’t really breathing anyway, but panting like dogs trying to get into my consort’s good graces.
They always jumped at the chance to call me a mutt or Sarakiel’s pet, but I wasn’t the one who was a bitch in heat.
I had more self-respect in my pinky than all of them combined.
I had readily faced death on multiple occasions because I refused to beg for anything.
Now, faced with the same option, they were all tripping over themselves to please my consort in hopes of earning their lives.
“Fucking pricks,” I hissed. I pressed too hard in my anger and watched as my skin finally broke, allowing silver blood to bubble up and stain the wood. “I should have fucking killed them.”
And just like that, the carnivorous hunger came back.
Saliva accumulated in my mouth at the prospect of chasing down each and every one of the males owed my retribution.
I closed my eyes, swallowing back my spit as I shoved the urge away. “Fuck,” I whispered as I wrestled with myself, struggling to gain control over myself.
Every part of me was screaming to kill.
Jolting up from my seat, I drilled the pencil deep into the table, seething over the top of it as I reined myself back in. “Overconfident bastards!”
If I let myself slip for even just a second, they’d be dead, and they didn’t even realize how much danger they were in. They believed that until Sarakiel wished it, they were safe from my clutches.
I drove the pencil in deeper with an enraged screech.
This was all Sarakiel’s fault.
If he had never offered me that deal, the chance for revenge, for freedom, I would already have been free!
Death would have spared me from this mess, from the struggles I faced every day. How much longer could I deal with the ghost of Myrin, with the mercury that pained me every day, with the males that had mocked me, parading themselves around my territory, with the feral nature that fought to consume me?
How much longer before I gave in to any one of these battles that I was fighting every day?
Above all, my damned consort posed the most danger because of the desire I had to earn his respect and admiration.
