Born of Fury

CHAPTER 5

Sumi came awake to the sound of female laughter. For a mere instant, she was again a girl at home with her sister, lying on her bed while they traded stories of hopes and dreams.

But as her gaze focused on a tan cloth wall, she realized that she wasn’t at home. She was in a strange tent. And that wasn’t the sound of her older sister’s voice.

Omira was long dead, and she…

Her eyes widened as the pain in her body hit her and she remembered what she’d been ordered to do. Why she was here.

She’d been assigned a target, and had been attacked by something huge.

The laughter outside ended in a fierce curse. “I swear, Darice, if you don’t learn to pick up your dirty underwear and stow it properly, I’m going to choke you with it! I mean it! You’re so disgusting! Ugh!”

What in the Nine Worlds?

Sumi ground her teeth against the pain and rolled over. But as soon as she realized she wasn’t alone in the tent and her gaze focused on the other occupant, she froze in stark terror.

Holy gods. He was absolutely huge! While she’d seen that on the monitors, seeing it and being close enough to be dwarfed by him was an entirely different experience. He practically took up the entire tent.

No male should ever have shoulders so broad. Nor a scowl so fierce. For that matter, one of those beefy biceps had to be bigger around than her entire waist… and she wasn’t skinny. Dressed in the black and brown leather of an Andarion desert nomad, he made a ferocious sight with his braids pulled back from his face and secured by a leather tie at the nape of his neck. From the short leather epaulettes of his shirt, thick leather straps were wound around both arms and held more weapons than she’d ever seen on a dozen soldiers, never mind one male. His large hands were covered with black leather fingerless gloves, and an ancient Andarion battle sword was sheathed and strapped across his back.

I am so dead…

Another thing the commander had failed to warn her about was how much Dancer Hauk favored his brother Fain.

Every bit as muscled and fierce as Fain, Hauk took second to no one. His dark brows arched over a pair of eerie, piercing white-and-red eyes that glared a hole straight through her. There was no doubt she was on his menu, and he was already barbecuing her butt in his mind.

I am so dead, she repeated again.

Trembling uncontrollably, she did her best not to show her fear. But she was pretty sure he saw it. He’d have to be blind not to.

His gaze followed every move her hands made as if he was waiting for a reason to kill her. And still he didn’t speak. He just watched with a deeply unsettling intensity. If she didn’t win him over fast with guile, she would be a stain on the ground at his feet.

With perfectly sculpted features, he’d be pretty if not for the lethal aura and well-trimmed goatee and mustache. But there was nothing feminine about this gorgeous warrior.

He was simply horrifying and bloodthirsty.

“Before you lie to me,” he finally growled in a low, feral tone that was thickly accented. “I know who and what you are, assassin. Why you’re here.”

She swallowed hard at the underlying threat. “Then why am I still alive?”

“Uncle Hauk? Can you please tell your monkey that —” The female’s voice broke off as she entered the tent with a plate, and saw them. A friendly smile spread across her beautiful, innocent face as she met Sumi’s gaze. “You’re awake! I’m so glad you’re not dead.”

She handed the metal plate to Hauk, who made it look more like a saucer in comparison to the size of his gigantic hands, before she knelt down beside Sumi and felt her forehead. The girl’s concerned kindness stunned her. “Do you remember being injured? Do you know where you are?”

Completely confused, Sumi couldn’t answer at first. She’d been told that Hauk would be alone on some Andarion spiritual quest. No one had mentioned he’d have companions, never mind family with him. This girl, who appeared in her late teens or early twenties, had called him “uncle.” But she was quite human while Hauk was definitely not.

The girl glanced over her shoulder at Hauk, whose gaze threatened Sumi’s life. “Uncle Hauk, stop scowling like that. You’re terrifying the poor woman. She thinks you’re going to eat her.”

She turned back to Sumi with another bright, dimpled smile. “I know he’s huge and scary and a full Andarion, but he won’t hurt you. I promise. I tend to think of him as just a big attack dog, who’s actually quite cuddly once you learn to ignore his growls.”

Arching a brow, Hauk pinned a look of utter disbelief on the back of his niece’s head.

Unaware of his ire, she continued talking. “I’m Thia and he’s Hauk. We found you wounded and brought you back to our camp. Uncle Hauk patched you up. Can I get you something to eat or drink?”

Thia’s tenderness was as startling as it was unexpected.

“W-water?”

Thia patted her hand. “Be right back.” She passed a glower to Hauk. “Try not to scare her to death until I return, okay?”

How could she be so brazen with him? Did she lack all sense? That tone she used with him was tantamount to popping a ravenous, rabid beast on the nose and telling it to shush.

To Sumi’s shock, he actually appeared charmingly sweet as he smiled at the girl and spoke to her in a calm, gentle tone. “Thee? Can you give us a few?”

That seemed to unsettle the girl a bit. “Sure.” Biting her lip, Thia glanced to Sumi as if she realized there was more to Sumi’s appearance in their camp than mere happenstance.

As soon as she was gone, Hauk set his plate aside, and stood to tower over Sumi’s pallet.

She fought the urge to run. While he’d been huge before, up close and in her space, he was gargantuan. And there was no missing the bloodlust in his white-and-red eyes. Something made even more ominous when he opened his lips and ran his tongue down his long canines as if savoring the taste of her blood and bones. “What’s your name and rank?”

“M-m-my what?”

“I saw your League markings, assassin… Name. Rank. Now!” That had to be the fiercest, deadliest bark she’d ever heard.

“Agent Sumi —” She answered immediately, barely catching herself before she spoke a surname that would guarantee her a slow painful death at his humongous hands.

“Sumi, what?”

“Just Sumi.”

Crouching in front of her, he grabbed her arm and pushed her sleeve back to expose the branded words that mocked her every day of her miserable life. “I know you were conscripted into League service. What felony did you commit?”

Sumi stared into the intensity of his cold glare as old memories returned to torment her. Like Hauk, the bastard she’d killed had been merciless and cold. Unyielding. Unforgiving. And his attack on her had been completely unwarranted.

“Murder.”

“Premeditated?”

Without thinking, she shook her head. Then she cursed her stupidity. It was never a good thing to admit to your enemy that you were anything other than ruthless. But then, as now, she’d acted out of fear.

“Who did you kill?”

Trying her best not to return to that horrid night with her thoughts, she snarled the answer. “My boyfriend.”

He arched a brow at that. “For?”

“Breathing.”

One corner of his mouth twitched as if her sarcasm amused him. Then he sobered into a terrifying countenance. “I can well understand the urge to kill someone for breathing. Been known to succumb to it myself from time to time.” He glanced to the opening of the tent. When he looked back at her, she had no doubt that she was only one wrong answer from death. “I also know you’re a mother.”

Stunned at what she thought was a well-kept secret, she sucked her breath in sharply. “How?”

He pulled the covers back to show the bandage over her abdomen where she’d been gored by the tourah’s horns. “I saw the stretch marks when I cleaned your wound. Given the location, there’s only one thing that could have caused them. And by their number and depth, I know you carried to term.”

Damn, he was good. And he was right. Tears filled her eyes as she tried her best not to remember the baby that had been stolen from her before she’d ever had a chance to hold her.

“Where’s your child now?”

A single tear fled past her control. It always did whenever she thought about her daughter. “She was taken from me.”

“By The League?”

She started to lie, but why bother? He obviously wasn’t stupid. And it was standard League procedure to seize custody of any child born to their soldiers. “Yes.”

Hauk sat back on his haunches as she bravely blinked away her tears, and stiffened her spine in spite of the pain she had to be in. He admired her courage, and there was no way for her to fake the agony he saw in those hazel green eyes. He’d been around assassins and soldiers the whole of his life. And he knew more than his share of ruthless liars and grifters.

She was none of those. While she was trying to be fierce and tough, she was failing miserably at it.

In the dark, with the element of surprise on her side, he was sure she was extremely accomplished at killing someone. But right now, she knew what he did. Up close, face-to-face, she couldn’t go a single round against him and win. She just wasn’t large or strong enough to take him in an open fight. Nor was she some psychopathic assassin who had gleefully chosen her occupation and relished it.

No, that role had been forced on her. And those hazel eyes and scared demeanor betrayed the deep vulnerability he’d just laid bare. This woman had a soul.

Unlike him.

“Is your daughter why you agreed to be an assassin?”

She drew a ragged breath. “Does it matter?”

Yes, it did. Greatly. “Answer me!”

She flinched at his growl, making him wish he’d chosen a softer tone. “Yes. They would have executed me during my pregnancy with no regard for the fact that she would have died with me.”

Yet she would never be allowed to see her child. That was the law of The League.

Hauk forced himself to bite back a scoff at her blind ignorance. She wasn’t doing her baby any favors by allowing The League to raise it and train it to kill. Nyk was living proof of that.

But Hauk didn’t want to spit on her sacrifice or maternal love. Not when she was doing what she thought was best for the child. She’d sold her soul to the devil to save her daughter’s life.

That gave him hope for her humanity.

He placed the covers over her again. “There are two children outside this tent. My niece and nephew. Neither of them can survive here on their own. If you kill me, you will be consigning them to death, too. And just like your daughter with your actions, they don’t deserve to die for my crimes. Let me get them to safety, then I will surrender myself to you. I swear it on my ancestral blood.”

Sumi scowled at his offer, which was essentially suicide and they both knew it. “Why don’t you just kill me?”

“Is that what you want?”

“Not really. But I don’t understand why you would do this when my death would be a much easier solution.”

Hauk wasn’t sure either. His emotions were all over the place. Yet the one thing he kept coming back to was the futures of Thia and Darice.

Keris had been cut down before he had a chance to live. To see his own son born. Hauk didn’t want to deprive them of that. They had a lot more to live for than he did.

Honestly, the only future he had was hellacious and cold. Even a tortured death at Kyr’s hands would be better than what awaited him at home. He’d already had more than his fair share of Dariana’s “compassion.” He really didn’t want any more of it.

Sooner or later, we all die. And he’d rather go out for a good reason than a bad one.

Clearing his throat, he lowered his tone so that neither child could overhear him. “Two reasons. One, but for whatever accident befell you, I’d be dead already. You had the drop on me and we both know it. And two, if you found me here, someone else might. In the event I go down, I want to know that they’ll make it home alive and unharmed.”

Sumi wasn’t sure what to think of him. The one thing she’d never expected from him, especially given the way he fought in battle, was this degree of humanity and love.

Not from an Andarion male who had plenty of reasons to want her dead, and more than an easy opportunity to do it. It defied everything her sister had told her about their species.

But there was no missing the dark torment in his eyes. The relegation to die in order to save his family that stung her with its remorse. He was so unexpected.

And yet…

“There’s only one problem with your noble offer.”

He quirked a brow at her.

“I’m no longer a League assassin.”

His other brow shot north.

Sumi fell into the role Kyr had demanded she play so that she could gather intel on him. “I escaped them. It’s why I’m here. I’m in hiding. I didn’t find you. You found me.”

Oh yeah, that was a scary look. But beneath his fierce scowl was doubt as he tried to ascertain whether or not she was lying to him.

And she was a terrible liar. The only thing that might save her was the fact that he didn’t know her well enough to guess the truth.

“You expect me to believe that?” he asked.

“Why else would I be here?”

“To kill me.”

Now it was her turn to arch a brow at his simple, unemotional statement. Granted, there was truth to it, but still… “My goodness, that’s some ego you have there. Does everything in the universe revolve around you?”

“When it involves death and treachery, it tends to.” He glanced at the opening of the tent. “And this isn’t just about me. It’s about them.” He jerked his chin toward the arguing voices.

“You really do love them.”

He nodded without hesitation. “Thia has already had her mother brutally murdered by her stepfather. Her father and stepmother would be devastated if something happened to her. Darice lost his father before he was born. His mother is an honorable female who doesn’t deserve to lose her son, too. He’s all she has in this world that’s keeping her sane and in it. She barely survived the death of my brother. She’d never survive the death of their son. If you have any decency at all, I…” He clenched his teeth before he finished with a word she was sure choked his pride. “Beg you, for all their sakes, not to add any more tragedy to their lives. They love their children as much as you love your daughter. This trip is supposed to be a happy memory for them. Please, don’t taint it.”

Tears choked her over his sacrifice. He didn’t ask to spare his own life.

Just theirs.

She wanted to hate him for what his brother had done to her sister. Needed to hate him so that she could complete this mission that would end with his capture and eventual death.

But having had her own innocence slaughtered when she’d been too young to deal with it, she had no desire to pay that forward to anyone. She would have given anything to have had a protector like this, guarding her.

No matter what, she wouldn’t see someone else’s children hurt. For any reason. “I swear to you, as a mother, that I will not harm them.”

“Or cause them to be harmed,” he added.

“Or cause them to be harmed.”

He inclined his head to her.

“Uh, Darice! I can’t believe you did that! Really? You suck so much! Your mother ought to rent you out for birth control. Five minutes with you and any fertile female would beg for sterilization!”

As Hauk stood, a pained expression crossed his face. Sighing heavily, he stuck his head outside the tent to check on his family. “What’d he do now?”

“He farted, belched, then spilled all the food onto the fire.”

“I didn’t mean to. It was accident.”

“Accident, my blessed buttocks! You burped with me telling you not to!”

“For the love of all gods, don’t kill him!” Hauk snapped at Thia. “His mom would really miss him. And I might, too. Maybe. Just… grab some water and bring it in for our guest. I’ll help clean up the mess in a second.” He growled low in his throat before he returned to his plate and held it out to Sumi.

Stunned by his kindness, she stared at it.

“Go on,” he said with a tenderness that shocked her even more. “I ate earlier today and you need your strength to heal.”

As she took it, Thia came in with the water. She was still highly agitated as she faced her uncle. “Can I please make him lick up the mess?”

“I’d rather you not since I’d have to listen to him bitch about it all night.”

“Then can I kill him?”

“Please don’t. I want to do it myself. I think I’ve earned it more since I’ve had to tolerate him longer.”

Finally laughing, Thia handed the water to Sumi.

When Hauk started to leave, he tugged gently at Thia’s arm. “C’mon, sweetie. Let’s give her time to rest.” He held the tent open for Thia, who quickly made her exit.

He hesitated as he pinned a sharp glare on Sumi. “Do we need to move camp tonight?”

She shook her head. “I’m here alone. I told you. I’m on the run from The League. Unless someone hunting me stumbles on us, we’re safe.”

Suspicion darkened his glower. “Truth?”

“I swear. Had someone else been with me, I wouldn’t have been left for dead out there, and you’d be dead already.”

That finally succeeded in getting him to relax. “All right. Just remember, whatever your intentions, Thia and Darice both have parents who love them as much as you love your daughter.”

And then he was gone.

Sumi didn’t miss the fact that he said nothing of his own parents and how they’d feel about losing their son. Both of whom, she knew from her research, were very much alive.

Fascinating…

Nor had anyone ever attempted to surrender to her before. In the past, her targets had gone out kicking and screaming, trying to take her with them.

Hauk’s actions were more akin to a parent guarding his young than an uncle. And it said a lot about the male’s integrity and decency.

How can I convict him now?

What choice do I have?

Sickened by her cowardly assignment, she dropped her gaze to the plate and water. How long had it been since anyone had been nice to her, never mind kind?

Honestly, she couldn’t remember.

No, that wasn’t true. Her sister had always been kind to her. But Omira had died a long time ago.

Unshed tears constricted her throat as she thought about Thia, who was obviously part human. Omira’s worst fear had been having a hybrid baby. Half human. Half Andarion.

Too bad her sister hadn’t known how beautiful her child could have been. In Omira’s mind, she’d pictured a monster that would devour her should she try to feed it. But Thia wasn’t a monster.

Never had Sumi seen a prettier young woman.

In a weird way, Thia reminded her of her sister. They both had that inner fire that warmed you and drew you close to them. She only hoped Thia didn’t lose her spark the way Omira had.

And all because of a Hauk. Brother to the one outside, which made her wonder if one of the kids was Fain’s.

Thia was too old. But the boy…

Dancer had said his father was dead. Could Fain have met the same fate as her sister?

She didn’t know why, but that brought another wave of tears to her eyes. Even though she hated Fain now, she’d loved him as her brother-in-law. She’d been just a kid when her sister had married him. And he had treated her with the same respect and regard that Dancer had shown her thus far.

“Sumi! Come here and meet the male I’ve been telling you about!”

Closing her eyes, she remembered the smile on Omira’s face as her sister and Fain had picked her up from school the first time. Because Andarions weren’t human, they couldn’t stand being referred to as men, women, or people. They were male or female.

And scary as all get-out.

Sumi’s eyes had widened as she looked up and up and up at her sister’s boyfriend. Barely sixteen, Fain had been huge for any human male, and given her much smaller size, he’d seemed even larger.

But as soon as he’d seen Sumi’s fear, he’d knelt down and given her a sweet, tight-lipped smile to hide his fangs so that he wouldn’t frighten her any worse. “Hi, Sumi. I’m Fain. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

She’d swallowed in terror. “Are you going to eat me?”

He’d narrowed his eyes on her with a frightening intensity. “Are you made of chocolate?”

She’d shaken her head.

“Then you’re safe from me.” Smiling tenderly, he’d taken her hand in his and led it to his warm cheek so that she could see that though he wasn’t human, he was humane. “I promise I don’t bite without an invitation.” With the kindest touch, he’d picked her up and carried her home.

In that instant, she’d fallen in love with him as a big brother.

Even though Fain had been forced to work three jobs to pay for her sister’s school and their living expenses, he had always made time for Sumi. Whenever she’d stayed with them, he’d gone out of his way to make her feel like she was his blood sister, too.

And all the love she had for him had died when her sister had taken her own life because no human would have her once they found out her ex-husband was Andarion.

None of them.

Either their prejudice got in the way, or their fear that Fain would stalk and kill them for being with her. Omira had been a total anathema to everyone. Male and female.

Unable to deal with it and her own fear that Fain would hunt her down and kill her, she’d overdosed on painkillers.

And left Sumi with no one and nothing… only the remnants of a shattered heart that refused to heal. Something Fain had promised her would never happen. He had said he would always be there for them both. But instead of protecting her like he’d promised, he’d done more harm to her and her sister than anyone else.

All because Omira had told him that she didn’t want any children in their marriage. For that single reason, he’d walked out on his vows and left Omira to fend for herself.

After that selfish breach of trust, Sumi’s love for him had turned to pure hatred. If Fain had never come into their lives, she’d still have her sister, and none of these last few horrid years would have happened.

Everything would have been different.

She would have been different.

Fain had lied to her and Omira, and no doubt his brother was lying to her as well. No male of any species could be trusted. They were violent and selfish. Both of her live-in boyfriends had taught her that with the back of their hands.

Whatever else happened, she couldn’t let herself forget that she was alone in this world. And regardless of what others said, they didn’t care. They were too busy with their own lives to waste time or energy on someone else.

She looked down at her wrist where she’d been branded.

Kill or be killed. That was the way of this harsh world. And she would much rather be a killer than a victim.

At the end of the day, no Hauk was worth her life or her daughter’s well-being. She would complete this mission, get her daughter free of League custody, and then she’d find some way to join Kalea, and raise her daughter so that no one would ever be able to harm her baby the way they’d harmed Sumi.

No lies. No feeling lost and alone. Adrift.

Kalea was all she had in this universe, and she wouldn’t fail her child.

Not again.