“Yep.” Brody turned his attention from the cat to Iven, and I did the same. I’d think about alien cat telepathy later.
Iven wasn’t Iven. Not anymore. His clothes were ripped to shreds. Pants in tatters around thighs bigger than tree trunks. His shirt was, once more, in tatters, but this time I understood the cause. Iven had transformed. Grown nearly two feet taller. His head almost touched the ten foot ceiling, and his shoulders were almost as wide as the teacher’s desk. His face was his…but not. His jaw was thicker. Wider. His handsome face was less refined, more primal. He was Iven to the tenth power. The same, but more.
As I watched, he plucked a bullet from his shoulder and laughed. The flesh moved, filling in the gap, healing him faster than the attackers could do any significant damage.
“Holy shit.” Did they all heal like that?
“Told ya.” Brody was practically giddy, like we were in the front row of a rock concert watching his favorite band. “My father said Atlan Warlords are the strongest warriors in the whole fleet. He said he never worried about going into battle if they had beasts with them.”
I tried to imagine Iven on a battlefield surrounded by hundreds of Warlords in beast mode. Iven was unarmed, mostly naked. What would it be like facing a thousand beasts wearing armor? Carrying blasters or blades?
How was it possible the war with the Hive had been going on for hundreds of years, as the Prillons claimed, if the Warlords all fought like this?
11
Krystal
* * *
There were only two attackers still moving.
Iven moved faster than I thought possible for someone his size and picked up one of the men by his feet. Iven swung him around and tossed him like a frisbee. The man’s head slammed into the wall with a sickening thud.
Only one left. The one who’d bothered to voice a protest about killing a child. He had both hands in the air above his head in surrender. His rifle lay on the ground at his feet. He kicked it away and backed away from the beast. “Please, no. I didn’t know she wanted us to kill a kid, man. I’m sorry.”
The rumble that came from Iven’s chest would have made most people run away, screaming in terror. The man had obviously looked death in the eye more than once, because that’s what Iven was right now. Death personified. Vengeance.
Alexander the Great moved behind the mercenary. Bumped his legs with a hiss.
The man jumped. “Look, she offered a lot of money. I swear, I didn’t know we were coming for a kid.”
“Warlord Iven, stop.” Brody stood up and stepped out from behind the table before I could stop him. He moved faster than a normal child when he wanted to. For the first time since I’d brought him to Earth, I realized hiding him here was going to be more difficult than I had hoped. And that damn cat was going to keep growing. What was I going to do when Brody was breaking every track, football or baseball record on the books, and he had a pet cat the size of a pony at the house?
The man dared a glance at Brody. If he thought it odd that he was pleading with a six-year-old for his life, he gave no sign. “I’m sorry, Broderick.”
“Brody.”
“Brody. I’ve hurt a lot of people. Mostly bad people. But I swear, I don’t do kids.”
Iven the beast crossed his arms over the biggest chest I’d ever seen and watched the small boy with incredible patience. My mate really was magnificent.
“All right. What’s your name?” Brody asked.
“Simon.” Iven snarled at him and he scrambled back. “Just Simon. I swear. I’d give you a last name, but it’s fake. I don’t exist. They wiped me from the books when they put me in the programs.”
Brody’s gaze was hard as diamonds. I’d never seen that look on his face, the look of a predator, of the future Elite Hunter he would become. “I don’t need your name to find you. I’m an Everian Hunter. Have you heard of us?”
The man nodded. “Of course.”
Brody tilted his head and studied the man for a few seconds.
“Can I put my hands down?”
“No.” Iven answered first, his beast’s barked command loud in the sudden quiet.
“Guess not.” Brody shrugged and signaled Alexander to come sit at his side. Iven, Brody and Alexander the Great. My new alien family. I could almost hear Kimberly laughing at the irony. I’d been the one who wanted nothing to do with aliens. Nothing.
Now I wanted everything.
