The scent tells a story that bypasses all rational thought. My mate is in mortal danger. She’s hurt. Afraid. Calling out for me to save her.
The rational part of my mind — the educated, civilized orc who had a conversation about consent in a basement six hours ago — tries to assert itself. This is an artificial chemical weapon. Sloane is safe behind a steel door upstairs. She’s fine. She’s protected. Don’t?—
But that voice is immediately drowned out by something far older and more powerful. Ten thousand years of orc evolution cannot be denied.
The change begins at my core. Heat spreads outward like molten lava through my veins. My heartbeat doubles, triples, pumping superheated blood to every extremity. The careful mental barriers I’ve built crumble like sand.
Red haze fills my vision.
My bones stretch and thicken, adding inches to my already considerable height. My arms and legs grow bigger, heavier. Muscle mass increases exponentially. My shirt tears across the shoulders and my pants strain at the seams before splitting apart. Tusks elongate into something wicked and sharp, longer than they’ve ever been. My horns grow, curving into dangerous points that scrape the ceiling. Claws extend from my fingers.
Steam rises off my skin despite the cool morning air. My vision sharpens until I can see individual dust motes floating in the shafts of light through the shattered windows. And my hearing amplifies until I can distinguish the different heartbeats of everyone in this house.
And above me, behind a steel door I can hear her heartbeat. Fast and scared.
My female is scared.
“Sloane,” I roar. “Sloane.”
I turn on the mercenary who threw the bomb who has been standing with a smirk on his face, recording my transformation with a cell phone. What happens next takes less than three seconds as my claws tear through his tactical vest like paper.
I throw my head back and let out a thunderous roar and call out her name yet again.
“He’s been hit!” Aldar’s voice, somewhere behind me. Distant. Irrelevant. “Scent bomb! He’s going feral! Grab the chains.”
Then I’m moving. Not toward any remaining threats who might be outside, instead I stomp upstairs, toward Sloane. Her scent pulls me upward like gravity reversed. My mate is above me, behind a door, and she is afraid. I must get to her and take her somewhere safe. A cave. A mountain. Anywhere away from this blood and danger. I will take her and keep her and fill her with my seed and no one will ever threaten her again.
“Sloane!” Garlen’s voice, louder, urgent. “Stay in the safe room! Do not come out!”
A hand grabs my arm. Garlen is trying to stop me. I throw him off without looking and he crashes into the wall. The enhanced strength is enormous — normal Jonus could never toss his cousin like that.
Aldar moves to block the stairs. I shove past him like he’s nothing.
I take the stairs three at a time, each step cracking under my increased weight. Her scent is so close now. Her heartbeat thundering. She’s right there, behind that steel door, and I can hear her breathing.
The feral part of me screams to break the door. Take her. Keep her safe. Make her mine.
“Sloane,” I shout.
I reach the top of the stairs and the safe room door is ten feet away. My claws are extended and my fist draws back, aimed at the steel?—
The door opens.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sloane
Jonus screams my name.
It’s not remotely said in the way he says it in bed, low and warm against my hair. Not the way he said it twenty minutes ago at the breakfast table, rough with love. This is something else entirely. A roar that shakes the walls, vibrates through the steel door and into my bones. Primal and barely recognizable as a voice I know.
It’s the anguished call of a male who will tear the world apart to reach his female.
“Oh no,” I whisper, meeting Laurie’s troubled gaze. “Jonus has been hit by a scent bomb.”
We’d been listening to the sounds of combat for what felt like hours but must’ve been minutes. Gunfire, crashing, the grunts and roars of orcs and men fighting. The muffled sounds of a household being destroyed. I suspect Garlen and Ellie are going to need the whole downstairs remodeled when all is said and done.
Then we hear Aldar’s shout from below, “Scent bomb. He’s going feral.”
