Sohut's Protection: A Sci-fi Alien Romance (Riv's Sanctuary Book 2) A.G. Wilde (best way to read an ebook TXT) 📖

What were she and Sohut going to do?

They were outnumbered, outmatched.

She was sure they could probably outrun them and put up a fight, but she wasn’t sure how she’d fare in one-and-one combat—that didn’t mean she wouldn’t fucking try her best.

One of the guards spoke, his words slicing through her senses, making her think she’d missed a part of the conversation.

“Qrak, we’ll make you then.”

Sohut stiffened even more, and he took a backward step as something zinged in the air. It sounded like an electrical current, the sort of sound you hear if you get too close to compromised power lines.

“Don’t you phekking dare. You’ll hurt her too!” Sohut growled.

“Does it look like we qrakking care?”

That was all the warning she got before the pain.

A searing pain that felt as if she was burning from the inside out. Her entire body shook as she lost control of her limbs and she was vaguely aware of going down…

But she wasn’t the one falling. Sohut was.

He fell to his knees, his arms still locked around her as she heard him grunt and she realized that whatever the guards were doing, they were doing to him, not her. She was only receiving the second-hand effect.

As Sohut fell forward and her back hit the earth below, she was suddenly staring upward through her watery eyes into the faces of three alligator-guards.

Their cruel yellow gazes stared down at her and Sohut as the weapon in their hands glowed strangely in the light of their ship.

It looked like a power rod. A shock rod.

They’d shocked Sohut with a direct current.

A rage she didn’t know she had burst within her organs and she screamed—only no sound came from her mouth. Her scream was silent as her body shook with the after-effects of the current.

She didn’t have time to get to her feet. The gator-guards helped her with that as one moved forward and pulled her from Sohut’s arms.

No.

“No.” Sohut groaned as he tried to stand. He reached for her, but the shock rod was promptly planted into his back and another dose of the current sent through his body.

His skin was turning black.

They were killing him!

His green gaze met hers and this time the scream that ripped from her body echoed into the forest.

She tasted the blood before she realized her head snapped to the side. The pain of the slap followed but she didn’t care.

She turned her burning rage on the guard that had slapped her, kicking and flailing but as her legs connected with his underbelly, he only grabbed her to stop her movement.

“I’ll kill you,” Sohut groaned again and began to move and something inside her crumpled and wrung. “I’m going to kill every last one of you.”

He needed to stay down.

They were going to kill him if he didn’t.

The guards cackled again and the world around her began to fade.

They were being beamed up into the ship above them and there was nothing she could do about it.

Her eyes locked on Sohut’s, on the man that had stolen her heart without her even realizing, and the utter pain in his eyes was enough to break her heart.

“Sohut…” She gulped.

The last thing she saw, an image that would be committed to her memory forever, was Sohut reaching for her…

Her heart broke.

It broke into a million pieces because there was a distinct feeling that she’d never feel his touch ever again.

27

Sohut fell on his back, his breath coming in labored gasps.

They’d almost shocked the life out of him and he’d have let them if that had meant he could’ve saved her.

But he couldn’t.

He’d failed.

Again he’d failed.

In the darkness of the jungle, the world never felt more alone…more desolate.

Clee-yo was gone because of him.

Once more, he was the reason the person he cared about the most was going to…

He didn’t dare to say it.

He didn’t even dare to think it.

The feeling of dread that he’d been harboring finally settled around him.

This was what he’d been afraid of.

This was the future he hadn’t wanted to happen.

This was the reason it’d all felt too good to be true.

A pained sound left him as he tried to rise into a sitting position, propping himself up on his elbows.

In his hand, something blinked red in the darkness.

The tracker.

His life-organ skipped a beat.

He still had the tracker.

It gave him a bittersweet feeling and he gripped the device tightly.

He couldn’t have destroyed it. Doing so would have activated it anyway. He’d needed to decommission it completely and the only way to do that would have been to take it back to his friend, Ka’Cit.

Ka’Cit would have had the tech to do such a thing.

Bio-trackers were finicky devices. It wasn’t something he’d wanted to play around with.

So he’d kept the thing.

The very thing that had led to the Hedgeruds finding them…finding her.

His physical pain turned emotional, churning in his stomach and he almost doubled over.

It was like when he was a chid and his mor had decided to send him and Riv to the mines. It was the same feeling all over again.

“But, momor, I don’t want to go!”

“Shut your phekking mouth. Look at me! I cannot. No longer can I do this alone.”

“But momor…”

“This is your fault, Sohut. Remember that. I could deal with Riv alone…but not you. Not you and your weakness…

Remember that you are the reason your mor has to beg on the streets of Dragxul because you are weak. I rue the day you fell from my body…you pest.”

“Mor…”

“This is your fault. It is your fault your saran left us. It’s your fault you’re going to the mines. You are weak. No Merssi should be as weak as you. You are a curse from my womb. A curse upon me, a curse upon your daran, and a curse upon your brother.”

A curse.

A failure.

All because he’d been a sickly child.

He was the reason his mother had sent him and Riv to the mines. He was the reason his