THEY DIDN’T STICK AROUND to cuddle. And as much as Stella wanted to get her hands—and lips—on Arest, she was glad. This cave gave her the creeps and there were too many of those monsters lurking for her to ever feel safe, even with her beastly man walking at her side.
The path up and away from the water seemed steeper than it had been coming down, but Stella kept her lips sealed as her calves burned. Arest had been fighting hulking monsters and doing most of the hard work, she could handle a little walk uphill.
No monsters lurked on the way back up and they made it to the crack in the wall without incident. Without stopping to discuss it, she went first. The monsters were lurking behind them. Hopefully. The halls of the tunnel weren’t exactly safe, but they were well lit.
Still, Stella scrambled as fast as she could and gave the room a good look around before daring to step out. Arest was only a second behind her. She had no idea how long they’d been in the cave. With no clock and no sun, telling time was an impossible task. But she didn’t think they’d been there for long. They’d only taken enough time for water, a snack, and pleasure.
She squeezed her thighs together as she remembered the press of Arest’s lips against her. Being a man, he had, of course, not wanted to talk about it. But she could sense a change in him, in them. Before they’d been two fellow survivors, relying on one another out of proximity and need. Now... now she knew she couldn’t leave this place without him. And if anyone from the outside came to hurt him, she’d do everything she could to stop it. She’d meant what she said to him. She would protect him from the ‘trainers,’ whoever they were.
He was hers.
Maybe she should have been scared by the intensity of that thought, but it was too perfect, too right. He walked half a step in front of her, giving her a view of those strong muscles and his tight ass moving under his loose pants. Mine. She more than wanted him. She didn’t just want his big claws protecting her from the monsters that lurked around them. She wanted him to hold her, to kiss her, to keep her close and never let her go.
Stella didn’t think like that normally, and she would have run screaming if they were back on Earth. But they were locked in a tunnel on some strange planet, and there was no running from this. From him. She knew that she should sink back into herself, erect an emotional wall and give herself that modicum of protection.
But then Arest glanced over at her, that devilish grin glinting on his lips, and her heart flipped and opened up.
No wall could stand up against that smile.
She grabbed onto his hand and stood up next to him. She liked touching him, being touched by him, and since it was the only luxury right now, she’d take it and not let go. Hand in hand, they climbed back up the hallway where they’d come from. When they reached the top, her brow furrowed.
“This hallway wasn’t here last time,” she said. Where once there’d only been the path down, now a new hallway branched out to the left, long and brightly lit without a monster in sight. The path they’d been following led straight ahead, but the lights seemed dimmer. She could only see a dozen or so meters down the way. Beyond that it was all gloom and mystery.
Arest gave a little grunt she took as agreement. Maybe he’d never be a chatty fellow, but she could get used to that. She’d never been much of a talker either.
They both looked down the way they’d been going. Stella didn’t like the new path. Why had it appeared? She couldn’t see a seam in the wall where a door would have been, but she supposed there must be one. This place had too many secrets. She just wanted to take Arest home and keep him in her bed for a week.
Maybe a month.
“Do you think we triggered the door somewhere?” she asked. “Or... are we being led somewhere?”
Arest shrugged, and Stella supposed he was right. At the moment, it didn’t really matter.
They looked at one another and then down the new path before stepping into the brightly lit hallway, finally going somewhere that they hadn’t yet traveled.
When the door slid shut behind them, Stella just rolled her eyes. She was too sick of this place to be scared.
***
THIS NEW SECTION OF the tunnels was as much of a maze as the first, but Arest mapped it out in his mind just the same, tracking their turns and counting his steps. By the third hallway they came to, he knew the answer to Stella’s question.
They were being herded somewhere.
Lights dimmed and lit, doors opened and closed, and they even found a pack full of energy bars that they both ate with glee. Perhaps they’d never been meant to go into that cavern and now whoever controlled these tunnels had given up subtlety to lead them where they were meant to go.
Or, perhaps, surviving the cavern had proved something to the controllers. Either way, Arest could feel that they were getting close to something big. The place stank of moisture and things long dead, but at the edge of his senses there was something else, something he couldn’t quite latch onto.
Up ahead, air whooshed as a door opened and closed. Arest tensed, letting go of Stella’s hand. She dropped back a step, sensing the change in him as he focused on the danger up ahead. He held up a hand, urging her to stay in place as he moved forward a few steps, trying to see if a creature had been let into the hallways.
Under his feet, the floor was uneven. He looked down and saw giant gouges in the stone. They looked like they’d been raked there with giant claws from a beast at least twice his size. Arest knelt low, drawing in deep breaths and tracking the scents. But there was nothing but him and Stella and the stench of the hallway.
He turned around to beckon her forward. Given the tunnels’ nasty habit of opening and closing invisible doors, he hadn’t stepped far away. But behind him, the wall slid shut with a silent whisper and locked into place with a click almost too quiet for him to hear.
Rage poured through him and Arest surged up, launching himself at the door with a possessed madness. He screamed, the sound ripping out of his throat and scraping glass from mouth to lungs. He didn’t care, he couldn’t feel it. He barely noticed that the lights remained on, and if one of the tunnel creatures attacked him right then, he’d end the thing in a single swipe of claws.
No matter how he tried, he couldn’t move the wall. His heart beat fast enough for him to hear and sweat beaded his brow as energy flooded him, urged him to do anything to find Stella. He punched the wall, uncaring of the pain in his knuckles as they took the brunt of the damage and barely dented the stone.
When that did nothing, he turned to his claws, scraping and digging into the deep gouges that were already there.
That made him pause.
He looked back down at the ground and saw those same claw marks that he’d noted earlier. He placed his palm on the marks and confirmed that they were twice as big as his own hand, big enough to rip through metal and tear away the side of a building.
But not big enough to ram through stone.
At least the claw marks were on this side of the tunnel. Arest would fight anything that posed a threat to Stella, and if there was something here, he had to find it and end it. For her.
He waited, but nothing stirred in the shadows down the hall. Nothing clung to the ceiling waiting to drop down on him. The hallway stretched down as far as he could see, and none of his senses hinted at any danger. He was alone, cut off from his woman.
A memory of the room they’d slept in stirred, and he ran his hands along the walls, looking for a control panel to the door. But this time there was nothing but solid stone. Nothing that would let him turn back and find her.
He placed his ear against the rock and quieted his body as best he could. His heart still beat a mad rhythm, but he could make out the distant drip of water and hear his own breath once again. But nothing trickled in through the stone, not even the muffled hope of a sound. If Stella was back there, he couldn’t hear.
And in his heart, he knew that this had been done on purpose. Whoever owned these tunnels didn’t want them together for whatever came next. And Arest didn’t know if they wanted him to do their dirty work, as he’d done so many times before, or if this was a more sinister game, one where he was the bystander and Stella the target.
It didn’t matter. He’d tear down these tunnels brick by brick if that was what it took to get her back.
Purpose settled over him, not quite calming the beast, but giving him a direction. He could waste the night away raging at the door and failing to get it open. He knew that if there were controls on the other end, Stella would have done her part and let him through. But since she hadn’t, he had to find another way to her.
He turned his gaze back to the hallway behind him. The light seemed to pulse to the beat of his heart, and at first he thought it was an illusion from the rush of rage he’d only started to come down from. But the pulsing grew stronger and Arest knew this was the path he needed to take.
He’d kill anyone or anything that dared to touch his woman, and when he was done, this place would be a smoldering ruin, with no one left to remember it.