Heart of the Guardians: Adoring Destiny by Adrianna Adore (best big ereader .TXT) 📗

it happens. We can choose to mate when we are sixteen. That is what brings the change. When a boy becomes a man. When a girl becomes a woman. For your kind, for the bears and big cats, it’s different. Your change comes when your markings begin to appear. Once they are fully realized, they put you inside the portal and this forces the final change although it isn’t necessary. This is your custom, full of pomp and circumstance. When you face your ancient enemies, your distant relatives, the change is instant. Your body remembers and shifts on instinct. Our change is raw and often bloody.”

“How do you know so much about us?” James asked. “Stig tell you everything?”

“Some.” Dimitri said. “Your secrets aren’t very secret among our kind.”

“So what are your secret rituals?” he asked in anger. “You get laid, turn into a wolf then celebrate by eating a baby?”

“No. We get laid and shift and if we’re not in complete control, if the animal form doesn’t allow for the human consciousness, we are culled. That is why some of our kind choose to remain celibate their entire lives.”

James almost stopped running. He couldn’t imagine going to his wedding bed knowing he might be killed before the night was over.

“We had a fragile peace earlier this century, there were even talks of us joining the council of Guardians again but then the human wars happened. We were behind the iron curtain for so many years you forgot about us, then your king wouldn’t help us and now we are cleaning up the demons coming through in our lands. We’re doing the job the Guardians are supposed to be doing but aren’t because you have grown old, weak and pathetic with your trappings of wealth and ceremonial displays of power. You hide your duality, barely know how to use it and try to control your ability to transform. You fear your power, you don’t embrace it as we do.”

James said nothing but seethed inside. He wanted to lash out, tell the wolf man his kind were too savage to live in the modern world, that they should have been eliminated centuries ago but the Russian was right. Just because the world was kinder and gentler than it once was, the creatures beyond the portal weren’t. They were just as vicious and wild as they ever were. They hungered to butcher the men and violate the women. They had always been that way, the ancient texts told of untamed times when giants roamed the earth and all manner of unclean offspring nearly destroyed the struggling remnants of humanity.

Maybe Isabella had been right but for the wrong reasons. He was weak and cowardly. He used sex and a dominating woman to control his urges to shift into a barely tamed beast. The council had urged restraint, it was the way of the Guardians. You didn’t shift unless you were needed to do battle with the creatures from the other side. A good Guardian would never transform to his animal form unless the portal was breached. It was shameful in the council’s eyes. It meant you were not in control and succumbed to the animal urges. Now, running with this wild man who embraced his animal half, he was starting to doubt the Council’s wisdom. Dimitri hungered for battle, he’d fought and killed demons in the mountains of his homeland. He knew how to destroy them.

James was afraid. His only encounter with them had been when he was thrust through the portal for his rite of passage. He had run away from them, fought a few small ones no larger than dogs and even those had left scars on him. He came back through boasting and bloodied and had buried the terror deep inside him. The door was sealed. It was guarded. He would never have to face the demons again. Or so he thought.

Two of the council members were in the ramshackle old woodsman’s hut deep in the forest. The doctors were tending to their wounds, stitching up jagged gashes when James and Dimitri stepped into the room.

“It’s about time.” Pallerson said, anger and pain in his voice. “What kept you?”

James glanced around at the blood-stained guards and the two guardians who looked like they’d been chewed up and spit out.

“Where’s Scrimson and Frank?” he asked, fearing the worst.

“At the mouth of the cave. They’re keeping the beast inside.” Councilman Tolley answered “It’s the last of them, the strongest I’ve ever seen. It can’t get out but we can’t get in to kill it, either.”

“My countrymen?” Dimitri asked “Did you find any of them?”

“Yes but the hell spawn found them first.” Pallerson said. “They were easily tracked once the unclean had the scent. Nothing smells like shifter blood.”

They followed the overgrown path up the mountain trail to the entrance of a cave a half mile away. Scrimson was pacing, guarding the hole in the rocks, his massive lion form impressive in the mid-day light filtering through the trees. His tawny coat was streaked with red and the slashes on his shoulder and haunch seeped blood.

“Where’s Frank?” James asked as he approached.

Scrimson shifted back to his human form, pulled his robe from a bush and wrapped it around himself. He looked old and haggard, the gray in his hair and beard seemed more pronounced than it had the last time they saw him. He sat heavily on a rock and waved in a general direction down the hill.

“I think he died, maybe not. He’ll be back. The creature almost got out in its last rush, it’s getting desperate. It’s been quiet for a few hours, maybe we injured it. I’m too exhausted to yell at you fools for entering the portal, go finish it off. I need to get stitched up.”

The old man moved away from the entrance, limping and in pain but he held his head high. He’d defended the realm, he’d done his job as Guardian. He’d let the younger