Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors #6)

Ecstasy Untamed (Feral Warriors #6)
Pamela Palmer


Chapter One

White-hot rage glowed, burning away his mind until only banked coals remained, coals ready to erupt into flame at the slightest stir of thought, of consciousness. His own yell rang out, silent and horrible in this suffocating dark, pounding at the insides of the skull he'd long since ceased to feel.

A perfect blackness had become his only reality, devoid of sound, touch, taste, smell. Devoid of life. His only awareness, the screaming rage, the endless fury.

From far away, a voice whispered, an echo of another time, another place, tormenting him with memories of what he'd lost. Memories of life, of light, of freedom. Of the Feral brothers he longed to rejoin and knew he'd never see again. His friends. Shape-shifters. Immortals. Though that was a lie, wasn't it? Immortal meant "unable to die," and he was certainly not that. None of them were. Quick to heal, incapable of aging, yes. But unable to die? No creature was that.

And his own death stalked him now.

The moment he'd realized he'd fallen into a Daemon spirit trap, he'd known all was lost. The animal spirit that had long ago marked him to be one of the Feral Warriors, one of the last nine shape-shifters that remained in the world, was being torn from him. And a Feral, once marked, couldn't live without his animal. Within days, he himself would be dead. Worse . . . much worse . . . the animal spirit, too, would be destroyed. Or trapped for eternity where it was as good as dead, unable to mark another.

The nine would become eight. No, not eight. He and Tighe had fallen into this trap together.

Seven. Seven Feral Warriors to stop the Daemons from once more rising and destroying the world.

The voice sounded closer now, no longer quite a whisper, yet indistinct, melding with others. As if they'd come to say good-bye. Or perhaps not good-bye. Perhaps the spirits of the seventeen Feral Warriors who'd been lost in this trap centuries ago had come to welcome him into their brotherhood. The brotherhood of the dead.

His soul shriveled at the prospect of spending eternity in this ceaseless dark.

Behind his thoughts, the animal within him screeched his fury, blending with the rising insistence of the voices. For a time, he'd thought the hawk spirit had left him, but he was back, raging with anger.

"Hawke." A voice broke through, his name slicing through the banshees in his mind. Kougar's voice. If he were able to feel his pulse, it would be racing. The blood would be pounding in his ears.

Was he hallucinating, now? Kougar sounded blessedly near.

"Come on, Wings." Tighe. "We need you, buddy. Come back to us."

Why would he imagine Tighe's and Kougar's voices in the same place? Unless Kougar, too, had fallen into the spirit trap. Were they all lost to the world? Were the last of the shape-shifters gone forever?

The rage that had become part of him in this place swelled, a river of fire burning away voices and thought. In his mind, he heard a snarl that sounded like his own, and felt as if his fangs were dropping, as if the claws had erupted from his fingertips in the way they did when he, or any of the warriors, went feral, a partial shift enabling them to access their wilder natures, yet fight as equals whether hawk or tiger, wolf or snake.

The growl began to vibrate in his throat, rumbling in his ears. Real. It felt . . . sounded . . . real.

Was his mind going, too?

The fury drove him to strike out, and he felt his arm move, felt his claws snag in flesh. Warm blood slid down his fingers onto his palm.

His heart pounded against his ribs, the thudding pulsing in his ears as he fought to break free of the darkness, driven by a meld of fury and desperate hope. Strong hands clamped down on his arms. He fought the restraint with all the wildness of the storm that possessed him, thrashing against his captors.

"Hawke." Kougar's voice rang with a strange note. A warmth he'd never heard in it before.

"Hawke, cease!" Lyon's voice ripped through the chaos, commanding as always.

As he'd done all his life, whenever the Chief of the Ferals commanded, he obeyed. Hawke fought to stop thrashing, his breathing fast and hard as the rage slowly receded. Sensation rushed at him from every direction - the sound of his friends' voices, the smells of Feral House - male sweat, the sweeter fragrances of the women, the warm, aged mustiness of a centuries-old house, and the rich, aromatic scents of roasting meats and fresh bread.

And finest of all, the feel of hands holding him down. Strong, but never cruel. The hands of his brothers.

Goddess, let this be real.

"Hawke, you're safe," Kougar's voice assured him.

As the last of the fight left him, the red haze receding from his mind, he blinked, his eyelids heavy, as if he'd been asleep for weeks. Slowly, his vision focused on the three men hovering over him, holding him down. Lyon. Kougar. Tighe.

"You're real." His voice cracked with disuse.

Tighe smiled, flashing a dimple. "We're real."

"Welcome back," Lyon said, his voice thick.

Hawke's gaze swung slowly to Kougar and found the usually emotionless cougar shifter with a smile in his eyes that Hawke had never seen. Kougar extended his hand, and when Hawke lifted his own, Kougar slapped forearms with him in the traditional greeting of the Ferals and pulled Hawke up.

The room shifted, and he found himself sitting on a pallet on the floor, a temporary dizziness swinging through his head, then abating as he eyed the blessedly familiar floral wallpaper and the chandelier hanging above the massive table.