Warlord Reunited, the fourth standalone story in the Chamele Barbarian Warlords series, is releasing on February 18th.
Last week, I shared the first scene from the first chapter.
You can read that scene here:
http://tasteofcyn.com/?p=7056
This week I’m sharing the fourth scene of that first chapter.
***
“You’re safe where you are now.” He yelled that into the wind, needing to hear those words. “Don’t leave your academy. Don’t come here, gerel.” He clenched his jaw so hard it cracked. “That’s an order from your warrior, your Warlord—your barbarian, as you call me.”
The prospect that she might make the journey filled him with both a savage anticipation and an equally fierce trepidation.
He missed his gerel. Those too-few planet rotations shared with her had been the happiest of his lifespan.
But he couldn’t, wouldn’t, place her in danger. She was his light. Without her, he would be in eternal darkness…as he had been over the past solar cycles.
“If you die—” His voice broke.
He prided himself on his resolve, on his strength, yet he knew he wouldn’t survive her death. It would claw out his heart, his soul.
“If I fail you, if I am unable to find Tolui, and he gets to you first—” His Ellie was his greatest weakness. His enemy, being a fellow Chamele, would know that.
Tolui would hurt Berke’s little human, torture her, kill her.
Berke fell to his knees, sinking into the snow up to his ass. The cold hitched his breath. The stress remained. It had flattened him, yet he still couldn’t expel it. The pressure was building inside him, locked behind a thick layer of ice.
He parted his furs, flipped up the strips of leather serving as his ass coverings, exposing his bare skin to the elements. Rows of straight white scars curved around his upper thighs, a tally of the planet rotations he’d spent apart from his gerel.
Reaching behind him, he extracted his sword. The blade gleamed. He drew it across an unmarked expanse of skin. The wound was thin, shallow yet effective. Blood streamed over his thigh, dripped on the snow. The crimson was vivid against the white.
The pain was sharp enough to shatter his walls. The tension coursed out of him. Berke tilted his head back and howled, releasing his fears, his agony, his wanting for the female he couldn’t yet have. He freed all of the fervent emotions he normally kept locked inside him.
If his warriors could see him now, they would be appalled, might question his leadership, his control. But they couldn’t see him, would never view this side of him. To them, he was the cold Warlord of their equally cold planet and he would remain that way.
His loneliness, his solitude, the pain of his sacrifice, was his to bear alone, to purge in moments like this. His bellows were sucked into the wind. His face, twisted by his distress, was concealed by the blowing snow.
Here, in this place, with merely the ghost of his Ellie for company, he shamelessly shared what he normally kept hidden deep in his heart, roaring his outrage at the unfairness of it all until he had nothing left, his voice hoarse, his throat sore.
He slumped, drained of everything, hollow and empty and cold, oh-so cold. The tension was temporarily gone. His pain had dulled. The situation was…manageable.
His gaze lowered to his thighs. Gauze of ice had formed over his self-inflicted wound. The blood had stopped flowing. He should trek back to his underground chambers, apply a healing balm, prevent the slash from scarring.
Yet he wouldn’t. The mark would be a reminder of his weakness, a covert badge of shame only he was aware existed.
Berke’s thoughts returned, as they always did, to the female he had hidden from the beings in his universe, his most precious secret.
“Give me time, Ellie.” His tone was edged with a pleading no one else had ever heard him utter. He was admittedly a proud male, but with his gerel, all arrogance was discarded. “I need more time. There’s only one enemy remaining. I have to defeat him before I can retrieve you. Then we can start our life together. For once in your rebellious lifespan, delay your actions.”
Yet he knew her. He knew her impetuous, too-brave-for-his-sanity personality as he knew the curve of her cheeks and the gold flecks in her eyes. She would come for her bounty hunters, would consider that to be her responsibility.
His Ellie was a leader, as he was. She had surprised him by breaking her vow, that was true. But she wouldn’t leave one of her females stranded on a faraway planet, let alone two of them.
Berke covered his bare skin once more and rose to his booted feet, squaring his shoulders. He had to prepare for her arrival, had to find and subdue Tolui, the last threat to his gerel, the last barrier between them.
That was the best, the only way to protect her.
With Tolui’s surrender or death, the Succession Wars would end. Finally. Berke and his brothers would be the undisputed rulers. The Chamele sector would be at peace. He’d retrieve his Ellie.
His little bounty hunter would be in his arms again. His fingers twitched as he sheathed his sword. The tension in his form, the ache in his heart, would be replaced with contentment and happiness.
He would be warm again. His Ellie would banish the cold like she had before.
Berke took one last look at the cloud-covered sky, gazing toward his gerel’s location, and he turned in the direction from which he’d come, determined to make his projections a reality.
Or die trying.
***
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Warlord Reunited
This barbarian warrior’s cold demeanor hides the warmest of hearts.
* * *
Solar cycles ago, Berke, a savage Chamele Warlord, found his gerel, the one being he is destined to be with for all time…except he couldn’t embrace that fate. He was fighting a series of brutal wars.
To protect his little human female, he conveyed her far from the Chamele sector. He then returned to the endless battles, concealing his pain, his anguish, his need, under a thick layer of ice.
His gerel was safe. That was all that mattered to him.
When Elle was a young bounty hunter, she bonded with an arrogant warrior on a distant planet. She was deliriously happy…for a while. Then he dumped her in a strange settlement far from his home and left, never to return.
Their parting caused her excruciating pain—both physical and emotional. She endured it, earned the esteemed role of head bounty hunter of an academy, salvaged a bit of a life from the disaster her primitive warrior had made of it.
Now, two of her bounty hunters have made the same terrible mistake. Elle is determined to rescue her friends and break their connections with their Chamele Warlords.
While she is in the sector, she plans to kill the warrior she’d once considered hers. Elle is ending her relationship with Berke…permanently.
* * *
Warlord Reunited is based on a much shorter story sharing the same title.
It is a STANDALONE Alien Barbarian SciFi Romance featuring a warrior hero and a take-charge heroine set in a dark, gritty, sometimes-violent universe.
Pre-order Now:
Amazon US:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B082RM76RF
Amazon UK:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B082RM76RF
Apple/iTunes:
https://books.apple.com/us/book/warlord-reunited/id1491702046
B&N:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/warlord-reunited-cynthia-sax/1116110455
Kobo:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/warlord-reunited-1
Smashwords:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/995680
