by V. K. Ludwig
“Ada, my dearest.” He pulled handsome lips into a hollow smile, holding his arms wide as if to receive something he actually cared about. “I’m so glad you are unharmed. Welcome to Xaleon. Your birthday gift.”
A steadying breath.
And another.
She was smart.
She was capable.
“It’s as charming as that half-digested bird my cat once coughed up at my feet,” she said and held a hand up as if warding off the devil himself. “Why is this building scented?”
“Scented?” He stopped and flipped up a brow. “What a brutish word to come from such a cultivated mouth. A precaution, nothing else. To ensure our… savage guests here won’t interpret too much into whatever they’re sniffing.”
“I guess our definition of savage is very different. After all, their kind has lived on this planet for centuries. Osacore managed to destroy it in a little over a decade.”
“I can tell Kerien had no trouble invading your mind, just like I feared.” Gral gave a tug on the sleeve of his suit, eying her warily. “Among other places, by the stench of it.”
Ada hid her flinch by straightening her spine, chin held high. “Give them their core so they can be on their way while you and I discuss my stay here on Xaleon until my birthday.”
His jaw clenched for a mere second before he gracefully waved her through the large double doors to his right. “The core is in my office.”
More like penthouse, with an entire wall of windows sitting at the edge of a steep drop. It overlooked a wasteland of mud piles and contaminated water sitting in ocean-blue puddles streaked across the landscape.
“Another precaution?” Ada asked, waving at around fifteen armored guards standing about, rifles in hand, barrels pointing down.
“Yes,” Gral said.
A glance over her shoulder revealed Thuran seemingly at ease. The Aurani warriors entered, positioning themselves in a half circle, slightly offset.
“This was dad’s office.” She glanced over boxes stacked in the corner, a picture of mom resting atop. “I can tell you didn’t start packing your things yet.”
Gral’s eyes first flicked to a chuckling Thuran, then to her. “Packing?”
Ada flashed him a mastered smile. “The way I understand it, my birthday gift comes with this office included. It’s pretty. With a new coat of paint. A light gray maybe?” She assessed the room and nodded. “Yeah, this will be nice. Especially once the view improves.”
“Ah, I see,” Gral said, his smile wavering. “My fiancé has gone out into the world, and now she’s returned thinking she can run Osacore.”
Shaky fingers punched into the pockets of her pants to hide, clasping the charm, letting the pad of her thumb brush over the engraving. “I can lead Osacore. And I will. The second I turn twenty-one, we will scale back mining so the planet can recover and replenish the osanium before we dig up every last ounce of it.”
An amused chuckle burst from his chest. “Scale back mining? To what degree?”
“Not sure yet,” she said with a shrug. “I’ll have the mineral deposits mapped so I can calculate just how much rest the planet requires. At this rate, Xaleon will be worthless to us in a few years.”
“And what will you tell the shareholders if they ask what numbers they can expect for the next quarter?”
Ada walked over to the desk, turned, and leaned against it. “I’ll probably tell them something along the lines of, um, however much you give to Drana, you will receive as blessings in return.”
Across from her, Thuran’s wide eyes caught hers. He dipped his head and tapped his sternum, and the Aurani warriors fell into a chant of mumbled prayers.
Something dark came over Gral’s face, as if he just now realized she meant it. “Ada, my love —”
“I’m not your love,” she said. “I’m not your fiancé anymore either. Miss Alvarez will do.”
“The shareholders will sell their stock.”
“Let them sell it. Do you think I didn’t prepare for that?” She tilted her head, taking in the increasingly nervous Klaxian. “If Osacore Estate has to go, so be it. I’ll buy the stock back.”
Gral forced a chuckle. “Stock won’t feed you.”
“I’ll ration,” she said with a shrug. “You would be surprised by how little I need. I sure was.”
He narrowed his eyes at her, tense jaw shifting enough fangs flashed open aggression. “To your right, Thuran. Black metal crate with the Osacore logo. Take your core and get off my planet.”
Ada folded her arms in front of her chest. “My planet.”
“Not yet.”
“But in a few days,” she said. “Until then, I’ll stay on Xaleon to assess the damage.”
Thuran checked the core and nodded. Four Aurani warriors positioned themselves by the crate, two on each side, the metal handles moaning when they lifted the heavy thing.
Gral walked up to her, lips peeled back enough he presented fangs only marginally smaller than Kerien’s, but not nearly as sharp. “You will return to Earth and remain on the estate until I decide otherwise.”
The moment he reached for her arm, Ada slapped his hand away. Thuran turned at the sound. “You don’t decide shit over me. I might not be twenty-one yet, Gral, but you can neither tell me to leave Xaleon, nor order me to go home.”
Scaled hands slithered to the back of her head and grabbed her hair faster than Ada could dodge, and Gral’s moist breath slicked over the side of her neck like grease. “Your cunt stinks of him as if that savage rutted you through a heat.”
“Let go of me!”
“It explains why he let you live when I hoped he would bleed you out,” he snarled. “You better resume your place beside me, Ada. I’d hate to orchestrate another kidnapping from which you won’t return.”
Everything from her neck down turned numb, blood rushing into her brain, humming between her ears. The ugliness of her past was more twisted than she’d thought.
She swallowed hard. “You staged my kidnappings?”
Gral threw his head back and chuckled low, only for his face to return with a menacing grin. “My father did. Only one.”
His father didn’t become a board member until she was around eight or so, which meant it could only have been the one when she was eleven.
She hated how her voice came small, sobs already sitting on her vocal cords. “Do you have any idea what that did to my life? Dad locked me away.”
“A welcome side effect,” Gral rasped. “Not anticipated, but highly effective in keeping you under control.”
“Why?”
Eyes she’d once thought beautiful turned dark and cold. “It was an election year, my love, and your father’s consideration to scale back mining interfered with my father’s promises to supply the UFG with enough military-grade osanium. So you see, Ada, repeating your father’s mistakes won’t do you any good.”
The pretty office, the restless guards, the tense Aurani warriors flaring their nostrils her way. It all disappeared from around her while she tried to make sense of his words. Dad wanted to scale back mining? The senator could never have bribed dad and remained on the board.
And then it dawned on her with blood-freezing clarity. What better way for the senator to sway dad to continue mining than to have his little girl kidnapped and…
Her stomach tightened, voice a breathed whisper. “You blamed the kidnapping on the Aurani?”
He strained her scalp until it burned. “Let’s get you home so you can prepare for the wedding, shall we?”
“I will never marry you.”
The room spun so fast she turned nauseous.
But it had nothing, absolutely nothing on how her face slapped against the glass surface of the desk, searing heat spreading across her skin.
A dull ache first pulsated around her forehead, then sent a brain-stabbing throb deep into her skull. All those debates she’d recited, the holographic imprint, the determination. It was worth shit. She’d prepared for a
n argument, not an assault.
Her heart pounded with fear, the tears burning behind her eyes blurring the outlines of Aurani warriors. Warriors Kerien had wanted to protect her. And she felt like a naive fool. Still the same pushover, because she’d failed to stand up for their love.
“Get your hands off her!” A bone-penetrating growl resonated the room, and heavy thomp-thomp-thomps vibrated underneath Ada’s soles. What was happening?
Hairs popped.
The room spun again.
No, Ada spun, because Thuran once more yanked her behind him, snarling, “Our Varac would not have agreed to this.”
“She means nothing to him. Why else would she be here?” Gral showed fangs and hissed. “What I do with my female is none of your concern, Aurani. Take your core before I have you gunned down like the animal you are.”
“Are you threatening Aurani warriors? This is no way to handle a female,” Thuran grunted. “Least of all one that refuses to be yours.”
Ada’s hip pressed against the biting edge of the desk, legs weak, head lolling uncontrollably. Bile prickled at the back of her throat. She’d made a fine mess of this, hadn’t she?
Thuran’s chest holster clicked.
Pointing a gun at Gral with one hand, he used the other to shove Ada backward until shoulder blades met cold wall.
“It was my doing that he sent you away,” he shouted, not glancing back though the words were clearly for her. “I preyed on his mistrust in humans because I’ve been a fool. Because I feared we might loose more than we already have if he makes you his Vekoshi. He will never forgive me if I let this happen to you.” When Ada only sniffed, he asked, “Would you have returned to him?”
“Yes,” Ada mumbled. “I love him.”
“It better be the truth.” The words which followed unleashed chaos. “Aurani, protect your future Vekoshi.”
Eighteen
Kerien trailed his hand over soft furs that had caressed Ada’s skin only this morning, suppressing the urge to bring them to his face, smell their sweetness.
The woman he’d called his mate had been escorted off-ship less than thirty minutes ago, and already he felt as if he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. Sitting alone in silence with no counsel to distract him, no politics to navigate, he hated himself for listening to his juketar.
His eyes burned, because with each blink, he saw the heartbreak in Ada’s eyes when he’d questioned if she would succeed; so he chose only to stare.
Instead of scenting the fur, he brought his hand to his face. His chest squeezed so tight he could barely breathe. All her life, people had played Ada for political gain. They weren’t worthy of her. Neither was he, because he’d done the same.
It gutted him, remembering the disappointment in her eyes. The hurt when he’d questioned her trustworthiness. Every damn detail of betrayal engraved onto the face of a beautiful woman. A memory which would haunt him even in the afterlife.
He stepped away from the bed, joints stiff, his eyes catching on the envelop sitting on the sideboard which should have held her charm. Should have.
The moment he picked it up, sensed the lightness of it, his heart dragged heavy on its strings. Empty.
Cunning women who only had their own gain in mind didn’t hold on to charms containing the very formula to save his planet.
If I become your Vekoshi before my birthday, I’ll meet even more resistance once I take over Osacore. You can’t change history if you’re clinging to the toilet all morning.
Her words of wisdom punished him with a never-ending resonance, consuming him, eating away at him from the inside. His mate was smart, determined, focused. All traits desirable in a Vekoshi, and yet he’d punished her for them.
He’d requested she pledge herself to him, but where had his loyalty been when he sent her away? Stripped her of all his support?
After yet another argument with his juketar, exchanging her seemed like the decision of a true Varac. But now? Staring into the ugliness of his betrayal? It had been the decision of a coward.
That painful realization tortured him for seconds that stretched into eternity. He’d chosen hatred and distrust over his female, letting her down when she’d needed him the most. And although she would likely never forgive him, just like he could never forgive himself, he would make certain she received what she was worthy of.
Kerien turned toward the door, his heart pounding something fierce in his chest. Ada was worthy of a kingdom, if not as his Vekoshi, than as heiress. And he would see to its deliverance.
“Have them start the fusion panels on the second transportation vessel,” he ordered the first guard he met on his way to the docking station. “I want all unmated warriors willing to volunteer to aid the heiress armed and boarded in ten minutes.”
“Yes, my Varac.”
Kerien didn’t bother retrieving his dagger and armor from his quarters. He wouldn’t go to Xaleon as a Varac, but an Aurani warrior not above begging his female for forgiveness. A regular blade would do, just in case, though his kind wasn’t short on weapons even when stripped naked.
The docking station quivered with the stomps of a good forty warriors, guns sitting charged inside their chest holsters, single or double blades sheathed by their sides.
“Warriors,” he shouted over the initial roar of the sparking fusion panels. “We are going to Xaleon in order to assist the heiress, the woman you all know I have recognized as my mate. Drana has revealed her to me, and Drana will safeguard us.”
A swipe down their faces and a curled fist tapping against their sternum, and all warriors asked the goddess for her favor. Kerien included, because he needed it badly.
From the current position of Aura Station, the transit to Xaleon was a mere fifteen minutes away, and yet it seemed endless.
“My Varac,” the co-pilot shouted. “We have located the other vessel and will touch down beside it. They’ve disassembled the docking stations.”
Kerien grabbed for the overhead handle, his heart pounding inside his chest. Would he truly feel the soils of Xaleon under his feet after so long?
He wouldn’t.
The moment he stepped off the ramp, his heart shriveled inside his chest, wilting away right along with his ancestral home. That sludge caked to his boots? It wasn’t soil. Soil grew life, but this stuff stank of rot and disease and… something else.
Nostrils flared.
Tendons stiffened.
Kerien knew they had a problem the moment he scented the mint permeating the air, faint, but no less interfering with his sense of smell.
“Be vigilant,” he called out, claw tapping against the handle of his blade. “I want those with the best scenting skill to track Thuran and the other warriors.”
He took careful, precise steps toward the scatter of buildings, the entire area empty, machinery abandoned. With each inhale, he anatomized what lay between the particles of dirty air. Sweat. Doubt. Something… rousing.
“We cannot pick up their scent,” one of his warriors said, head bowed. “Which building should we go secure first?”
Kerien’s claws scraped over the inside of his palm, concern thickening the blood which pumped through his veins. Not for him. For Ada. Had he delivered his mate to danger?
“My Varac?”
He raised his hand. “Do not move the air.”
Closing his eyes, he flared his nostrils wide, dissecting sweat from doubt, until he reached the scent which hid underneath. Weak to his warriors, but heady and potent to Kerien, intoxicating all over again, and for once so very useful. Ada’s approaching estrus.
“The building to the right,” he said, claw pointing. “Ten warriors each on the north and east side of it. Climb the exterior and gain access from the top. You will not attack unless defense requires it, and meet—”
“Varac!” the pilot called from the ramp. “We’ve detected two UFG battle cruisers on course to Xaleon.”
Kerien grunted. They’d called in back up. Whatever was goi
ng on inside that building, they better be quick to join. “How much time do we have?”
“Twenty-five minutes,” the pilot said. “Thirty if the nebula continues to thicken since there’s some electronic discharge at the moment.”
Kerien pushed himself into a sprint, jumping across massive tire tracks. “Spread out. Now! The rest follow me to that building.”
His lungs burned with the way he kept scenting the air, rapid puffs bursting in and out of his nostrils. The closer he came to the door of the building, the thicker the smell of her approaching heat grew. Until another familiar smell mixed into it: her blood.
All warmth sucked from his horns.
No. He had to be mistaken.
But when he reached for the door and pulled it open with such force he ripped off the top hinge, his own blood curdled at what he found. One of his warriors stared right through him from abandoned eyes, shredded flesh hanging limp from a blast wound to his neck.
“Find the heiress!” he shouted. “Kill every guard, soldier, or Klaxian that crosses your way.”
Warriors poured into the building, securing rooms to the left and right of the long hallway, while others approached the stairs.
To the left of him, he found a massive office, the walls painted in blood. Dead guards littered the floor, intestines hanging off their corpses where horns and claws had ripped them out.
“Level one clear,” one of his warriors shouted.
Kerien let the might of his voice shatter from the walls. “Ada!”
A gunshot answered in her stead.
Kerien whipped around.
He sprinted up the stairs, his instincts flooding him with so much input his brain fogged. Once he reached the landing on the top floor, a barrel pointed straight at him.
“Aurani scum!” the guard shouted.
Kerien threw himself against him with an oomph. The human stood no chance. Before the black-uniformed man pulled the trigger, Kerien sliced his claws across his throat. The guard dropped his rifle and slumped to the ground, hands pressed to the spray of blood gushing from his neck.