Amber looked at Wrexel and then Travis. “Where is my father?”
“We thought it was best to sedate him; the shock of discovering you here has taken its toll on him.”
She nodded miserably.
“He has missed you greatly, as have I.”
Amber could accept she may have left one man for another, but could not fathom that she so cruelly left her father without any contact for so long.
Amnesia had brought about a moral conviction within her soul that had been missing before. Perhaps that is why it happened, to make her a better person.
“This must be so shocking to you, Amber,” Travis said gently and then he turned his icy gaze on Wrexel. “Her amnesia, if it’s truly from the accident, must be something you are relishing, but she will remember soon and hate you once again.”
Some of Travis’s men entered to confirm a possible escape route. Amber had no chance to ask Wrexel questions until the room cleared, leaving them alone.
She decided to follow his advice and put her personal questions aside. Finding out more about her crazy life was not optimal right now.
“Do you fight these Sketchi often?” The enemy at hand was more important than her past.
“Yes, of the 104, they are the ones who attack the most frequently. There are many of them and they are essentially a nation without a planet. They drift in their warships from galaxy to galaxy.”
“Who are the Raks you keep talking about, Wrexel, and what did they do to cause all these arguments?”
“Each planet has a Watch Tower and is responsible for a targeted area. The beam it transmits slows down and seizes the engine mechanism of an approaching ship. It allows the first responders, the army who hover in wait, to defend their planet. The Raks had a Watch Tower failure years ago. Unlike Rheese, which is in between armies, switching from Throm to Rak, they are a military nation and should have had their armed forces waiting to stop the successful breach. They claimed a coup attempt had their military off kilter and one of the 104 managed to break through. They attacked Throm upon entry, resulting in a war on Lee, one of our moons. My brother lost his wife in the attack and a lot of Thromian blood was shed.”
Wrexel’s face was etched with bitter anger as he continued. “Throm believed their coup excuse was a ruse. All eight planets are federated and we are all supposed to work toward one goal but truthfully, every planet has its own agenda. For Throm and Rak, it’s to be the most powerful in the eight. To this day we believe the Raks dropped their guard on purpose to wipe us out.”
* * *
Amber had so many more questions but the depiction of the Sketchi demanded attention. “Are they just hovering above the city? Will we get past them?”
“No, they have hundreds of patrol soldiers.”
Wrexel flicked on another hologram and she saw a Sketchi standing on what looked like a flying jet ski.
“I have no doubt they are circling the perimeter of the city in small droves. They will kill anybody who tries to leave or kidnap if it’s a female.”
“Like us,” Amber sighed. “Like me.”
“If they see us,” Wrexel reminded her. “But they will not! As soon as we have an escape route that I am happy with, we will cut past the lizards and work through the forest ghouls, I don’t think the Sketchi are eager to patrol in there, so we will be unhindered in our run. Once we are back, I will ensure Staede hunts them more voraciously now and destroys them before they consider coming near the Federated Eight again.”
“Why Staede?” she asked.
“Staede is in charge of our flying squads and war in the sky. I lead our combat warriors. He has been systematically taking them out, but has been a little distracted of late.” Wrexel looked at her with accusation.
She tried to change the subject to the positive. “He has taught me well. I can’t believe how ingrained the knowledge of fighting is. It is so deep that I can remember it above all else; I must have trained often.”
Wrexel smiled sardonically. “It is amazing considering Staede opted to train you only in order to spend time with you, Amber. I am quite certain he never intended or considered that you would be in any real danger.”
His eyes narrowed. “You remember all of his lessons in fighting and strategy, yet have no memory of your relationship with him.”
Amber could not meet his gaze. “I don’t feel like an immoral person, Wrexel. My recollection of being in embraces with your brother is shocking to me. I don’t understand why, if I am married to you, I would behave in this way. I can’t believe your brother would behave in this way.”
He laughed without mirth. “The idea of preserving my marriage would never bother my immoral brother. His main goal since the first moment he laid eyes on you was to have you in his bed and he has never ceased trying to seduce you.”
“He’s in love with me?” she said absently, still wondering why she had encouraged his behavior if she was with Wrexel.
Wrexel scoffed. “He wants to fuck you, Amber. Staede loves only himself.”
She flinched.
“He is always hoping that I will tire of you or change our monogamy contract to an open one and share you with him, a question he likes to ask me regularly.”
“He does?” Her eyes widened.
“As did you.” He caught and held her gaze as she gasped.
“I asked?”
No, this isn’t me!
She could not believe it!
Would not believe it.
“Just before we left, I caught you with him… and you asked to be shared with Staede.”
9
Wild Lands
Travis left with the two guards, Wrexel, and Amber. He suffered in silence. His greatest desire for two years had been to see Amber again and dispel the nasty images and rumors about her. Their reunion had offered no salve.
Life in the Diogel Universe was certainly different and extremely evolved, but journalism had changed very little. Every article about her was forever encased in his tortured mind.
The day she arrived upon Throm, not even two weeks after she and Wrexel had left Earth, they had been married – or joined as they called it – in the Monarchical Halls of Throm. Travis had read the report of the bride, the hasty groom, and night of confirmed consummation for the law of all ages. He remembered breaking out in a cold sweat, imagining his sweet, innocent Amber in the hands of the seven-foot brute.
Brutes that he had been unfortunate enough to see naked upon occasion, when they were training his humans in combat on Rheese. They were large and formidable in every way, as well as vicious and bloodthirsty. He could not fathom Wrexel treating Amber with the gentility she required. He denied the reports of her happiness. He knew it was a lie and a twisting of the truth by those who covered the news on Throm or other tabloids that were entranced by the marriage between the universal terrorist and the sweet, young Earthling.
He had still been reeling from the feedback about her nuptials when news of her second one was broadcast. The tri-marriage, common on Throm. Travis felt bile rise to his throat, considering what Amber was being subjected to. The agony of imagining her married to not one but two of them became too much to bear. Thinking of her held captive and regularly taken against her will despite the Thromian pledge that they did not rape was bad enough. Visions of her sandwiched between them made him retch. He glanced at Amber as she walked beside Wrexel toward the City Wall.
She had no idea what she was dealing with and he couldn’t warn her without having his head ripped off. He wondered how long Wrexel had tampered with her memory. Was it from the start, or recently like she claimed? He peered at her wistfully as she walked ahead with the guards and winced when Wrexel saw his gaze and fell back to walk at his side.
Travis glared at the menacing alien. There wasn’t a being in Diogel who didn’t fear him. He was calculating, bloodthirsty, and vicious, and Amber was his captive.
“Why do you torture yourself with something that will never be? Even if I am
killed tonight, she will still be married to Whyle. Although there is no doubt that Staede would challenge him and take her before my body was cold,” Wrexel taunted him. “Amber will always belong to a Thromian.”
“Take,” Travis nodded sourly, “just like you took her. But none of you have Amber of her own free will.”
“Does it matter?”
“It will if she remembers while she’s here,” Travis hissed at him. “Maybe then she will admit the truth to the Yimmyrd council and be removed from your clutches.”
“Not even the Yimmyrd will take Amber from me,” Wrexel responded viciously.
Travis wished that Amber had heard Wrexel’s words, or seen the look of possessive determination.
Psychopath!
God, he wished he didn’t need him; he would happily shoot him and take the death penalty with open arms. Wrexel was a lecherous, despicable alien, a terrorist without mercy and remorse.
“Make sure your men keep up, as I will kill them if they hinder me,” Wrexel reminded him as he began to walk to Amber.
“I needed their protection,” Travis hissed at him.
Wrexel laughed wickedly. “Why would I bother killing you now when I could have done it any day in the last two years? If she had clung to your memory and pined for you, I would have considered it, but there was never a need. After our first sexual encounter, you were all but forgotten.”
Travis flinched. “So you say, but without her memory I do not know.”
* * *
Amber walked ahead with the two guards. She had been mortified when Wrexel had dismissed them without any acknowledgement or conversation.
“We will move at top speed,” he said when they introduced themselves as Garth and Len, brushing their names aside with indifference. “You can’t use lasers,” he added. “The invaders will pick it up; if we are confronted we must do it silently to avoid them alerting their guards.”
“We need protection,” Travis argued, “and I’m not referring to the Sketchi.”
They entered a narrow duct in the wall used to dispel excess water from the river that ran through Rheese. It was dry but dark and musty. When they reached the end of the tunnel, Travis unlocked the thick steel door with his key card. They all waited as Wrexel slowly peered out, using his superior vision to check if the Sketchi were near.
He gave them a nod, and they moved forward, hugging the wall of the city. They stayed in the shadows and avoided the light that came from the four moons.
Amber’s nerves were on edge. She was sure Wrexel could defend her and she had confidence in her own skills, but not against an entire fleet of armed Sketchi. As the only woman in the group, she had the most to lose.
Wrexel’s grip on her forearm was a comfort, but he glanced at the necklace at her throat twice and her heart lurched painfully. If overpowered and outnumbered, she accepted what she had to do. Her fate would be painless but those left behind would suffer. She prayed fervently that they would be able to get to the ship undetected and save the colony of human women who had to be equally terrified in the city.
They began to circle the side of the wall when Wrexel stopped abruptly and waved them back.
Her heart thumped painfully.
He silently indicated that they were all to hide in the crevices of the wall. He pointed to something in the distance that they could not see. She was even more surprised when he thrust her into a small crevice and then pushed Travis in behind her. Wrexel was too large to join her and even though he hated Travis and didn’t want him to touch her, he would do anything to keep her safe. She still needed to understand the truth of her departure from Earth, which had been made to sound as if he were guilty of doing something wicked. Unless that excuse was convenient for the immoral Amber she was trying hard to ignore.
Either way she could not deny his concern for her welfare.
She felt irritated by the arm that Travis put about her shoulders.
She didn’t need comfort.
She wasn’t a weak female.
She heard the transporter coming closer, the buzzing sound reminding her of a lawn mower as it came to a slow hover.
Amber held her breath and peered out over Travis’s shoulder to see the short, squat hooded Sketchi pass on his small, open craft. He moved slowly as his head roamed from side to side, looking for possible escapees. Wrexel had mentioned that their mini crafts did not possess heat sensors, but that the Sketchi’s own eyesight was just as good. She held the necklace tightly within her grasp, trying to slow her breathing. She hoped the vile creature would not see or sense them in the dark. She hadn’t asked Wrexel about their squat, fat, ringed noses. Did they have a superior sense of smell?
* * *
The Sketchi landed nearby, and a measure of panic assailed her; had he seen something that made him suspicious? Wrexel would remain hidden unless needed. He said that attacking them was not in his plan unless he had no other choice. Alerting the main ship would have them attack Rheese before they had a chance to seek help. The lone Sketchi did not rise back into the sky. He moved his uncomfortable gait from the craft, getting dangerously close to where she hid. He was more hideous than Wrexel’s earlier projection.
His movements were slow and deliberate, those of a goblin crossed with a pig. He grunted and continued his surveillance of the surrounding land before scratching the ground beneath his feet.
He shuffled even closer to them and raised his head, looking up in the air, his mouth opened to reveal more of his pointed canine tusks. His next movement caused her to jerk with fright, for it was much faster than the slow pace they had observed until then. A long tentacle shot out from underneath his brown monk cloak and grasped a small bat bird that had been flying above. The bird cawed and wriggled in his grasp but the Sketchi appeared to enjoy eating his prey while it still lived. He made a long and drawn-out meal of it, biting and chewing slowly, feathers, scales, and narrow bird legs all crushed by his teeth as his jaw moved from side to side, grinding his catch. The crunches rang out in the silent night along with the dying caws of the bird. The Sketchi moved forward again, scratching at the ground with his foot, coming closer to where she hid.
Amber had no fear that she or Wrexel would kill him if he spotted them, but the idea of him alerting a ship full of his kind terrified her. Her shaking hand clasped the euthanizing charm until it cut into her palm. She closed her eyes for a moment as a memory washed over.
The woman in the white gown from her dreams, the dark-haired angel held out her hands. “You’re safe. He watches over you all the time, you are the chosen one; he will never see you come to harm.”
She realized it was her mother.
Amber wished she could remember more but knew instinctively that she was dead and not waiting in concern in the city behind her.
The sound of the motor starting up again interrupted her deep thoughts, and she sighed with relief when the Sketchi flew away. Wrexel arrived at their hiding place seconds later to pull Travis and then her from the crevice in the wall. When she stood before Wrexel, he took her hand from the necklace she had been clutching so tightly that the amulet had made an imprint.
He looked at her meaningfully, knowing what fears had gone through her mind.
“You would take the tablet if more arrived?”
She nodded and his mouth opened with a slight intake of breath.
“Do that over my dead, lifeless body, Amber.” His voice was a gruff whisper. “I would have killed him and those he summoned and then kept running with you until it was safe. I would sacrifice this entire city to ensure you stay alive.”
“I wouldn’t want that.”
She was fraught by the intensity of Wrexel’s feelings for her, but also troubled that he thought so little of her own kind.
“Let’s move,” Travis hissed.
Wrexel ignored Travis’s demand and smoothed the lines upon her palm with a soft finger, kissing it with his warm mouth until she sighed with pleasure.
“I had a mem
ory of my mother.”
Wrexel frowned.
“She’s dead, isn’t she, Wrexel? She’s not here on Rheese.”
Wrexel turned to glare at Travis, who looked like a deer caught in headlights.
“No, Amber, I’m sorry but she isn’t,” Travis replied but looked distinctly uncomfortable. Wrexel kissed her hand once again and said, “Now we run.”
* * *
Wrexel’s pace was unforgiving but Amber stayed at the large warrior’s side, except for the moments when he darted ahead at inhuman speeds to survey the land.
Both guards were red in the face but Travis, who wasn’t as fit, took the most strain. Wrexel would slow to a fast walk only when they needed to drink water.
As they ploughed on through the night, Amber kept alert, worried that the ghoulish creatures would attack again. Wrexel ran at her side, his gaze piercing the darkness ahead. Every time she tripped, his hands lifted her up before her knees touched the ground. The ghouls either picked up Wrexel’s scent or were busy hunting elsewhere, for none approached them that night.
When they reached the edge of the forest, exhaustion overwhelmed the human members of the group.
The grasslands lay ahead and as they entered, it began to rain. The sky clouded over and it became so dark it was as if the night had no end. They struggled through the depths as slimy swirls of foliage wrapped around their legs and slowed them down.
Wrexel scooped Amber into his arms, carrying her as they plunged through the water. Amber clung to him in exhaustion, resting her head against his neck, grateful once again for his unending strength.
* * *
Travis glanced at his watch. It had been 15 hours since they left the city walls; he hoped that his people had continued to negotiate with the Sketchi to buy time.
He looked at Amber. She seemed exhausted but Wrexel was right; she was fit. He also noticed that each time she stumbled, her hands reached for Wrexel, who always responded with care. He watched their exchanges in agony, their shared smiles of pride when they passed the corpses of the ghouls Wrexel had obviously killed the last time they had gone through the forest.
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