by Loki Renard
She is precious.
Delicate.
Perfect.
Human.
I went to the ends of the universe for her, following strange stars.
I followed her to the gates of hell, and I walked through them with her.
She was the one thing I could save.
She was the only thing worth saving.
My breath rattles through my body, escaping through holes that shouldn’t be there. Some would say I am dying, but I have never felt so alive. The darkness will not claim me today, because I have found my light.
She looks up at me, her face twisted with emotion. She grasps at me, clasps my band, begs me for forgiveness she doesn’t need. Her touch is the fire which illuminates the stars. It is life itself.
I cast my mind back to the moments before I met her, and I wonder how I bothered to draw breath in the life I lived before she came to me. Everything that happened before I found her seems so devoid of meaning. Every victory, every defeat, every beat of my heart only had value because it was a small part of the journey toward her.
“REAPER!” I call to my broodkin.
I shout his name to the stars.
I know this is his doing. He has not abandoned us. We are outcasts from the scythkin. That means he has called in a raid on himself and us. He is up there, somewhere in the dancing sky of death and because of him, we will survive.
Chapter Thirteen - Too Late To Apologize
42
“I’m sorry.”
I’ve never felt how truly weak those words really are until this moment. They mean nothing in the face of the battered body which is dragged onto the ship over Reaper’s shoulders, the thing that used to be Tarkan.
Reaper flew down into the battlefield and took me first. He plucked me from Tarkan’s insensate arms and all but threw me into the shuttle. Then he grabbed Tarkan, and he flew us out between the flashes of light and the rampant destruction raining down all around us.
For the first time since my chains were broken, I am alone. Because Tarkan sacrificed himself for me. That big, strong, unstoppable scythkin let himself be torn to pieces because he thought it would keep me safe.
Now he is lying on the medical table much like the one I once laid on, and he is in much worse condition than I ever was. Parts of him have been taken that might never return. He has been mutilated on my behalf. Galactor’s judiciar managed to find everything that made him powerful and noble and subvert it. I feel sick to the pit of my stomach knowing that I was the cause of this.
Reaper is working on him. One is by his side, acting as nurse. I am left to sit outside and watch, numb and ignored.
After many hours, Reaper comes out of the medical bay. He has One in his arms. She looks exhausted. They are both covered in the black blood which seeped from Tarkan’s every wound.
“Is he going to survive?” I ask the question as Reaper walks past me, apparently intending on dismissing me completely.
“He may. He may not.”
He takes another step, and I let out a wail. “Wait! You have to tell me…”
“I don’t have to do anything,” Reaper swings around on me, tall and dangerous, clutching his lover in his embrace.
I recoil, but it is too late. I have tempted the wrath of this scythkin, and I am going to feel the pain.
“I want you to understand something,” Reaper says. He is very calm, almost cold. “We have been hidden from scythkin forces for a long time now. It is part of our survival strategy. It protects One’s life. I had to make contact in order to initiate the invasion. That means we are no longer safe.”
“I’m sorry,” I repeat my new mantra.
“It doesn’t matter if you’re sorry,” he says. “Some things can’t be undone.”
I grit my teeth. I know he’s right. But that doesn’t make hearing it any more palatable. This is my fault. 100% my fault. I have done more damage than I can understand, to all of them.
“He spoiled you,” Reaper continues, his voice deep and gravelly. “He thought softness was the way to show you that you were cared about. But you knew the moment he pulled you from that petting zoo that you were cared for. You should have been whipped every time you stepped out of line…”
“Reaper, go easy on her.” One comes to my aid unexpectedly.
“Go easy on her? That is all anyone has ever done, and look what that did to Tarkan.”
“I SAID I WAS SORRY!”
I yell the words, but they don’t matter, and I sound even less sorry because I’m screaming.
“You don’t know what sorry is,” Reaper says. “And you better hope that Tarkan doesn’t die. Because if he does, I swear I will make you know what sorry is.”
Fear pierces my belly. My throat clenches with fear. I want to run away, but I don’t.
“He made a choice,” I tell Reaper. “Just like I made a choice. He could have killed every person on that planet, but he didn’t.”
“Because of you.”
“Yes. Because he thought I was worth protecting.”
“You shouldn’t have needed protecting,” Reaper growls. “You should have been light years away, with us. You should have been safe.”
I didn’t just drag Tarkan into my drama. Reaper came too. One came too. These aliens and this woman, they’re not just incidental organisms. They’re beings who make sacrifices for me. From the beginning, they’ve done nothing but try to help me. Reaper and Tarkan gave up their favorite ship to try to get me back home. But I’ve never really realized that. I’ve always been waiting for the next betrayal.
I fall silent, mumbling another one of those useless apologies. Then I raise my head.
“What do you want me to do?”
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Reaper says. “You don’t listen. I’m not going to do anything for you. You don’t deserve it. You can go in there with the warrior you helped destroy, and you can stay there until fate decides what to do with you.”
“I’m sorry.”
I cry the words over and over, but nobody cares. The one I most need to know I am sorry cannot hear me.
Tarkan lies on the medical bed surrounded by machines. He is silent. Unmoving. He is so badly hurt he might never wake up - and there is only one person to blame.
Me.
I cannot blame anyone else, not even Reaper, whose harsh words hurt my feelings terribly. What do my feelings matter when I am looking at the mangled body of my lover? How can I blame anyone else when it was Reaper who dragged us from the ruins of the court. He called down a hostile scythkin invasion on the gardens, and then we had to flee. Every minute since then has been painful. I have counted the hours - ninety nine have passed and still Tarkan lies silent.
One has not spoken to me since the rescue. Reaper gives me orders and expects me to obey them. I do, because I am guilty and I know it. I didn’t save humanity. I got people killed. A lot of people, probably. And more importantly, I may have destroyed Tarkan.
He told me he’d always come back for me. And he did.
I wish he hadn’t.
Reaper hates me. Their brood is so small, just the two of them, and I almost destroyed it. One can’t stand to look at me. I am outcast again, just as I was in the beginning. I wish Tarkan had left me chained up. I would have died there and nobody would have been hurt again. The judiciar was right about me. I am a problem with no solution.
I should never have gone back to the simulation. I was never going to save those people. All I could ever have achieved was assuaging my own guilt and anger. And now I’ve pushed Tarkan too far. The only male who ever loved me lies still and cold and I would damn every single one of those one hundred and forty thousand people to see him take a single breath.
It is selfish. But I am not a good person. I am a ruined, broken, hollow shell of a thing. If he comes back, I promise to everything even slightly related to a deity that I will forever be obedient to him. I will never allow him to be hurt on my account again.
“Breathe, Tarkan!” I beg his silent, still body. “Please, breathe. Come back to me.”
“It’s time to eat.” Reaper’s voice comes from behind me. I have not had much to do with Reaper before this incident. He has been the stoic, strong leader who looks after his mate and fixes the problems that have unfolded one after the other since they found me.
“I ate already.”
It is a little lie, told so I do not have to leave Tarkan’s side. I would starve happily if it meant he knew I was here. At the end, as the gun fire rained down and the building fell and all the world seemed to be disintegrating into pieces, he held me. Now it is my turn to hold him.
He makes a grunting sound, then walks around to check the machines.
“Is he getting better?”
I’m almost afraid to ask. I don’t want to know the answer if it isn’t yes. And I don’t want to see the expression in Reaper’s eyes either when he looks at me. I am a great disappointment to him. I am a painful reminder why Tarkan lies here. I think he would happily throw me into the oblivion of space if it wasn’t for the chance that Tarkan might still rally and be furious.
“Reaper, I am sorry,” I say. I have said it many times. Hundreds, maybe thousands of times.
He doesn’t respond to me. He looks through me with those burning eyes which look so much like Tarkan’s, and then he turns and he leaves. The second he is gone, my silent tears turn to fresh sobs of utter misery. I’ve lost everything that matters, and it’s all my fault.
Tarkan
Hot droplets of pain and sadness bringing me back from the brink of unbeing. I have been in a dark place for what seems like a long time, a solitary stillness. In this place there was no thought, no action, there was only peace. I think I might have stayed there forever if I hadn’t been brought back by the rain of my lover’s tears, liquid penetrating the darkness of forever
I open my eyes and extend my arms to the woman who is my world. She sobs and collapses into my grasp.
“I’m sorry, Tarkan. I’m so, so sorry.”
She’s already forgiven. I know why she did what she did. I know her intentions were good. I know it was the only way she could try to fill the void left by all the hurt she suffered.
“Shhh,” I comfort her as best I can, though I can barely feel my limbs, and what I can feel burns like fire. She crawls up onto the bed and I hold her and together we slip back into the darkness.
Chapter Fourteen - Trouble
Many, many healing days later…
Tarkan
“You’re doing well,” Reaper tells me. “There's a lot of tissue to regenerate, but I think it will grow back.”
“I feel good,” I tell him. He has appointed himself my doctor, which is fine because I couldn’t use any of the medical tools in my injured state anyway.
“Good,” he says. “I think you’re clear to start exercising again too. That will help build muscle and encourage the bio-regeneration.”
“Yep,” I agree.
“So,” he says. "That leaves the matter of 42.”
“It does?”
“What are you going to do to her?”
“String her up by her toes and play accordion music until she promises she’ll be good forever?”
Reaper scowls. “This isn’t funny, Tarkan. We almost lost you. I almost…” he trails off into a growl. “She needs to be handled.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to do what needs to be done.”
“Are you.” He says, skeptically. It’s not even a question, just a cynical statement.
“I’m not soft, Reaper,” I say. “I know what she needs.”
And I do. He didn’t need to say anything. The need for punishment has been written all over 42’s face since I woke up. She feels bad for what she did. She knows she was wrong. But without some kind of consequences, she’s going to feel bad and wrong forever. I have to discipline her, free her from her guilt. I have to make her fly.
“If you’ll leave me alone for five minutes, I’ll deal with her now.”
Reaper nods and leaves me be.
“42!” I call out her designation. Sometimes I call her Fortuna, but 42 is the name I have known her by from the beginning. It has more weight somehow, more history.
She is not far away. She slinks into my presence with the same guilty expression she’s been wearing for days. It’s time to wipe that off her face, replace it with tears of contrition - and then the release of a rough orgasm.
“Come here,” I say, crooking my finger.
42
I feel a shiver very low in my belly, something more than merely sexual. When he looks at me that way, uses that tone of voice, I feel his possession running through my blood like a drug. I am his. I gave myself to him a long time ago, but now he is going to claim me in the way I need to be claimed.
“You were naughty,” he says, his lips quirking with the sexiest kind of amusement at that understatement. We both know I was more than naughty. I didn’t just disobey him. I almost got him killed. I did get him maimed. He is yet to fully recover all the sharp parts of his anatomy - but he still has the ones that matter.
“Yes,” I agree.
“Yes, what?” His tone sharpens. I swallow hard.
“Yes, Sir?”
“That’s better,” he says, his voice deep and resonant, his burning eyes locked on me with an intensity which makes me feel like I am melting from the inside. Every part of my body is engaged with him, taking cues from him. A flick of his brow makes my pulse race and my stomach churn. Tarkan has not often used his innate scythkin dominance on me. It has been something he has tried to shield me from. But not anymore. Now I am sensing that I am going to get the full force of his power.
“You disobeyed me,” he intones. “You behaved in a way which caused us both harm, and which could have destroyed thousands. For that, you are about to be thoroughly punished. Do you understand?”
I nod, breathless. “Yes, Sir,” I add quickly when that brow indicates a silent response is not enough.
“Over the bed,” he says. “I am going to use an ancient human punishment. A belt.”
He could tell me he was going to flay me and I would let him. How bad can a belt be? I haven’t worn clothing since my rescue. I don’t feel worthy of it. I have an urge to bare myself along with my shame, and that means when I bend over the bed I am immediately exposed.
“This is going to hurt,” he says. “But I don’t want the message to be pain, because you have had enough pain. I want you to feel this. Take this deeply. I want you to know this means I will always come for you. Time and again. No matter what it means. No matter how much it hurts.”
I am already crying in place, my shameful misery flooding the bed. I don't deserve anything this good. I don’t deserve his care, or his love. I deserve the pain that is about to come, heralded by the swish of leather arcing down toward my flesh.
SLAP!
The leather sings through the air and wraps around my cheeks, a thick band of heat bursting against my ass in a single strike. I cry out, and feel his clawed fingers raking gently through my hair.
“If you feel yourself start to go to that dark place where you can no longer feel my care, say nebula,” he growls softly. “I want this to hurt. But I do not want to harm you.”
I feel a rush of love which makes me sob. Tarkan takes such good care of me in every way he can. Even now, when he is punishing me with leather, making me stay in position like a naughty girl, turning my flesh into his disciplinary canvas, he wants me to know that I am loved, and cherished, and that he will never let any harm come to me.
I start to cry, not because of the pain, but because of the sheer relief of finally submitting to him. His leather lands again and again, heat and sting flashing through me, absolving me of my sins. I saw him suffer for me, and now I want to suffer for him, even though it is only a fraction of the pain, I want him to know I can and will bear it for him.
A dozen strokes land, each of them bitin
g against my skin, heating my flesh, making me experience my regret and remorse fresh each time.
When I think I can stand it no longer, the leather slides away and is replaced with the flat of his hand pressing across my cheeks. The span of his fingers curls around my hip, holding me in place as my body writhes. I cannot stay still for this. I cannot avoid the effects of the pain. I cannot hide from them, or him.
“I’m sorry I was bad,” I whimper, a small sound escaping my lips.
“You are not a bad girl,” he says. “You are a very good girl. My very good girl. Always mine. No matter what.”
I let out a sob which comes from the very core of me, the place which has always been empty.
"Why are you so nice to me? Why do you forgive me?”
“Because," he says, walking around to crouch in front of me and take my face between his cupped hands. He looks into my eyes with his burning gaze, his fanged teeth not retracted as usual to try to hide his nature, but exposed in their full glory. “You are mine. And you will always be forgiven.”
I wish he would beat me, yell at me. I wish he would make me feel the same painful humiliation he must have experienced when he allowed himself to be crushed by lesser beings to keep me safe.
“They didn’t hurt me," he growls. “Not in any way that matters.”
“I saw them hurt you.”
“I was made to be broken,” he rumbles. “My body is far more resilient than you can imagine. I let them do what they needed to do. And now they lie in pieces, crushed beneath the glory of the scythkin empire - and you are here in my arms. I won, Fortuna. I won.”
I hear pride and triumph and love in his voice. I see nothing but passion in his eyes. I realize that he never felt humiliated. I was the one who was humiliated. The pain didn’t matter to him. All that mattered to him was me. He knew the nobility of his cause, and through it he was saved.
“Please,” I whimper. “Take me. I’m yours.”
He does.