She fell asleep when she settled again.
She wasn’t certain what awakened her or how long she’d been out, but she woke to utter pitch blackness. Startled, uncertain what it meant—if anything—she shoved to her feet, bracing herself against the wall to keep her balance since the darkness and sudden awakening had left her disoriented.
She’d no sooner stood that an abrupt, very loud crash very close startled her and the baby.
She sucked in a scream.
Nye didn’t attempt to silence his.
“Quiet!” A male voice hissed the command. Emma didn’t recognize it.
He reached her even as he spoke. His hands skated upward to her neck and she felt him grasp it, felt his fingers curl around the collar, thick enough she thought for a handful of seconds that he was going to choke her to death. Instead, thankfully, he broke the collar loose and dropped it.
Then he encircled both her and Nye with his arms.
“Now!”
Now what, Emma wondered blankly?
She wasn’t certain, later, if she even completed the thought.
She was distracted by a stinging sensation that rapidly accelerated to fire and then stopped before her brain had even finished processing the pain. She felt a sensation of falling and then an abrupt stop, like the falling sensation when she was asleep that inevitably jerked her awake.
It did this time, too, and she opened her eyes to blinding light and Nye’s screams of fright.
When her eyes adjusted, she discovered they were surrounded by a veritable army of Hirachi warriors, all in full ‘war paint’ and bristling with knives and clubs and spears and even guns.
Almost in sync, they dropped to one knee, executed some sort of salute that was a fist slammed against their chests and uttered some sort of chant.
Strangely, Nye’s wails of distress cut off abruptly as the warriors dropped to one knee.
When Emma glanced at him fearfully she discovered, to her stunned amazement, that he was looking around at the warriors almost with an expression of … pride, a half smile curling his lips.
This was not a scene he was unfamiliar with, she thought.
The man who’d ‘traveled’ with her, urged her off of what she discovered was a platform of some sort. “I will take you to your cabin,” he said brusquely.
Emma glanced up in surprise at Kadin. She’d recognized his voice, but there was a coolness in his manner and his voice that confused her.
He hustled her and Nye from the room and down a hallway so briskly she had to rush to keep up and was so breathless by the time he stopped she felt downright faint.
Opening a door, he all but shoved her and Nye inside and closed the door behind them.
Emma stood gaping at the door for several moments after he’d vanished and finally turned to look at the cabin he’d escorted them to.
It was so stunning it completely distracted her from Kadin’s behavior.
It was massive, for one thing, by her standards and by the standards of the cabins she’d seen pretty much everywhere—on ships and trains and the space ship she’d been in before for that matter.
It looked like four cabins had been spliced together and she wondered if they’d knocked out the extra walls.
And why.
Nye was High King, she reminded herself, but …good god! … a baby. He didn’t need this much room. He couldn’t even walk yet!
Noticing finally that Nye was studying her worriedly, Emma smiled at him. “This is really nice, huh? Look at that fancy crib they have for you! And it’s huge! I think I’d like my bed to be closer to yours, though. What do you think?”
To her surprise, he turned his head and looked at her bed. When he met her gaze again, he smiled.
Emma had the weirdest feeling that he’d actually understood.
Dismissing it, she crossed the room and sat him down in his crib and then moved to the wide bed that had been installed for her—she supposed—as his nursemaid? Struggling not to feel depressed at that thought, she got down and examined the underside of the bed. Without surprise, she discovered it was bolted to the floor.
“Well! That sucks! I can’t move it. Maybe they’ll move it for me … later,” she ended as it abruptly occurred to her that she and Nye had been removed from the slave ship and there had been a group of warriors gathered there.
To be transported to the slave ship, she realized with a sense of horror.
They’d been moved to safety and everyone else was fighting on the ship that had taken them.
Including Kadin.
And Gaelen.
And Hauk.
She felt a lump form in her throat. Maybe that was why he’d seemed so cold? He was focused on getting them out and getting back to the fight?
Before she could get too caught up in imagining all sorts of horror, someone tapped on the door. Surprised, she got up and moved to it, studying the panel beside it for a moment and then pressing what looked like it might be an open/close button. The panel slid wide, revealing a yellow skinned Hirachi warrior woman.
The woman looked down at her with a touch of surprise and obvious contempt. “I learn Engish to help serving woman attend High King Nye.”
Emma gaped at her with a mixture of outrage and fright. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t crossed her mind that, if Nye really was royal, she might be kicked to the curb, but she’d convinced herself that she would be allowed to mother him until he was grown. His mother had died. He had the needs of any baby, regardless of his heritage or status.
The comments set her back up right off, put her on the defensive. The contempt was bad enough but to add to that the female had claimed her baby! Her lips tightened. “I can take care of Nye myself,” she responded tightly. “He can be a handful, granted, but I’ve managed just fine up until now.”
The female produced a bottle and held it up. Before Emma could snatch it, she smirked and walked past her to the crib.
Nye gaped up at her, but it was hard to say what his reaction was.
Until the female tried to pick him up.
He instantly began wailing and reaching for Emma.
Which brought Emma’s motherly instincts to the forefront. She hurried after the woman and held her hands out for the baby.
The female looked reluctant to hand him over, but apparently thought better of fighting Emma over the baby when a guard opened the door and looked in.
Pasting a patently false smile on her lips, she handed Nye over and the bottle.
Emma couldn’t prevent a touch of satisfaction from flickering through her, but she smiled at Nye instead of provoking the giantess like an idiot.
Unfortunately, there was no comfortable rocking chair like she’d had in her own place on Earth. She moved to the bed with him as had become her habit and settled with her back against the headboard. Nye very happily sucked the bottle dry, belched loudly and snuggled against her and went to sleep.
“The king should sleep in his own bed,” the female, who hadn’t bothered to identify herself, said coldly.
Emma sent her a cool look. “He’s a baby and he’s been through pure hell since we were captured. He feels safe with me and he needs that right now until he feels more secure.”
She could tell the woman wanted to argue. Instead, after staring at her for several moments—as if she thought she could stare her down!—she crossed the large room, opened a compartment along the far wall and pulled out a bed.
Emma found it deeply unsettling that the female clearly intended to share the room with them—maybe had been ordered to do so—but she was pretty sure she couldn’t toss her out on her ass.
Maybe one of the guys would help her when, if, they came back?
Acknowledging that possibility made her feel vaguely ill and a lot distressed.
She had no concept of how long this battle, or war, might last or when she might reasonably expect to know something. But she found that all of the tension while she was waiting for she knew not what had drained her o
f energy. Before very long, she was drowsing, in spite of her uneasiness about the guys and the scary female sharing the room with her.
It wasn’t a peaceful sleep for all that. She kept feeling the falling sensation and jerking awake. Finally, after rousing Nye several times, she carried him to his crib and carefully settled him so that he could rest.
She tried for a while to stay awake, but even the fear that the strange woman might try to knock her off in her sleep couldn’t keep her awake. She fell asleep wondering if she’d get to wake up again.
The splash of water woke her. It was so reminiscent of the time she’d woken and discovered Gaelen in the tank she was convinced it was him. Climbing from the bed, she rushed through the open doorway she saw and into the bathroom she discovered attached to the baby’s suite. She came to a screeching halt the moment it registered in her mind that it absolutely wasn’t Gaelen making use of the water as ‘the female’ stepped out.
“Oh my god!” Emma gasped. “Excuse me. I’m so sorry. I thought ….” She stopped, deciding it might not be a good idea to say what had been on the tip of her tongue until she understood the situation better.
The woman looked her up and down with just the hint of a sneer. “I done. Emma should use,” she said, pointing toward the tank she’d just emerged from.
Emma narrowed her eyes at the bitch. She would’ve considered it a lie to say she was ‘clean’, but she’d done her best with what was available and it wasn’t as if she’d been working outside! She supposed she could have made use of the tank provided for Gaelen, but it hadn’t seemed right to do that when he clearly needed it—or at least she thought he needed it. In any case, it was briny and that didn’t make her feel clean at all. “What should I call you? Or would bitch do?”
The word might not be part of her vocabulary, but it was evident from her expression that she realized, just from Emma’s tone, that it was an insult. “Valee.”
Emma nodded. “I don’t suppose you could tell me where I might get something to put on?”
Valee looked blank.
“Clothing.”
Valee still looked blank. “De king’s man, Prince Kadin, order we bring here clooding an’ toiletries for woman an’ bebe.”
“Well, thank god you learned ‘Engish’,” Emma muttered. “Thanks.”
Dismissing the woman, she headed over to the tank. She hadn’t seen ‘clooding’ or toiletries, but maybe they just hadn’t brought them yet? Or maybe they were stored somewhere in the suite?
Getting in was no easy feat considering it had been made for giant people.
She hoped to god she could get out again without having to summon help.
But she decided to wait until the bitch left to attempt to get in so she wouldn’t amuse the female with her efforts.
She was glad she had. It took several attempts before she managed to leap up high enough to shift her center of balance and fall in.
It was fucking cold! She almost gasped in a lungful of briny water when the chill hit her.
Her teeth were trying to chatter when she surfaced, but at least she could stand up in it, which she hoped meant she’d be able to get out again—soon. There was nothing pleasant about it. The sooner she was done, the better, she thought.
Without soap or wash cloth, she simply used her hands to scrub over herself to clean off the best she could, raking her fingers through her hair in hopes of cleaning and detangling it.
When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she bailed out, pretty much the same way she’d gone in—leaping up to hang over the side and then flipping out—except she didn’t leave head first but rather threw a leg over to hoist herself out.
It was hell on her cooter and ass crack, but she managed to get out without serious damage to her person.
She hadn’t hung around to see where, or even if, there was any sort of towels stored, so she just jumped up and down and slung her hands and arms like a dog, trying to sling as much water off as possible and then hurried out to the main room to find something to put on.
The bitch had opened a concealed panel to reveal the bed she’d slept in so Emma went around the room patting the wall until she found one that had … well, some sort of textiles that looked like it could be used to cover her.
It really looked more like togas.
Shaking her head, she pulled one out and struggled into it. It kept sticking to her, which made it difficult to situate, and when she finally got it on she had about a foot too much fabric around her feet, but it was wonderful to be mostly covered after so long. ‘Mostly’ because it was made a lot like a toga and that meant her arms and shoulders were bare.
After a search revealed nothing like a shirt, she held the gown up and headed over to the bed. It took some effort and she thought the whole damn thing would unravel, but she managed to tear a strip off the bottom so she could walk without falling on her face and then she took the strip she’d removed and tied it around her shoulders like a shawl for comfort.
Not beauty.
She was pretty sure she looked worse than she had when she went into the tank.
Which really sucked since she ran into Kadin as she headed out the door.
Literally.
She’d discovered the bitch had taken Nye while she was trying to bathe and that alarmed her so much she ran to the door to charge through it and slammed into Kadin, who was standing in the opening, and bounced back, landing on her ass.
Chapter Fourteen
Kadin made a grab for Emma and missed as she ricocheted off of him.
She slammed into the floor on her ass so hard she bounced twice before she stopped moving, looking up at him with her mouth open in shock and her face turning blood red.
Peripherally, Emma was aware of embarrassment over her clumsiness, and pain, and also gladness to see that Kadin didn’t seem to have come to harm, but her primary focus was on the baby and she bounded up almost before she’d skidded to a halt. “She took the baby!” she gasped.
Kadin tensed, frowning as he grabbed her shoulders and gave her a little shake. “Who? Who took him?”
“That … bitch …that stayed here last night. She suggested I needed a bath and then picked up the baby and left while I was bathing.”
Kadin looked like he was having trouble following, but after a moment some of the tension left him and a half smile twitched his lips. “Princess Valee?”
That jolted through Emma like a douse of cold water. “What?”
“Chief Amarl’s daughter, Princess Valee? She was sent to attend the young king.”
Confusion, fear, and dawning anger flooded through Emma. “She was supposed to take him?” she asked blankly.
Kadin frowned and spoke to one of the men standing guard outside the room. After a rapid fire exchange in another language, he turned to her again. “She has taken him to the dining hall to break his fast. I will take you so that you can see there is no cause for alarm.”
That didn’t actually answer her question and it was a pressing one as far as she was concerned. Had the baby been, basically, taken from her already? Or had the bitch just taken advantage of the distraction?
Almost more disturbing was the fact that the baby hadn’t cried or in fact raised a fuss of any kind and he wasn’t keen on strangers.
Kadin seemed to notice that she was still distressed as he guided her along the corridor. “She is ….” He paused, apparently trying to figure out the relationship. “Cousin, I think. Her father, Chief Amarl, and Nye’s grandfather were brothers.”
Emma didn’t find that information particularly comforting, but some of her tension eased.
She hadn’t considered that he would have relatives—and she certainly should have. She frowned. “Sooo, Nye’s father was Hirachi? And his mother Satren?”
Kadin looked uncomfortable. “Nye is the product of genetic experimentation by the Sheloni. His mother was an Earth woman. One of his fathers was Hirachi and one was Satren.”
Emma halted in her tracks.
“You aren’t serious?”
His lips flattened. “Deadly.”
Emma blinked at him. “How did …?” She broke off when the answer immediately presented itself. “His mother was taken by the Sheloni?”
The comment clearly surprised him, but she couldn’t tell if it was because she hadn’t pried into his background, because she wasn’t exactly stunned about the genetic experimentation, or because it seemed it had just occurred to her that it was the Sheloni kidnapping people all over everywhere. “Yes. As was my mother.”
Emma gaped at him, realizing abruptly that she’d noticed at once that he had traits of both races—just like Nye. She’d just assumed it was because the mother was one and the father of the other tribe or species. “It’s considered irresponsible and unethical to experiment with people like that—which is why it’s illegal on Earth. At least, in the U.S. I couldn’t say about some of the other countries experimenting with DNA.”
A jolt went through Kadin at that. “Your people experiment with … this sort of thing?”
Emma shrugged. “In a way we have for a very long time—to improve food crops. We just never considered it genetic manipulation and, of course, we didn’t really understand it or have the knowledge to mess around on an atomic level like we do now. But it’s restricted to plants and lower animals. They’ve cloned some animals and also added genetic code to alter some species—like, this scientist added spider DNA to these goats to produce super strong fibers that could be used to make super textiles.”
The dining hall was filled to bursting when they arrived. Emma hadn’t expected it. There hadn’t been anyone on the ship they’d left Earth in except her, the baby, and the three guys. Of course, she knew this ship had more. She’d seen the warriors, but she’d had no idea there would be so many!
She didn’t realize she’d stopped dead in her tracks until Kadin settled a hand along her waist and gave it a reassuring squeeze and then pressure to urge her forward again.
They seemed to be attracting a lot of attention and Emma wasn’t happy about it, but she was able to ignore it after a moment and focus on looking for Nye.
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