by V. K. Ludwig
I wanted her.
Wanted her in the most selfish way imaginable.
I had taken her freedom.
Might have taken her family.
Should taking her body cause me a sleepless night?
Mating her against her will was dishonorable. But was it more dishonorable than not participating in the efforts to save my own species?
Having Eden assigned as my potential mate might have been cruel, unfeeling. But then again, I had already been all those things to her — she had said so herself when she’d struggled against me. At least in that way, I knew I wouldn’t disappoint.
Why I got up and draped the blanket over her body, I couldn’t say. I’d never had much of a conscience to begin with, so why start now?
What would I call a female who kept coming back to me? A fighter? A fool? I had made my mind up — I would call her anam ghail de min.
My fated one.
Chapter 7
Eden
I wasn’t in my room.
I didn’t dare open my eyes.
Even with them still pressed shut, I could tell something had changed. Soft and velvety, the lightweight blanket caressed my skin like liquid silk. The air was less stagnant here. Sweeter, too, with a subtle hint of flowers and berries and… pancakes?
I slowly turned, my brain screaming inside my skull at the motion.
Had Melek sedated me?
A large black wall tapestry came into view. Like a mandala of gold-embroidered branches, planets, and stars. Potted plants stood about the room, their foliage twisted and tangled in colors of purple and orange. A glance across my shoulder revealed an entire wall made of one massive window, with fog hovering over what had to be Earth.
I hesitantly left the warmth of the oval-shaped bed behind, and strolled over to the window, my knees still shaky underneath me. The glass sat cold and stiff against my hand. Yes, I was still on Earth, and seeing the pine forest spread in front of me and tie into a chain of mountains in the back made my lungs stutter.
“You are awake.” A deep voice startled me, my palm squeaking noisily off the glass. “I had them bring a variety of your foods if you wish to eat something.”
That voice.
It turned my posture to stone, making my heart squish itself as it pounded loud and heavy against that rock-hard ribcage of mine.
Turning around meant destruction.
It wasn’t so much the tone of the voice I recognized. No, it was the accent and the choice of words. As if whomever they belonged to had studied them. He chose them carefully and delivered them with authority.
My stomach roiled, reminding me of the many skipped meals. But I couldn’t turn around to face the stoic stranger. A soldier, given his black uniform. Green, impassive eyes. If that voice hadn’t brought back memories of fear and disgust, then the scent of rosemary following him would have.
Come to think, everything in here smelled of him.
I smelled of him.
The awareness of that came with a shudder.
“Do I not use the correct words in your language?”
What was the point of not responding?
He’d keep on talking anyway. Standing there forever wasn’t an option, so I turned to face this shitshow.
There he stood, his posture straight, his jaw stiff, and with his hands clasped behind his back. I all but crumbled underneath his relentless stare. Just like that, my life had gone from bad to nothing short of dreadful. What was his name again? Commander something-very-long.
I had to keep my wits together now because danger loomed over me like an incoming storm. It prickled my skin, making my hairs stand on end before the first lightning struck.
“Where am I?”
He observed me, taking his time to respond. “These are my personal quarters on Ardev Five. I had you brought here so we may discuss the most recent development.”
His elaborate word choice stood in stark contrast to the primitive way he had ground between my legs the day at the pharmacy. My attention lingered on the nauseating memory of his hard cock for a second too long, and I didn’t notice how he had walked up to me.
“Development?” I asked, trying to step away from him, but I immediately rode up against the window. “If this is because I tried to run then… I promise it won’t happen again.”
And for the first time, I meant it, because sitting inside my little prison sounded a lot better than being here with him right about now. “Where is Melek? I wanna talk to my healer.”
“I have dismissed your healer from all his dealings with you because of his professional incompetence.” He turned away slightly, jutting his chin toward the door across. “If you would follow me downstairs, we can discuss everything else in a more appropriate setting. And I would like for you to eat because you’ve lost a considerable amount of weight since…”
The way his voice trailed off implied it all.
Did he really think I didn’t remember him?
Just looking at him made my scalp ache where he had pulled my hair. Repulsion rolled up and down my arms in never-ending waves of goosebumps breaking against my skin.
“You mean since you captured me!” I had technically snarled it at him, baiting for trouble where I should have kept my mouth shut. Wasn’t I in enough trouble already?
His eyes tightened at the corners. “I had hoped —”
“That I forgot how you groaned in my ear when you rubbed yourself all over me? Or how you shouldered me and carried me off?”
He clasped his hands a bit tighter as if he didn’t know what else to do with them, a twitch running across his temple. “The way I conducted myself that day was shameful, that much I will admit. But taking you into custody was necessary, and for that, I will not apologize. Now if you would please follow me.”
He set into motion and disappeared through the door, leaving me behind, confused and terrified.
What was I supposed to do?
Follow the guy who was a disturbing mix of superior articulation and subpar self-control?
Angst made me hesitate for another moment, then I left the room through the same door and found him walking down a massive staircase.
The golden rail slipped along my palm as I steadied my steps and followed him downstairs into a large entryway. I immediately recognized the coded door to the left, making a mental remark that freedom waited behind it. Or not.
His hand flicked toward the other door. “This is my office.”
As if I cared.
It wasn’t like I intended to move in here.
We walked through an archway and entered a room the size of a football field. Light poured in from the wall across, made up entirely of windows, which made my eyes squint.
I turned around and took everything in. The white couches and loungers standing about. Palm trees with spiked trunks growing at least twenty feet high. The curved outline of a pool waited at the center of it all, the water inside a pinkish-gray.
Chair feet dragging over the floor made me look up.
He pointed at the chair, then walked around the glass table and sat on the opposite side. Large golden platters sparkled in the middle, holding pancakes, French toast, bacon, and other foods.
My stomach churned at the sweetness pushing into my nostrils, and my mouth watered at the heartiness of the bacon. I walked over and sat, rolling up a pancake in slow-motion. Pretending I wasn’t hungry at all, and only ate because being polite seemed appropriate.
He surveyed me with a calculated coldness, and then he spoke the words I had feared for days. “We have found your genetic match.”
The pancake dissolved into nothing but bitterness on my tongue. “I will never let one of you touch me. Melek said I can turn it down. That’s true, right?”
“Dalle. That’s correct.” He shifted to lean against the backrest of his chair, sucking on his upper lip before he continued. “However, we usually insist on a six Earth months period during which you will agree to spend time with your potential
mate.”
Yeah, I didn’t think so.
I lifted the pancake to my mouth once more. “Six months, six weeks, six years. It will be a waste of time.”
“Precisely my thought,” he said with a cruel twist on his lips. “I have neither six weeks to spare, and certainly not six months. Which is why I had you brought here so we may negotiate how to move this along to our shared benefit.”
That pancake stopped less than an inch from touching my lips again, my arm suddenly frozen in place. “What? I… I don’t get what you’re trying to say.”
Or perhaps I did because a hollow feeling grew inside my chest as if my heart was about to dive into a free-fall. I wanted to say something. Blurt out my veto before my brain comprehended the implications.
And then he spoke again, piercing me to my chair with his cold gaze. “I am your genetic match… Eden.”
There went my heart.
It bottomed out somewhere in the deepest pit of my stomach.
I didn’t like the message of his words, but I disliked the emphasis he had placed on my name even more. As if he had spoken it a million times, casually letting it roll off his tongue as if it was the most familiar thing to him.
“No.” My voice came out small, like that of a woman finally broken, and the way my head shook frantically probably made me look the part. “This is a joke, right? You did this on purpose. Had me assigned to you so you could finish what I didn’t let you that day at the pharmacy.”
“Leska, I could have taken whatever I wanted from you without consequences.”
“Rape is punishable by death for your kind. Melek told me.”
“It is, and I was the one who established said law. And while I will not lower myself to putting myself above the law, the fact remains that taking your body that day would not have cost me my life. Yet I did not.”
Who was this guy that he had such power?
He sat there, his face as straight as his spine, surveying me with a raised chin and a certain ascendency in his air. Everything about him screamed leadership and a nauseating amount of arrogance as if they had groomed him from birth to make me feel small.
“You’ll have to rape me then because I’ll never let you touch me willingly.” I tossed the pancake back onto the platter to stress my point. “I will never mate with any of your kind for as long as I can avoid it. But especially not with you. I was locked up because of you. You are a disgusting, cruel pig.”
He turned his head and stared out the wall of windows, where a gloomy fog trailed around the odd vegetation behind it. It was like a garden of some sort, with corkscrew trees and shrubs carrying small colorful dots that might have been berries or blossoms.
His focus drifted far from here, his jawline tense as his next words came calm but concise. “Tell me what it will take for you to accept me as your mate. To give your body willingly until I seed you with my child.”
I tried to keep my expression neutral, although he still didn’t look at me, my pride searing. “There’s nothing in this world that would make me accept you.”
“Not even your freedom?”
His eyes remained distant somewhere beyond that fog, but a slight frown settled on his forehead. He brought a hand to his chin, rubbing through what appeared to be a good five days-worth of beard growth.
I hated how he let silence stretch between us to a disturbing degree. Mostly because it made me consider his question as if I was someone he might buy. Lured into spreading my legs by waving the key to my cage.
He rose and walked over to me with purpose in his steps. His gaze found mine once more as he pulled out a chair close to me and sat down, leaning slightly forward. Broad and strong, his chest expanded in a deep inhale right in front of me, and I sat paralyzed, staring up at him.
“I’m a practical male, Eden,” he said, his voice still as commanding although he had dropped it to a near whisper. “Another Vetusian might pledge you his love and his heart, but I will not pretend that I have any of those things to give. What I can give you is the world, along with the freedom to explore it, indulge in it even.”
He tugged a strand of my hair behind my ear so quickly, I had no time to evade his touch. “We both understand this is a cruel twist of fate, but it is fate nonetheless, and I shall ignore it no longer. The Vetusian Empire came here to save our species from extinction, and I cannot forget my responsibility in doing my part. So I’ll ask you again. What does it take for you to carry my child?”
I should have ignored his question right along with the insult. But would that have been reasonable? Was it wrong of me to consider his words? I tried to make sense of all of this, and that talk of fate.
“What if I say no?”
“Then I shall have you returned to your room and bother you no more.”
And then I phrased the question I knew he wanted me to ask. I could tell by that smirk hiding behind his straight mouth. “How much longer do I have to stay in that room?”
“We lost two million engineers due to a failed negative matter jump, along with around one million healers. Construction is approximately two Earth years behind schedule, perhaps more. The fact being that we give priority to families and those females who accepted their mates —”
“I see where this is going,” I said with a laugh, entirely fake because tears pricked the back of my eyes. “This is the moment where you’re telling me that I’ll be stuck in that room forever unless I agree to let you fuck me.”
“Mate,” he corrected me dryly. “But yes, as unfortunate as this situation is, habitats are in short supply for those females refusing Vetusians mates.”
“How convenient.”
He quickly grabbed my chin, squeezing it tight until his fingers burned into my flesh, and forcing me to look straight at him. “I lost over three million of my brigade, leska. Do not use this fact for your sarcasm, for there is no convenience in their deaths.”
The chair shrieked underneath me as I struggled out of his clasp, my chest tightening with anxiety. His demeanor had gone from noble to downright nasty again, reminding me all the more of the man who had captured me.
“Why would I believe you?”
He retreated his hand and tugged on the embroidered sleeve of his black, tailored jacket. “Because you have nothing to lose. I have taken your planet. I have taken your freedom. But I am offering you one of those things back in exchange for a child. In exchange for access to your body, without risking that bit of honor I have left after our last encounter. Proof of my honesty will supply itself soon enough.”
The beat of my heart ticked like a clock, marking each second during which sick questions shot through my mind. What if agreeing would buy me freedom? Away from that room and the monotone, brain-deafening, nothingness I could barely endure for a month without going insane? That was what I had to be, right? Mad for even considering his proposal.
A child was no joking matter.
What if he lied?
But then I remembered Melek mentioning the very same thing, though in much more simple words.
I wrenched down a gulp. “Define freedom.”
If he tried hiding that self-satisfied smile, then he did a poor job. But chances were, he wanted me to see it as he folded his arms in front of his chest.
“My personal quarters will be at your disposal. You may roam Ardev Five as you please,” he said. “We are still in a state of transition, but once things settle —”
“So this freedom talk is all bullshit. All you’re offering me is to stay here and roam the ship? The fact alone that you live here too makes this proposal terribly unattractive.”
His strong body perked up in front of me, making me rasp in a sharp breath. “A child will not be something immediate, and neither will be freedom. As time passes and the transition moves along, your freedom will increase.”
“To what point?”
“To the point, you may leave Ardev Five. You may even leave the planet for all I care as long as it doesn’t endanger my chi
ld.” He rose and straightened his uniform, gently patting any and all potential wrinkles into place. “Earth will be different from what you remember. But there will be occupations, entertainment, education, as well as many hybrid children since some females are already reportedly pregnant. Of course, I will always provide for you, and my standing allows me to provide well.”
Some were already pregnant?
Perhaps they had too little fight where I had too much?
“And the child?”
“Will be raised in your care, unless you would prefer it otherwise.”
I gave a scoff. “Only a cold-hearted ass like you would suggest that. Of course, I would want to raise my child.”
He nodded and grabbed one of the crispy bacon slices, then simply walked off.
“Where are you going?”
“I have duties to attend. Make yourself at home while you’re here, but do not touch things you have no understanding of.” He stopped and turned once more, his gaze as relentless as ever. “You have until tomorrow to decide, and will be returned to your room if you refuse.”
Chapter 8
Eden
A child in exchange for freedom.
Five words. Ten vowels. Sixteen consonants.
No matter how I twisted and turned the sentence, it still sounded all sorts of wrong between my ears. But that didn’t change the need for my decision.
The edges on the last piece of French toast had gone dry, but I grabbed it and munched away. How long I had paced this massive room, I couldn’t say. Given the size of the place, it was more power walk than pacing. In any case, it was dark outside and had been for a while.
I might have considered checking out the large door in the hall once or twice, but quickly abandoned the idea. Pretty sure it was DNA-coded as well, and I sure as hell didn’t wanna get nearly close enough to the Commander to get a sample of his.
My mind raced, considering the options.