Light Unfolding: A Reverse Harem Science Fiction Romance (Wings of Artemis Book 8)

by Rebecca Royce

  Well, there was that.

  “This is Melissa Alexander.” Her voice banged into the room. She was pissed, and I could hear it. I gaped. No, no. This was not what was supposed to happen. This is why we had MacKenna McMann. We faked a leader. Melissa should not be speaking to this man.

  “Well, Melissa. It sure is nice to speak to you.” He was smooth. I couldn’t see him, but I could tell just from the sound of his voice. “I think it’s time you and I made a deal. I assume I’m speaking to the real leader and not the fake one you guys made up. Oh yes, we know that. We can tell from voice recognition software. You might have been able to fool the pathetic Sandler Cartel but not us.”

  There was a pause. “You can talk to me. Yes, I’m in charge.”

  I closed my eyes. Melissa had children. This had been the point of having the fake leader. Now she was going to be a target. We were going to have to hide her even more than we already did. Rohan nodded at me. “I’m going to go see Nolan. He’ll need help.”

  “Thanks.” I loved how he thought of those things. Rohan scooted around the Sandlers who had all stopped to listen.

  Amber still clung to her sister. “It’s so bad there. Earth is gone as we knew it. He was constantly on the airwaves even before the invasion.”

  “I have your father here, Melissa. So I’m very glad that I’ve got you to speak to. See? I am willing to make a deal. Say hi to your father.”

  I gasped and so did Paloma. Chancellor Alexander was dead. Or at least everyone had thought he was.

  “Dad.” Melissa sounded a little shakier. “You’re okay?”

  “Don’t give him anything, Mel. Not anything. And don’t believe a word he says. Not one single word.”

  “You can have your father back,” Danny interrupted. “All we want is for all of you to leave that base of yours. Leave it. Pack up and go. No one will get in your way. We’re tired of fighting this. You’re small. We can bomb you into tomorrow. But there is uranium beneath you, and we’d like that.”

  There was? How did they even know? I met Paloma’s gaze, and she shook her head. No, she hadn’t known that either.

  “Leave. Go wherever you want. This is still a free universe. People will like living under our rule. Everyone will be richer for it. Just leave.”

  I shook my head. There was no way in hell anyone here was running anywhere.

  “Danny.” Her voice was stern. “I think you should go ahead and check out your history. You see, I don’t think you adequately know who I am. I moved through that black hole back when it wasn’t so easy to do so. We gained time and didn’t age. My name is Melissa Fucking Alexander, and I blew shit up. I don’t believe you that you’ll give me my father. I don’t make deals. You want war with me? You can have it.”

  “Good girl,” Graham Alexander called out. “I love you.”

  The sound of a gunshot rang out, and I jumped like it was in the room with me. I stared at my brother Quinn. “Did they just kill him?”

  “They were always going to kill him.” Quinn stared up at the ceiling. “And they’re going to start firing on us any second. They thought that they could distract us longer.”

  I trusted him. If anyone knew how they would think, it was Quinn. Ari ran into the room. I ran to him, meeting him halfway there. Paloma ran, grabbing her sister’s hand. If we were about to be attacked she’d get to Ben, fast. I understood. I’d only had my son inside of me for a month and if I couldn’t keep him safe, it would kill something inside of me. Of course, if that was true, then it was likely I wasn’t keeping myself safe either.

  My husband stared at me. “We saved Rohan, but it might be for naught. If they’re coming at us with everything, then I’m here with you. Nowhere else, ever.”

  I nodded at him. “I love you.”

  Jackson rounded the corner. He came to me, and I let go of one of Ari’s hands to hold Jackson’s too. I was calm. Did I want to be bombed into oblivion? No. Was I glad to be standing here with them? Yes. Did I know we had done everything we could do? Yes. But maybe there were some forces that were too big to take down. Sadness swept through me at the thought, but I was okay.

  Melissa’s voice continued. “I am quite sure we’re being listened to, that others are monitoring this conversation, Danny. You just killed my father so listen to me now. I will fight you until I don’t have breath in my body. For however long that is. To save this universe. If I can’t do that, others will. I am surrounded by strong, powerful women and they are not alone. In every inch of this quadrant there are women ready to protect their families from you. They will rise up. You should be very afraid.”

  I had hated this element of her on Orion, but now I loved it. There was strength in Melissa, and her confidence filled me. Yes, there were others. They would stop him if we couldn’t. I believed her.

  She was Melissa-Fucking-Alexander. And I was Waverly Sandler. I’d helped make her this way. I had my own power and at least right then I could feel it surrounding me like a sun pulsing in my soul. We were all of us strong.

  Canyon and Rohan rushed in, each stood around me. Their mouths met my cheeks, my forehead. Each of my husbands gave me a kiss.

  “If this is it, then we had a hell of a ride didn’t we?” I grinned at them.

  And we waited.

  And waited.

  Waited…

  Had everyone been wrong?

  A sound beeped in the room.

  “Hello. My name is Blaze. We saw you had a situation up here and took care of it for you. Permission to land and discuss plans.”

  Blaze? I gasped. “The Super Soldier?”

  Canyon rushed to the monitor in the med bay and hit some buttons. “I gave him permission.”

  “From the med bay?” Jackson asked him. “Is there nothing you can’t do?”

  “Not much.”

  What had just happened? Had we just been… saved?

  14 Help From Above

  “So you know these people?” Tommy asked Canyon, whose body was so tense next to mine that I could feel his energy bouncing off my own like they were both palpable things.

  “Know is the wrong word. Not any of us knew each other. Not really. We had a sense of each other. I knew who he was. Everyone did. He was in charge of most of the force.”

  A shuttle appeared in the visible distance. Usually we’d have alarms going off, but we were basically dead. We’d get the time to reboot and fix things or be blown up before we could. As it was, we only knew they were coming because they’d told us they were.

  Everyone in leadership was with us, even Melissa who had just watched her father assassinated. She was pale and silent. C.J. and Cooper stood shoulder to shoulder with her. I was between my Super Soldiers. Diana, who had just lost her grandfather, leaned on Sterling. I wondered if she felt the same way I did right then—like she had to put herself between him and what was coming.

  These were Super Soldiers and maybe they had separated from Evander, but they couldn’t have my husbands back, not ever.

  I would stand between them and anything that might come for them. Or anybody.

  When the shuttle finally landed, four men disembarked one right after the other. They didn’t look particularly concerned or worried about being with us. Then again, four Super Soldiers could probably undo our entire operation in under ten minutes and stop to drink coffee when they were done without breaking a sweat.

  I blinked as it dawned on me that I knew them all. Well, I’d seen them all. They’d been lined up together on the main ship when I’d snuck aboard with Canyon. It was Blaze, Anders, Kellan, and Corbin. There had obviously been a reason they were together in their pods. I swallowed. I wouldn’t let them know I’d seen them all nude and unconscious. Some things were best kept to myself.

  Blaze stood in front of the other three. They were all silent as his gaze swept over all of us, pausing for an extra second on Canyon, Rohan, and Sterling.

  “I suddenly wonder if all my deceased colleagues are going to suddenly appea
r alive on this side of the galaxy.” A muscle ticked in his jaw.

  I decided right then and there I’d rather not piss him off. I would if I had to, but I’d prefer not to.

  Rohan, who had been silent for the last hour, finally spoke. “We didn’t pretend to be dead. If you were lied to, that’s not on us.”

  “Rohan.” Blaze nodded to him. “It never did sit well with me that you’d been lost. You’re like a cat, you’re bound to land on your feet.”

  If only he knew how untrue I knew that to be. There was a world where Rohan was gone. It wasn’t a world I wanted to live in but it existed.

  “Blaze, frankly, we are surprised to see you. Out of everyone, you helping us is the least probable.” Canyon answered for Rohan.

  “Maybe I needed to see with my own two eyes that two… sorry, it looks like three, of my top soldiers were alive and well. That they’d… left us and gone across the galaxy where they were living an entirely new life.”

  He was lying. I could feel it in my bones. “Maybe you had your own doubts and hearing their names and that they had this life made you finally do what you’d been wanting to.”

  All four guys reacted to me when I spoke, their hard gazes landing on me like a bomb. I forced myself to stay very still. I didn’t want to show weakness in front of them so I wouldn’t let them see that I wanted to collapse from their stares alone. I’d been awake too many days. I felt like hell and there was no time for me to be this way.

  People were dead. The world might be ending. I wasn’t sure how much more of this I could take. Canyon lifted his hand and massaged the back of my neck. That helped so much I almost became a puddle of liquid on the floor. I didn’t have to be afraid. I had a room full of people who would see to it that nothing happened.

  “You’re the voice.” Anders spoke. “The one who told us there was a life beyond the one we had. It was… effective. You’re with them.” He looked at Rohan and Canyon. “You’re married to two who are like us.”

  I nodded, but it was Jackson who answered. “And us.” He indicated Ari and himself. “We share her. That’s fairly common on this side of the galaxy.”

  Kellan hadn’t taken his gaze off me. “You are having a baby.”

  “My baby.” Rohan took my hand in his.

  It was Corbin who took the lead now. “We were told Super Soldiers were sterile. Are you sure it doesn’t belong to one of those two over there?”

  He was so cold sounding. All of them had eyes hidden by ice. I couldn’t make out an emotion in any of them beyond Blaze’s annoyance and yet they had left Evander—with three ships full of soldiers like them. They’d saved us. That had to mean something.

  Didn’t it?

  Or was I just fooling myself?

  “He’s mine and that’s the last I’ll say on it.”

  “Perhaps you are anomalous. Something gone wrong with the sterilization.” Corbin was really stuck on this subject.

  “I never heard the sterilization theory before,” this was the first Sterling had spoken. “My wife is also pregnant and it is my baby.”

  I stared at Diana. She hadn’t said anything, but she smiled at me. “We only found out this morning so just a little bit behind you. They’ll grow up together.”

  “Are you at all concerned that there might be things wrong with the babies? Genetic things based on the changes they made in us? That the babies might not be normal? That they might be like us or in some way altered because of us?”

  I hadn’t and even hearing Corbin say that didn’t change a thing for me. It was Dane who answered. “The children will have all appropriate medical care. You were all changed in utero, if I’m understanding the process correctly. The genetic material that was used to make you was normal. My guess would be that the babies received normal genetic materials from their fathers and unless we were to alter them, they will appear normal on scans. Now, I’m sure your parental DNA was taken from the very best possible people. They’re probably strong and healthy as you’d have been, too, even without the manipulation.”

  Melissa sighed. “All of this is fascinating. We’ve had a very long day. Cross that, days. We are grateful to you, but I’m sure we can all discuss procreation and the combining of genes another time.”

  “You’re Melissa,” Blaze spoke again. “Yes, we didn’t come here to do this. We were monitoring your frequencies, trying to decide if we were going to intervene. Your speech was impressive. Yes, it will take leadership on Earth to win this battle. Even with the three ships we now control we don’t have enough power to take down Evander on our own. Combined with you won’t be enough either.”

  Anders nodded. “Statistically speaking, we will all die.”

  “How many do you have?” Nolan asked. “How many people?”

  Blaze held Nolan’s gaze. “We have eight hundred fifty soldiers, all willing to turn on Evander for a new life. They will like the news of the babies. That will be… helpful.” He stepped further into the room. “But we do not know how to win the hearts and the minds of the people. We are blunt force. We are killers. I am not sure a new life is in store for us, not really. But we can be rid of those who did this to us. On that we are all agreed. It will just mean having to get you back in order and securing this place. We cannot have a base that can be so easily overpowered.”

  “Agreed. We know that,” C.J. answered him.

  “The problem has been the sheer volume of attacks. We had two enemies taking aim at us all the time. It’s amazing we made it this long.” Quinn ran a hand through his hair.

  Blaze blinked. “That can be changed. This place can be fixed. And I think together we can win. If the people really are capable of, as you put it, rising up. Are they?”

  No one answered, and after a minute I couldn’t keep my tongue. “They are. I’ve seen it time and again. Given the chance, people really do want a better life. I think we can do this all together. There will be more of us every day. Maybe it’s dark right now. Maybe right now is the worst it could possibly be. But that just means that things will get better.”

  I knew it. Right then, I could feel the truth in my words.

  The dawn was coming, the light breaking through. We’d seen the darkest it would be. Earth was occupied.

  But only for a moment. Time was fluid. What seemed like it would always be, would always exist, passed in a heartbeat. Evander had won the battle.

  We would take the war.

  Blaze lifted both his eyebrows slowly. “You do have a way with words, Waverly. I do want to do just what you tell me to do. Are all the females around here so… persuasive?”

  Oh, he had no idea.

  There were few of us, but we were an unstoppable force. But I figured he’d just have to discover that for himself.

  Six months later…

  Rohan

  The things I had known about babies before Wavey’s pregnancy would have fit in a one minute conversation. Babies were small and breakable. But I’d spent the last months learning everything I could. Like I knew that at the moment she was in pain because the baby was sitting on her in such a way that it was making her lower back hurt. I also knew if I went over and rubbed her it would lessen.

  The problem was, I couldn’t go do that while she was working. There was a time and place for things. That was something else I had picked up along the way.

  Blaze stood to my left. He’d been my commander, and I had left him without a word. It had never dawned on me, not for a second, that he’d care. We were pieces in a cog under his charge. That was all. Or at least that was what I had thought. Over the last months, I had come to wonder if he had felt quite differently than I’d ever realized.

  He was still cold, hard to read, and remote. But then I’d been that, too, until I spotted Wavey on the ship where we had rescued her from a marriage auction two years ago. Time had certainly moved us along.

  She had woken something else inside of me that had been dormant until her. And somehow she loved me, too. Somehow, I had th
e right to touch her, when she wasn’t working, and to know her hopes, dreams, fears. I got to hold her hand when we thought the world was ending. I got to know that she valued me as high as anything in the universe.

  I got to hold her heart against my own.

  “Blaze, I know it’s hard. I know that some of the guys are having trouble.”

  He was quiet for a minute. Then he answered. “You said guys. Guys was not a word you would have used or one I would have chosen. Yet, you use it like it’s natural for you to do so.”

  “I still don’t sound exactly the way everyone else does. For all that Canyon can talk to computers, which makes him quite different, he converses more naturally than I do. Wavey doesn’t seem to mind and my closest friends are her other husbands. I don’t really care what anyone else thinks.”

  He nodded. “She loves you. I can see it. I don’t know exactly what that is, or how to go about feeling that for someone, but I can see it. All of the guys do. Seeing you with her is helpful. It makes us think this whole thing isn’t ridiculous.”

  I supposed that was good. “I’ve never particularly thought of myself as a role model for anyone.” Although, that was going to change. One of the things fathers seemed to do was to role model. I was going to have to work on that. “I just want you to know that it does get easier. Fitting in. Believing. Feeling things.”

  “You could have come to me when you were having your doubts. You could have talked to me about how you were feeling.”

  And there it was. What we’d never said to each other in six months of co-existing on The Farm. I sighed. “No, Blaze, I couldn’t. To do so would have meant my death.”

  I’d seen what happened to those who expressed an opinion or a thought the company didn’t like. They suddenly disappeared, and it wasn’t to be sent across the black hole. No, they were never heard from again.

  He shook his head. “Maybe with another commander, but no one working under me ever got executed for expressing anything unless it was against mission. If they turned a gun on a fellow soldier. Something like that. Otherwise we worked it out. You might have discovered you weren’t alone.”