by Luna Hunter
Torin charges towards the warden, but in the blink of an eye he grabs the gun, lifts it and pulls the trigger. Time seems to slow to a crawl, my throat closing as I watch my alien lover stop abruptly in his tracks and crash to the floor.
“No!” I scream, my voice hoarse. “No no no! You monster!”
I crawl towards Torin, but to my surprise, there’s no blood. Instead, a dart sticks out of his chest.
“It’s only a sedative,” the warden says. “You didn’t think I’d let him die that easily, did you? No, I’ve got bigger plans for him.”
I cradle my mate in my arms, tears continuously streaming down my face.
“What are you talking about?!”
“His punishment,” Anik sneers. “It’s due.”
“You can’t,” I say. “He has the right to appeal! I haven’t signed off on anything!”
“Oh really?” Anik says. “What about this?”
He pulls a paper out of his back pocket and throws it at my feet. I snatch it up, wipe my tears away and try to make sense of it.
“It’s all right there. Torin has withdrawn his appeal and accepted his sentence.”
“What?! This is a forgery! You can’t do that!”
“I’m from the Onyx family!” he blusters. “We don’t break rules — we make them!”
I feel so small, so insignificant as I hold Torin in my arms. I thought that I was a lawyer, someone who could exact change, someone who could make a difference… but even after all those years of study, even after all I’ve been through, the warden has proved me wrong. There’s no justice. Only power.
“Don’t take him away,” I plead. I’m broken. I can’t have him stripped away from me, not now. He means more to me than life itself. Please.
“Don’t worry your pretty little head,” Anik says. “You’re going to watch his punishment every step of the way, I’ll make sure of that. Guards, take her.”
The men descend upon me like a pack of wolves, their hands grabbing at my arms and legs, pulling me away from Torin. I kick and scream and raise bloody hell, until a needle is jammed into my neck.
Then everything goes dark.
I wake up.
It’s far less enjoyable this time. There’s no rhythmic Zoran, heartbeat, no powerful arm draped over my body. There’s only the cold floor, and every muscle in my body aching. It all comes back to me in a flesh. My hands travel down my body, and I notice I’m wearing a prison jumpsuit. Those guards didn’t… did they?
“Don’t worry,” a nasal voice says. “My guards didn’t touch you, not like that. We aren’t animals, like that alien beast.”
I glance up to see Anik Onyx’s lanky frame standing in the doorway of what appears to be my cell. It’s a different one, smaller, and in the background, I hear a faint humming noise.
His face is about the last thing I want to see right now.
“You’re the beast here,” I cough, scrambling to my feet.
“Don’t give me that look,” he says. “You brought this upon yourself. Cavorting with criminals. You broke your own rules — you know you can’t have relations with clients.”
“You locked me in there,” I sneer. “You don’t play by the rules.”
“I don’t have to. They don’t apply to people like me. Have they taught you nothing at law school?”
My head aches with a dull pain, the sedative still slurring my speech and my movements. I try to attack Anik and wipe that grin off his face, but all I do is stumble and crash into the wall.
“It happens tomorrow,” he smirks. “Enjoy these last moments. They are all you will ever have.”
He closes and locks the door, and complete darkness surrounds me. I crumple to the floor. Tears stream down my face, and my stomach feels like an endless pit of despair.
And then I hear it.
Torin’s low growl.
“Torin?!” I ask. “Where are you?”
“I don’t know,” is the reply.
The sound seems to be traveling through the wall itself. My fingers claw at it, looking for a hatch or a hole or some sort. I feel a ventilation vent, which must connect Torin’s cell to mine.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I… I don’t know,” he answers.
Hearing his voice is both a relief, yet at the same time, it magnifies the pain tenfold. Knowing he’s so close yet I can’t reach him is pure torture.
Exactly what that Onyx bastard intended, no doubt.
“Look, he says. “Nora. I have a message for you. Can you hear me okay?”
“Yes,” I say, trying to stop from sobbing. “Yes.”
“Listen carefully. I need you to… forget about me.”
I shake my head and bang it against the wall. No. No no no. I can’t do this. I won’t. Torin’s voice sounds different, like he’s been defeated. Like he’s running on empty.
That is not the Torin I know.
I know a man of boundless energy. Of joy. Of pure survival instinct.
The warden is not just going to murder him — he’s breaking him. Stripping him of everything that makes him himself.
“This is the end for me. We’ve tried our best, we’ve come far, but… we have to face reality. This is the end of the line for us. I hoped my brothers in arms would show up and save the day, but I can’t keep believing in that dream. Maybe they’re still out there somewhere, and I hope they are, but they could have died a long time ago for all I know. I don’t know. All I know is that I love you, Nora Baker. I love you with all my heart, more than life itself. You’ve shown me a new way. You’ve awoken feelings I didn’t know I had. For that I will be forever grateful, in this life and the next.”
“Stop it,” I cry, “Stop it. It’s not too late, it’s not.”
“It is, Nora. It is. And that’s okay. I’ve made peace with it. You have a whole life ahead of you. You can’t spend all of it mourning me. You’re smart, intelligent, courageous, beautiful. Promise me you’ll love again.”
“I can’t,” I say. “Stop it, Torin. Please.”
The idea of being without him tears my very soul apart. Right now, I’d rather die than be without him. The time we’ve shared, though it’s been short, has been nothing short of amazing.
I want a lifetime of that. I can’t go on without him. Not anymore.
“Promise me, Nora. Please.”
“I can’t,” I insist. “And I won’t. I love you, Torin. I love you and only you, from now until the end of time.”
“You’re stubborn,” he answers, and I think I can hear him smiling. “I love you, too.”
Chapter Nine
Nora
“There. Isn’t she beautiful?”
Anik Onyx is staring at a sun, a giant ball of continuous fire. The screen on this spaceship provides enough protection that we can look right at it without fear of going blind, but still the light is so strong I can only peek through my eyelids.
“Why are you showing me this?” I growl.
My wrists and ankles are bound, and the bastard has even put a leash on me like a dog. Anik Onyx is a sadist, pure and simple. He yanks my leash and I nearly trip over.
“Stop barking, little doggie, and watch. You know what’s going to happen? Do you have a suspicion yet, hm?”
I do, but I don’t even want to think about it.
A wide smile spreads across his creepy voice.
“That’s right, doggie. I’m launching that little lover of yours straight into the sun. And I’m going to make you watch, oh yes.”
“You’re a sick fuck,” I bite.
He runs a finger across my cheek. There’s two guards at the door, but they just stare straight ahead. His twisted behavior must be nothing new to them.
“Oh, I know,” he says. “I know. Why do you think my family placed me here? Their youngest son, their most brilliant, their crowning achievement, contender for the family throne… I had it all, you know. Power. Money. Women. Yes, so many women…”
His hand moves down to m
y neck. I swallow the lump in my throat, and his grip on me tightens.
“So many women… but when you have an endless buffet of pussy, it all loses its taste after a while, you know?”
I can’t breathe.
“You start chasing highs, one after the other, and they all need to be bigger, better, grander…”
All light seems to dim, and his voice sounds far away.
“You choke out one little whore and suddenly you’ve ‘shamed the family’,” he grits through his teeth. “You promise to be good, but what do you do, hm? What do you do once you’ve had a taste?!”
His eyes are filled with darkness, and it’s all I see. Just a void, an endless sea of nothing. The warden isn’t just a bastard and a sadist — he’s a fucking psychotic murderer.
His grip loosens and I fall down to my knees, coughing, crying, gasping for air.
“That’s right,” he hisses. “You don’t stop because you can’t. You have to feed the beast, feed the hunger. People start asking questions. And that’s when your family moves you away to a faraway planet, gives you some busywork and tells you to fuck off and never besmirch their name again.”
He grabs my hair roughly and pulls me up to my feet. I cry out in pain, but this only makes his smile wider. “Don’t worry, pet. I’m going to make it last. I have big, big plans for you.”
His hands move to the zipper of my jumpsuit. The warden leans in and whispers a sickening threat into my ear. “I’m going to be inside of you when you watch him die, pet.”
Oh hell no.
I’d rather die than let him lay a single finger on me. He may have me in chains, he won’t break my spirit. Not and now and not ever.
I pretend to sink down to my knees, and he buys it. Of course he does. He thinks the world revolves around him, around his sick, twisted idea of pleasure. “That’s a good pet,” he muses. “Obedient. I like.”
I kick off as hard as I can, smashing the top of my head into his lower-jaw. He stumbles backwards, bashing his head against the window, putting a fine dent in it. I reach for the stun-gun on his hip, yank it out, whirl around and shoot the two guards right where they stand.
They were so flabbergasted they hadn’t moved an inch — and now they crumple onto the floor.
“You bitch!” Onyx cries. “Whore! I’ll make you pay!”
I point the stun-gun at his head.
“Give me the keys,” I say, my voice trembling. “The keys!”
He sneers. “It’s too late. You can’t save him. You might as well stay and watch.”
“The keys!”
“If you give up now, I’ll let you live,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. “But if you persist, I won’t make any promises.”
I shoot him right in the neck. The warden drops to the floor like a brick. I frantically search his body for the keys and find them in his left pocket. I quickly undo my chains and bolt out of there. I bump into the chest of a guard outside, and before he realizes what’s happening, I place the stun-gun against his neck.
“Where is he?!” I say. “Torin! Where is he!?”
“D-d-downstairs,” he stammers. “The a-a-armory.”
I pull the trigger and he falls to the floor, unconscious. I sprint down the hall, frantically searching for my lover. Was the warden telling the truth? Is it too late? Or was that simply more psychological torture?
I jump down the stairs, my heart racing a million miles per minute. It’s like a damn maze in here. I follow the signs pointing me towards the armory. A left, a right, a left, another set of stairs, another left. I breeze past guards and other personal, and they’re too stunned or surprised to act before I’ve already turned the corner.
There. The armory!
My heart feels like it could burst right out of my chest. I run in and there he is. Torin.
Wearing a spacesuit and tied to a rocket with thick, heavy chains.
“Torin!” I scream as I run for him, opening the door despite the computer’s automated warnings.
“Nora!” he says, his eyes wide. “You came!”
“Thirty seconds to launch,” the computerized voice says.
I pull at his chains, but they are too tight for me to remove. I fiddle with the keys, trying to find the one that frees him.
“Run away!” he says. “Nora! Listen to me! It’s too late!”
“It’s not,” I say, “it’s not!”
Yet with every second that passes, my heart rate is ramped up.
“Twenty seconds to launch.”
“Go!”
“I’m not leaving you! I’m not!”
“You’ll die!”
“I’ll die with you!”
“Ten seconds to launch.”
I fumble and drop the keys. It’s too late. In a final bid of desperation, I jump on Torin’s body and hold him. I hold him as tightly as I can, sliding my wrists underneath his chains.
There is no other place for me in the universe but here. I want to be at his side. In this life and the next.
“You fool,” Torin says, but I can see he’s smiling, his eyes filled with tears. “I love you, Nora. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Torin. I love—”
“Launch initiated.”
Doors slide open, revealing the darkness of space — and the intense, overwhelming brightness of the sun. I close my eyes as all air is sucked out of the room, and the rocket launches with an unbelievable kick. I hold onto Torin as tightly as I can, and I think about the time we shared, the way he made me laugh, made me cry, made me feel alive and understood and loved.
Everything goes dark as my consciousness slips away. We’ll burn up, together. We’ll die as we loved one another — a bright, intense flicker.
Chapter Ten
Torin
Nora is so stubborn. I told her to forget me, to move on — and what does she do?
She jumps onto a freaking rocket and won’t let me go, not even if it kills her. That’s what I get for trying to tell her what to do.
I want to hug her back, but I’m strapped down completely. All I can do is watch her, watch her as her eyes close, as her breathing stops, as my heart breaks into a thousand tiny little pieces.
This is the end. I don’t know if I’m blessed for having met her or cursed for having so little time with her. It doesn’t matter now. We’re going to meet our maker.
And then, a light.
Is it the sun? So soon?
The rocket spins, and everything becomes a blur. I see strange things, what looks like a ship, coming closer. I must be hallucinating. Am I dead already?
This is the afterlife?
The G-forces become too much, and I feel the darkness take me…
“Wake up, Torin. Hey, wake up!”
A hand slaps me in the face. A strong, tough one. One that can only belong to a Zoran warrior.
I sense another strike and I grasp the wrist before it connects. My other hand flies up and grabs the throat of whoever is assailing me.
“It’s me,” a voice cries. “It’s me, Torin!”
I open my eyes — and stare into the green face of Egon.
My commander.
“E-Egon?” I stammer.
This confirms it. It’s the afterlife. I have died and rejoined my comrades.
“Egon!” I say as I pull him into a bear hug. “Is the whole gang here?”
“Everyone except for Marcas, yes, how did you know?”
“Why wouldn’t they be?” I smirk.
“Where do you think you are?”
“Why, the afterlife of course,” I say as Egon helps me to my feet. “Kane!” I say as I see a silver Zoran standing in the corner. Behind him are several other Zoran men I have never seen before — and several human females.
Human females in the afterlife? It keeps getting better!
“Your time hasn’t come yet, friend,” Egon says, clasping me on the shoulder. “We need you.”
What?
The room spins. I am still dis
oriented and have to hold on to his arms to stay upright.
“We arrived just in time,” he says, “for you. I hope she pulls through as well.”
She?
But…
I push my way through the crowd, and my heart jumps — both in joy and horror at the same time.
There lies Nora.
Her body is pale, her lips blue.
“Is she?” I stammer. I can’t even find the words.
“She’s alive,” a blonde human female says as she injects a needle into my mate’s arms. “But only barely. She’s fighting for survival.”
“You have to save her!” I cry, a feral rage growing inside of me. “You have to save her!”
Kane’s silver arms pull me back. “Let them work, friend. They know what they are doing.”
I turn around, my insides feeling like they’re going to burst. Anger roars inside of me, and I take it out on them.
“Where were you?!” I cry. “Where were you?! I waited, months upon months, and you show up now?! You might as well have let me die!”
What a cruel, cruel world to save me now and let my mate die. That can’t happen.
I’d rather never have woken up than live this life.
“We came as soon as we were able,” Egon says. “Trust me.”
I trust Egon with all my heart and soul, but that does nothing to ease the pain and suffering that is eating me alive.
“Do you want to make him pay?” Kane asks.
“Who?”
“The man that did this to you and her.”
My eyes narrow. “Yes,” I grit. Yes.
I kiss my mate’s forehead and let the human females do their job. They have her hooked up to several machines, and although I feel my place is by her side, Egon has informed me the warden’s ship is tailing us. We need to stop him — once and for all.
I’m going to make that bastard pay.
We suit up and eject. Our crew is seven Zoran strong in total. I don’t know their names, but I know they mean business. One look in their eyes tells me all I need to know. These are men I can count on.
I haven’t had time to talk to Egon or Kane yet. I don’t know what this ship is, where they’ve been all this time, or who the humans are. All of that will have to wait.