by Regine Abel
Even though the disks moved at the lightning speed of insects, the mercs still managed to destroy a few of them. But it wasn’t enough to spare them from being temporarily blinded, disoriented, and hearing impaired. As much as I wanted to stay and play with them, we sliced through some of the men and blasted others. I needed to get to Maheva’s daughters and any other Veredian Suman might hold captive before they realized who we were. The whole point of keeping them blind and not stating our demands was to avoid him taking our Sisters hostage.
As most of the rooms appeared vacant or to be storage for Suman’s ill-gotten stash, we dashed towards the largest room at the back. Another series of twenty smaller rooms, only accessible by the main one, surrounded it. My radar indicated the presence of four Veredians, and a mix of Avean, Sarenian, Korlethean, and Dantorian females. Our allies peeled off along the way to secure other rooms or fight the remaining guards trickling in. Amalia—clad in a Tuurean armor—and her mates, followed us with Mercy and Ravik. No guards stood watch outside of the room, but a vault door barred its access.
Amalia slapped her hand on the control panel, and her eyes went out of focus. Three blinks later, the reinforced door began sliding open. Khel immediately pulled his mate back behind him, Lhor also taking a protective stance in front of her. She didn’t balk, the same anxious hope I felt plain to read on her face. Xevius squeezed my hand and gave me an encouraging smile. I wished my armor had been disabled so that I could bask into the comfort of his emotions. How powerful Krygor’s Berserker energy must have been to affect me even through my armor.
But the sight revealed by the opened door erased all such thoughts from my mind. The immense common room, filled with colorful cushions and both an indoor garden and pool, matched a traditional Tarnegian harem design. Each door lining the back and side walls would lead to the concubine’s private chamber. Despite the rage boiling inside me, I only had eyes for the sixteen scantily clad females that stared at us. All but the Veredians and the Korlethean expressed fear.
I dropped my shield, moisture gathering in my eyes as Amalia’s hand squeezed my arm, keeping me from advancing. She disabled her Tuurean armor, and the rest of us followed suit. Lips quivering, Amalia extended a trembling hand towards Mercy. She took it, clenching her fingers around her niece’s. I had never seen such vulnerability, almost fear, on Mercy’s face. Together, they advanced with hesitant steps towards two of the Veredian captives; twins with faces eerily similar to theirs. Galicia and Gerana, also choked with emotion, held on to each other, smiling through tears. The other captives looked on, shock, confusion, and hope painted on their features.
No words were exchanged at first. One of the twins in a blue, diaphanous dress, let go of her sister dressed in a similar fashion—but in yellow—and cupped Amalia’s face in her hands, examining her like a wondrous treasure before pulling her into her embrace. My niece burst out in tears, holding her aunt in a bruising hold.
“Facility secured.” Sohr’s voice in my earpiece nearly made me jump out of my skin. “Suman is in custody.”
I absentmindedly acknowledged and signaled for Jezaya to relay that information to Aleina, my eyes remaining glued to the scene before me. Mercy seemed on the verge of a panic attack when the second twin caressed one of her black horns, before embracing her, too.
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” Mercy wept, clutching her younger sister with the energy of despair.
“Hush, Mercy. Hush,” her sister whispered. “You have nothing to apologize for. You did us no wrong. And whatever else your father may have done, he protected us. Our buyer, Nathan, had not been a master to us, but a father.” Pulling away, she wiped the tears from Mercy’s face and smiled gently at her. “Sunam tried for years to buy us, and then to kidnap us, but Gruuk forbade it. We were supposed to be reunited once your father died, but Fate decided to take another of the three paths that had been laid before us,” she added, giving the room a resentful glare.
My throat tightened further, and more tears gathered in my eyes to see such a strong woman in pain. Guilt over her father’s and brother’s business had never stopped eating at Mercy. It wasn’t her burden to bear, and yet, she shouldered it. I could only hope that with her sisters now recovered, she could finally begin to heal.
I welcomed Xevius’s arm wrapping around my waist, supporting me as we walked into the room towards the Korlethean female. I wanted to greet the twins but felt too self-conscious to intrude on their reunion. My Sisters went to reassure the other women, including our other two Veredians.
“We’ve waited for you for a long time, my brother,” the Korlethean female said.
“It had been foretold?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Of course,” she said with calm acceptance. “I just feared it wouldn’t be for another while yet.”
“Aunt Kamala,” Amalia called in a still shaky voice.
Xevius led me by the hand across the short distance to my niece, soothing me with his Kaa. The twins had swapped places to embrace their other relative.
“This is my Aunt Kamala, Aunt Aleina’s half-sister,” Amalia said to the twins.
“I am Gerana,” said the twin in blue.
“Which makes me Galicia,” said the twin in yellow.
I babbled some half-coherent greeting before getting pulled into a bone-crushing hug by Galicia, followed by a repeat by Gerana.
“Aleina and your mother are on their way,” I said, regaining my composure. How odd I should be so emotional when they weren’t blood. And yet, all of Maheva’s bloodline felt like my own. “They will be here any minute.”
Joy quickly gave way to horror as they glanced down at their outfits.
“Not like this,” Galicia exclaimed.
It took seconds for me to realize they didn’t own anything they would want to be seen in by their mother upon their first reunion after forty years. One of my Tuurean Sisters, Armina, a kinetic like Aleina, volunteered to reshape some of the finer fabrics found in abundance in the harem into more respectable garbs for all the females.
By the time they were ready, the Braxians had effortlessly hauled most of the corpses out of the way to spare Maheva’s sensibilities. But she didn’t flinch at the sight of the blood splatter and gore left behind. Remembering how she had fallen apart upon seeing Mercy, I had expected her to be the same total wreck at the sight of her twins. But her undeniable joy appeared laced with a seething anger that confused me. As more embraces and tears were shed between the twins, Aleina, and their mother, Maheva’s fury only seemed to grow.
“This was not the future Gruuk had planned for you,” Maheva said with barely repressed anger. “There should have been no pain, no sorrow, and no abuse for you until we were reunited. I want to see the son of Gharah who cheated you out of it.”
“This way, Mother Maheva,” Ravik said, gesturing outside the door.
We all exchanged an uneasy look. I had never seen the gentle Maheva with such murder in her eyes. With Mercy by his side, the Magnar led the way to the shuttle bay where Suman’s men had tried to force the door open. Holding each of her twins by the hand, Maheva walked into the room with majestic grace. It was surreal seeing her march in surrounded by her four daughters and Amalia, all with incredibly similar features. As she stopped a couple of meters in front of him, Suman didn’t need to ask who she was or the source of her anger.
Standing in front of the sealed door, his arms held up horizontally by magnetic shackles, and another pair keeping his feet to the ground, slightly parted, Suman watched Maheva with dread. His begging and pleading fell into deaf ears. Ignoring him, she extended a hand towards Mercy, who placed a blaster in her mother’s palm.
“Maheva!” Minh exclaimed, giving his mate a disbelieving stare.
Her head snapped towards the doctor, who slightly recoiled at the cold warning in her eyes. She was no longer the gentle, almost broken soul that had been rescued eight years ago from a lifetime of slavery. Before us stood a mother, whose babies had b
een hurt, exacting retribution on the fool who had done it.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to carry a life inside you for months? To love and nurture your children knowing that, somewhere out there, some twisted son of Gharah is waiting for the first opportunity to take away your babies and to mistreat them in order to sate his own perverted pleasures? To use them for his selfish benefit and greed?” Maheva asked Sunam in a chilling voice that gave me goosebumps. “Gruuk gave my girls to a kind man who gave them a good life. But you couldn’t leave it alone, could you? All this wealth, and it still wasn’t enough, was it?” she hissed, gesturing at the state-of-the-art shuttle bay and the fancy vessels within.
Suman began pleading again, but he might as well have been talking to a wall.
“You shouldn’t have hurt my girls,” Maheva snarled, adjusting the setting on the blaster.
Suman’s begging turns into shouts of help to all those in attendance as Maheva took aim. Eyes cold, hand steady, she fired. The male screeched, pulling at his restraints, but they didn’t give an inch. Tilting her head to the side, she watched impassively as he writhed in agony.
I didn’t know this Maheva; she scared me.
“Ah hoo!” the Braxians shouted in unison as blood flowed down Suman’s crotch, the torn fabric, burnt at the edges, showing the shredded remains of what had once been his cock.
His eyes rolled in his head, but Maheva wasn’t done with him. With determined steps, she marched towards him.
“Oh no, you don’t,” she snapped. “You don’t get off that easy.”
Slapping her hand on the exposed skin of his arm, she pushed her healing powers into him. In seconds, Sunam stopped bleeding and, to my horror, his flaccid genitals reformed. I understood Maheva’s fury. The thought of anyone hurting my future child also had my blood boiling. But this was a perversion of the powers the Goddess had granted us. Our gifts were for the betterment of our people, and to be put at the service of those in need. They were not tools of torture or vengeance. And yet, I watched without intervening. The memory of all my Sisters being hauled out of the breeding compounds, crying and screaming as their new masters tore them out of their mothers’ arms, never to be seen again, fanned the flame of my hunger for retribution.
However, my relief at seeing Maheva hand the blaster back to Mercy was short-lived as Aleina came to stand before Sunam. He blubbered unintelligible pleas that failed to move my sister any more than they had her mother.
“This is for stealing my sisters, and for thinking you have the right to enslave another, to deprive them of any hope, any future,” Aleina said, in the hard voice Admiral Lee had used before unleashing the wrath of the Tuurean on those who had dared to wrong us. “For every time you hurt a woman, any woman, just because you could and felt like it. And for thinking you can make a Veredian your pet.”
This time, I didn’t flinch when my sister blew up his crotch again. But hearing the Xelixians join their voices to the Braxians as they shouted ‘ah hoo’ did take me by surprise. There was no distress or condemnation in Ghan’s eyes as he observed the scene, quite the opposite. While Amalia seemed slightly on the ill side, her mates looked on with almost feral satisfaction. It then dawned on me that slavery and violence against women, especially crimes of sexual nature, received excessively harsh punishments on Xelix Prime. So, of course, this didn’t make them cringe. It was just punishment.
Once more, Maheva healed Sunam before he could pass out so that he could face Mercy’s justice.
“I would blow that filth you call your cock again, but I have other plans for you. My father warned you to stay away from my sisters. Instead, you made a liar out of him the minute he passed away,” Mercy said with something akin to hatred. Then a sadistic smile stretched her lips. “You will serve as example for all those bastards who made our lives a nightmare, forced us to hide, to jump at shadows, and fear any moment would be the last day of our freedom.”
“What… what is that?” Sunam asked, eyeing with terror the injector Mercy pulled out of her weapon’s belt.
“This?” she asked, waving the injector in front of him. “This is the nice part. One of my favorite and latest inventions. The tiny implant I’m about to stick into you just like so, is going to do everything in its power to keep you alive and perform urgent tissue and organ repairs as the need arises. Very useful for warriors on the field of battle.”
Without breaking eye contact with Sunam, Mercy dug into a small pouch on her belt and retrieved a cone-shaped piece of metal. Which she held in the palm of her hand. Whatever command she was encoding into the nanites it contained would not be pleasant for him.
“This,” Mercy said, showing him the object, “will not be nice, at all. When I stick that one inside of you, the metal will unravel and start spreading through your body in a size no bigger than a needle. Since the path is random, it might take a long time before it reaches your brain. And even then, there’s no guarantee that it will kill you—not with the healing implant. But hey, the implant wears out after eight days. Worst case scenario, you’ll die of exposure or internal bleeding in the hours it stops working. Until then, enjoy!”
“You’re insane!” he shouted as Mercy approached the nanobot to his arm.
“Insane?” she repeated, holding off implanting him. “You see that beast over there?” she asked, pointing at Ravik. “I married him. Those giants surrounding him that crushed your men into a pulp, are now my people. I’m not insane. I’m ruthless and merciless. No one fucks with my family, and no one will ever mess with the Veredians again. You did both. As we say on Braxia, revenge is a patient beast.”
Under another ‘ah hoo’ from the Braxians and the Xelixians, joined this time by the Korletheans, Mercy shoved the nanobot into the fleshy part of Suman’s forearm. I felt numb to the man’s screams. Mercy nodded to Krygor, who responded with an evil grin. As soft and gentle as he acted with his friends and grandchildren, Anton’s sire had a sadistic edge that shone bright whenever faced with enemies. Setting the magnetic shackles to levitate, he opened the shuttle bay’s door which Amalia had released and carried Sunam outside. Although I hadn’t been in the know, I guessed Krygor would display him on some kind of elevation, just like on his home world. Braxians stuck criminals on pillars at the entrance of their compounds to die a slow death and remain there to rot for a month as a warning of what fate awaited them to those who would break the laws.
Maheva took the hands of her twins, visibly shaken—but not revolted—by what they had just witnessed and escorted them out of the shuttle bay under the intense stare of my mate. Sensing the scrutiny, Maheva’s head turned towards us, and she made eye contact with Xevius, hers unflinching. He slightly bowed his head in concession to I didn’t know what. She didn’t reciprocate, as if his response had been her due, then turned back ahead and walked away.
With Mercy and Ravik in the lead, Aleina and Ghan second, and then Amalia and her mates, Maheva’s bloodline followed her. As Xevius and I also headed for the exit, Febus caught up to us.
“They all had it wrong,” Febus said to Xevius, matter-of-factly.
“Yes,” Xevius said, holding my hand. “She was always the key. Not Amalia.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, confused.
“The Seers and the Oracles all tried to predict what future awaited all of us by looking into Amalia. We all believed Eryon’s bloodline would change the world as we know it,” Xevius explained in a soft voice. “But while that is in part true, he is only one of the cogs. It was always about Maheva. It is her bloodline that brought together some of the most powerful nations. We all rallied beneath her banner to save her children. And now, we follow in her wake.”
“It is tremendous power for one to yield,” Febus said in an enigmatic voice.
And now, she has had a full taste of it.
I had no problem reading his underlying meaning between the lines. The troubled expression on Minh’s face as he, too, followed his mate, slightly off to the side, f
urther highlighted the unease that some of my Sisters failed to hide.
A surreal scene awaited us when we walked out of the compound, with all of our decloaked vessels surrounding us. Yes, it had been overkill, but a powerful statement that had made all the mercenaries who had thought to intervene in Suman’s favor turn back.
As our shuttle took off, Krygor came to stand by my side, dwarfing me by his height and ridiculous piles of muscles. He was staring pensively at the receding view of Suman, hanging on a pillar raised on the house’s front yard.
“Do not be troubled, Kamala,” Krygor said with that deep, thunderous voice typical of the Braxians. “Maheva did what a true mother does to those who harm her children. Anton wasn’t so fortunate. His mother was as beautiful as her heart was dark and cold.”
He turned to face me. His pitch-black eyes bore into mine, and his brutish face took on that ‘least’ scary expression that passed for soft and gentle in a Braxian.
“I see the worry in your eyes and in those long-haired, pretty boys,” he said with a teasing voice as he looked at Xevius approaching us. “But do not fear; there is no lust for power in her. Recognizing the early signs of it is what helps me keep Ravik’s throne safe from those who covet it. You will understand better in a few months once you, too, hold that little life in your arms, trusting you to keep her safe.”
My brain froze, and my jaw dropped. Krygor grinned—it made him look like a predator about to kill its prey.
“What is it?” Xevius asked, stopping by my side.
“She smells lovely,” Krygor said, ignoring my mate’s question. “The perfect mix of the two of you.”
My hand flew to my stomach, and Xevius, realizing what was going on, placed his just above mine.
It was his turn to look stunned. “But I didn’t feel her this morning!” he exclaimed, shock quickly giving way to joy.
“Not surprising,” Krygor said in a conciliatory tone. “I couldn’t smell your daughter either until moments ago when she blossomed. Congratulations!”