Moon Struck

by Heather Guerre

  “No!” Hadiza snarled, slapping at his huge, stone-hard hands. “Get him out of here!” She struggled to block his attempts to pick Aisha up. “You’ll hurt her!” Hadiza shouted in the Creole. “You’re making it worse!”

  “ASIER!” Lyra screamed, tugging at the other Scaeven’s arms—shouldering herself between his hulking form and Aisha’s prone body.

  Asier appeared in the doorway. He spat out something vicious-sounding, and lunged for the other Scaeven, wrapping him in a headlock and hauling him—kicking and flailing—from the birthing room. Aisha’s blood smeared the walls in big, Scaeven handprints.

  Aisha herself was too pale, too still. Hadiza glanced at the screen—the Scaeven glyphs and Crurian numerals told her nothing. She had to rely purely on sight and feel.

  “Her pressure’s too low,” Hadiza said crisply. “And her heart rate is dropping. We have to get that baby out of her, and quickly. He’s tearing her up inside. Help me turn her on her side for the spinal block.”

  Lyra worked quietly, efficiently, obeying commands without hesitation or question. She remained pale and drawn, but she didn’t faint and she didn’t vomit. When Hadiza made the first incision low on Aisha’s abdomen, Lyra turned her face away. But when Hadiza asked her to hold the spreader, she turned back and stoically helped to hold the dying woman’s guts open.

  When Hadiza finally hauled the oversized, stone-gray neonate from pulped mess he’d made of his mother’s womb, she handed him off to Lyra without a word, and set to repairing Aisha. Let her go, her mind whispered, while her hands did the work they were trained to. She doesn’t want to be here. It’s not your choice to bring her back. Let her go in peace.

  But she couldn’t do it. Even when it looked like the choice was going to be taken out of her hands entirely, Hadiza simply doubled down, working fast and hard—cutting and vacuuming and suturing. She allowed the medibots to attach a line of synthetic blood, and when she tied off the last suture, Aisha’s pulse had steadied and her blood pressure had leveled.

  Hadiza was soaked in blood—up to her elbows, all down her front. She couldn’t see herself, but had no doubt that it was smeared on her face, in her hair. She looked down at the unconscious, tortured woman and felt hot tears welling in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, choking on the words.

  Another medibot emerged from the wall, inserting an IV into Aisha’s arm. Hadiza had no way of knowing what was in the drip, but decided it was better not to remove it. She’d done everything she could. The rest was up to fate—and Aisha herself. Hadiza leaned back from the tub, and for the first time, realized she was hearing the sounds of an infant’s cries. Deep and rasping as the call of a wildcat, the cries echoed through the maze of chambers. Hadiza got to her feet, and followed the sound through the other room, down a tunnel, and into another round, subterranean chamber.

  Aisha’s tormentor stood in the center of the space, holding his son and staring down at him with such fierce pride and happiness that, for a split-second, Hadiza forgot her hatred of him. And then she looked down at the blood coating her arms, and she remembered.

  He turned to her, looking genuinely stricken. “My mate,” he said in the Creole, lurching towards Hadiza. “Is she—”

  “She’s resting,” Hadiza said coldly.

  “Thank you,” the Scaeven said, dropping to his knees. He kept his son cradled with one arm, reaching out his other hand grip Hadiza’s arm, looking very much like a supplicant before his blood-streaked goddess.

  She jerked out of his reach. “Do not touch me,” she snarled. “You are a monster.” She stepped back until she nearly crashed into Asier.

  “How much time do I have?” she asked him.

  “At least a zeitraum.”

  Hadiza nodded. “I want to be there when Aisha wakes. Keep him away from her.” She turned away, walking back to the birthing suite.

  The other Scaeven remained on his knees, watching Hadiza with open reverence. “Thank you!” he shouted after her. His bellow chased her down the tunnel, “Thank you!”

  She’d apologized to the victim and been thanked by the monster.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Leo Cluster, NGC 3842

  Scaevos Multi-body System, Varan Moon

  IG Standard Calendar 236.46.25

  Hadiza came to him. It was their last joining before he would face the tribunal. She stepped into his cell, and he knew instantly that something was wrong. Instead of throwing herself into his arms, she stood uncertainly in the center of the cell, staring down at her knotted fingers.

  “Rourra, are you alright?”

  “I forced a woman to give birth to a child she never wanted. I kept her alive when she wanted to be dead. And then I left her with her tormentor. I took away every one of her choices, the same as he did.” She glanced down at her tangled hands. “I washed my hands over and over. She’s alive, but her blood is on my hands.” Hadiza’s voice cracked on the last, and a sob escaped her.

  Errol moved towards her, desperate to take her into his arms, to comfort her.

  She jerked away from him, and he froze.

  “Rourra, let me—

  She shook her head, still staring at her hands. “Tell me I’m more than just a baby receptacle to you.”

  Errol stared at her, at a loss. A disbelieving laugh caught in his throat. “Can’t you tell? Haven’t I been painfully obvious?”

  She didn’t respond, didn’t look at him.

  Errol knelt before her. “Hadiza, I’m in love with you. I have been since you saved my life on Tranar.” He paused, thinking. “No, long before than that. Since you tried to treat my injuries on Daalinalikiniri-din-kaal. Or maybe even before that, when you took down a fully grown Scaeven armed with nothing but a serving tray. It may have even been from the first moment I saw you, frightened and caged, but still so beautifully unbroken. Has it not been obvious in every word I speak to you? Every time I touch you? Every time I look at you?”

  Hadiza stared down at her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever been loved before. Not in that way.”

  Errol gently tilted her chin up, forcing her to look him in the eye. “You have been. By me.” He didn’t kiss her, didn’t take her into his arms. He simply held her gaze and hoped she would see the truth in his eyes—that he was hopelessly in love with her, and nearly insensate with the terror that this could be the last time he ever saw her.

  Something in his gaze reached through her despair. Some of the bleakness faded from her expression, and she stepped into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and burying her face against his shoulder. Her body shook against his, and hot tears soaked through his shirt. He folded his arms around her and carried her to the bunk, setting his back against the wall, and holding her against his chest while she grieved.

  “I love you, Hadiza,” he whispered against her hair. He held her until she had shed every tear she could, until the rigid tension left her body and her sobs died to shuddering breaths.

  When she could breathe again, she pushed against his chest, leaning back to look into his eyes. Her expression was troubled, conflicted. “Errol, I—”

  He laid his fingers over her mouth. “Don’t say it, rourra. I couldn’t bear your pity.”

  Her brows drew together, but when he lifted his fingers from her lips, she said nothing. She contemplated him for a moment, silent and unmoving. Then, slowly, she rose up on her knees, and kissed him. It was a soft, unhurried kiss—just the simple touch of her lips against his. He held onto her, content with that simple touch.

  Hadiza shifted, sliding her hands up the broad expanse of his chest, over his shoulders, up the back of his neck. Her fingers fisted in his hair and her lips parted against his, her tongue sweeping across his bottom lip. Errol groaned, heat surging through his blood, tightening his groin.

  He leaned back from her kiss. “We don’t have to do this.”

  “It’s our last chance,” Hadiza said softly. “Let me save you.”


  “You’ve done enough. I don’t want to be the monster who traps you here. ”

  She kissed him again—a long, slow, lazy taste. “It’s not a trap if I walk into it knowingly. Not if I want to be there.”

  Errol pulled back. He regarded her somberly. “Hadiza…”

  “It’ll hurt me if they send you away, Errol.” Her eyes were huge, sincerity shining in their depths. She cared for him. It might not be love, not yet. But he could earn it. In time, he could gain her love. But first, he needed to bind her to him forever.

  “You’re too good, rourra.” He kissed her with tender sweetness and laid her gently down on his pallet.

  They melded together, slowly, softly. He traced the contours of her face, burning the shape of her eyes and the yield of her lips into his mind. He tasted and stroked every inch of her, to better remember for days where he may never again have the pleasure. He learned every soft curve, studied every long line, explored every peak and valley across her body.

  He kissed her lips into a lush, swollen pout. He licked and sucked her nipples into peaked buds, and grinned against her plump breasts when he realized the feel of his fangs on her skin excited her. He trailed his lips down the velvety plane of her abdomen and slipped his tongue into the soft folds of her sex. He tasted her there, licked her, savored her, consumed her, until her spine arched off the pallet and climax tore through her.

  When he slid inside her, it was with slow, peaceful ease. He savored her blissed gaze as he moved inside her with long, languid strokes. He reveled in the soft, helpless noises she made as she clung to him. He relished the feel of her soft body pinned beneath his, the snug clasp of her sex, the very potent ecstasy of her presence, her trust, and her care.

  He worked into her until she came again, and held himself back so he could experience every moment of her headlong rush into oblivion—to know that he did that for her, he sent her to that sweet release. And then when she was limp and sated beneath him, holding him softly and looking up at him with sex-drunk eyes, he took his own release, filling her one last time with his seed.

  Wrung out in every way, he lowered himself to the pallet and pulled her into his arms.

  Mine.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The tribunal took place in the chamber of the Justiciar—an opulent rotunda within the center of Enforcement’s headquarters on Varan. The walls were black stone, polished to a mirror shine. Dimly glowing sconces punctuated the wall at even intervals. Between the sconces, columns spanned the impressive height from floor to ceiling. The justiciars’ seats ringed the circumference of the room.

  Errol stood on a raised dais in the center of the circular chamber where the justiciars could look down on him from their towering seats. Enforcer Asier Mor-Talis and Admiral Renier Kir-Thoran, witnesses, stood beside each other behind a row of obsidian balusters beneath the chief justiciar’s seat.

  “Errol Sin-Haros,” the chief justiciar intoned gravely. “We have heard the claims against you. We have heard your defense. We have reached our judgment.”

  Errol tilted his head back, looking up at the elder Scaeven, waiting.

  “For the crime of violating the injunction against the pursuit of human females, you, Errol Sin-Haros,” the justiciar took a heavy breath, “are condemned.”

  Errol couldn’t move. He became a fixed statue, staring up at the chief justiciar. His lungs were stone, his heart a block of ice.

  “You will be transported on the next shuttle to Yrrth to carry out your sentence. Ten solars of labor. Any property and land holdings you may possess are forfeit to Scaevos.”

  The sconces on the walls snuffed out, plunging the chamber into darkness. The tribunal was over.

  “But the human—” Asier’s voice cut through the darkness. “She may be matebonded to him.”

  “She has been tested,” the justiciar said impatiently. “The matebond has not been established. This tribunal has concluded.”

  A cold spear ran through his heart and lungs. Errol let out a staggered breath that tore at his throat with icy claws.

  He would never see her again.

  He left the chamber, escorted on either side by young Enforcers. Asier stood in the vestibule outside, his face rigid with suppressed anger. He stepped into Errol’s path. He gave the two escorting Enforcers a hard look, and without a word, they retreated, leaving Errol and Asier the space to confer privately.

  “It’s over,” Errol said tiredly, looking his old friend in the eyes. “I appreciate what you’ve done.”

  “Something’s not right,” Asier said under his breath, gaze darting to the justiciars who were filing out of the chamber behind Errol. “They imported Ravanoth tech to test for the pregnancy, since our AI isn’t reliable with human biometrics.”

  Errol shrugged. “The Ravanoth have been interacting with humans for several solars. Their tech should be—”

  “Errol, she has to be pregnant. She rarely sleeps. She’s started eating nearly as much as I do. When I told her I was leaving to attend your tribunal, she accidentally crushed Sofie’s comm with her bare hand.”

  Errol’s heart began to race. He straightened, taking an uncertain step. “I have to get away. I have to get to her—”

  Asier put a hand on on his shoulder. “Listen, if you try to fight your way out of here, it will only end badly. You’ll be taken down by sheer numbers, and your chances at seeing her again will be null.”

  Errol steadied himself, hauling in deep breaths, nodding at the sense of Asier’s words even while his mind screamed at him to get out of here! Run to her!

  Admiral Renier Kir-Thoran emerged from the chamber with the the chief justiciar, carrying on a hushed conversation. He and the justiciar exchanged brief, grave, final words, and parted from each other. Kir-Thoran approached Errol and Asier, his hard face unreadable.

  “I’m sure your master will be pleased,” Asier told him, distaste dripping from every word.

  “You’re speaking of the Sahr, I assume?” the admiral said, unruffled. It wasn’t really a question, so neither Asier nor Errol spoke. “The Sahr did make it quite clear that he expected justice to be delivered today,” the admiral continued. “And that there would be severe consequences if a condemnation was not decreed.”

  Errol clenched his hands into fists, fighting against the urge to wrap them around the Kir-Thoran’s neck.

  “Justice?” he snarled. “The Sahr’s grandson was at that auction.”

  “Was he?” Kir-Thoran evinced no actual surprise. “That might explain why the Sahr is so concerned about your criminal tendencies, Sin-Haros. You see, in addition to your mucking around with slavers—tsk, tsk—it seems that a certain human female has gone missing from the traffickers’ manifest. A lovely, red-haired, green-eyed female. The Sahr’s grandson was especially concerned about her.”

  Errol’s fury abated into confusion. So, Elos Dal-Sahr wanted his head, not just because he was a witness to the patriarch’s involvement with the traffickers, but also because the human his grandson had bought—and likely raped—had managed to escape. Did he think Errol was involved with her disappearance? And why was Kir-Thoran telling him all of this? The dangerous revelations were completely at odds with the admiral’s smirking arrogance.

  Errol’s eyes narrowed as he considered the admiral. “So the Sahr thinks it’s alright for a patriarchal son to have a human. But for a lowborn nobody like me, it’s an injustice.”

  “Yes, well, that’s just the natural order of things, isn’t it?” Kir-Thoran’s expression was bland, but his eyes burned with something feral. “Scaevens are by nature a conquering race, are we not? Our very civilization was founded on the brutal violence of our ancestors. Those who climbed to the top earned their mastery over the rest of us by right of conquest. Creatures like you and I—nobodies from insignificant lineages—were always meant to serve our conquerers. And servants do not get to share in the riches gleaned from the conquered. We simply convey them to our masters. As is right.” T
he words spilled from his mouth with smooth sincerity, but their obsequiousness rang false, and his eyes shone with the gleam of a dangerous animal.

  Errol’s thoughts were scattered in a thousand different directions. He could hardly keep himself from fighting his way out of the Enforcement headquarters and hijacking a shuttle to go get Hadiza. He didn’t have the patience or the time to piece together whatever cryptic puzzle the admiral was laying out.

  Kir-Thoran cleared his throat. His expression smoothed, and the fire in his eyes faded to a smolder. Speaking very quietly, he said, “In all his concern over the delivery of justice, the Sahr quietly arranged for the human’s biometric results to be destroyed, along with the Ravanoth equipment used for the scan.”

  Errol and Asier both stiffened.

  “In the interests of justice, of course,” Kir-Thoran went on. “He did it without the justiciar’s knowledge, since he, quite honorably, did not want to interfere with their impartiality.”

  Asier shook his head, looking suspicious and baffled. “Whose side are you on?”

  Admiral Renier Kir-Thoran smiled. It was a slow, malevolent reveal of over-long fangs. The fire in his eyes flared to a full roar. “I serve only Scaevos.”

  A perilous silence followed his pronouncement.

  The admiral leaned in. “If I were the Sahr,” he said in an undertone, “and if I were very dedicated to the preservation of justice, I might be concerned that a certain human female involved in all of this criminal perversity was going to interfere by turning out to be actually pregnant. In order to preserve justice and the law—and the natural order of things—it would be important to remove that variable, so to speak.”

  And with that, Renier Kir-Thoran departed.

  Errol’s heart thundered in his chest. A high-pitched hum filled his ears, cutting through the surrounding conversations. Cold sweat broke out over his body. He gripped Asier by the shoulder, overcome by a wave of nausea. “He’s going to kill her,” Errol said hoarsely. “I have to get out of here. I have to find her.”