by Mina Carter
“He’s a goner.” Karryl fell into step with him as they walked into the main area of the hall. “He just doesn’t realize it yet.”
“When we took the humans, we assumed they would be docile and biddable like the oonat. Seems the gods played a hell of a joke on us, didn’t they? The human women go after what they want, and they don’t stop until they get it.”
Laarn nodded with a wry smile, stopping by the main station to call up a list of the injuries logged in for treatment. They were the usual assortment of training injuries and one serious burn from engine fuel. Looked like the idiot stuck his arm against a running vent. The healer shook his head at such stupidity. Really, some males should be stopped from breeding.
Karryl’s smile was broad as he leaned his hips back against the console next to Laarn, his arms folded over his chest. “Finally realized you were hunted, brother? How do you feel about that? Of all of us, you were the one I never thought would fall…”
“Why not?” Laarn selected one of the open cases for treatment. “I’m a man like any other. A red-blooded male with all the usual drives and needs…” He slid a sideways glance at his friend. “And what makes you think I wasn’t the hunter? I had my eye on Jess as soon as I saw her on that base.”
And he had. One of the first warriors onto their command deck, he’d noticed her immediately. Kneeling with her hands on the back of her head in the middle of the mass of humans, his gaze had gone directly to her. It didn’t matter that there were other females in the room. His attention had been solely for her. She’d been clad in that gods-awful uniform the humans wore, the one that concealed the lines of a woman rather than celebrating them like clothes should.
Then she’d lifted her head, their eyes had met and he’d been sunk.
“Trallshit,” Karryl snorted. “You were running scared and everyone knew it.”
Caught. Karryl had always been able to see right through him.
“Yeah. But I came to my senses. Thank the gods she managed to get herself with child in my lab before that draanthic Saal could make a move on her.
“Speaking of…” Karryl nodded to the other side of the hall. Saal was in the doorway, one hand propping him up. He was covered in blood and unsteady on his feet.
“Huh.” Laarn raised an eyebrow. “Wonder who else he pissed off to get another beating?”
Saal staggered forward, his gaze latching onto the two warriors. “The gardens… they took the Lady Jessica,” he gasped and then keeled over unconscious on the floor.
BUNDLED into an oonat robe with a veil over her face, Jess was taken from the palace and hurried through the streets of the city below. She’d been into the city a couple of times before, but those journeys, in a comfortable carriage surrounded by guards and warriors, bore no relation to being frog-marched through the back streets, only able to get snatched glimpses of where she was through the thick material covering her face.
She tried to remember the twists and turns they took, and how many paces, but before long she was hopelessly lost. Through it all, the hard hand on her arm gripped cruelly, painfully, but thankfully there was no longer a blade at her throat.
But she could hear, and when they hit a crowded area she tried to struggle, opening her mouth to cry out.
Before she could, though, a hard voice said at her ear, “Don’t bother. All they see is a handmaiden, a slave. Scream all you like. They wouldn’t raise a finger to help you even if we beat you to death right in front of them.”
Tears filled her eyes as she realized that he was right. The robes rendered her invisible. The veil was something else, used for handmaidens whose features were presumably too non-Lathar to be palatable. Disgust rose. It was the Lathar equivalent of the human joke about putting a bag on an ugly woman’s head so a man could fuck her.
But it meant that he was right. No one would help her, even if she struggled or screamed. She’d seen the scenes themselves. Seen the harsh way some of the Lathar treated their slaves, like they were little more than animals. Not the K’Vass though. She’d never once seen one of their number raise his hand to the robed handmaids. Sure, there was no kindness but there also wasn’t cruelty.
They turned a corner and she stumbled on the dusty, hard-packed dirt between two tall buildings. The shadows were chill here and she shuddered in reaction.
“For draanth’s sake, keep ahold of her,” a voice in front of her growled. “She needs to be in good enough shape for the ceremony.”
She had to press her lips together hard to suppress her cry of pain as she was hauled upright again and half-carried, half-dragged along. What ceremony? What were they talking about? A bonding ceremony? Fuck that, they’d never get her to agree to bond to anyone, not even if they tortured her.
“Fucking waste if you ask me,” the guy holding her growled. “Prime bit of cunt. Why can’t they use a beamer to get the brat out, rather than cutting her open? That way we can all have a fuck before we kill her.”
Her heart stuttered. Holy shit… They planned to cut her baby out of her? Why? Her question was answered as the man in front of her spoke again.
“Because Dvarr says it’s a sacrifice to appease the old gods. They speak to him, have said the bitch’s spawn is the goddess made flesh again, and she’ll use the Terran women to enslave us.”
They were all fucking nuts. Fuck this. Jess started to struggle and scream.
“HELP! I’M TERRAN. THEY’VE KID—”
Pain flared over the back of her head and she staggered, falling to the ground as her vision darkened. Her body went sluggish, no fight in her as she was picked up. There was the sound of booted feet running and then a door crashing open.
“Bitch started yelling but I don’t think they followed us.”
Dumped unceremoniously on the floor, her veil was yanked off over her head. She was in a house, but not one like the palace.
Instead of smooth marble, this one had sand-colored walls surrounding an interior courtyard. Looking up, she saw the central part of the ceiling was missing, allowing her to see the blue of the sky above, but nothing that would help her.
A fountain gurgled in the middle of the courtyard, water cascading down to the small pool at its base. Sheer panels of floaty fabric fluttered gently in the breeze, their tails brushing the tiled floor gently. All in all, it looked like illustrations of the Roman villas in her automated teaching lessons as a child. She’d always thought they looked so pretty and peaceful—the exact opposite of what she was feeling now as those panels were pushed aside by a warrior as he strode through.
Swallowing her nerves, she scrambled to her feet, stopped from backing up by the two big men behind her. Looking up, her gaze slid over the familiar leathers and parted jacket of a Lathar warrior, and then into the hard, familiar face of the purist leader, Dvarr.
He smiled.
“Welcome to my home, Lady Jessica.”
16
“G et me a fucking location now!” Laarn growled over the commlink as he stormed through the lower city streets, a blade in one hand and a pulse pistol in the other. He knew he presented a formidable sight in full battle armor, his hair flying around his shoulders as he kicked doors down and stormed through houses.
Maids scattered as he entered the next house, the high-pitched shriek of terrified oonat getting on his nerves as he ripped through rooms but found them empty of his prey.
“FUCK!” He turned in a circle in the shady interior courtyard, fists white-knuckled around his weapons.
They’d stolen Jess right out from under his nose. From the palace gardens no less. He still couldn’t understand why she’d even been there on her own, and he’d raged at her guards. Demanding to know how the fuck they’d let her out of their sight when they knew what was at stake. When they knew the entire fate of their race rested on the shoulders of one delicate little Terran female and the child she carried.
No.
He stopped dead, a frown creasing his brow. The drapes whispered around him in the breeze that lifted st
rands of his hair across his face. The rage inside him, the panic… it had nothing to do with losing the last piece of the puzzle to save his species. Even if Jess had been just a normal woman, nothing remarkable about her DNA or the child she carried, he would still be incensed… furious… terrified and desperate to find her.
Because she was his, the baby was his and he loved them both.
He blinked, every cell in his body motionless as the knowledge resounded through him.
He loved her.
He loved Jessica with every fiber of his being.
Closing his eyes, he let his head drop back as he let out a groan of despair.
He loved her and he might have lost her forever.
Fear gripped his heart as he pushed himself into motion again, storming from the house. New purpose filled him. If he had to search every fucking dwelling in the city to find her, he would. Someone, somewhere, knew where she’d been taken and by whom. When he found out, he was going to tear their spines from their bodies with his bare hands.
And when he found her—when, not if—he growled under his breath, “I am so chaining you to that fucking bed.”
“Somehow, I don’t think that was for me.” Karryl grinned as he appeared at Laarn’s side, fully armed and armored the same as the slender figure behind him. Laarn lifted an eyebrow, recognizing Karryl’s mate, the human soldier, Jane.
“Don’t ask.” Karryl growled as he spotted the direction of Laarn’s gaze. “You know human women. They do what they want, when they want. At least if she fights with me, I can keep an eye on her.”
“True.” Laarn’s gaze flicked down to the blood across Karryl’s neck and the eyebrow went up again. “Yours?”
“No.” The warrior shook his head, his braids dancing and the valor beads catching the light. Soon it was likely both he and Laarn would have to cut their hair: Laarn to take up the role of lord healer and, if the rumors he’d heard were true, Karryl to become a war commander with his own group of ships.
“We ran into a mouthy one. Sympathizer. He’s had an attitude readjustment.”
“Readjustment?”
Karryl chuckled. “He made a crude comment about human women where Jane could hear him. She educated him on the error of his ways.” Suddenly the warrior frowned, touching the comm in his ear. “Someone two blocks over saw a couple of warriors dragging a veiled female through the back alleys a while back. Want to bet that’s our girl?”
“My girl,” Laarn growled possessively. Even though he knew Karryl was mated and equally possessive over the woman at his side, he didn’t like any other male laying claim to Jess, even verbally.
“Your girl, got it.” Karryl held his hands up in surrender as he and Jane turned to go. Laarn couldn’t help noticing that already they moved as a unit, Karryl watching the rear as his slender mate took point. The big warrior cast him a glance. “You coming or not?”
By the time they got two blocks over, the emperor and reinforcements had arrived, warriors crowding into a back alley that had been cleared of merchants and furniture from the street cafes. Laundry from the neighboring houses fluttered in the breeze overhead, shielding them from the baking sun.
Daaynal was grim-faced as he flung a bruised and battered warrior into the dirt at Laarn’s feet. Blood streaked one side of his face and his left arm hung limply, the upper arm at a funny angle. The healer in Laarn, though, was well and truly dormant as he looked down at the male. It was one of the guards from Jess’ security detail.
“This fucking draanthic sold us out. He’s one of Dvarr’s. We caught him trying to steal out of the palace on the sly.”
“Shit,” Jane breathed, pulling off her helmet to look down on the fallen male with disgust. She looked up and met Laarn’s gaze, looking between him and Daaynal. “It all makes sense now. I couldn’t figure out how she’d slipped past a group of battle-hardened warriors like that. I mean, me or Kenna?” She shrugged. “Yeah, you boys haven’t a hope in hell of stopping us if we want out…”
A warrior behind Daaynal snorted. “Really? A woman? Our warriors would easily catch you and restrain you.”
A chill descended as Jane looked the young warrior right in the eye. Laarn almost felt sorry for him as her voice, cold as space, sliced through the silence.
“Really? Perhaps you should have been on hand to offer your wisdom to Ishaan F’Naar or maybe the T’Laat then. I’m sure Ishaan in particular would have benefited,” she said, naming the clan leader she’d shot point-blank between the eyes and the clan who thought it would be a good idea to try and kidnap the human women from the K’Vass.
The warrior wisely shut up, backing up a step under Jane’s steely gaze. She returned her attention to Laarn and Daaynal. “Jess was Ops, so the idea that she could slip past your detail didn’t sit right with me.”
“Ops?” Laarn asked with a frown.
“Base operations… traffic I think. Basic military training but not combat personnel,” she explained. “We wouldn’t put her on a battlefield. She’s too valuable doing her primary role.”
Karryl advanced on the bloodied warrior, a snarl of anger on his face. “So this asshole let her go…”
“…And told his buddies where to find her,” Daaynal finished the sentence for him, reaching the male before Karryl and hauling him to his feet with a hard hand on the back of his neck. Trapped between the two bigger warriors, he went pale, and started to talk… words falling from his lips in a panicked stream.
“It was Dvarr… he threatened us all,” he stammered. “Threatened to wipe out our entire clan if we didn’t find some way to get the girl to him. When she wandered off by herself—” He squawked as Daaynal’s hand tightened. “He’s in there. They were going to perform the ceremony at sunset.”
Laarn’s eyes narrowed. “What fucking ceremony?”
Silence fell in the small group as they waited for the answer, all eyes trained on the pale, panicked male.
“A…a sacrifice to appease the gods. If the Terran and her spawn die, the gods will favor us.”
Fear that he might be too late tried to take hold but a glance at the skyline assured him that sunset was still a way off. It was traditional to offer sacrifices as the sun went down and Dvarr was a traditionalist… so surely he wouldn’t do anything before sunset in case that displeased the gods. But… He was also a fucking lunatic. Who knew what he was thinking?
Laarn roared, rage and panic filling him, but before he could land a blow on the sniveling creature, Daaynal wrapped a big arm around his neck and wrenched. The loud crack of bone snapping filled the alleyway before the warrior dropped, lifeless, to the ground, his neck snapped and his eyes wide and unseeing.
“To live without honor is no life at all,” Daaynal snarled. “So he will not live. Apparently Dvarr is holed up in there—” He nodded to the bigger house at the end of the street opposite them. “What say we go and crash this fucking ceremony they have planned?”
Laarn was already moving, intent on marching down the street and kicking the door in to rescue his mate. Rage surged through him, white hot and volatile, ready to explode at any moment. They had his woman, and his child, and they planned to kill them.
Daaynal stopped him with a large hand in the middle of his chest and nodded toward the roofline. In his rage Laarn had missed the squat outline of automated defenses half hidden in the tiles.
“Don’t be a hero, son,” the big emperor murmured. “At least until your female can see and coo appropriately.”
Laarn snarled, about to knock his uncle’s hand away when a new sound registered. The thump-thump-thump of bot feet. Heavy bot feet. As he watched, a troop of drakeen combat bots rounded the corner and took up position in front of them, slowly moving forward toward their target.
“Nice to see the big guns here,” Karryl whistled, falling into place beside Laarn and Daaynal as they followed the bots, using the cover they afforded.
True to form, before they’d gotten halfway up the street, the automated de
fenses on the roof of Dvarr’s villa activated. The cover plates lifted, twin snub-nosed canons edging into view. Instantly they locked onto the group and the next moment the air was filled with laser blasts.
The bots moved, their mechanical arms a dance of metal and energy fields as they caught the incoming fire, protecting the men, and one woman, behind them. Laarn shot his uncle a sideways look. The destroyer-bots of the Lathar armory, drakeen were rarely deployed in groups of more than two, yet there were five in front of them and at least three bore the personal insignia of the emperor. Which begged the question, where the hell had Daaynal found so many pilots. Drakeen were hellishly difficult to pilot, and not many had the aptitude for it…
Then he spotted the uplink band around the back of Daaynal’s head, half hidden under his hair and snug to the scalp, and blinked in surprise, looking at the three bots with the emperor’s mark again. Sure enough, all three moved easily, but with a strange synchronicity that the other two didn’t.
“All three are yours?” he asked, catching his uncle’s eye as he rechecked his primary assault weapon automatically.
The corner of Daaynal’s lips quirked up as he did the same, sliding the weapon back into the sheath at his thigh. Two more pistols were in bandoliers across his wide chest. None of his movements betrayed the fact he was also piloting three heavy bots when most couldn’t pilot one without lying down in a dark room.
“Your mother rewrote the code for them when we were kids,” he murmured with a wink. “Don’t tell anyone… it’ll be our little secret.”
Shit… Laarn blinked again, rolling his shoulders as they neared the villa. No wonder no one had ever challenged Daaynal for the throne, not when he had tricks like that up his sleeve.
Then there was no more time to think about anything other than getting his female and baby out of Dvarr’s clutches.
“The plan?” he demanded as the bots formed into a line, bringing their guns to bear on the front doors of the villa.
Daaynal grinned, unsheathing both his sword and rifle. “Kick the doors down, kill the bastards inside and rescue your woman. What else?”