Unfortunately, Rygan had his own plans for her.
***
Ariel felt the press of heat and dust as soon as the teleport spat them out on the rock face. The outcropping she was now standing on with Rygan and surrounded by his elite guard was high above the scary sand pits that for now were empty. All around her Tellox stood high in the rocks, safe from the dangers below. She'd known that there were over a thousand Tellox. All male warriors in perpetual prime. Being surrounded by them was something altogether different. It both punctuated the power of the warriors, while also showcasing the tragic truth.
The Tellox for all their warrior might and technology were a dying breed. Hard to kill they might be, but not impossible, and eventually with no new children being born, they would die out. It was no wonder they were so driven by the prospect of blood mates being found again. She reached out to Brax and felt the pain of too much space between them. She could not communicate with him here and had no way to return to the ship and free him before this travesty of justice happened. She could not even leave the outcropping she was standing on. Force fields surrounded all the watchers, separating them from the sands down below, and any possibility of interfering. Then she saw one of the great sand dragons push its way with an angry roar out of one of the numerous crevices that comprised their homes, and all the blood drained from her face. This was what unarmed men were going to be facing?
"Even if I have more traitors among the people, they cannot get past the shields to help."
Ariel looked up in surprise to find that Rygan had shifted close to her and was addressing her personally. It was the first time he had done so since he had left her on the floor in the middle of her change. She had been quietly watching everything that was happening around her. He had turned hot eyes her way constantly, but it had been more along the lines of making sure the property he had recently reacquired was where he had placed it. Now he wanted to converse?
She went through her options quickly and asked him something that had been nagging at her and would not show this man she was worried about Brax or his men. He would be looking for weaknesses. "Why do your men seem so different than the rest of the Tellox I have met?"
She read surprise in his eyes, and then a little slither of something dark she would have preferred to miss. But then he smiled and answered her, instead of killing her, which was what she thought he would do after his reaction to her question.
"I have found ways to assure loyalty in my chosen few." He looked her up and down. "Much the way I will assure loyalty in my mate, once the rest of this is settled."
Ariel really did not like the sound of that.
"You are a scientist in your own primitive Earth way," he went on. "Perhaps you will even be able to appreciate what my scientists have been able to accomplish. You will never be able to understand the science, but you may see the beauty of the results."
Ariel looked at the giant warriors standing so utterly cold and still around them. "Beauty is not the word I would use."
She tried again to reach Brax, but it was useless. They were just too far away from each other. She would be worried that something had happened to him but Rygan would never miss the chance to torture him with the show he was about to put on. "If you have a way to assure loyalty in your Tellox, I am surprised you never used such a technique on your brother, or the rest of the Tellox for that matter."
"The process takes a certain level of acceptance to be truly effective. Most Tellox would not see the advantages over the disadvantages. My brother would never agree to it, and he would have tried to stop my experiments had he known how deep I was delving into the past."
"Disadvantages like losing their free will? I can see why that might be an issue." She shook her head and looked around her again. "Did your men know what they were getting into when they agreed to it?"
"To become the elite of the Tellox with battle skills equal to none, and none of the emotions that hold others back from greatness?"
No emotions, she thought. Did they know he was turning them into the weapons their creators had originally wanted when they made the Tellox? Did they even have personal thoughts? Or did that get taken when their emotions went? "Is it reversible?"
He raised a brow at her. "Why would I want to reverse perfection?"
Not really an answer, she thought. But then Rygan gave a motion with his hand and she watched one of the warriors leave, probably to get the prisoners ready for death, and she realized she did not have room on her plate to add rescuing automaton warriors. She had enough to do already.
She needed to free Brax, rescue his loyal men, free the women still held prisoner and somehow dethrone the crazy King before he did any more damage to her people or his own. She just had no idea how she was going to accomplish any of that while locked behind a shield on a desert moon with no tech within reach. Though if she reached out with her senses she was feeling more than a slight hum from the shield, and she had to wonder if the new awareness had to do with the lack of other tech in the area, or if her abilities were evolving along with the other changes going on in her body. The question was, even if she could somehow affect the Tellox shields now, how would that help Brax and his men?
"Tellox warriors," Rygan called, moving to overlook the pit, his com was broadcasting to every warrior even as he spoke looking around at the different groups of warriors surrounding them. "Witness the traitors."
Four warriors in nothing but leather pants and boots teleported to the middle of the pit. A dragon immediately lunged but the shield erected around them knocked it back. Ariel examined the men so loyal to her mate for the first time. She knew from his memories exactly what they had risked for him, and how much it would kill Brax to watch them die like this, brutally and branded traitors by his brother.
Naked but for their leather pants and long boots they were stripped of all weapons, and yet they looked around them with absolutely no fear. Nearly as big as Brax and ranging from six and a half feet tall to nearly seven they were all massive men built with power and speed in mind. All gleaming golden muscles in the hot sun and facing a dozen large predators with nothing but a slim shield between them, one that would soon be removed, they personified the Tellox in all their savage glory.
And the rest of the Tellox looking at them knew exactly what they were.
Brax's men were known to the warriors of the Tellox, nearly as elite a crew of fighters as the King’s own. They had been called heroes long before they left behind their people to find their missing General. More than one surprised murmur went through the crowd. More than one looked less than pleased with what they were witnessing. She heard more than one shouted demand to know why they were in the pit.
"These men attempted to use the technology from other worlds to take down my ship and capture me. What they could not take in combat they attempted to take with trickery."
She needed to do something, before Rygan finished his spiel and dropped those shields. Forcing her panic and fear under control Ariel felt for the hum of energy. The ones close to her were so much easier than the ones down below in the pit, but they were controlled from the same place, so there was a chance. Logically she knew that she could not protect them for long, and that there was too much of a chance Rygan would discover what she could do, and she still would do nothing but delay the deaths of these men. Logic meant very little when she knew what these men were to Brax. So, she set her emotions, and her logic aside and reached for that distant hum.
CHAPTER TEN
Brax watched the com screen his brother had so graciously provided him and if he had not been strapped down like a pig for the slaughter he would have lunged at the screen. His mate, his men, all in danger and here he sat unarmed and helpless to do anything but watch.
He strained against the links of solodite, as if sheer will would see them broken. A sound caught his attention, and it was not on the screen before him, but on the ship around him. He tilted his head to listen and his brow dropped in surpris
e. Is that singing?
He shook his head at the strange feeling of lethargy swept over him, and he had to fight his own body to keep his eyes open.
There was a blast of heat at his back. It woke him up fast, the sound booming through the brig like a bomb had exploded. The percussion of the hit pelted him with debris and knocked the coms out. He saw his men dropped into the sands surrounded by beasts just before the screen went blank.
He turned his head to look behind him and saw who had rescued him. The last thing he expected to see was a beautiful Tellox female. Only it was not his female.
Megan, he remembered, one of Ariel’s sisters. He looked from her to Morax, her Tellox mate at her back, and then his eyes went back to her. “Were you singing?”
She smiled and shrugged her shoulders, her eyes going from him to her mate at her back.
“We did not have time to fight our way through the ship to get to you,” Morax said as if that was some kind of explanation. If it had been her singing that had nearly knocked him out, he supposed it was.
“We don’t have much time,” Megan said her voice still lyrical and peaceful even in her agitation. “I don’t think it worked on everyone, and I don’t know how long it will last on those that did go to sleep.”
Morax held up the controls for his constraints. Brax stopped thinking about the strange changes in his circumstances and smiled.
***
More and more of the dragon creatures were surfacing as Rygan talked. Even as the king explained how they had been captured trying to use alien technology to take down the throne. The warriors watching from above became less and less pleased at what they were seeing.
Brax's men were the only ones that seemed untouched by it all. They stood tall and unafraid as the beasts tried and failed to get to them through the bubble of protective shield they could not see. The dragons became increasingly enraged as their attacks failed. Gnashing teeth and slashing claws that would tear the men apart grated and were repelled by invisible shields, but it was a grim testament of what was to come, and the leathers and skin that were soon to be sundered and torn were no match for it.
"Release the shields," Rygan called and a loud roar of disapproval went through the Tellox as the creatures were unleashed on the five men.
Only the shields did not fall.
Ariel caught and held them, fighting the slippery unfamiliar energy with every bit of her attention. She ignored the reactions all around her. Did not even hear Rygan demanding to know why he was not being obeyed and fought to focus all her attention on the energy that flowed and sparked across her grip. Within a few seconds it started to feel like she was trying to hold a live wire while standing in water.
Still she held on, ignoring the burn as it grew, and fisting the energy even as it seemed to develop a mind of its own, one that rebelled at the control she was exerting over it. She did not realize that energy was flowing and snapping over all the shields, or that all the coms were sputtering in the resulting power surges she created holding the pit shields up. She only knew pain and determination to save the men standing so proud and unafraid surrounded by dragons.
It was one of Rygan’s men that noticed her first. She was too far gone to realize that she was now the center of attention as more and more of the warriors looked at her and froze in place. She did not know what they saw, only that it was Rygan who came at her, sword lifted for what would no doubt be a killing blow. The rage on his face did nothing but highlight the usually hidden madness. She saw him coming but more as an after image, she missed entirely the sword raised in her defense, but the stranger that had appeared at her side would not have been familiar to her anyway. And she did not care about any of that. All she knew was pain and fire as she held on to the ever-increasing voltage of power surging through her.
Let go, Ariel.
Ariel recognized the voice and let go, wondering how Sara had gotten there. Right before she fell into the fire that used to be her mind.
***
Brax landed on the sand between his men and the sand dragons just as the shield his mate had been holding with sheer will dropped. He did not have time to look for her with the dragons coming at him, but he could feel she was alive, and had to be content with that for the moment. Creeg evaded the same attack on the other side of the men. Creeg and his Calvern had teleported in with him, weapons at their feet for the others, and Oz, Marek, Ren and Chevak had all grabbed whatever they could reach and had started fighting at his back. Between the shields and the extra help from his now armed men, they pushed back the beasts long enough to teleport them all out of the pit.
A slash of claws came at his face and was bounced back by his personal shield. He arced a sword strike across the beast’s chest and had to be content when the armor-plated beast merely backed off with a roar of rage, but like the rest of them, he would return. These beasts were nearly impossible to kill, even armed for the battle.
The shields around the men in the sand pits dropped with an almost crackling pop, but Brax, Creeg and his Calvern were already surrounding his unarmed men and pushing the beasts back with brandished swords and personal shields. Then before the creatures could turn and attack again, all the men were teleported to the space beside Ariel. Brax looked around for his mate and found her looking pale as death in the arms of another warrior. He growled low in his throat. His rage at the sight kindling fire in his eyes and making every muscle in his body prepare for battle.
Farin, he thought. What is that black eyed bastard doing here? He had never been one of his brothers’ toadies. He would have no doubt made Rygan's enemy list just as Brax did if he was not so often away from Tellos.
Farin smirked at him. His loyal men standing around him with swords raised. As always, the bastard seemed to know just what Brax was thinking. "I would hand her over, but I feel as if you are going to need your hands for your sword." He jerked his chin toward the king’s guard, now surrounding Rygan who Brax just realized was bleeding from his shoulder. The black-eyed warrior holding his mate gave him another of those irritating smirks. "He has already felt the edge of mine, when he tried to cleave your bride in two."
This time Brax did not attempt to control the growl that came from the rage in his gut. And it was not for Farin, a man he was quickly realizing he might owe more than he could ever repay.
"We'll take her," a soft feminine voice said with a thread of steel he recognized. Brax turned just as Creed and Morax both cursed loudly and growled at their mates. The female, Sara, gave her own version of a snarl and glared at her mate. "Did you really think we would stay behind? Really?"
The other sister, Megan went to Farin and looked up at the warrior that stared down at her with a look of surprise on his face. A look that Brax was sure the warrior had never worn before. "We have her."
The voice was also feminine, but where her sister radiated a formidable feminine strength of will, this one, Megan, he remembered had a voice that almost sang, even when she was not actually using it to put men to sleep. Her soft brown eyes offered a peace the likes of which he himself had never thought to experience. It was no wonder that Farin looked like he had been hit by a boulder, or that Morax was suddenly at her side, one hand on his mate’s arm pulling her back, the other on his sword hilt in clear warning. But Farin was no more immune to the peace of those eyes, or the music in that voice then Brax had been when he met the women the first time. He gently offered Ariel to her sister, and then when Morax helped her take the woman from his arms, he bowed his head in respect and backed up.
Sara rolled her eyes, and shook her head, joining her sisters, while flagrantly ignoring her mate’s glare of outrage. The three of them, clearly Tellox, stunningly beautiful females all together like that was a picture the likes of which the Tellox warriors had never seen. They had the attention of every one on that damn moon so it was with some relief that the oldest sister, Sara, winked at her mate across the sand before the three of them teleported away. It was a relief in one way. In
another, Brax did not like the way his mate had looked, and he wanted nothing more than to follow her and make sure she was going to be well. But he was not done here.
Once the mates were gone, Brax, Creeg, Morax and surprisingly Farin turned as one to confront their King and the warriors shielding him with their own bodies.
Brax's men, as well as the rest of Creeg’s Calvern stood with weapons drawn watching the King’s guard while they were distracted.
The silence that the women had created was still going strong when Brax and the others faced off with their king.
Creeg opened his mouth to speak, rage and purpose clear on his face, and Brax knew what he would do, so Brax stepped forward and spoke first, his voice booming across the sands. "I challenge you Rygan, for your crimes against my mate and her family."
Creeg's teeth snapped shut as he whipped his head around to glare at Brax. But Brax kept his eyes on his brother’s face. At his words the rage and every other expression disappeared and that cold emotionless mask he had been hiding behind for years fell over Rygan’s features.
"The dishonored do not have the right to challenge, certainly not the king."
Brax smiled coldly. "But I am not dishonored. My name was never struck from the ranks or labeled traitor. You have very carefully kept me out of all your decrees and public appearances, remember? I am General Brax of the Tellox, and I challenge you Rygan for your crimes. That of trying to kill a blood mate."
Rygan narrowed his eyes at him. "Killing me will not make you king," Rygan said coldly. "You do this and the Tellox will splinter and fall."
Brax had never wanted to be king but his brother’s words angered him beyond reason. "Look around you, the Tellox have already fallen. Never in the history of the Tellox have we battled among ourselves, but your paranoia and greed has made this inevitable. Accept my challenge and die with at least some honor or refuse and be labeled a coward and they will tear you apart rather than follow you."
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