by Isabel Wroth
Ohlen looked disgusted, offended as hell, vehemently denying he would ever hurt her by forcing anything upon her. She struggled to find words that Ohlen might understand, words that wouldn’t confuse or upset him. Her father used to tuck her in every night, kiss her on the brow and tell her, ‘Our people survived the decimation of our planet, we can survive anything. What doesn’t kill us, my flower, only makes us stronger,’
“I know you wouldn’t, and logically Andi knows it too. But she suffered repeated trauma, her mind has reverted to an instinctual…primal state. To shut down when she is frightened and not in control. How long were you listening to us speak?” Ohlen’s cheeks turned dark with fury, but he answered her question frankly. “I had arrived in time to hear Andi begin to speak of her torture.”
“Then you didn’t hear her say how much larger you are than she is. That you are the Devil she doesn’t know.”
His stricken expression made her rush to continue, “She knew what to expect from Ethan. She knew how he would behave, not to trust him or expect anything but pain from him. Clearly Andi has the heart of a survivor, so give her your patience, let her know you. Offer to teach her, gauge her response as you would any soldier and tailor that training to suit her physical ability. You’re a warrior, teach her how to be strong. To fight. To be in control. To trust you by showing her your patience, your understanding. That’s the best advice I have to give you, I wish I had more, but unfortunately I have very little in the way of experience here. I think one of the others of my crew is a psychologist of some kind, one of the men, maybe he could offer you some better insight.”
Tarek stroked his hand down her spine and back up to knead his strong fingers into her scalp, “Your insight is very wise, my one. Very, wise.” She looked up at him, feeling like she was blushing clear to the roots of her hair at that look of pride on his face, the tone of it in his voice. He inclined his head to her, then looked at Ohlen with that powerful, commanding confidence, “Let your mate know you, Ohlen. Offer your strength as you have, but teach her to find her own as well. She will thank you for it later. Treat her carefully,”
“But not like she’s stupid and won’t understand you. Or tell her you don’t expect her to do as good as your normal students, because she’s human, and a girl.” She added hastily, and Ohlen’s brow furrowed thoughtfully as he nodded, “I thank you, for your help, truly. I will take heed of your words and think on them carefully.”
She smiled, glad she could help, hoping Andi would be receptive. Ohlen hesitated, glancing at Tarek briefly, looking about as uncomfortable as a seven foot tall warrior could look. “I have already asked much of you, but may I be bold enough to ask for one more boon?” Tarek made a rumbling growl of displeasure, “Depends on the um, boon.” She said with an easy smile, and Ohlen blushed, “Andi wished to return to the common room with the rest of your female crew. Some of them seemed angry with me, and I don’t know why.”
“Did you ask?”
“No. They enfolded Andi into their midst and made it clear by their expressions that my presence was…not needed. I lost control of myself, I am ashamed of that, not of what I did, but that I did not stop to think of how Ga’rae and Commander Falken’s mates might react to the sight of my beast.”
“Ah. I understand. I’ll speak to them.”
“After you sate your hunger.” Tarek growled, dismissing Ohlen with a jerk of his chin.
Tarek brought her a veritable feast of a meal, sitting across from her and giving her these smoldering looks that made her mind shift back to the dream she’d been having before he’d woken her. It made her stomach twist and flop, made desire streak up her thighs, and every time it did, Tarek’s lips would twitch in a smug little smile and a soft purr would rumble in his chest. He could smell her arousal. And her mortification, but he said nothing about either. He did however, ask her if she too would like to train as a warrior might. “Do you think I will need it, to better fit into your world?” He shook his head after taking a long drink of his water, pulling his hand down over his mouth, “No. We are rarely ever in a state of alert, threats are made to our solar system, but with our control of it and our military numbers, it is unlikely you would ever be in a position where you would have to defend yourself against an enemy. If I am not present, my trusted warriors would be. It is not our way to leave our females, even ones who are warriors, unprotected.”
Eleven
She thought about that all the way down to the common room, where the air was considerably tenser than last time she’d been down there. Andi wasn’t anywhere to be seen, but Gwen and Cassie were having an argument over in the corner, some of the other women watching uncertainly. She looked up at Tarek when he stopped in the doorway, looking forbidding and serious now, “Do you require my presence?” He asked seriously, and she sighed, tugging on the end of her braid in agitation. “I don’t think so. I’ll contact you if I do,” He lowered his head and nuzzled her cheek, “And I will answer, my one.” She couldn’t help but to shift her face a bit to catch the edge of his jaw with her lips.
She was pretty sure he was growling under his breath when she left him at the door.
Gwen and Cassie both rushed up to her and started talking at her a mile a minute, so fast and trying to be louder than one another that she had to take a step back to get out of range from the spit flying. “SHUT. UP!” She shouted, and both women blinked, looked at one another and then back at her. “Calmly, one at a time, tell me what the problem is.” She said it slowly and firmly, trying to do her best impression of…her mother, Jesus. Gwen sucked in a deep breath, but Cassie beat her to it, “We’re worried about Andi. She came down earlier, and after a little while she got jumpy, nervous again, wouldn’t quit pacing. As soon as that…crazy monster showed up she almost ran across the room to him!”
Still not understanding the problem, she looked at Gwen and raised her brows, inviting the other woman to add her input now too. Gwen was wringing her hands, agitated, fidgety even. Probably as fidgety as Andi had felt out of Ohlen’s sight. “She shouldn’t be alone with him. I don’t have enough information about this whole interspecies mating thing to say that it’s safe. Or a good idea. We’ve been here on board for what seems like seven days, a whole week, and after what happened yesterday, Andi is acting weird. Not how I would expect someone who just witnessed the mutilation of their abuser, to react.”
Insecurities. Feelings. Emotional…stuff. Three things she was unable to handle well on her own, let alone settle for others. Cassie and Gwen were acting so strangely, not as confident and self-assured as they had been before they’d met the Sarazens who intended to claim them. And then, like a live wire shock, it hit her. Andi wasn’t the only one experiencing a change. “The first night I spent here in this barrack, after having slept in Tarek’s bed, I tossed and turned, I fidgeted, I freaked because thought I wanted to be away from Tarek so I could think straight, but all night, all I thought about was him.” Gwen and Cassie both shared a quick, uncomfortable look. “I asked Tarek about it, he told me it was a pheromone related reaction. My body responding to the blood he’d transfused me with, or something. I’m sure if you ask Ga’rae about it, Gwen, you’ll come up with some medical explanation. All I can say, is that too long away from Tarek, and even I get fidgety. It’s weird, but I feel safe when I’m with him. And I hope Andi feels every bit as safe with Ohlen. She told me he’s kind to her, gentle, that she feels as comfortable as possible with him even after everything she’s been through. God knows we all need some of that feeling right now.”
Cassie huffed, even as Gwen started to relax a little, nodding her agreement. “No, we haven’t been mistreated, but we’re alive because these men wish it. Because they want something from us. We’re being forced to rely on them because they have no other options. For all we know they’re taking us to a…a…an intergalactic slave market or something!”
“Right now, we don’t have much choice but to trust these people. I for one haven’t had any
reason for mistrust. Tarek has done everything he said he would, he hasn’t pressured anything out of me or made me feel beholden to him. Has Falken given you reason to mistrust him?”
“He has a penis, that’s reason enough.”
She tried to think about what it would be like on their side of things. Tried to rationalize, sympathize, and admitted that aside from the threat of Ethan and his cronies, she hadn’t ever been betrayed or harmed by a man. She couldn’t wholly understand where Cassie and Andi were coming from, and that to them her quick alignment with an alien, and a complete stranger at that, would be a potentially horrifying pill to swallow. Gwen seemed to swing back and forth between her logic and her curiosity, and seemed to her to be having more of a dilemma due to not being able to medically explain what was happening with their hormones and pheromones. But her own studies of plants and animals seemed to help her accept the oddness of their situation. Or at least find a way to make peace with it.
In the end, she really didn’t know what to say or how to make them believe her when she said that she didn’t feel Andi was in any immediate danger. “This is difficult for me to come to grips with too, and I’ll understand if you don’t agree with my point of view. I’m hardly going to force you to accept any of this. But we are at a disadvantage. I’m not saying sacrifice yourselves to these warriors in exchange for refuge and a home. Before last week, most of us still operated under the assumption that we were in fact the only intelligent life in this galaxy, and look what happened.”
“So what are you saying?” Cassie pressed, and she shrugged a bit helplessly. “Don’t take anything at face value, but don’t yank the tiger’s tail out of ignorance. Ohlen already came to see me this morning, wanting to know how to best care for Andi. What to do to keep from frightening her. It didn’t feel like a farce, and these creatures don’t seem to be the type to waste time on something they aren’t dedicated to. I’m naïve in many ways to men in general, I don’t know if I’m making the right choice. It could blow up in my face tomorrow, but I can’t worry about that without making myself crazy.”
This pleased neither of the women, it didn’t calm their fears at all, which made her doubt her ability to lead any of her people. Doubt herself too. “There’s a name for this,” Cassie told Gwen with a huff, and Gwen nodded shortly, “Stockholm Syndrome. It was an ancient form of insanity on earth, where prisoners fell in love with their captors out of desperation and a primal desire to stay alive.” Cassie jabbed her finger in her direction, eyes on fire, “That’s it. Stockholm syndrome. Insanity.”
“We’re not prisoners.” She rebutted, and for a second Cassie looked thoughtful, “Aren’t we being forced to rely on these warriors for our very lives right now?” That was a rather negative way of looking at it, “Forced? I don’t know about forced. Fortunate, I’d say, given the alternative we were presented with first. And if it makes you feel better, Tarek and his people have offered to begin searching for our remaining ships. Their technology is clearly more advanced, and they have the ability. Which means if there are humans still out there in our tin cans, and once they are retrieved and brought back to us, we would then be able to resume our nomadic roaming through the galaxy trapped inside technologically inferior ships, treated like expendable assets by our superiors, facing unknown alien races with potential ships more advanced, and next time we might find ourselves on some…intergalactic slave auction block and sold as meat. Or worse.”
Both women gulped, paled a little and she nodded, hoping she was drilling her point home as confidently as possible. “See what I mean? Could drive you crazy thinking like that. And maybe I am a little crazy, but not crazy enough to pretend that the idea of a home, on a planet protected by the supposedly fiercest warriors this side of the galaxy, where I am not treated as an expendable asset, sounds rather nice. I can tell however that you two aren’t the only ones who are having trouble adjusting, so a meeting is in order, yeah?”
Twelve
He paced in his quarters alongside Falken and Ga’rae, watching and listening to the hologram of the gathering of their mates and the other humans and how his Clary was attempting to democratically hear everyone’s fears and lay them to rest. On one hand he applauded her attempt to be diplomatic, but on the other his beast was snarling a vicious challenge to simply walk in there and take command of the worthless males who were bleating nonsense and upsetting his female. “Unless you were acting a fool, have any of us been harmed, threatened or mistreated?” Clary asked loudly, so gods be damned beautiful it took his breath away. “Did you have your memory wiped of the murder that took place, in this room?” One man guffawed incredulously, and Clary shot him such a look that Tarek couldn’t help but chuckle. “I said, any harm, threat or mistreatment to us, while not acting a fool.”
“And don’t pretend Ethan didn’t deserve what he got, Judah. You and I both treated several of his victims.” Ga’rae’s mate snapped, “Scariest shit I’ve ever seen in my life,” Gwen stated, and Ga’rae sighed wearily, clearly missing his mate and frustrated that she continued to refuse to see him. “But he deserved it,” She finished, shooting Clary a look before sinking down in her chair.
Clary sighed too and sat down, scooping her hair out of her face, staring at the table top hard while she gathered her thoughts. More than anything, he wanted to go to her, stand behind her, beside her, in front of her if need be and save her from this ill-fitting role she demanded she play. His mate studied flowers, and aside from being the strongest, most stubborn female he had encountered in many hundreds of years, his mate was not meant to lead such insubordinate, untrusting, undisciplined children. He tried to remind himself that the majority of these humans were in fact not soldiers at all, that they were scientists and engineers, and totally unskilled in the ways of combat. But it still didn’t make his desire to show them true command, any less. “I’m scared shitless.”
Falken groaned at Clary’s admission and slapped his hand to his face in agony. Ga’rae hissed, and he snarled, wanting to shake his fist at her and shout at her to never show fear to your subordinates! “So much has happened to me, to all of us, in the last week, and I’m surprised more of us haven’t gone completely nutters.” He saw something start to happen then, that he hadn’t expected. The humans were listening, raptly now. Some even leaned forward and fixed their eyes on his Clary. “Our parents and our grandparents left earth with no guarantee that there would be another viable planet for them to call home. Five ships, fifty thousand souls between them, with nothing but a prayer when they launched from our dying homeworld, and set out into the unknown. The first few years were rough, but apparently they were a bunch of hardy bastards, and they made it through. They had us, second and third generation survivors, and as far as we know, we’re the last thirty odd humans in the entire universe. We survived a bloody invasion of snake things, and we were scooped up and rescued by another race of aliens big enough to scare the piss out of Goliath. Clearly, we’re a bunch of hardy bastards too.”
A few chuckles came from around the table, and he marveled at what he was witnessing. At how for the second time, his mate proved him wrong. How strong and wise she was, without likely understanding or knowing what she was doing. “These Sarazens…they’re bloody terrifying.” He frowned, wondering if she truly felt that way about him, if truly she was frightened of him. “They’re creatures bred for battle, for war, and there’s so much about them we don’t know or understand.” A glance at Falken and Ga’rae told him they were both just as uneasy with the idea that their mates were frightened of them, that because they were bred for battle and war, that their gentle human females wouldn’t be able to accept them. Accept the depth of their bond, or the need they had of the lovely creatures. “But they took us in, they searched for us on the wreckage of our ship, at risk to their own lives. And you know, I just realized, I didn’t even bother to say thank you. Or ask if they lost any of their own.”
Pride. Never, had he known such pride. He wanted to roar,
to jump on his men and pound their backs as he loudly claimed that female as his, but the breath was frozen in his lungs, unable to look away and miss a moment of this. “They had no cause to give us refuge, likely it would have been easier, more logical for them to simply stay here on their ship at a safe distance, and blow both the Aria and that other craft, right out of the sky. They had no reason at the time to bring aboard any useless baggage. Or, Judah, if all they wanted was us women, they could have at any time tossed you dickless lot back into space and had done with it.”
Blushes and coughing came from the male side of the table, and several of the women just smiled, “They’ve taken us in, offered us no violence except in justice that our own people refused to give. They’ve tended our wounds, fed us, treated us with far more deference and tolerance than our people would have done had the situation been reversed. And yes, there is much we don’t know, things we need to learn, but we’re being given a chance to live. To show our parents and our grandparents, our friends on the Aria, that we’re worthy of being called hardy fucking survivors. This was the goal of our race, to find a home among the stars, and flourish again. Have a second chance. And if I get a hot, scary, snarling alien man cat in the process, you know what? I think I’ll count myself damn lucky. I could be dead right now. But I’m not. Yes, I’m scared, but fuck me I will not let my fear keep me from being thankful that I get another day to smell the roses. Now,”