by Mikayla Lane
He turned angry eyes to the assembled crowd and lashed out. “What the fuck is wrong with you? We have a gravely injured team member coming in! Where the fuck is the respect?”
Grumbling sounded loudly around them and the words ‘traitor’ and ‘murderous killers’ were all too clearly discerned among the chatter. Dree was shocked, and although Liam and the other Dranovian’s held their heads high and their backs straight with pride, she had felt Liam’s slight flinch at the horrible words being spoken about them.
She was furious and disgusted. Not only with the fact that her own Tezarian brethren were among the crowd, but because she had probably had the same thoughts when she first saw the Dranovian’s and even though she had learned better, it didn’t excuse her.
Dree grabbed Liam’s hand and squeezed it tightly until he looked down at her. The moment her green eyes connected with his, she spoke to him, loudly enough for anyone to hear.
“I am sorry,” she said as tears formed in her eyes at the gentle man’s startled face. He looked as if she had slapped him and Dree continued.
“I’m sorry if we treated you as badly as this when we first met. And I’m sorry that our brethren are too cowardly to learn who you really are before they allow their fears to control them.”
Liam’s face seemed to melt and he looked helplessly at his brother’s for what to say to the tiny woman with the courage and fierceness of a bear.
Dread, Viper, Trick and Mir all raised their weapons alongside the Dranovian’s and Dread said, “Fuck an apology. If they come close just shoot. Arms and legs are easily repaired.”
Viper laughed as the crowd gasped and Chris and the Dranovian’s looked at the Tezarian’s as if they had gone stupid. “What the fuck are they doing?” Reign asked his brother’s through the Shengari’, wondering if they were being set up or corralled towards a trap.
Chris looked around at the uneasy and armed crowd, knowing damn well their odds were not good if they were forced to engage in the open. The larger problem would be that their honor would not let them kill one of their own if they weren’t defective. In extreme situations, they would consider it and he knew by the look on Reign and Cole’s faces that they were starting to consider it.
The transport landed behind them and Chris heard his father’s booming voice behind him. “Where the fuck is Amun?”
“I’m here! I’m trying to get through!” They heard someone yell near the middle of the crowd and to their left.
It was Tricia who stalked up behind her sons and placed her hands on her hips, glaring at anyone near her. She drew the energy towards her and after a few seconds she threw her hands up in the air and watched as the crowd slid across the floor, leaving a path for Amun to come through.
Chris and his brothers sighed in relief when they saw the doctor running through the opening and directly towards their sister who was being pushed through the doors to the Med Lab in the docking bay.
Chris and his brothers didn’t move an inch as Amun started speaking as soon as he got close enough to be heard without yelling. “Tell me what we got!”
Reign chuckled. “Mom, when did you get so good at using your new power?”
Tricia walked over to Reign and hugged him while he held his gun in one hand and used the other to squeeze her to him affectionately. The docking bay of people looked on in startled amazement at the exchange between Tricia and the man who was obviously as old as she was.
Tricia grinned up at Reign before stepping away to smile or give a touch of encouragement to Chris’s brothers. “Actually, I’m learning on the fly,” Tricia said with a smile as she touched her stomach.
“Your new baby sister has decided that she will be the one to teach me to use it. Let’s hope she realizes who is truly friend and foe because I would hate to see what she could do to someone who tried to hurt her brothers or sister,” Tricia said warningly to the crowd.
Tricia turned back to Chris as he and his brother’s groaned at the confirmation that they would indeed have another female hellion on their hands. “Angel will be all right, Chris. I will make damn sure that she is. You make sure none of these fools dare to try and come near her while she heals and bonds with her new beast. And try not to kill anyone, we usually like them when they aren’t acting as fools and trying to kill our kids,” Tricia said as she glared at those who were still standing around, staring at the Dranovian’s.
Tricia turned back to Chris and squeezed his arm until he looked down at her. “Be careful, your father and I will be right inside if you need us.” With that Tricia turned and walked into the Med Lab to assist Lara and Amun in saving her daughter’s life.
The crowd began to grumble again as the Tezarian’s stood beside the Dranovian’s, their weapons pointed at their own. The situation became more volatile the moment Ivint Torenson stormed through the hangar followed by Reven Debreskii, his mate Jaxson Adronatof, Niklosi Jevasari and Balduen Skardard.
Their pace slowed dramatically the closer they got to the Dranovian’s until they finally stopped, only a few steps in front of the crowd that had already been there. Jax was the first to speak.
“Damn… now I understand the crazy energy,” Jax said with a low whistle before she turned to her mate, Reven.
“You need to stay out here babe. I have to get in there and help with the girl. Keep these guys safe. They are more important than you realize. And not just because they are Grai’s kids,” Jax said cryptically before she winked at the Dranovian’s and with a wave of her hand, walked right past them into the Med Lab.
“Damn I hate the way the Prime’s can nullify our power,” Dusty complained through the Dranovian path, while his brother’s grunted their agreement. That simple wave of Jax’s hand had momentarily paralyzed them, while she strode right past and into the Med Lab.
Ivint, Reven and the other Valendran’s groaned when they heard the next voice coming up to them from the crowd. “Oh get the hell outta my way damn it! I got nephews to meet!” His words barely raised eyebrows since Grai had hidden the existence of Tristan and Tricia from his brother’s Traze and Koda for years.
Traze T’Alq slid to a stop in front of Ivint and stared at Chris and his brothers. Chris and the others couldn’t help but grin at their young uncle, and in some cases, older uncle, that they had watched grow through the vid’s that their parents sent them regularly.
“Traze…,” Chris said roughly, trying to stop himself from grabbing and hugging the amusing boy he had watched grow into a man.
Traze grinned. “So you know me!” His grin only widened when the Dranovian’s smiled at him and nodded.
Chris smiled at his uncle. “Dad and Mom keep us updated. But Traze, this is not the time for this. It’s a little… tense right now,” Chris said, hoping that Traze would take the hint and go inside the Med Lab where he would be safer.
Liam, still trying to block Dree, looked at Traze. “Uncle, why don’t you go inside and check on our sister. I think you will really enjoy meeting her. You have a lot in common,” Liam said while all his brother’s chuckled. Everyone but Traze knew Liam was referring to their reckless and sometimes stupid antics that Angel and Traze had in common.
Traze, who was trying desperately to learn to be a man worthy of his deadly laustio child mate, looked around the hangar and began to sense the agitation in the energy of the crowd gathered. He turned in a slow circle and for once, he tried to think before he acted.
Just as Traze’s handler, Lt. David Jacobs walked up behind him, Traze drew his weapon and turned it on Reven. Ivint sucked in a shocked breath and stared at Traze before speaking to the boy.
“Traze, put that damn thing down,” Ivint said slowly, knowing that he needed to do something soon before the situation got out of control and someone got hurt.
As the previous High Councilor to the Valendran planet and the commander of the Valendran allied forces, he wasn’t going to watch all of the work they accomplished be wiped away like this.
Traze remained beside the family
he didn’t know that he had and the Tezarian’s who stood beside them and shook his head. “I’m sorry sir, but no. If there is one thing about Grai that all of you should be remembering, it is that he never does anything unless it is for the protection of all of us.”
“Until Grai can explain things to us, I will stand with the sons that he trusts enough to protect him while his guard is down and his back turned,” Traze said, his unusually strong and determined voice surprising everyone.
It took everything Traze had in him not to flinch when David walked up to him. He was expecting to be slapped in the back of the head and disarmed and was stunned when David stood beside him and addressed Ivint and the others he had brought with him.
“Gentlemen, with all due respect, this is one time that I have to agree with the man-child. This is not as it seems and you need to let Amun get the girl stabilized so that Grai can explain this,” David said, trying to keep his burgeoning Prime powers in check.
He could feel the pull of the energy inside the Med Lab and the desperate effort to save Drago’s mate. David’s own Prime beast was torn between protecting the Dranovian’s and his need to assist the Prime laustio trying to bond within the broken human girl.
Reven looked at David and Traze in astonishment before finding his voice. “If one of you know what the hell is going on and why they are here, why don’t you explain it!” Reven said angrily as he gestured at the Dranovian’s.
Dree bristled with anger. She’d never really worked with Reven or Ivint and didn’t give a damn who they were since Ivint wasn’t the High Councilor of shit on her planet, Tezaria.
“You arrogant prick! They… are standing right the fuck in front of you! Why don’t YOU ask THEM yourself?” Dree asked Reven sarcastically, while the Dranovian’s snorted, coughed and cleared their throats in an effort to hide their laughter at her courage and snippy words.
Words that Chris and his brothers had wished they could say but wouldn’t for the sake of the alliance he father fought so hard for. With that in mind, they held their tongues, determined not ruin what their father had tried to create.
Chapter Nineteen
Drago and Grai stood back as Angel was surrounded by Amun, Lara, Tristan and two very brave Med tech’s whose only interest was their human patient and not the drama unfolding outside of the doors.
Amun looked at the scans and sighed. “Damn, she’s a full human. But she’s a fighter,” he said as he looked at Lara and asked, “Can you hold her energy and the new beast, while we fix the body?”
Lara nodded her head as Tricia walked in the room and came directly to the bed, followed quickly by Jax. “Yes, we can hold her and also assist with life support.”
Drago ran his hands over his face and paced near the foot of the bed, before he turned on Grai and growled lowly, “How could you have allowed her near that man?”
Grai rounded on Drago, the men squaring off unintentionally as their fear for Angel overwhelmed them. “I had no idea that they had anything to do with John Rothfeller! That is not what they were there for! You have no idea what they were doing…,” Grai argued before Lara and Tricia lashed out at both of them with their energy, dropping both men to the floor in a sitting position.
Tricia glared at both of them. “You are the only two men in this world that she loves more than anything. More than her brothers. And you are not going to fight! Not here, not now when she needs you both the most! And Grai… so help me, your baby daughter will not hesitate to help me kick your ass if you don’t tell Drago about his mate!”
With that outburst Drago and Grai looked at one another helplessly while Tricia and Lara turned back to Angel. Grai knew that his mate was right. His baby girl had grown and her mate needed to know about the beautiful and incredible woman that he was lucky enough to have been mated to.
Although he knew they were released from the energy that had dropped them to the floor, Grai chose to stay there and leaned back against the bed his daughter fought for her life in.
With a small smile and heavy sigh he spoke. “When I first came down to this planet and began discovering the hybrids and protecting them, I found the first Dranovian, my son Christopher,” Grai said with a smile as he remembered the dark haired, lonely infant.
“At the time, I didn’t know much about my own beast and what it was about Chris that made him different, but I knew that the way the others shunned him and at times bullied him, meant that he needed to be protected. I saw an innocent boy, not legends of monsters I never knew of, when I looked at him.”
“The more hybrid children I found, the more Dranovian’s I began to find and the more I realized that these children needed a home, a real family. I could relate to how they felt, ostracized from their own, bullied and hated for something that was no fault of their own. And one day I discovered first-hand the reason why I was finding a Dranovian amongst each hundred or so hybrids.”
Grai leaned his head back as that day ran through his mind. Chris, Reign, Mikal and Liam were only young teens when they had sneaked out of the country estate that Grai had turned into a home for them. The boys had gone out to try their abilities at night, the one time that Grai hadn’t trained them in yet, because he was trying to keep them on a normal child schedule of sleeping, waking and learning at normal hours.
The boys had wandered through the neighborhoods of the closest town, their bodies prowling for something that they didn’t understand, but were driven to find. Until they reached a small home on the outskirts.
When Grai had found the boys, they were covered in cuts and bruises, their growing bodies covered in blood. It was then that Chris had looked at Grai with tears streaming down his face and said, “We had to kill her, father. She was broken and killed everyone.”
It had taken an hour to find out that the boys had heard screaming and when they had gone to investigate, they had found a hybrid woman brutally murdering everyone in the home with a knife. She had managed to kill the mother, father and three of the children before the four boys had been able to stop her murderous rampage.
The hybrid woman’s ability had been to create energy whips that she had used to torture the family and the boys with, before the boys had drawn on their Dranovian power to kill the anomalous beast, unwittingly killing the hybrid woman with their untrained power.
Grai explained that it was after that night when he had learned what the boys were and their purpose. He had also learned that the hybrid they had killed was suspected of a series of family murders across several states and that if the boys had not found and stopped her, she would have continued to kill the innocent.
Grai had learned as much as he could about the Dranovian’s after that night, in order to help the boys and train them properly. Not only to protect themselves from the fear and hatred of their brethren, but so they could protect their brethren from those who had become soulless killers from a damaged and anomalous beast bonding.
In the years that he had helped the boys, raising them as his own, training them personally to protect themselves and use their unique abilities, Grai had become father to them. And each new boy that he found and brought to the others, became son and brother, until they had formed a family.
Grai looked at Drago and smiled. “Thirty one years ago, most of the boys were adults and well established in their abilities and responsibilities. They remained at the estate, taking care of their brothers and helping to raise them to understand their duty to this world and to their people.”
“I had been working on some new developments and business ventures with the company and had been away from them for weeks and when I returned, I knew that they were hiding something from me. The younger boys had still not learned how to hide their energy from me and I waited, knowing one of them would slip up.”
Grai snorted and grinned at the memory while Drago remained engrossed in the telling of the story. “I followed Trevor and Shane, the two youngest, out to the gardener’s shed. I’m not sure who was more surprised when I e
ntered,” Grai said with a chuckle.
“There was Chris, with a dirty diaper in his hand, while Mikal tried to hold a squirming and cooing Angel. Reign and Cole were using a hot plate to try and heat a bottle for her and they all looked terrified,” Grai said causing even Amun and the Med techs to chuckle at the visual he created for them.
Grai’s smile faded and he continued. “She was covered in Medi-bands. Bruises and burns were all over the front of her tiny, little body and the boys were trying really hard not to hurt her while they changed her diaper.”
“I knew by the care they showed her, that they hadn’t harmed her but I had to know where she came from. I wanted nothing more than to beat the hell out of whoever could have done that to such a tiny and helpless being,” Grai said as he blinked away the tears that formed in his eyes.
“The boys had been in the city, tracking a suspected hybrid serial killer when they tracked the hybrid to an abandoned building. By the time they had breached it, the hybrid had used her ability with fire to set the building ablaze along with the drug addicts that had made it their home.”
“The boys had barely escaped unharmed when Mikal heard the cries coming from the building. He was just learning how to use his Windwalker abilities and had yet to successfully use it consistently, but he went inside for her anyway. He had gotten Angel out just as the building exploded, killing the hybrid in her own blaze.”
Grai shook his head sadly. “Even the burns hadn’t been from the fire, they had been from her mother dropping her hot crack pipe on the baby while she was strapped helplessly into her car seat,” Grai said angrily, his feelings over what his daughter had gone through not diminishing much through the years.
Grai pushed the thought from his head and smiled at Drago. “You should have seen her. She was malnourished and so small, but she had a temper and with one look at those pretty brown eyes she could twist your heart in knots. She’d had more than a week to wrap those boys around her little finger and they were not going to give her up.”