The Bonding

by Imogen Keeper

  Sero, acting as Tam’s copilot, used a pair of binoculars that allowed him to see at night and isolated a clearing in which they could land. Nissa enjoyed watching Tam work. She could only see part of his face from her seat but he looked stern and serious and confident. It hadn’t been very long since he’d satisfied the needs of the Bonding but her belly clenched in a sudden burst of desire at the sight of him.

  Within ten minutes they landed and within another five they were off. Dim light from Triannon’s red moon, Chlyrossa, filtered through leaves to illuminate the damp litterfall of the forest floor. Their footsteps were nearly silent, muffled by layers of decaying leaves, as they moved toward the city of Trian. The trees towered above them, arms stretched high, dwarfing even the massive Tribe warriors.

  Nissa followed behind Sero, with Tam on her right and Kaleus on her left. Jingo moved soundlessly behind them. They shifted constantly, sweeping the forest on either side, rezals held ready as they stepped around lacy ferns, ducked under hanging moss. It was a side of Tam she hadn’t seen before, alert, vigilant, wary. He was in full warrior mode now. A shiver ran down her back, despite the heat.

  Splirantu, furry pink mammals that lived in the trees, warbled warnings to one another as their group passed, an echoing cacophony that echoed through the forest. Glowing amber flissa-flies, about the size of Nissa’s thumb, hovered in the trees, calling to mates with the intensity of their lights. She breathed deeply of rich air and reveled in the feeling. It spread through her chest, rolling along her veins. Home. Triannon.

  The air was warm and almost violently sticky. Having spent so many days in the temperature-controlled comfort of the Tribe’s various spaceships, Nissa had forgotten the feel of hot, humid air on her skin. Sweat ran between her breasts.

  They passed over two streams, small enough that the warriors jumped them with ease. At the first, when Tam lifted her silently and tossed her bodily over the water at Kaleus, she’d been too surprised to protest. She’d grunted when Kaleus caught her with arms as hard as stone and dropped her unceremoniously to her feet.

  At the second stream, she moved before he could get to her and with a running start, she leapt over the stream. Tam’s eyes narrowed infinitesimally before he too jumped over the stream. When she smiled broadly, he shook his head but she saw the slight shadow of a dimple in his cheek.

  As they approached Trian, the forest changed. The Splirantu grew silent, no more flissas lit their path. The prolific ferns thinned. The air grew cooler with proximity to the ocean and the smell of fertile soil was overshadowed by fresh salt air.

  Nissa had tried to temper her expectations. She’d told herself a hundred times that everything would be different after five hundred years. She warned herself that any number of disastrous events could have taken place, floods or disease, earthquakes, wars, explosions. But nothing could dampen her raging emotions when they passed through the last grove of trees in the red forest.

  The sky opened wide to vast and velvety blackness punctuated by tremulous stars. The bright, swirling red moon rode the top of the sky. Only Tora, the smaller of the two gray moons, was visible, hanging grim and freckled along the horizon like a fat, ripe fruit. A breeze tugged at her hair, cooling the sweat that had beaded along her forehead.

  What had looked like buildings from space were nothing more than roofs bathed in rosy moonlight, supported by vast columns. Under them lay innocuous piles of stone.

  The land moved downhill toward cliffs overlooking the sea. Nothing but rooftops, covering stacks of rubble.

  It was hideous and horrible and anticlimactic all at once. Part of her was relieved. She’d half expected to see hellish fires or cesspools of decay, garbage or bodies piled high in streets. Every last building in Trian had been dismantled and the bridges that had crisscrossed the river were gone. The palace and the museums and the theater, the central square that had run red with blood, they were all gone. The city of her childhood, the city that housed every memory of her life before Tam, had been dismantled, deconstructed, as though it had never been.

  The river that had once flowed to a gracefully carved, carefully engineered aqueduct and into a vast and elegant reservoir now churned and seethed uncontrolled. Where once there had been cliff, now there was a great, yawning gully through which plummeted a massive waterfall, a constant roaring din.

  Gone were the carefully laid-out streets where vendors had sold trinkets, the piazzas where people had dined and gossiped and parks where they had strolled on lazy afternoons. The vine-covered buildings and stately homes, the glass towers and the enormous music hall were all gone. Nothing remained of the Trian Nissa had known. In its place was nothing but a great quarry.

  The only building to survive was the great burgundy gash of the arena. The building hulked in the center of the rubble, a sullen relic of the discarded past.

  She wasn’t sure if she should feel relieved or angry, sad or glad. Tam laid an arm over her shoulders. She turned to him with dry eyes. “It could have been a lot worse.”

  He didn’t speak.

  “It could have been the whole planet. This is a small scar.”

  Tam turned to survey the quarry that had become of her city.

  “We can rebuild.”

  A muscle clenched in Tam’s jaw. She took his hand and squeezed it. You and me, Tam. She wanted to say but couldn’t. She pressed her free hand to the place between her breasts.

  He returned the gesture. She felt the pulse of his emotions across the bond. They walked through desolate rubble-strewn paths between the buildings. The Argenti took measurements and recordings and temperature readings. They moved down alley after alley until Tora set and the other gray moon, her half-brother Teemo, rose. In the distance came the din of music and voices.

  Nissa chewed her lip. What would they find in the direction of the revelry? Trianni? Or the monsters who had tortured, enslaved and killed them?

  The music pulsed a resonating beat, foreign to her ears. They stood on the barren land where the palace had sat, overlooking the sea, by the Red Gardens along the back, thick with willowing trees that trailed flowers in strands like a lady’s hair. Fountains of white had been rimmed in ferns that had grown as tall as Nissa’s hips, with lacy leaves so thin she could almost see through them.

  Half her childhood had been spent in the Red Gardens. A variety of tutors had seen to her education, ensuring she could dance to the right dances and speak with the correct accent, greet politicians in the proper mannerisms, hold her dining utensils correctly, converse on a variety of subjects, without giving offense. She’d spent her life learning to be a pretty decoration, fit for the future king.

  She looked at Tam again and felt a familiar pulsing between her legs. She’d rather have Tam than a thousand polite Trianni politicians. He’d changed her so much. He’d taught her who she really was. At her core. Without the trappings of corralling royal blood.

  The roofs gave way to actual buildings with walls that appeared to be living quarters.

  The music beat from a broad gray building with large open windows. They could see movement inside, bodies writhing and dancing. Fumes laden with alcohol and smoke floated from the windows. The smell of hot, unwashed bodies mixed with the fresh breeze off the sea.

  They stayed back, melted into the shadows, skirting the edges of buildings as they approached. Nissa moved closer to Tam, standing only inches away, taking comfort in his clean, male smell. She hadn’t needed his warnings to stay close. She wouldn’t part from him for any reason.

  Her body strummed an insidious beat of its own, demanding satisfaction, demanding Tam. Her nipples hardened. Tam inhaled sharply and gave her a look that sent heat flooding between her legs.

  “It can wait a bit longer,” she whispered, grateful for the darkness to hide her flush as the other warriors pretended they couldn’t hear or smell the liquid need spreading through her core.

  When a man and woman exited the gray building through one of the open hatchways and moved i
nto their alleyway, Nissa had to bite her lip to stop from calling out a greeting. From the ruddy silver light of the moon, they looked so like her own people that she smiled. Trianni, the pale luminous skin, thin frames and red hair. The woman could be her sister.

  Instead of the rich red gowns her people had worn a thousand years ago, this one wore next to nothing. Just a tiny black skirt that barely covered her bottom and a pair of black triangles tied over her breasts. Her feet were bare and dirty. The man wasn’t much larger but he wore clothes, a full pair of black pants and a shirt and a pair of sandals. He spoke to the woman in harsh, guttural words. She cowered against the wall of the building behind her.

  He slapped her with a quick hand across the face. Tam’s body tightened. A low growl sounded in his throat. The Trianni grabbed the woman by the chin and yanked her face back and forth, snarling. He shoved a hard palm to her forehead, throwing her back against the wall. Nissa hadn’t seen the cattle in the Trian market treated so cruelly. The woman pleaded in a strange language that she couldn’t understand.

  Three more men exited the building, but they weren’t Trianni. They were off- worlders, the evil ones. From the way each of the Argenti stilled, breaths caught, she knew they recognized their enemy. The Vestige. They moved like predators, slow and feral, their skin deathly white, their ebon hair moved through the air like fine-spun silk. Their bodies were heavily muscled, with great bulging arms, like Kaleus. One of them smiled as they approached the Trianni man and woman.

  Hands raised up to his shoulders, the man backed away and for a moment she felt glad that they were coming to rescue the poor abused Trianni woman. Then he called out something that made the three white males laugh and one reach down and cup his genitals, lewd and derisive, rocking his hips back and forth.

  Still moving with the unnerving fluid grace that reminded her of Tam, they surrounded the woman. She cried and even though she couldn’t understand her words, she could imagine what she said.

  The males only laughed harder and the music throbbed in her skull. The Trianni man watched from the shadows, smoking something that smelled thick and sour.

  Her stomach pitched and a cold sweat covered her skin. The growl built in Tam’s throat and his shoulders jerked. Sero blocked him with a hard arm across his chest. Kaleus grabbed his arms. Jingo put a hand over her mouth and drew her backward, forcing her to turn her back to the gruesome scene.

  “Hundreds of people in there. Too many,” Sero said, and she didn’t know or care if he spoke to her or to Tam as they climbed over rubble in a darkened alley between buildings.

  “She looked like Nissa.” Tam’s voice was as low and quiet as she’d ever heard it.

  “I know,” said Sero.

  Her stomach heaved and it was only Kaleus’s hand on her arm kept her from tripping. Tam lifted her high into his arms and the warriors moved to a careful, steady jog. Following his glowing red screen, Sero led them toward the cliffs, where they would remain until the following night. She buried her face in Tam’s neck and breathed in the reassuring, wonderful scent of him.

  16

  Fuck this place.

  TAM’S HEART POUNDED in his throat as they ran for the cliffs, Nissa now slung over Tam’s shoulder for the long journey, she shuddered with chills and fever. The illness of withdrawal, worse, by far, than the symptoms she’d felt at base when he’d lingered too long at the gym.

  Her body bucked and heaved against his chest and she vomited over his shoulder. It was the bond. She needed his serum. Not for the first time, he felt the trickle of fear down his spine. What if something happened to him and she was left without him? Moving fast, in Sero’s wake, he tried to let his arms absorb the shocks of his steps so she wouldn’t be jostled too abruptly.

  “Sorry, Tam,” she moaned, head dropping to his shoulder. “I should have known, it was just so—” She broke off with another heave and Tam stroked a hand down her back, hoping to soothe her.

  “Shhh.”

  Sero led them on the most direct path toward the predetermined location, this taking them through a residential district.

  They moved in shadows along a back alley off the main street, quietly, avoiding attention. Meager, unfortunate buildings rotted and leaned against one another. Trash drifted over unpaved, wreckage-strewn alleys. Four-legged mammals rutted in shadows. A few kids played with a ball, wearing clothes that were torn and filthy. The light of candles burned behind some of the windows.

  An old woman, dressed in rags, shouted at their group as they slipped past. Fligrra. Though the language she used was one he spoke, the word was foreign to him. It was the language of the Vestige. The word had to mean whore. There was no mistaking the way she said it, with shaking fists and clenched lips, pointing at Nissa in disapproval and disgust. Fligrra. Tam had never raised a hand to a woman but he was sorely tempted to take his boot to that one.

  When Nissa lifted her head with a whimper, Tam snarled, bared his teeth and faked a lunge at the old hag, taking perverse pleasure when she scampered away, drawing the kids with her. Nissa’s back arched. Pain, panic and humiliation seared through their bond. She was desperate. She needed him.

  Fuck this planet. “How far?” he asked.

  “A quarter mile,” Sero grunted. “Can she make it?”

  Nissa answered for him, her head wilting on his shoulder. “Yes. Go.”

  He gave Sero a silent nod of assent. If Nissa had been more alert, she’d have no doubt asked a thousand questions, but she simply hung, groaning.

  As soon as they reached the safety of the cliffs, he dropped over a small rise, to a gentle promontory that afforded a semblance of privacy, though the warriors would still know and certainly hear everything they did. There was no time. He peeled the clinging suit down Nissa’s body and in a single movement shoved his cock home, pulling her legs tight around his waist, holding her close, needing to feel her around him, breathe her in. She was hot and wet and when he was fully seated in her liquid- tight depths, she sighed.

  There were few moments in his life that Tam could say hurt to remember. Losing his mother. Losing his sister. Losing his father. Those memories hurt with a physical pull that made him squirm. Watching Vestige filth attack a woman with hair like Nissa’s, skin like Nissa’s, had hurt. Badly. Every cell in his body.

  He’d never felt so angry. He’d wanted to kill with a fury born of primitive, ancient rage. That rage filled his cock now and when he sank it inside her pussy, a violent roar tore from his chest and he came almost instantly but it wasn’t enough. He needed more. Nissa needed more. They moved together in a violent, furious coupling.

  Fuck this planet.

  Fuck the Vestige. He plowed inside her until she shook. And he shook.

  They spent the rest of the night on the cliffs, eating rations, sleeping in shifts and waiting for the following evening to make their way back to the clearing to return to Tycho and their ship.

  It was nice there, Tam had to admit. Looking over the green sea, listening as it smashed against cliffs that seemed to be made of glass. It was quartz actually but so clear one could see down deep.

  The air was balmy and fresh. Salty. Nissa clambered over the cliffs at dawn, a bloody sky behind her, happily describing the birds and the plants and the bizarre animals they saw swimming in the churning green depths below them. He could feel the sadness in her, the anger and the fear, but she hid it well from them and from herself.

  Moving with a lithe ease that had worried him at first, Nissa hopped along the cliffs, hair blowing, to gather items she found growing in the rocky outcrops.

  “It’s a delicacy,” she said. “I’ve missed it so much.”

  It was a soup, she explained, made from the milky liquid of a fruit that grew there. She added the stirred eggs of the great green birds that squawked and shouted at them and the crushed seeds of a flowering white plant that grew on the cliffs.

  She brought half of a hollowed-out fruit to him, full of her soup, looking so proud he couldn’t hel
p but smile. He took a deep sip, eying the cranky birds.

  “They’re just angry because I stole their eggs,” she said, the wind pulling at her hair.

  “We should move,” said Kaleus. “They’ll draw attention.”

  Tam sipped the greenish soup, eying the colorful birds. The other warriors milled around, weapons in hand. He knew what they were thinking. Kill the birds. Shut them up. Eat them, if she doesn’t like their rations. Dump them in the soup, if it will make her happy. But they’d all glanced over at Nissa, knowing she wouldn’t like it.

  “It’s good.” He’d have told her it was good even if it tasted like piss and smelled like shit, but it was actually good.

  Her smile was exultant. The other warriors took her offered fare with a dubious acceptance that amused him. What did they feel when they looked at her? What would he feel if he were them and he had to look at her, stand next to her, but couldn’t touch her?

  It was unimaginable. He looked at Nissa and saw...Nissa. Beauty. Peace. Happiness. His.

  She smiled at him and nudged his hip. Sero met his gaze from where he stood on the edge of the cliff. “Twenty minutes,” Tam said. They’d move as soon as he’d given her a fresh injection. The thought made him smile.

  So they returned to their little promontory, away from the warriors, leaving them all staring gloomily at the still-circling group of angry, noisy birds.

  They would have some privacy that way, at least. They’d never be able to hear them over the squawks. Tam glanced down the cliff face. It was a sheer drop. Not a sea vessel in sight along the crashing citrine waves below.

  Only two ways anyone could get to them, up the cliff or over the little rise, guarded by Sero and the others.

  He stashed his weapons on the ground, stripped off his suit, watching as Nissa removed her own.

  A minute later moss tickled his ass and Nissa straddled his stomach. “I hate how weak I am.” Her voice was muffled and subdued against his chest.