The Bonding

by Imogen Keeper

  Then her face shuttered.

  The armed guards at the entrance let them through with minimal fuss and there they were, standing in the bright-white Healing Bay in the company of more women than he’d seen in years.

  Thirty days ago he’d have called this a dream come true. Right then, it felt like hell. He stared at the lone Trianni man among them and he knew, he just knew, how this would end.

  “Father,” Nissa called excitedly, her voice a girlish squeal he’d never heard before. The old man opened white-robed arms and she ran to his embrace.

  Excitement, relief, happiness, he felt it all vibrating like music on her side of the bond. The man may have been her father, but Tam still hated seeing his arms wrap around her waist.

  Feeling very much an outsider, he stepped closer to the circle of Trianni, the flock of women circling and turning in constant motion like a pack of vibrant, beautiful birds.

  “They told me you lived.” Her father stroked her hair, and Tam’s fingers clenched. “I am so glad.”

  She hugged him again. Despite the rich embroidery on his robes and the gold buckles at his collarbones, he looked frail, ancient. He looked as if he’d be a prime fit for one of the Tribe’s religious leaders, the Maegi, but not a king. The leaders of Argentus were elected and almost always from the warrior ranks. He’d never seen so diminutive a leader, yet he knew from Nissa’s memories the man had been honest and fair.

  “Father.” Nissa turned to Tam, eyebrows wrinkled, face pinched, as if she was about to explain that she had a terrible disease. “You must meet Tam.”

  Her father’s face iced. “They told me you had been mated.”

  “Yes, father, his name is Tam.” They spoke in the Trianni language, the soft syllables musical and sweet.

  Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. Her lips trembled. She squeezed Tam’s hand, pulling him to stand at her side. He wrapped an arm around her waist to offer support, relieved when she leaned into him.

  The Trianni king inclined his head politely but turned to Nissa. Tam extended his arm forward, waiting to clasp forearms with her father in the Tribe’s formal gesture for greeting, which the man would surely have learned by now. Her father only stared back at him, his shoulders tight, face unimpressed.

  “Father, this is Captain Tam Essinger, Warrior of Tribe Argentus. My mate.”

  Her father said nothing.

  “Tam, this is my father. King Himnor of Trian.”

  Tam dropped his arm and nodded. King of what? Of people dead half a millennium ago, on a planet on the other side of the galaxy?

  Not for the first time, Tam wondered at the delusion that let the king—and Nissa— believe they still had a people to rule, that Nissa owed anything to those little bastards. He’d suggest bombing the hellhole and be done with it, but he knew that wouldn’t go over well.

  Himnor sighed. “You have to end this marriage, Nissa.”

  Tam worked hard to keep his face neutral. Like hell, old man.

  “It isn’t a marriage, Father. Not like we had on Triannon. It’s...” She trailed off and Tam imagined she was trying to determine how best to explain the bond to her father in terms he’d understand. I’m addicted to his cock, my king would hardly be effective. Nor would without his ejaculate, I could die, Father.

  Tam spoke up. “Bonds are sacred to my people, sir. It’s more than just a marriage. It’s a physical dependence.”

  Her face was grim but she pressed closer against his side. Her palm rested in his hand, cool and clammy.

  Himnor stared at their joined hands. “I’ve learned how your bonding happened. You had no choice when he forced this bond with you Nissa. But you have a choice now. You are a daughter of Trian. The queen-designate.”

  Feeling like an asshole, big and hairy and useless, he watched her struggle to explain.

  He’d have been happy enough to just shout that ending the bond was off the table, or maybe punch the old guy, but Nissa wouldn’t like that and after the shit with the moon, he’d rather avoid another confrontation.

  “Father, you don’t understand. It’s not his fault. He had no choice. He saved me.”

  “I know who he saved.”

  “They’re helping us. Tam is helping us.”

  “They are helping themselves. Never doubt that.”

  True enough. The Tribe had their own agenda, but self-interest didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. The Trianni women had faded into the background, faces avid with curiosity.

  “I do trust them, Father,” she argued while Tam stood, impotent beside her. “I’ve been back home. I have seen our people. We can return and help them but only with the help of the Tribe.”

  “We will return and we will do so with their help. Argentus can have some of our women, if the girls are willing. But not you. Not our queen-designate. They will need their queen.”

  “Mother is queen.”

  Her father’s eyes changed at that.

  “They need a queen-designate. You represent their future. They need that connection. One of them with one of us. It’s the only way.”

  “Perhaps another Trianni woman could step forward to be queen?” Nissa said and the statement hit Tam like a blow to the solar plexus.

  Himnor inhaled, a sharp hiss through his thin nose. “You would turn your back on us? On your entire planet. For this?” He gestured with his arms to indicate the ship. “For him?” He pointed at Tam.

  Tam raised his eyebrows, holding his breath. Say yes. Say yes, I would.

  She swallowed audibly, frozen. Doubt, indecision, panic. He felt it all. It spread across her face, clear as the written word, and roiled across their bond.

  Her father must have seen it too, because his face darkened and his hand shot out.

  Tam caught the palm inches from his mate’s face. Fury coursed through him.

  Nissa issued a high-pitched squeak and rocked back a step.

  Tam hissed with fury. Himnor’s face blanched like he was surprised by his own actions. Tam didn’t care if enough regret to float Sierra-Six burned in his brain.

  In a single motion, he had the old man by the neck. The wall rose forward to meet them. His body vibrated, a steady thrum that bared his teeth. He barely resisted the urge to bang the man’s head against the bulkhead. White-rimmed green irises the exact shade of Nissa’s stared at him uncomprehending.

  Vaguely, he registered the Trianni women shouting around them and then Ajax moving beside him.

  Nissa spoke above it all. “Tam, please.”

  The fingers of Tam’s hand tightened. His voice came in a deep growl. “Do not touch her again. Father or not.”

  Ajax pulled at him, trying to get him to release his grip.

  “Tam, no.” Nissa’s voice came in a weak croak.

  Himnor’s face flooded. “You would dare to accost the king?”

  Tam released him.

  Himnor’s feet dropped back to the floor.

  “I’ll do worse than accost anyone who threatens her. And you’re not my king, old man.” Tam backed away slowly.

  Himnor shook his head, with an attempt at elegant disregard. “She will not be your mate for long. She is betrothed. Promised to another man.”

  Tam snarled.

  Himnor shrank back visibly.

  A hacking cough sounded from one of the beds. All heads turned to see a small man with graying hair and skin a pale, deathly blue. He rose to his feet on shaking legs, bracing himself with a hand on either side on a hospital bed.

  “Criamnon?” Nissa’s voice held nothing but curiosity.

  Tam watched her as if through a fog. The questions forming on her face. Oh, shit.

  Her father spoke. “Yes, while you were cavorting with that beast, your betrothed lay dying.”

  Nissa froze, her gaze locked on one of the hospital beds.

  Beside Criamnon lay another Trianni, one who Tam recognized, though he’d only seen her through Nissa’s memories.

  “Mother?” Her voice rippled with surp
rise. The woman in no way resembled the queen she had been. She’d shrunk, faded.

  “Darling.” Her mother’s voice was so weak it barely rose over the ever-present hum of the ship. She held out a hand in Nissa’s direction.

  The queen was blue, like Criamnon. Dark-purple veins spread from her lips and down her temples. The skin around her eyes and mouth pale turquoise in flesh that was deadly white.

  At her worst, Nissa had never come close to looking this ill.

  Criamnon staggered toward Tam. “Step away from the king.”

  Tam couldn’t help it. He snorted. Not because he was amused—nothing about this situation was amusing—but because of the balls on the little bastard. He met Ajax’s eye. Ajax didn’t smile. Tam noticed vaguely that the orangey-pink-haired woman he’d seen before stood at his side.

  Nissa shot him an unamused glare and returned her focus to her mother.

  “I am so glad you’re safe,” Nissa’s mother said. Thin white fingers stroked Nissa’s wrist. Her eyes, wide and green and fringed in burgundy lashes, looked enormous against pale skin. Her father joined her at her mother’s bedside, giving Tam a wide berth.

  One of Ajax’s healers moved Criamnon back to his bed where he collapsed, breathing heavily.

  The Trianni man placed a hand on Nissa’s shoulder in greeting. Tam released a low warning growl. Criamnon dropped his hand with a weary sigh.

  Ajax caught his eye, shaking his head.

  “Leave our family to mourn,” Nissa’s father said with a regal nod toward Tam.

  Tam raised a brow in his direction and eventually the would-be king turned back to his family.

  “When were you found?” Nissa asked her mother.

  Tam froze.

  The woman coughed, deep and racking, her shoulders jerking as if she’d be torn apart. A healer brought over a balloon and held it to her lips. She inhaled deeply of the soothing vapor it contained.

  The king answered for her mother and Tam didn’t like the almost triumphant tone of his voice. “Criamnon and I were brought in the day before you left for Triannon. Your mother was brought in the next day along with several other Trianni.”

  Nissa turned toward Tam, who had remained frozen. “You knew my father had been found? And Criamnon?” she asked him, eyes growing wider in a pale face. “That’s why you moved the trip up a day.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything,” he said. His voice felt like woodchips coming out of his throat.

  “But I asked you. You lied?”

  “You didn’t ask. I didn’t tell.” The argument sounded false even to his own ears. “Nothing would have changed. You’d just have worried the whole time.”

  She crossed her arms in front of her breasts. “Don’t pretend you did this for me. You did this for you.”

  Himnor interjected. “He lies. He will do anything to keep you. You are his only chance at having a mate. It’s his fault that Criamnon is dying.”

  Tam stiffened at that. “Bullshit.”

  Nissa stared at Tam’s eyes, wide green eyes searching for an explanation.

  “According to Feola, he told that one,” her father pointed at Ajax, “to wake Criamnon last.”

  Tam didn’t know what to say. It was bullshit to blame him but he couldn’t open his mouth to come up with an answer. Every cell in his body had stalled.

  Her father pointed at Ajax who looked surprised and angry and annoyed all at once. “So they waited. They opened the pods of your mother and all the other females who came in during the last six days. It was only after the lights on Criamnon’s pod ceased to function that they opened his pod. If they hadn’t waited until his pod failed, Criamnon might not be sick.”

  Ajax cleared his throat. “We would have focused on females first, anyway. And his sickness would have worsened regardless of when we found him.”

  Evidently Himnor had been fitted with a translator, because he glared sourly at Ajax. “Silence, healer.” His voice carried a trace of decayed authority that echoed across the chamber, small and flat.

  Ajax made an ambiguous sound. The woman beside him murmured something Tam couldn’t understand, eyes wide and earnest and locked on Ajax’s face as if it held all the answers in the universe.

  Tam met Nissa’s burning green gaze.

  “Did you do that?”

  He nodded stiffly.

  “Why?”

  “I just...” He shook his head, “I just wanted more time.”

  “That’s not it. You didn’t trust me.”

  Everyone in the room was silent, shuttling their gazes back and forth from Nissa to Tam as they spoke.

  “I just wanted more time,” he repeated.

  “More time for what?” She looked confused more than angry.

  “Before your loyalties changed.” His mouth formed the words stiffly, as if they came from a stranger’s throat.

  Nissa’s shoulders tightened. “I have always been loyal to my people.”

  “But also to me. You were loyal to me,” he said simply, willing her to understand. “That’s already fading.”

  She shook her head.

  “You’re looking for excuses,” he said, with sudden clarity. It was the truth. “You have been since the beginning.”

  She shook her head but didn’t deny it. She turned to her mother, breathing in thick, raspy breaths. A tear slid down her cheek.

  “Leave us.” Her voice brooked no denial. Tam took a step toward her. “Go,” she said sadly.

  He swallowed, throat thick, and stalked from the room on legs that felt as heavy and hard and immobile as if they had been cast of iron. His heart thundered in his chest, a hideous dirge.

  Criamnon lay on his bed, wheezing and blue and dying.

  Tam closed his eyes.

  24

  A thousand brittle pieces.

  NISSA SAT on the hospital bed in Healing Bay. Her mother lay beside her, so small and so pale she might already have been dead, but for her eyes. She was afraid to even squeeze her hand, it was so frail. She met her father’s gaze, reading sorrow, fear and frustration in it. Her mother would die. Tam had lied to her. She didn’t know how much she even cared about that, if at all. It made sense in a weird way.

  He couldn’t have known that Criamnon would die. That was a ridiculous layer of blame. And knowing her father had been found, or the other male, wouldn’t have changed a thing. She’d still have gone to Triannon. And worried the entire time. Tam had been right on that front.

  But her mother was dying.

  Her heart fractured, a thousand brittle fragments clawing their way toward the surface. Judging by the thick dark veins that spread across her face and down her neck, by her labored breathing, it would happen soon.

  Very soon. In a matter of hours, there would be no queen of Trian. The last shred of hope for a life with Tam withered and died within her.

  “A warrior could provide serum?” So awkward even mentioning it in her parents’ presence.

  Her mother smiled. “I am queen. Wedded to your father.”

  A voice sounded in her head. Tam’s voice, strumming a beat that resonated down to the bones. Queen of what? What are we clinging to? Tradition from half a millennium past? People who will surely hate us?

  Nissa turned to Ajax. “Save her.”

  He shook his head, eyes warm and sad. “I cannot.”

  “Use your serum.” Something moved in his eyes, something that told her the request pushed beyond unreasonable and into insulting, offensive.

  His gaze shifted to one of the Trianni women nearby. “She does not wish to be healed that way.”

  “Tam healed me.” She had to try.

  Her father looked mutinous again and Ajax, uncomfortable.

  “Your mother is unwilling. There is a difference.” There was.

  Her mother touched her arm, as brief and delicate as a butterfly’s wing. “Do not waste the time we have.”

  Nissa closed her eyes. Her mother would be dead. Teemo would be bombed. Five thousand
Vestige soldiers would be killed without warning, the Argenti would invade, and her father would be king of a people who had never seen him before and who spoke another language. He wanted to take Tam from her and offer her up as a trade to the people living on Triannon. Elect someone to be your future king. He can have my daughter. I will teach him what he needs to rule. We will lead you.

  It felt as though a thousand years had passed since she’d stood on the clifftop where a nasty little man had licked her face and run filthy hands over her body. A hundred thousand years since she’d floated, more at peace than she had ever felt in her life, with Tam surrounding her, filling her for the first time. A million since she’d looked out over Trian, at a city of honest citizens, before the Vestige came. A beautiful, prosperous city filled with a populace who would one day look to her as their queen.

  It made her feel silly and stupid and selfish. All her anguish. Who cared what those men had done to her? What did it matter? She had survived. Who cared what Tam did to those men? They were gone. It was a waste of time. She wished she could have the last few days back. She’d have spent them with her arms and legs wrapped around Tam like a vine, breathing him in, absorbing him into her soul until their bodies fused and they could never be separated. With a weak hand, her mother pulled her down to lie beside her on the bed. “Daughter.”

  Nissa met eyes exactly like her own. Her throat swelled, cutting off her air.

  “Your people are going to need you.”

  Nissa nodded even as her chest compressed.

  “Forget what your father says. There’s nothing wrong with that man of yours. The way he looks at you...” Her mother’s eyes welled. “I wish I could tell you to be with him, be happy. But that—” She broke off, stroking Nissa’s hair. “That isn’t the life you were born for. It wasn’t the life I was born for either. We were born to be queens. To do our duty. You need to think for your people. Not for yourself. You need to lead them. Be their queen.”

  Ajax moved around them, checking her mother’s vitals. He gave Criamnon some sort of tea to drink, keeping his gaze averted. Her father backed away to give them some privacy. She hadn’t missed the set of his shoulders. He knew how this would end. Nissa’s heart sat hard and heavy. She’d known, with a heinous prescience, from the moment the knife had touched her neck and she’d seen the grinning Trianni. She had known. She couldn’t turn her back on them. She wouldn’t.