Krygor’s Hope: Braxians 3

by Abel, Regine

  We burst out laughing, and I found myself squished into a three-way hug. My heart filled with love for my two giants.

  * * *

  Our stay on Venus Hive flew by way too quickly. By the time we left, Grace steadily called me Mom, and Anton called me Mother. As I’d later on found out, Grace had been left at an orphanage as an infant and never fully recovered from her sentiment of abandonment. Family and a sense of belonging meant a great deal to her. I could relate. With my own messed-up childhood, the much too early loss of my mother, and then being sold and used as currency, had left far deeper wounds than I had realized. To thus be claimed soothed old scars I’d too often denied.

  Their children calling me Nana did something weird to me—something weirdly wonderful. Siona was crazy about her new big brother. Beside the fact he doted on her, she was missing Tevek terribly —my firstborn son. The Goddess only knew when we would be reunited. At least, the Veredians had promised to keep hunting for him.

  Our arrival on Braxia turned out to be another surreal experience. I’d thought the Sarenian sendoff had been impressive with the Prince, the Emperor and so many noble houses, but it paled in comparison to the Braxian greeting. Their Dagna alone—the Veredian-Guldan hybrid called Mercy—could have stolen the show all by herself. She was tall, stunning, with a you-better-not-fuck-with-me aura that commanded respect. But to have her standing next to Magnar Ravik—the most fearsome beast I had ever seen—and surrounded by his army of giants, including two dozen guards riding real karvelis, was enough to have me weak in the knees.

  The Magnar and his queen approached us with a savage grin on his face. He gave my mate a brutal embrace and slapping his back with such strength it resounded loudly. The Dagna followed, and only then did I notice the two young Braxian-Veredian-Guldan hybrids shadowing her: the firstborn young twins of the royal couple. Siona gasped in awe at their sight. Far more intimidated than I’d ever admit, I smiled with what I hoped would come across as confidence to the most gorgeous Guldan female I had ever beheld. The softness of her expression as she returned my smile turned me upside down.

  “Hello, my sister,” said Mercy in a soft, sensuous voice. “Welcome to your new home.”

  “Thank you, Dagna,” I said, relieved that my voice came out firm and confident despite my being utterly star struck.

  “Please, call me Mercy,” she said, with a dismissive gesture of the hand. “You’ll find that Braxians aren’t formal. And I fully intend to call you Hope. It is good to see that more of us have escaped the chains of Guldar. I will want to know everything about you, about that lovely daughter of yours, and how in the world you managed to tame that crazy beast.”

  Krygor chuckled and pulled me against him with a possessive grin. “With all due respect, Dagna, I’m not crazy, just borderline insane… sometimes. And I would rather you do not corrupt my mate with your strange ideas. My daughter has already grown obsessed enough with those wretched combat training programs of yours.”

  Mercy’s brows shot up, and her head jerked towards Siona. “You love combat?” she asked my daughter.

  “Absolutely!” my baby exclaimed, staring at the Dagna with undisguised awe. “We’re not allowed to do things like that on Guldar, but now I definitely want to learn more.”

  “You and I, my dear, are going to get along beautifully,” Mercy said with a mischievous glimmer in her eyes.

  The Magnar rolled his eyes and moaned as if in pain. “And another daughter ruined,” he grumbled with false despair.

  “Hush, my beast,” Mercy said, playfully elbowing him, before giving me a resigned look. “You will also find that Braxians like to shout, roar, and flex their muscles, thinking they’re intimidating someone. But deep down, they’re all big, fluffy teddy bears.”

  Outraged scoffs resounded all around from the massive giants surrounding us.

  “Come,” Mercy said, slipping an arm under her ‘beast’s’ arm to lead us inside the imposing walls of their compound. “The feast awaits.”

  We followed in their wake, a silly grin plastered on my face.

  “Welcome home, my beautiful Hope,” Krygor whispered in my ear.

  Chapter 20

  Krygor

  Sitting at the table of Ravik’s private council chamber, I let my gaze roam over my fellow Councilors—including Ravik’s heir, Keran—each of them eyeing me with the same eagerness. I could no longer sit in this room without being reminded of Mercy all but raping the Magnar while under the effect of her mating heat. A part of me regretted that my Hope didn’t have that purely Veredian trait—not that she wasn’t naturally wild and unbridled.

  I quickly chased away the naughty images of my mate popping into my head. The last thing I needed was to get distracted by a raging hard on while discussing the serious matters that I had to share with my king.

  I spent the next half hour or so going through a detailed report of everything that had transpired from the moment Faolen had taken control of my ship. The fleet that had met us after our liberation had run a battery of tests on my vessel, and the most powerful virus scans in Mercy’s arsenal. Nothing had been found, as per the Emperor’s promise. So far, it did look like there had been no foul play.

  “I still think we should retaliate,” said Raylor Caldes. “They have captured and tortured one of the Magnar’s High Council. Not responding makes us weak.”

  I smiled at the irony that the man who had hated me—and probably still did—for executing his firstborn son in the slowest, most excruciating fashion for the wrongs against my own firstborn, would now be advocating for avenging my honor.

  “A fair point,” replied Keran, pensively. “At the same time, Emperor Nemrox could have disposed of you and of your ship long before we reached you.”

  “You have stated the facts of what happened,” Ravik said, “but what is your sense of the actual situation there? I would have expected you to come in here demanding blood. And yet, you seem disturbingly calm and peaceful.”

  “I do want blood,” I said with a predatory smile. “I will be spilling it shortly when I go pay a visit to the special friend my son had delivered to my dungeon. But I do believe it would be unwise to enter into a war with Sarenia at this point in time.”

  “Why?” Fenton asked with a frown.

  Along with Elder Pattel, Fenton was one of the more moderate members of our Council, and both were part of Ravik’s inner circle of trusted friends and allies.

  “Because I believe there’s far more going on than meets the eye,” I said in a somber tone. “The one thing that struck me was how easy everything turned out to be.”

  “How so?” Ravik asked.

  “The whipping was real, as was the Verlenk they unleashed in the Arena,” I said pensively. “They had not expected us to free ourselves of our chains. But then, offworlders always underestimate the power of a Berserker. However, the minute the tide turned in our favor, they adjusted their plan in real time. The Prince is as big a player as his sire. It was uncanny how much decisional power was left to the boy.”

  “The same boy who covets your adopted daughter,” Boros said, his pale brown eyes narrowing. “Is that why you suggest avoiding a war with them? An alliance of your houses could bring great power to your clan and to Braxia as a whole.”

  I liked the Clan Leader Boros Grumar. He had come a long way from being on Ravik’s list of the Fifteen to be executed to now sitting on his Council as one of the voices that spoke truth to power honestly instead of the political games others liked to play.

  I pursed my lips, pondering my words carefully before I spoke. “It could be both a great benefit and a recipe for disaster. I do not relish the thought of my daughter so far away, living amidst an entire species with the power to mind control her.”

  “Mercy is already hard at work to develop some sort of technology or method to make the Veredians and our allies immune to the Sarenians’ compulsion without impeding their own psionic abilities,” Ravik said. “There are still many years le
ft before the Great War. We will be ready.”

  “I am relieved to hear it,” I replied. “But many other things troubled me. The Emperor and his son made it a point to prove to me on multiple occasions that the relationship between them and the Guldans is lukewarm at best. He has hinted they are currently planting moles or dormant agents within the ranks of the Guldan Empire.

  “Isn’t that a good sign of them wanting a genuine alliance with us?” Raylor asked.

  I rubbed my chin pensively then shook my head slowly. “I do not know that we can trust them. It felt to me that they were trying too hard. You see, after I killed Ambassador Lorik’s brother and then Juntel—that fool who had attempted to force himself on my daughter-in-law—everything became too easy.”

  “I still can’t believe the idiot sought revenge on you for the punishment Mercy and I exacted on that insane son of a bitch,” Ravik muttered. “But what do you mean by too easy?”

  “They gave me a way out through the Blood Hunt,” I said, my eyes going out of focus as I revisited the events in my mind. “A way out that ensured both my clansmen and my females would leave Sarenia with me, unscathed. Having seen us battle the beast in their Arena, they knew we could handle what creatures lurked in their Gauntlet. Except, it turned out we couldn’t. We were not prepared or qualified to defeat a Crawmaw. And yet, conveniently enough, an elite group of Sarenian Hunters showed up just at the right moment to help us ensure victory. And then, while they had us surrounded and outnumbered, they merely walked away.”

  “That is indeed unusual,” said Fenton. “They wanted you to succeed while giving you the illusion that you were earning your way out.”

  “Exactly. And the same happened when I found my females. They had conveniently been escorted by the Prince and the Hunter who had captured us to begin with.” I refocused on the men around the table, puffing out my chest with pride. “You should have seen my mate and daughter beating the living daylights out of that pompous Ambassador Hartuk. I almost didn’t stop my woman from killing him.”

  “Why did you?” Keran asked with genuine curiosity.

  “The Emperor made me promise that I would only maim him, not kill him,” I replied matter-of-factly.

  Startled gasps resounded around the table as my fellow Councilors all stared at me in disbelief; a sentiment I understood all too well.

  “Nemrox wanted to earn my trust and keep the peace between our peoples,” I continued. “Until we know more, we should keep open the communication channels between us. Either way, I do not trust them, even though I genuinely believe that the Prince actually is my daughter’s soulmate. But this whole thing feels too much like a setup. Nemrox knew that I would find myself in a position to kill the Ambassador and made sure I wouldn’t. How could he be so sure unless he had planned it? How do I even know that Hartuk’s actions were his own and not compelled by the Sarenians? After all, it made no sense for him to challenge the Prince’s claim to Siona during the Hunt when he’s courting an alliance with them. It made even less sense for him to act so brutally against my mate to subdue her after he’d been sternly warned against the consequences of harming females in any way.”

  “You said that compulsion makes the victim uneasy,” Fenton argued. “They do not know what is bothering them, only that something isn’t right. Under the circumstances, Hartuk would have known or at least guessed that the Sarenians were messing with him.”

  I shook my head slowly. “Not necessarily. In fact, in this instance, it completely makes sense that the Ambassador would not have realized he was under any compulsion if they were in fact controlling him. The unease stems from being coerced into doing something that goes against the victim’s normal will. But Hartuk wanted to hurt my mate and to spite the Prince after the disrespect they both showed him. He also wanted to hurt me by taking ownership of my woman and abusing her. So no, he wouldn’t have resisted being incentivized to do those specific things.”

  “Following that logic, we can’t even know if the Ambassador was truly the one behind ordering your capture along with your mate,” said Raylor. “The Emperor could have been behind the whole thing from the start and only mind-fucked Hartuk into thinking it had been his idea to begin with.”

  “That thought crossed my mind,” I said, nodding in concession. “However, I do believe the idea originated from Juntel, who mentioned it to the Ambassador, who in turn decided to pitch in for my capture. When Juntel ordered the purchase of my daughter for the Prince, he had no idea that I would eventually be brought into the deal by Roman. He merely saw it as an opportunity to get revenge on my son. The Emperor then seized the chance to turn the events to his advantage.”

  “I don’t like any of those mind fucks and will manipulations,” Boros said in a growl. “This is messy business. Are we sure we want to deal with these people?”

  “It’s even messier than you realize,” I said. “The truth is, I don’t know that anything that happened on Sarenia, if anything of what I’ve seen of their people and their culture is real at all. That does not sit well with me.”

  “Why would you doubt it?” Ravik asked. “We’re immune to negative psionic powers. Your mind was your own throughout your stay there, unless you were drugged.”

  “I was not drugged that I’m aware of,” I replied crossing my legs as I pondered further. “But it is quite possible everything we experienced was orchestrated to give us a specific image of their people; a positive image straying from the negative one that has been spread about them, and that would make it enticing to consider an alliance with them.”

  “That would seem extremely difficult to pull off in the short time between your capture and your arrival on Sarenia with so many moving parts,” Keran argued. “How could you ensure that someone in such a large population wouldn’t give away the plot?”

  “That’s just it,” I replied staring intently at my future king. “Who we got to see and where we got to go were strictly controlled. I only had direct contact with the Prince, the Emperor, their guards, and the two idiots that set up the whole thing to begin with. Hope and Siona were kept inside the Serail, under the constant supervision of a couple of their females. Those females spent their entire time trying to sell them the beauties of their home world and the upsides of their culture. Conveniently enough, a strong emphasis was put on how well females are treated on their planet, and how their entire society revolves around the protection and nurturing of offspring.”

  “The exact type of topic that would resonate with your mate,” Fenton replied, understanding dawning on him.

  “Now you understand my reservations,” I said. “For this reason, I do believe we need to grow closer to them. We must be able to spend time on their home world with the ability to move freely in order to understand who they truly are or if this was all just a show.”

  The men muttered their agreement. How we went about it, though, would be a completely different discussion, especially appointing the perfect candidate with the right diplomatic inclinations and the right analytic mind to see through whatever schemes or deceptions might be thrown his way.

  “But there’s something else you should be aware of,” I said, leaning against the backrest of my chair. “The Emperor had a lot to say about the Korletheans, none of it positive. If what they are implying is true, our four-way alliance may not survive.”

  “One less player only means the remaining ones grow closer,” Keran said calmly. “I have no particular affection or dislike of the Korletheans. However, there is some shady business going on with them and the way their people are currently divided. They are no threat to us. We are immune to their psionic powers unless we allow it. The Veredians are the one we must remain allied to at all cost. They will rule the galaxy. All others are expendable.”

  “No, son,” Ravik said. “The Xelixians cannot be eliminated from the equation. They are too tightly integrated with the Veredians and married to their leadership. However, the Korletheans might be expendable, even though they fath
ered many of the Veredians.”

  “So, do we further fuel that fire by sharing those revelations with the Veredians?” Raylor asked.

  “And thus, do the Sarenians’ dirty work for them?” Boros challenged.

  Ravik stared at Boros for a long time. His words had hit a nerve. I had felt that the Emperor had been playing a game, but it took this comment for it to really sink in. I hated feeling used.

  I snorted slowly shook my head, feeling stupid for not having seen it sooner. “I feel used and yet, they have been up front with me about what they wanted. Prince Zerien flat out said he wanted Braxians, Veredians, and Xelixians to leave the Galactic Alliance and join them. This is the first seed of dissent that would eliminate the part of the alliance they don’t want.”

  “Do it,” Keran said. We all turned to look at him, surprised. “If this alliance is meant to be, we will all need to trust each other. That means secrets will need to be exposed. We do not have that many years before the Great War. If we are to have a fallout, let it be now so that, should there be any chance of mending the rift, we will have a long enough runway to do so. And if it cannot be mended, then we might as well cut out the cancer now rather than let it fester.”

  Ravik smiled with a glimmer of pride that I understood too well. I didn’t know how much longer Ravik would hold the throne before passing it on to his son, but it warmed my heart that his heir was a man that I would proudly follow as I had followed him.

  “So, it shall be done,” the Magnar said. “As for Sarenia, we will keep the communications open, but do not trust them. And regarding Guldar, as much as I would like to confront them, your abduction was an opportunistic attack by the Ambassador, whom you’ve already punished. We cannot lay it at the feet of Emperor Ardrak. But let’s try to get eyes on Hartuk and find out what the Sarenians are getting him to do.”