by Bex McLynn
“I don’t understand,” Maude said and then turned to Therion, who looked just as confused.
Seph gasped, pulling Maude’s attention back to the display. Her brown eyes glistened with tears as she raised a shaky hand and tapped her chest. “It’s me. Josie.”
Josie? How—
Suddenly the room tilted on her. “Josie? But… but you’re all grown up.”
“You’re the same.” The woman who introduced herself as Seph, but then insisted she was Josie, staggered back, and immediately the thane put his arms around her. She tilted her head to look up at him. “She’s the same. She hasn’t…” She took a ragged breath as a thunderous expression clouded her face. “Goddamn fucking stasis pods! Years, Zver! Years!” She fisted his black uniform, and Maude wasn’t sure if Seph tried to drag the thane down or pull herself up. “What about Xander? Oh god, Zver! What about Xander?”
Maude stared at the displayed, trapped by the anguish and panic in Seph’s voice. Just a moment ago, Seph had been giving her a bright and happy greeting. Now Seph cracked apart in the thane’s arms, clinging to him as she wailed.
“Maude?”
She jolted as Therion stood directly in front of her, dipping his head as his eyes sought her attention.
“Maude,” he said softly. “What does this mean? What’s wrong?”
What does this mean? It means this nightmare had become infinitely worse.
She jutted her chin toward the screen. “That’s my cousin, Josie.”
“Seph is Josie?”
“Yeah, um, Josephine.”
Therion shifted closer to her, pulling her from her thoughts. “What’s this about years and Xander?”
Maude swallowed, her throat pinched and aching. “I don’t know who Xander is.”
“He’s her son, back on your planet.”
Oh, good lord. This was bad.
Maude shook her head. “I don’t know Xander, Therion. When I last saw Josie, she was just a kid.”
“Kid?” he repeated the English word.
“Ah, human child. Twelve, thirteen years old.” In her mind’s eye, she saw Josie skipping ahead of her on the sidewalk, her ponytail bouncing as the copper highlights in her curls caught the sun. For Maude, that memory was only a few weeks old. Maybe a month? “Therion, I’m older than Josie by a good ten years.”
Therion glanced back at the screen, then to Maude again. “You look…”
From behind her, she heard a growl. She turned to see Dyr rising from his chair.
He blew a hard breath through his nose. “Fucking Unholde. Stasis.”
“Aye.” Gummy frowned, her gaze unfocused.
“Come on, Sarda.” Dyr began guiding Gummy from the bridge. “We’ve something to see to.”
As Therion’s grandparents left, Maude heard retching coming from the display, but when she looked, no one was on the screen. Soft sobbing, no longer pitched with desperation, came over the comm.
“Maude.” Therion drew her name out, pulling her attention back to him.
He looked stricken. His green-gold eyes darted all over her, and she could guess what he saw. She knew her face had paled. That her eyes were ringed red with unshed tears. That her own breathing had turned to the mild pants of impending panic.
“That’s my baby cousin, Therion.” She gestured to the display. “Means I was taken years ago. And because of the pregnancy only being weeks along…”
“You’ve been in stasis that whole damn time.” Therion placed his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “Fuck, Maude. I am so fucking sorry.”
“My sister’s probably in her mid-thirties by now. Has probably given up hope that—” Maude’s hands pressed against her belly. “Oh, her baby. She probably thinks—”
Therion gave her a light jostling. “We don’t know what your sister thinks, Maude. But on the honor of my house, I promise, you’ll get to ask her for yourself.”
“Therion,” the thane said.
Both she and Therion turned toward the display. The view on the screen had changed. The thane now looked down on them, as if the lens angle changed from the paneled screen to his wrist.
She couldn’t read the thane’s expression as he spoke. “I’ll comm you later.”
The comm cut off.
The silence—the absence of Seph’s sobs—pounded in her ears.
She looked up at Therion. His expression appeared grimly determined or perhaps resigned, like he knew what was coming. That Maude would fall apart like Seph had.
Maude sniffled and offered the only concession that she could. “She shouldn’t give up hope, Therion. Just because I was taken years ago doesn’t mean that the same happened to her.”
She watched him study her. “Aye. True enough.”
“She’s beautiful.” Maude gestured to the dark display. “Josie. Well, Seph. I always knew she’d grow up to be beautiful. She perfectly matches, inside and out.”
“That she does.”
She couldn’t delay it any longer. She started to sag.
Therion gathered her into his arms. “Come here, Maude.”
She pressed herself into the coolness of his chest and broke into sobs.
Chapter Eleven
Therion sat on the hard deck as he stared into the shadowy alcove of Maude’s bunk. She was nestled into the recess, and her deep, rhythmic breathing softly filled the cabin. When last he’d checked on her, the red blotches on her cheeks had begun to fade. Her exhaustion had given her a peaceful escape into oblivion, which had frustrated him. He’d wanted to be the one to wipe all her worries away, and this irrational protectiveness that rose within him rivaled his practicality.
To be truthful, what little practicality he possessed was being annihilated by his own impractical desires. More than anything, he wanted her to keep him by her side, which made him doubly fucked. Although the Athela always chooses, he wasn’t the choice that she needed. Say farewell to the ne’er-do-well…
The ping of his WristCune pierced the silence. Glancing down, he read the short message that hailed him to the maintenance bay of the freighter.
He pushed to his feet. His reluctance to leave her had his limbs weighing him down like anchors. He didn’t want her to wake and find herself alone. But he’d get no answers in her cabin. In the corridor, he nodded to the armored grunt who stood a discreet distance from her door. At least it eased him to see his house surrounding her in its protective corona.
Toward the back of the bulky freighter’s maintenance bay, he found his grandmother perched on a storage crate, scowling at the power cells that they’d confiscated from the Gwyretti. Meanwhile, his grandfather paced before her like a caged majoris feline. Seeing his gappa so riled unnerved him. Dyr was always the reserved half of his grandparents’ pairing.
Therion heaved a sigh, readying himself. The tension roiling off his grandparents meant this fuck-all catastrophe was hurdling them straight to Unholde’s Gate. “Aye. You needed to see me?”
Dyr jutted his chin toward the power cells. “It’s about all this shit.”
Therion ran his eyes over the salvaged cells. While he had served as Prykimis’s Acting Cachemaster under House Jahat and had struggled to keep the gravity on and the rotting air scrubbers going, his knowledge of Athelasan tech had expanded vastly. Hell, he’d been forced to install hundreds of stop-gap junk parts as he hunted down original and refurbished components for the ailing spirenought.
Therion knew his salvage.
“It’s all shit, Gappa,” Therion said as he glanced over the useless power cells again. “Nothing but dead power cells.”
He’d handled cells like these before. His crew would dump the ash inside the old cells and retrofit a second-rate, TerTac power core inside. Those retrofitted parts never lasted long, but they kept critical systems running.
“It ain’t a power cell,” Gummy said as she pointed to a cell.
“What are you going on about, Gummy?” He guessed that she pointed at the cell that had angered her earli
er in the compound.
“It’s a stasis pod.” His gappa stopped his pacing and gave Therion a long look.
Therion knew Dyr to be highly suspicious, overly protective, and a topnotch technopath. But never would he describe him as an idiot. A man with his grandfather’s expertise should know a junky Athelasan power cell when he saw one.
His gappa grunted and nodded, as if agreeing with Therion skepticism, but then said, “And it’s an original Athelasan power cell.”
Dyr had stressed the word ‘and.’
Therion batted his attention between the cell and his gappa. “What are you saying—?”
Gummy huffed, but her tone lacked its typical gruffness. “It’s a stasis pod that the Athelasans converted into a power cell.”
Therion’s stomach twisted as a chill moved through him. He stared at the cell, now seeing something malevolent rather than inert, as his thoughts streaked through him like bright light, blinding him yet enlightening him.
…that the Athelasans had converted…
That enlightenment illuminated a horrifying picture.
“Seph…” Therion turned toward his grandparents as his stomach sank. “She said she woke up in a stasis pod.” His grandparents said nothing, and he sensed they were waiting for him to voice his thought that would topple everything. “And Seph powered up Prykimis just by being on board.”
“Aye,” Gummy nodded grimly. “And what do you think the girly’s doing for the spider?”
He knew. “Powering her.”
Kora received power from Maude. That shifty piece of tech had plugged into Maude, making Maude her personal power source.
He gazed at the bit of Kora that encased his wrist as the word ‘parasite’ rolled over his skin, and he jolted. He needed to get that thing off of her.
Therion swore as he bolted from the maintenance bay, ignoring his grandparents’ calls. He thundered down the corridor, barking a command at Maude’s guard to fucking move.
He burst into her cabin, strode to her bunk, and yanked the blanket clear. Then he was on her before she fully woke, trying to pry his fingers under the smooth nacre tendrils of the spider.
“You godsdamn fucking leech!” he thundered. “Get off of her!”
Maude screamed and thrashed beneath him.
He growled in frustration, his fingers too big to snake between the spider and Maude’s skin. “Fucking trusted you! Thought you were protecting her!”
A warm palm pressed firmly against his cheek. Another pressed on his left forearm. Maude had her hands on him. “Therion? Therion, what are you doing?”
Gods, she sounded so scared.
“We need to get it off of you, Maude!”
Suddenly Maude jerked beneath him as the rending sound of fabric tore through the cabin. At the same time, Kora released the compression on his wrist, then dropped off like a shed shackle.
Kora’s larger form, covered in torn scraps of fabric, sprang off of Maude and landed on the deck. The reverberating clang of metal on metal assaulted his sensitive hearing. Rapid clicks rang out as Kora scuttled across the deck on multiple spiny legs. She reabsorbed her small bit as she crawled up the bulkhead and anchored herself there by the door, just a hand’s width from the only exit.
Therion gathered Maude to his heaving chest, twisting to shelter her further inside the bunk.
“Therion.” Maude pulled at his arms. “Wait. Stop. She’s not hurting me.”
Gods, Maude was so trusting. Always too nice. She didn’t know.
“Maude,” he growled out, keeping his eyes locked on Kora although Maude continued to tug at him. “She’s leeching power from you.”
Kora sprung at him, her spiny legs spread wide then snapping closed as she wrapped herself around his torso. Pinning his arms, she yanked him off the bunk and onto the floor.
He snarled and thrashed, kicking out, but then cool, hard nacre roped around his legs and bound him.
Maude scrambled out of the bunk and threw herself over him. His helplessness had fear spiking through him. With Maude this close, Kora could easily wrap herself around Maude all over again. Gods, he had to—
Maude pressed her palms to his face, held him firmly, and kissed him. She pressed her lips to his mouth until he opened to gasp a lung-full of air, hoping to fuel his muscles and keep up the fight.
But she sighed into his mouth, her warm tongue stroking against his, stunning him as his brain and body tumbled with the sensation of her slight weight on top of him. Her flavor was in his mouth. The sound of her luscious moan resounded in his ears.
Now his limbs reflexively jerked, desperately wanting to wrap about her and keep her pressed to him. His mouth eagerly fell into her kiss, starved for the taste of her.
Maude softened her kiss, gently extracting her lips as she lifted her head and gazed down into his eyes.
In the best moment of Therion’s life, Maude simply gazed right at him. Her eyes radiated with such heat and concern and unflagging intensity that his heart clenched inside his chest.
“All better?” she whispered.
Human whispers were nothing but a breathy exhale compared to the rumble of a Teras. Thank Direis his hearing was damn sharp.
Was he all better? No. He was fucking phenomenal.
Then, it occurred to him. “Did you just kiss me to shut me up?”
She arched a feminine golden brow at him. “I kissed you so you’ll listen.” Her brow then furrowed with worry. “Are you listening?”
“Aye.”
“She’s not hurting me. She’s been protecting me.”
Fuck, her view was skewed, just as it had been with the Gwyretti. “Maude—”
“The fact that she left my body—for you—shows you that you’ve nothing to fear from her.” She tilted her head, as if studying him from a different angle. “I wish you could feel her right now, Therion. She’s flooding me with emotions.”
“You can’t trust those feelings.”
Maude smiled tenderly and stroked his cheek. “I can tell which emotions are hers, Therion. She’s feeling anxiety and concern right now. She’s worried that you fear her. She’s not trying to soothe me with false calm.”
He shook his head. “Maude, you need to get off me so I can thrash this thing.”
Kora changed her shape, flowing from metal ropes that bound him, into fine-line vines that started to slither up his arms.
He flinched.
Maude soothed him with a cooing sound. “She likes you, Therion.”
She held her hand up. A part of Kora had entwined about Maude as well, but it trailed a web that attached back to him.
“I bet your wrist is all better,” Maude whispered.
Like triggering a reflex, he rotated his wrist, finding it pain-free. That should have stunned him, but his eyes were locked on Maude. His heart beat wildly as Kora continued to twine over Maude’s skin, giving him peeks through the shredded fabric of her clothes. Everywhere the Teras were dark, Maude was light. Her golden hair. Her luminous skin. Kora covering her like ethereal praal.
Therion’s world—hell, all of the Tendex—had no comparison for someone like Maude. Her allure was just like a mythological sefura, a perfect being from Teras tales and legends.
The realization—that an esoteric dream, present in the flesh, was straddling his hips and looming over him—rocketed through him.
His arms final freed, he curled up, constricting his abs as he pulled Maude to him, and kissed her. He banded one arm around her small shoulders, anchoring her against him as his other hand cradled the back of her head. His fingers carded through her silky hair as he adjusted the tilt of her head and deepened his claim on her lips.
Where Maude had kissed him frantically, trying to get his attention, Therion’s kiss had him drawing from a well. With long, languid sips, he tried to fill himself to the brim.
As he desperately tried to quench his never-ending thirst for her, his cock stirred. His hands jerked, wanting to grasp her hips and drag her over t
he throbbing ache of his arousal.
With a desperate moan, he flexed his hands, adjusting his hold on her in an attempt to satisfy his urge to pump his hips. Urge? No, the tremors in his hips were no longer a reflexive impulse. He willfully wanted to drive upward and bury himself deep within her.
As if she knew his obscene desire, she pulled back against his hold. “Therion. Wait. Listen—”
Frantic that she was about to reject him, he rolled them. Flipping her beneath him, he hoped the new position—which was nothing like being safely seated in a brace—would remove the crude temptation to thrust up into her.
“I won’t, Maude,” he heaved as he dove in to kissed her again, willing his fucking hips to remain locked in place. “Promise. I won’t.”
He caged her beneath him as he cradled her jaw in his hands, angling her up to receive him. Yet, when she moaned sweetly and tangled her fingers in his hair, his hips rocked forward again, nestling him into the cradle of her spread legs. His cock pressed against her core—
She didn’t jerk away.
Unbelievably, she arched beneath him, lifting her hips up and grinding herself against his prodding cock.
This wasn’t— A gentlemen would never—
A vivid image, him holding Maude’s legs wide open as he sank into her, hit him like a bullpulse blast.
He pulled back, rocking back onto his heels, not trusting himself to pepper her with apologetic kisses as he slowly lifted himself off of her.
Their tussle had left both of them heaving. His exhales flared his nostrils, while her airy pants parted her kiss-swollen lips. The cabin echoed with their ragged breathing.
No words passed between them.
Godsdamn it. The moment was mired in an awkward silence, and just like last night, it fucked with his head. Of all the filthy acts he could’ve conceived, that vulgar one—driving his cock into a woman with braceless thrusts—had surged forth and tempted him? Damning him with a perverse act that guaranteed his pleasure but not hers.
Fuck that. He’d pleasure her properly. He’d show her that he wasn’t who everyone thought him to be: an honorless, graceless fuck-up.
He grasped the waistband of her pants—the fabric already rent by Kora when she’d fled Maude—and tore them away.