Kept From the Deep: Venora Mates Book Two

by Octavia Kore

  His face twisted as if he were in pain, and Jun stroked his tense features.

  “They were tortured, treated cruelly, had pieces of their bodies removed from them. After watching our sire suffer the loss of his eye and being starved for days, Ruvator gave in. He gave them the information they sought, thinking it would end their misery, that they would be free. Instead, they killed my brother and left Tesol for dead.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anymore today, Brin,” she assured him, not wanting him to have to experience more pain than he already had.

  Brin shook his head and continued. “My dam, Brega, was the one who found them tied up in the building the aliens had abandoned. Tesol had spent days alone with the corpse of his only son. I’m sure you can imagine the toll it took on him.”

  Jun’s lip quivered and she shook her head. “That’s unimaginable.”

  “My dam was devastated at Ruvator’s loss, and my sire… he could hardly function. They were barely given time to recover before they were called before the council.

  “At first, the elders politely asked them to produce another pup to replace the one who had been lost. The Venium need numbers. Losing even one pup, especially their only one, was disastrous for Brega and Tesol, but losing a warrior in his prime… the elders eventually demanded Brega produce another and so I was brought into being.

  “Conceived in hatred and disappointment, created only so that she and Tesol would not face any more punishment. Brega blamed my sire for his failure, and for Ruvator’s weakness. She had lost them both in her mind. My sire was no longer fit for service after the loss of his eye, and that shamed her a great deal.

  “The council had demanded she replace Ruvator, so when I was born, she did just that. I was given his name and all of the shame that came with it. I’d failed in her eyes before I’d even drawn my first breath.”

  Brin’s fingers combed absently through her hair.

  “She nursed me for as long as she was forced to, then gave me over to someone else, telling them she couldn’t bear to look at me a moment longer. Her place, she told them, was on the field where she could exact her revenge, and regain the honor she felt had been taken from her.”

  Jun opened her mouth to speak, but Brin silenced her with a finger to her lips.

  “When I was old enough to walk, Tesol began my training. I needed to be stronger, both mentally and physically, than my brother had been. I wouldn’t fail, wouldn’t give in. If it came down to the loss of my life or the loss of my honor, I would choose death. Crying, flinching, any movement to defend myself resulted in lashings.

  When my sire became angry over the fact that he was left behind to raise me on his own, we would train even harder. Every day, every moment I was with him was literal torture until one day I stopped feeling, stopped reacting, just… stopped. I was their perfect warrior. I think Brega might have even been proud of me then.”

  Brin’s grip in her hair tightened and she tugged at his arm until he released her. Jun interlaced her fingers with his and squeezed. He’d been through so much.

  “I was supposed to continue my military training, but I had no intentions of ever following in their footsteps. I enlisted as a Havacker the moment I walked into the building and shattered all of their hopes and dreams.”

  “How old were you when the whipping started?” Jun couldn’t help asking.

  “I’d seen eight birthdays pass the first time he used it on me.”

  “Why didn’t someone intervene on your behalf? Why didn’t the council do anything to stop them?”

  Brin laughed darkly. “The council found my parent’s training methods to be ‘quite successful’ in turning me from a rebellious pup into a model warrior. The fact that I was so young didn’t seem to bother them at all.

  “That doesn’t mean I didn’t have anyone in my corner, though. Nyissa, Oshen’s dam, heard about the truth of what was being done to me after her mate told her my story. Nyissa and Calder took me in when things became too much, fought tooth and claw for me.

  “His parents kept the training guidelines the elders sought to pass from being written into law, and when I was old enough to leave Brega and Tesol’s home, I was given a place among their family. I had love and support for the first time in my life. They are my real family.”

  A small sweet smile tugged at his lips.

  “Nyissa gave me my name the day I came to stay with them. It was the first, and most wonderful gift anyone had given me.”

  “Hold on,” Jun frowned, swiping at her tears. “Nyissa? Did you seriously name your AI after Oshen’s mom?”

  Brin had the decency to at least look abashed, rubbing the back of his neck. “It started out as a joke to get under Oshen’s skin.”

  Despite the seriousness of what they were dealing with, Jun felt a giggle bubble up from her chest. She sniffled, shaking her head in disbelief as she looked up at him. Getting under Fishboy’s skin was something she’d enjoyed immensely during her time with him.

  “Does he know you did it?”

  Brin chuckled. “Not yet. I was biding my time, waiting for the perfect moment.”

  She glanced around their cell, the humor fading as she realized that perfect moment might never come now. Jun tried to hold on to the spark of laughter he’d given her, but she couldn’t seem to stop the sadness from encroaching. Her hand smoothed over his tail as it tightened around her waist.

  “Brin…” Jun whispered through her gathering tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for everything they put you through.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” he told her. “It all led me to a backwater planet, where one of the most beautiful inhabitants held a gun to my head, kidnapped me, and then fed me the scrambled young of a domesticated bird.”

  Jun fought the grin and failed. “Wow, what an awful person.” She brought his hand to her lips and pressed tiny kisses to his knuckles. “Still, I’m sorry for the pain they caused you.”

  “They are the reason I’ve made certain decisions about my future.” Blue eyes searched her face as if he were trying to read her, waiting for her reaction. “I won’t ever have biological pups. I won’t pass their lifeblood to another generation. Their legacy, their hatred, will die with me.” Brin stared down at their joined hands. “I won’t let her use them the way she used me, Jun. Never.”

  She’d dreamed of a huge family her entire life. While it was true she wanted her own babies and the chance to experience pregnancy and birth, Jun knew better than most that you could love children not born of your body just as much. She’d watched her mama and papa love and raise her cousins as their own.

  Something Nuzal said on their way back to the cells nagged at her. He’d called Brin her bonded, but she wasn’t exactly up to speed on her alien terms. Was being someone’s bonded the same as being their mate, and if so, how did the Grutex know? Brin hadn’t mentioned it on Earth, and there hadn’t been an opportunity here.

  “It’s why I tried to ignore the pull,” he was saying. “I couldn’t take that from you, not after you told me you wanted your own children.” He cupped her chin so that she was forced to look at him. “I don’t want to lose you, Shayfia, but I would understand if you chose not to accept my condition. You’re my…”

  She wanted to hear the words, needed to hear the words. “Your what, Brin?”

  “You’re my mate, Shayfia,” he whispered against her lips, pulling her face to his. “My end and my beginning. The sun, the moons, the air in my lungs.”

  Jun wrapped her arms around his neck as she pressed closer. “When did you know?”

  “The night you kissed me in your bedroom as you tended to my wounds.”

  “I kissed you?” Jun sputtered as Brin grinned. “I recall it happening the other way around.”

  Brin shrugged. “You kissed me, I kissed you. Either way, I felt the swelling and knew that night.”

  “You’ve known all this time and didn’t think to mention it to me?”

  “I can’t give you wh
at you want. I won’t, so I saw no point in sharing that knowledge.”

  Ah, there he was, the Brin who thought he knew best—the irritating male who tried to make her decisions for her.

  “Do you think Oshen’s mother loves you any less just because she didn’t give birth to you?” The muscle in his jaw ticked, and he swallowed thickly as he shook his head. “Don’t keep things from me just to spare my feelings. If you had told me, I would have told you that sometimes children aren’t born into families, they’re brought in. A child doesn’t have to share your blood to be loved, Brin.”

  The look he gave her made her stomach drop and she gasped in surprise when he ducked his head, stealing her lips in a desperate, hungry kiss that took her breath away. God help her, she wanted him. His tail tightened around her waist and Jun hummed, wriggling in his lap.

  “Goddess, help me, Shayfia, you’re going to kill me,” he rasped when he was finally able to pull away. Brin scooted closer to the solid wall at the back of the cell and propped his shoulder up, resting the side of his head on the cold metal. “Come here.” He tucked her into the crook of his arm, shielding her with his body as he got comfortable. “My Shayfia,” he murmured against her hair. “Sleep.”

  “My bossy alien.” She chuckled, even as she felt her lids begin to close. “I should check your back again.”

  “You should let me hold you. My back will heal. Thank you for seeing to me.”

  Jun closed her eyes and listened to the rhythmic beating of Brin’s heart. Don’t keep things from me, she had told him, but she was a hypocrite. As she lay there in his arms, her body was slowly shutting down. Without an exam, Jun had no way of knowing how much longer she could fight. How was she going to tell him he would have to say goodbye?

  Chapter 17

  Nuzal

  Nuzal pored over the journals he’d kept in his past lives, but there was nothing in them that would explain the strange glowing he’d experienced last day cycle with the bonded female. Jun. What did it mean, and why had it only happened when she touched him?

  Nuzal had left her in the cell with the Venium and moved to the next corridor. The cells here were larger and held a wide variety of humans. He’d stormed up to the first one on his right, tapped in the code, and then grabbed the first female he saw.

  Nothing.

  No lights danced over his skin; no warmth spread through him from their contact. He repeated it with every female in the cell before frowning at their quivering forms as the last female jerked out of his grip.

  Jun was the only human who had ever elicited this type of response from him.

  Nuzal was no closer to finding out the answer than he had been when he returned to his room to search for any clues. Had anyone seen him as he carried her back to the cell? Had they reported him to Erusha or even the Kaia?

  Surely, if they had, he wouldn’t be here at his desk, swiping furiously through page after page of these glecking journals that contained nothing but the ramblings of an overconfident warrior.

  The results of Jun’s lifeblood analysis had been delivered to his comm sometime after he’d returned, but he hadn’t opened them. He needed to check them. If Erusha caught him slacking on something so important, he was sure the male wouldn’t hesitate to remove him from the project. The thought of another male in the lab touching her, of Raou touching her if he wasn’t there to protect her, filled him with rage.

  Nuzal tapped on the flashing icon that indicated there was an unopened report waiting for him. He checked her subject number against her file and scanned the results of her lifeblood tests.

  There were DNA matches for four different species in their data banks: human, Gri’ku, Ihod, and Venium.

  Three of the four were aquatic species that the Grutex had been in communication with for as long as he could remember. It wasn’t surprising to see that more than one species had been used in her ancestor’s line.

  The idea at the time had been to overwhelm the human DNA with that of the other species. It would lay dormant for generations, passing on the traits silently until they were awoken within the descendant.

  A sudden anxiety jolted through him. The awakening process was hard on humans. It changed them, reformed them. Recovery took days for some, weeks and months for others. Would the little female survive it?

  Nuzal had kept himself locked away long enough. He needed to see Jun, to calm his fears over her safety so that he could best figure out how to protect her.

  Nuzal’s first instinct was to go straight to the cells. He wanted to see her, to look at her with his own eyes and know she was all right, but he never went in so early. Working under such scrutiny meant he needed to keep to his routine, especially after his out of character behavior from the last day cycle.

  If he’d wanted to be on the Kaia’s good side, Nuzal was almost certain he’d failed. After his morning workout, Nuzal headed for the common room. It was a multi-purpose area, used mostly as a dining hall during meal times.

  It was early enough in the cycle that many of the males in this section of the ship were either still on duty, or they were just waking up. That meant Nuzal wouldn’t have to deal with a packed meal line or crowded tables.

  The doors parted as he approached, and he squinted against the intensity of the lights. Since the majority of the males in this sector were scientists and other intellectuals, they remained on board most of their lives.

  The lighting in this room, and in most areas of the ship, was intended to provide them with certain vitamins in the same way Earth’s sun did. Nuzal passed through the meal line, taking his tray of nutrient packed food and scanning his wrist so that the system could track him.

  In one of the corners of the room, tucked into the egg-shaped chairs, sat Erusha. He took a distracted bite out of his protein bar as his eyes scanned something on the holoscreen of his wrist comm. The male looked up when Nuzal took the seat across from him, nodding in greeting.

  “Nuzal, getting an early start?”

  He nodded as he broke the dense bar in half.

  “I thought it best to get a jump on the cycle.” The food was bland at best, and Nuzal chewed quickly, drawing from his water packet to help wash it down. “The Kaia seemed to take a keen interest.”

  Erusha grunted. “Dipping his hand into things he has no understanding of. I’ll be happy when he moves on to something else so we can be left in peace.”

  Nuzal glanced up in surprise. He knew the male didn’t care for the Kaia, but to voice his dislike in a common area where any number of warriors could overhear him was dangerous. His superior looked up at him then, narrowing his eyes on his face as if he were trying to find something.

  “Vodk mentioned that you looked unwell after the lifeblood draw on the bonded female last cycle.” Nuzal froze, his body going cold and rigid. “Are you well?”

  There was something in the way the male spoke that made Nuzal uneasy, like he knew whatever came out of his mouth was going to be a lie. He needed to be more careful.

  “If Vodk would have come to me with his concern, I would have assured him I was fine.”

  A pregnant silence stretched between them, eyes locked as Nuzal tried his best to hide the anxiety clawing at him. Erusha finally inclined his head, stuffing the last of his bar into his mouth.

  “Good. We have a long cycle ahead of us. I assume you’ve received the female’s results?”

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  “Although predominantly human, her results show the presence of three separate aquatic species.”

  “A descendant of the original test, perhaps,” he mused. “I don’t recall much from that life cycle, but I do remember combining the handful of aquatic DNA we had in our possession. For whatever reason, they weren’t as compatible as we’d hoped. Very few of those offspring were satisfactory.”

  “Her Venium markers were high enough to make me think it’s what has allowed the bond to form between her and the male.”

  “Was the h
ormone present in samples?”

  Nuzal shook his head. “It doesn’t seem like it was a trait she inherited. From what I could tell, she is not bound to him in the same way he is to her. Our answers regarding the hormone will most likely be found within the Venium.”

  The male’s comm flashed against the inside of his wrist, and he frowned down at the screen as his eyes darted back and forth. A hum filled the air between them, a sound his superior often made in the lab as he worked. It told him he was mulling something over in his mind.

  “What did you make of the rest of her results?”

  Nuzal shifted in his seat. He’d been so worried about keeping up appearances that he hadn’t even looked over the last few pages of the report.

  “I only skimmed the first page before deciding to come in.”

  “Bring it up.”

  The look on the other male’s face made his stomach clench and he activated the holoscreen, selecting her file and scrolling past the DNA results. Their knowledge of human anatomy at this point was excellent. They had generations of test subjects to compare her to, and the findings were shocking. The little female was incredibly sick.

  “Her kidney function is far below normal. It’s dangerously low.”

  “Even lower now,” Erusha corrected. “That was at the time of the lifeblood draw.”

  Her kidneys and heart were in terrible condition. Why hadn’t they given her a proper evaluation before sending her to a cell? The excitement of their arrival and the critical condition of the Venium male had thrown them out of their normal routine. Had they followed protocol, they would have caught this much sooner.

  “Gleck,” Nuzal mumbled as he swiped a hand over his face. “How long has she been this way? Why didn’t the cryo pods alert us?”

  Erusha shook his head as he gathered his tray and got to his feet.

  “The cryo pod likely kept her body stabilized until she was transferred into the cell. You’ll go to her immediately. The last thing we need is for the female to die before we can even pinpoint the hormone.”