by Dena Christy
He needed to find something to do to keep from pacing a hole in the floor, so he went to the kitchen hoping to find a distraction. The computer sat on the table right where Cheria had left it. Perhaps it would be a good idea to check his own messages. He doubted there would be much there, since most of his messages came from Angis. But if it bought a few minutes distraction, then he'd do that to keep his mind off his worry for Cheria.
As he waited for his message program to load, he thought about what would happen once they'd extracted themselves from the situation they were currently in. Could he walk away from her when it was all over?
His mind turned away from the thought of it. There was more to his feelings for her than his pledge to protect her. When he closed his eyes and imagined his future she was in it. But what did she imagine? Could she see a place for him in her life? And where would that life be? On this planet or on his own?
He didn't know the answers and his message program had finally loaded. As he suspected there was very few messages waiting to be read, but cold flashed over his body when he saw there was a message from a friend, who lived on his home planet and was one of the few residence that had embraced the more advance technologies of the other planets in their star system. It was the oldest unread message and had been sent a very short time after he'd received Cheria's bounty message from Angis.
He opened the message and scanned it. He had to read it a second time for the news to fully sink in.
Rone,
Your parents have asked me to send this message to you. It saddens me to have to tell you that Tage passed away in his sleep early this morning. He knew his time was growing short, so he had me record a message for you from him, which I have attached to this message. Please accept my condolences for your loss, and if there is a message you would like passed on to your family, please send it to me and I will forward it on.
Numbness swept over Rone, and he was unsure what he should feel. The last time he'd been home, only a few months ago, Tage had seemed weaker but hardly that close to death. But seeing his disease progressing had given Rone a sense of urgency and it was that urgency that had led him to accept the job to hunt Cheria. To think that his brother was already dead when he'd embarked on his hunt. He gave a bitter laugh.
He stared at the tiny square attached to the video. It would be the last time he would ever look upon his brother's face. His parents would have already gone through with his death ceremony and put him on his funeral pyre. There would be nothing left of him now but ash.
He scrubbed his hand over his face. The news still had not hit him, but he didn't want to watch the video sent by his brother. He wanted to live in the moments before he'd read the message, when his brother was still alive and he was going to save him.
After several moments, he opened the attachment. His brother had gone through the effort of getting one last message to him. He owed it to him to watch it, no matter how painful it turned out to be.
Tage's face came on the screen and shock went through Rone when he saw just how much his brother had deteriorated since he'd seen him last. His skin, usually a robust and healthy purple, had faded so that it was almost gray. That skin was stretched over his face, which had so little flesh on it that Rone could see the shape of his skull. His eyes were dull, and Rone had difficulty seeing the strong, robust warrior his older brother had been as he now looked at the ravages his disease had wrought.
Taking a deep breath, Rone hit the play button on the message and braced himself for what his brother would have to say.
"Hello little brother." A ghost of a smile crossed Tage's face. It had always been a joke between them whenever he'd called Rone little brother. Even before his disease had ravaged Tage's body, Rone had always been the bigger of the two.
Rone blew out a slow breath and swallowed past the tightness in his throat.
"By the time you see this I will have joined our ancestors. There is something that I feel I must say to you and I fear I will not get the chance to because I will be gone before you come home again. I had wanted to talk to you about this when you were home last, but you were not ready to hear it. Perhaps you will listen now."
Tage paused, looking down as if gathering his thoughts. Rone was tempted to turn off the video, to pretend that his brother wasn't gone, that he still lived and that there was still a chance for Rone to save him. But he would not disrespect his brother's memory because pain was steadily growing inside him.
Tage looked up and looked straight at him, for an eerie second Rone felt like his brother could actually see him.
"It was never your job to save me. I appreciate that you did it out of love for me, but I never wanted you to leave everything behind in your pursuit for the money to cure me. I knew that this disease would get the better of me in the end. I tried to tell you, but you would not see it. The doctors who said that they could find a cure if only there was more money were lying to you. They were lying to me, which I've known for a while. So I've stopped paying them the money you've been sending. It's waiting for you to use to build a new life for yourself."
Anger burned through Rone at the news that his brother had stopped using the money he'd been sending home. How could he have given up on his life like that? How had he known that the doctor's were lying?
"I am sure that by now you are sitting there, angry that I stopped using the money. It may have been your choice to leave our home in your quest to save me, but it was my choice to face the truth. Here is my truth."
His brother took a deep breath and Rone could see the struggle in his face and his throat got tighter. He didn't know if he could endure the pain of listening to any more of his brother's final words, but he could not turn away now.
"I have had a full life. I have seen worlds far away from our little village. I have seen the joy in my woman's face when I asked her to be my mate. I have seen the miracle of my child being born. The only pain I feel now is in the knowledge that my son will grow to manhood without me. I would ask that you come home and look out for him. Be a father to him and show him what it means to be a strong warrior. You have always been a protector, more so than I have been, and I know that you will watch over my son until he is grown. But I want more for you too.
I have known love, Rone. I have felt the peace and happiness that comes from finding my mate, from loving her and making a family with her. I want that for you. Find your woman, Rone. Find her and when you have found her, hold on to her and do not let her go. There is so much joy to be had in life, and it goes by so fast. Do not waste another minute of yours. Good bye, little brother."
The screen went black and as if moving through water Rone slowly closed his message program and eased shut the lid on the computer. He was gone.
His throat was impossibly tight and he stood up, grabbed a glass from the shelf and filled it with water. It was hard to swallow, and finally when he'd drank half the glass down he set it aside. He braced his hands on the counter and gripped it while his head sagged down.
He was like that when the pain inside him grew so great that he roared with it.
Chapter 20
Cheria felt like she was coming full circle as she walked around her old neighborhood. The sights, the sounds, were the same as they had always been, but it seemed different than it used to. When she was young all she could think about was escaping, of getting away from here. She had thought that happiness would come when she was gone from this place and when she was someplace new and more beautiful than the world she'd come from.
A smile crossed her face. How foolish she'd been. She hadn't been any happier in Tari A'Veloo than she'd been in Tusko M'Kedi. The hole that had been inside her had gone with her there.
She hurried about her errands, her mind turning. Perhaps an opportunity was being handed to her. A chance for her to change the direction of her life. She had to hope that she and Rone would live through this. It didn't seem fair that the bad guys would win, especially now that she and Rone had found each other.
Once she finished picking up food at the outdoor market, she decided to go by Wes' stall to see if anyone had been asking questions. She doubted that the android would have been able to search Bano Iberi well enough to conclude that she and Rone were no longer there. And they'd left nothing that would indicate that this was where they were heading. But it wouldn't hurt to talk to Wes to check that no one was looking for them yet.
She got to his stall, and there was a lull in his business when she stepped up to the counter. He looked up when her shadow fell across the window and a big smile pulled his lips apart.
"I'm seeing you more than I have in years, Cher. To what do I owe the pleasure?"
"I just wanted to make sure that there has been no one asking about me or my friend."
Wes's smile fell away.
"There has been no one asking, Cher. I will let you know the second I hear something. Are you in trouble, girl?"
She looked at her old friend, but could not force a smile to cross her face.
"Yes, but it would be safer if we don't talk about it. Don't worry though, I'll come out on top. I always do." And it was a hope that she clung too. She would get out of this, and when she did she was going to make changes.
"You always were too clever for your own good. Is that why the Thonaxian is with you?"
"He is protecting me."
There was more too it than that, but she didn't know if she wanted to get into it with Wes right now. Back when she'd lived in the neighborhood he'd always tried to set her up with men that he knew. After the first few dates he'd sent her out on, she'd told him to stop. She wanted more for herself than to be stuck in this neighborhood, and he'd been hurt and insulted by her desire to live a different life than the one offered to her here.
A look of disappointment crossed his face, and she wondered about it.
"I had hoped that there was more to it than that. I thought maybe you'd finally found the man for you."
A frown crossed her face. It always struck her that he thought that she wouldn't be able to find love with someone not from this place. It seemed odd to her that he would be hopeful that she'd found something with someone who wasn't even from this planet. With someone as different as Rone.
"I always thought that you wanted me to settled down with someone in the neighborhood."
He laughed and shook his head. "That was me being pigheaded. My Tessa always tells me that I think I know what's best for everyone but should mind my own business. I would have liked to have you stay here, to settle down and have our children grow up together like we did. But I know that's not for you. There has always been a restlessness in you."
That was certainly true. It was what had pushed her to leave here in the first place. She'd always known there was a much wider world, something bigger and better than this small spot in the universe. But standing here in front of Wes' stall, she realized that in her search for the bigger and the better, she'd missed out on the connections. On the things that made life worth living.
And she decided for once that she was going to be honest with herself and with her friend.
"I think I'm falling in love with him." Saying it out loud, getting it out of her head and into the open air made it feel real. And it made her realize that when she was with Rone, the restlessness that had plagued her for most of her life wasn't there. She felt still, settled. Like she didn't need to search for that undefinable thing that could make her happy because she'd already found it.
"I knew there was more to it than just his protecting you. Does he know?"
Cheria shook her head.
"I've only just discovered it in this moment. I want to be sure that it's real. I haven't known him long, and the situation we're in isn't exactly ideal for forming a loving relationship."
Wes chuckled and shook his head. "There is no such thing as an ideal situation for love. If we spend our lives waiting for the right time, the right person will have passed us by. Life is messy. That's why when we find the one who helps make the world make sense, we have to grab them and hold on to them."
The corner of Cheria's mouth pulled up. "Do you give this sort of counseling to every customer?"
He laughed and shook his head. "No, just the special ones who need nudging in the right direction."
People were starting to line up behind her. The time for chatting was over, so she straightened up and looked at her friend one more time.
"Thanks, Wes."
He gave her a tiny bow. "There is no need to thank me. Just remember, grasp your happiness."
With a nod, she turned away and made her way down the street back toward her old home. Grasp her happiness. Could she do that, could she lay herself open to Rone, to be vulnerable with him, trusting that he would not turn her away?
She wasn't sure she was ready to make that leap. The discovery that her feelings for him might go beyond desire, beyond the need for his body, was too new. It was all too new and fragile, and despite what Wes had said about there being no ideal time, she and Rone were fighting for survival. Once they were out of the situation they were in would be time enough to move beyond it to something more permanent.
That was assuming, of course, that what she was feeling wasn't one sided.
She went up the steps of the house and punched in the code. The lock disengaged, and she went in.
"I'm home."
The house was silent, and a frown pulled her brows together. Had Rone gone somewhere? He hadn't said anything to her about it before she left.
She walked further into the house and turned her head to look toward her sitting room. Rone was in there, on the sofa with his elbows on his knees and his face buried in his hands. Despair was evident in every line of his body.
She dropped the bags she was holding and moved toward him.
"Rone? What is it? What's happened?" She came closer to him and he looked up at her, stark pain evident in his silver eyes.
"He's gone." There was a dullness in his voice. It was like all the life that was inside him, the strength that he carried with him always had drained from him, leaving only a shell.
"Who's gone?" He didn't answer and she stepped closer and put her hand on the top of his head, running her hand over the silk of his short, dark hair. "Please tell me."
It was like something snapped inside him, as if some thread of control the he had over himself broke. And he put his arms around her hips, pulling her to him and resting the side of his face against her torso. She could feel a shudder run through him.
"Tage's gone. My brother is dead and I couldn't save him."
Tears burned in Cheria's eyes at the grief in his voice. She was at a loss for what to say, what to do to make things better for him. Perhaps she couldn't. Maybe what he needed was for her to just be here, to hold on to him while he tried to process what had happened.
To that end, she put her arms around him and he turned his face so it was buried against her. She stroked her hand over his hair, trying her best to soothe him as he poured out his grief in her arms.
* * *
Most of the day slipped by in a haze for Rone. His mind was still having difficulty grasping that his brother was gone. He was in bed, with a sleeping Cheria beside him. She was snuggled up against him, and he'd spent most of the time since she'd arrived home holding on to her.
Keeping her close to him blotted out some of the pain. She was softness when he needed it most. She hadn't urged him to talk about what was going on in his head, had only held him, offering comfort without unnecessary words.
As he buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her scent it was not lost on him that if he had not immediately called Angis to argue about her bounty, if he had been at the cafe for several moments more, he would not be with her at all. There would have been no reason to take such a lucrative job if he'd known that his brother was already dead.
In that moment he thought about never having met her. What would have happened to her if he had not been the one sent out on her bo
unty? Would she now be dead? Would the person who had hunted her in his stead have delivered her straight here, directly to the bounty holder and to her death?
His Cheria was clever, she'd evaded him and perhaps she would have evaded any hunter sent after her. But that would have left her alone and vulnerable with no one to protect her. It may very well have led her straight toward the killer who hunted her.
His arms tightened around her when he thought about how close he'd come to never knowing her. And it was the sign he'd been looking for. The one that told him that Thonax had chosen her for him. So many little things had to be in place for her to come into his life, and he knew he was holding the woman he wanted and needed to be his mate in his arms. The question was, did she want that too?
He sighed, and his breath stirred her hair. She murmured against him, and he eased back and looked down at her. Her eyes drifted open, and she blinked a few times.
"What's wrong? Can't you sleep?" Her voice was soft with sleep, and she reached up to caress his cheek. He took her hand and pressed his mouth to the center of her palm. He put it back where it had been and rested his hand against hers.
"Sleep is elusive. I am sorry if my restlessness has woken you. It was not my intention." His mind would not shut off, would not be quiet. And his thoughts were centered on the woman in bed with him, whose warm body was doing so much to blot out the crushing blow the news of his brother's death had delivered.
"Have you been able to sleep at all?" She moved her hand down so that it glided down to his shoulder. He shook his head in answer to her question. His body was tired, but his mind would not stop turning. "Do you want to talk about it?"
