He joined her on the bed. His instincts took over, controlling his strong muscles. She slid easily into his lap, and even more easily onto his cock. This was not the gentle, tender lovemaking of reunion that he’d imagined during all of the lonely nights he’d waited without her. This was raw and questioning, his hands and lips asking questions she avoided by answering with moans and thrusts.
“Touch yourself,” he managed between kisses.
“But—”
“I will see you pleasure yourself.”
How could she refuse? As he continued his thoughtless, primal thrusting, Katharine’s hand reached down, her eyes slipping closed as her pussy tightened from the sensations she gave herself.
“Do not close your eyes. Look at me.”
Her eyelashes fluttered, but Katharine obeyed. Her eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them, filled with heat and need. Breccon scanned them for something deeper, for that love he wanted her to feel for him, but all he saw was sex. His own cock twitched and swelled. She was too sweet, to intoxicating. As she got closer to her own peak, her hips rising to meet his, so too did Breccon yearn to release.
“Breccon, I’m going to—”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish. Not the sentence or herself. Breccon flipped her onto her back, ripping himself from inside her and hovering at her entrance. She screamed at the sudden withdrawal and her entire body shuddered with the loss of his heat and her imminent orgasm.
“Do you love me?” he asked, the sensitive tip of his cock just barely brushing against her clit.
“What?” she asked, trying to meet his featherlight touch and bring herself over the edge. Breccon still did not give her the satisfaction, but he did apply a little more pressure. Just enough to drive her wild. Still, in her eyes, he saw only sex.
“Do you love me?” he asked again, spreading out each word so it could be clearly and perfectly understood. She was not going to get what she wanted until she answered.
“Yes, yes,” she howled, scratching at his back, “I love you!”
It was enough. Breccon returned his cock to her, thrusting hard and deep as he dared. The pressure inside of her and the constant assault on her clit was too much. She rose and rose, higher and higher, tempting Breccon to fall before she did. But as soon as he kissed her, Katharine broke, crying into his kiss.
Her eyes were closed. Breccon could learn nothing from them. Instead, he willed the last of her orgasm out of her before allowing himself to follow her over the edge. He roared, holding her close as he rocked with finality. She would feel his love. She had to.
For a moment, they lay there without saying a word. For Katharine’s part, it seemed content. She sighed and touched her forehead to his. She relaxed beneath him. Breccon couldn’t join her softening. He now lay atop the woman he loved with more questions than answers, a troubling place to be.
“You’re afraid.” Katharine reached up to play with the ends of Breccon’s hair, so gently he shuddered as if he’d been tickled. “But you shouldn’t be.”
Breccon wanted to know how she could be so calm. They’d traveled all this way, they loved each other—at least, he thought they did—and though all of that could be lost with a single wave of his mother’s hand, she looked at him now as if they were back on his ship, careening carelessly through the recesses of space.
“I’m going to invoke the Rite of Kaal-Nokt.”
She whispered that, but she might as well have screamed it in his ear. Breccon froze. No one had claimed Kaal-Nokt in six hundred years. He’d only told her about it on the ship because it was something of a fairy tale for his people, an interesting anecdote about a long-forgotten hope of peace between this planet’s tribes. Kaal-Nokt was a princess of the Yicardi who wanted to marry a warrior of Tallel. In order to prove her loyalty to the tribe, she was given a cursed amulet, an amulet that directed her to complete five tasks that would prove her love for the Tallel warrior.
“You can’t—” Breccon protested.
“I have to,” Katharine yawned, pulling Breccon to lie down at her side so she could cuddle into his chest, “I can save your people, Breccon. And I swear, I will.”
Her eyes sunk closed and the concerned wrinkle in her forehead smoothed as sleep came closer and closer to taking her captive, leaving Breccon alone with his thoughts. But now, his mother whispered cold shards of doubt into him. He had no doubt that Katharine could and would save his people. He only doubted she’d still love him—if she ever loved him at all—when the salvation was finished.
Chapter Two
The next day, Katharine of Earth demanded the Rite of Kaal-Nokt. First to Breccon, who delivered it with weary eyes to the guards, who delivered it to the High Maiden. Soon, she walked in the center of a phalanx through the world she’d not yet gotten to explore. Her instincts told her to stare straight ahead, to seem aloof and above it all. These were a warrior people. Like the soldiers she’d worked with in Italy and North Africa during the war, they probably wouldn’t appreciate or be swayed by a gape-jawed girl taking in the sights.
But she couldn’t help it. She was, to her knowledge, the first human to ever set foot off their planet, much less outside of their solar system. And if she’d been struck by the streets of Casablanca and Rome, she was blown to bits by the world wrapping itself around her now. Rune-Yon was like nothing she’d ever seen or dreamed of.
She was over the rainbow.
The violet sky and twin suns had been visible from her prison. They cast a bright haze over the alien world. Breccon and Katharine walked side by side on the impossibly white sands of the beach that bridged the space between the deep purple. She’d seen photographs of the redwood trees of California in the photos of some of her flight nurse friends, and they looked like saplings next to the skyscraper trees that made up the Rune-Yonian forest.
Eventually, the caravan turned into that forest. Katharine reached for Breccon’s hand, a physical impulse that she couldn’t control, only obey. The trees stretched above her, covering the sky and making her feel as small and as scared as she’d ever felt. Until now, she barreled forward with her plans to stay in this strange place with single-minded determination. These people needed her. Breccon needed her. And maybe she needed them too. But when he gave her shaking hand a tight, reassuring squeeze, Katharine wondered for the first time if maybe she had been too hasty. She knew nothing about this world but her desire to save it. Was that enough?
She braved a glance at Breccon, who’d been nothing but steely since they fell asleep the night before. He’d tried his best to talk her out of it, to throw his hands in the air and all but demand she back away from this idea of hers, but she’d been just as stubborn as him. As scared as she was, there was no going back now. Katharine was determined to win the love of these people. It was the only way she could save them.
And any doubt she had vanished when Breccon returned her glance and raised her hand to his lips for a brief, tender kiss.
“Halt.”
The phalanx obeyed the cried order, and Katharine looked between the shoulders of the soldiers in front of her. They’d arrived at the base of one of the trees, but not just any base or any tree. This tree—the tallest she’d yet seen—was intricately carved. Battle scenes and love affairs played themselves out in the bark. Tormented enemies lay dead and men and women locked themselves in tawdry, passionate embraces. There was not an inch of untold story or uncovered wood; Katharine wanted to stay and examine each and every one, but before she could, a panel opened, like two wide doors swinging wide, and they were ushered inside.
Breccon’s hand tightened around hers, and Katharine wondered if he was as nervous as she was. Was it a voluntary squeeze? Did he even realize he’d done it?
The tree was not a tree at all. Or, more precisely, it had clearly once been a simple tree, but over time had been hollowed out and decorated, transformed into somethi
ng more grand and beautiful than all of the European churches and castles Katharine had ever seen put together. Along the walls of the circular room, chairs and benches, walkways and parapets had been carved. The great, hollowed-out tree was something of a reverent arena, a cathedral for the people of Breccon’s tribe. When they reached the center of the empty ground level, the phalanx around Katharine departed, leaving her and Breccon alone and staring up at the throne carved high into the northern side.
Katharine did not miss the gasp of the crowd when she was revealed, nor did she miss the rumblings and chatter that followed. She had to remind herself of the oddity of her being. She was a foreigner, a circus sideshow introduced to this world. A small voice in her head begged her to run away and hide from the attention. She tried to ignore that, choosing instead to take a step forward and throw her shoulders back.
With all the bravery she could muster, she met the eyes of Breccon’s mother. They hadn’t changed from their cold, silvered grimace. They still regarded her with condescending derision, like she was an annoying bug to be swatted away. But now, there was something else, too. Something sad. After a moment, she raised a single hand, and the entire hall fell silent. Katharine shuddered at the woman’s power.
“Who comes to the Chamber of Warriors?” She bellowed, rising to her feet so she could better look down her ridged nose at Katharine.
“I do,” she braved, “Katharine of Earth.”
“And what is your purpose here, Katharine of Earth?”
All eyes were on her. Everything rested in the balance of what she said next.
“I am here to invoke the Rite of Kaal-Nokt.”
An eruption of noise exploded around them. The words sent shock waves through the Chamber. Katharine even heard Breccon’s breath hitch, and he’d known all along that this was her intention.
“Do you understand the dangers of the Kaal-Nokt? Do you accept responsibility for your choice?”
No. Yes. Katharine didn’t understand the dangers of the Kaal-Nokt. No one told her what they were. But she would brave them. She had to. She hadn’t come this far just to return to Earth. How could she? How could she return to her tiny life on that tiny military base, taking orders from men with tiny minds? How could she leave behind these people who needed her, when even now she could see the sickness across the faces and bodies of the assembled tribespeople? But, above all, how could she leave Breccon? How could she taste love and leave it behind like it meant nothing to her?
“Yes, High Maiden.”
This time, she was the one to silence the room. The gravity of her words sunk the crowd’s jubilant curiosity, leaving them with nothing but to hold their breath and await Mayyalka’s words. The Rite of Kaal-Nokt was binding. Once it was spoken, it couldn’t be undone, not even by a High Maiden. The magic was already beginning to weave its way around Katharine; she felt it tickle the back of her neck and toy with the ends of her hair. Before she met Breccon, she didn’t believe in magic. But, before she met Breccon, she didn’t believe in extraterrestrials either. She thought both were stuff of pulp novels and comic books, but here she was, right in the middle of her own story, living with both. Mayyalka nodded once.
“Very well. Bring the amulets forward.”
Amulets? Katharine’s attention snapped to a priestess-looking woman who marched towards her and Breccon, an amulet hanging from each of her outstretched arms.
“Breccon—” Katharine choked, looking back at him with uncertainty straining her voice.
“You will both—” The High Maiden emphasized that word, a nail in the coffin of Katharine’s plans. She hadn’t realized... She thought she alone would have to bear the weight of these tasks. She didn’t know Breccon would have to endure them too. How could she? She thought Kaal-Nokt had worn them, not Kaal-Nokt and her Rune-Yon soldier. “—wear these until the five tasks are complete. Should you succeed, you will wear them until the day you are wed as a symbol of your acceptance in our House and our Tribe.”
Katharine didn’t want to ask what happened if they failed. As the amulet glowed and the priestess lowered the amulet around her neck, letting the pendant lie flat against her skin, she imagined increasingly horrific ways that it could punish her failure.
She faced Breccon. His face was an unreadable mask. In that moment, all she wanted to do was run into his arms and beg his forgiveness. He was now stuck with the consequences of her hasty decision. The danger she faced now faced him too. Katharine inspected the pendant lying flat on Breccon’s bare chest. An intricately chiseled rock held an illuminated, swirling blue stone. The blue electrified his skin and the Carving tattoos he’d won in battle. It would have been beautiful if Katharine could see it as anything more than a noose she’d accidentally roped around his neck.
The priestess retreated, and Breccon and Katharine once again turned to face his mother. They did not touch. Or speak. And Katharine thought she might break if someone so much as breathed on her too hard.
“The Kaal Nokt has begun. You will make the trip to the Temple of Kaal-Nokt on the Seventh Mountain, and there you will know if you have succeeded in your tasks. The amulets will guide you. May you prove yourself worthy, Katharine of Earth.”
With that, they were dismissed, and Katharine had never felt less worthy in her entire life.
* * *
“I’m sorry.”
They had been marching for almost an hour by the time Katharine finally felt brave enough to speak. At least, she thought it had been an hour. With the way the suns moved and her own mind fought a war against itself and her own shortsightedness, they could have been walking for twenty minutes or twenty hours. She couldn’t tell. Breccon didn’t respond, but instead continued to walk ahead of her. She cleared her throat. Maybe he hadn’t heard her.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“I heard you,” was his only reply.
Her stomach sunk. He hated her now. She’d lost him. She’d ruined everything. Crackling leaves crunched beneath her feet, filling the air with a faint, insistent popping noise. It underscored the chaos in her heart.
“I didn’t know—”
“Of course you didn’t know. That doesn’t make it any better.”
She thought she understood his anger, that it was an easy, quantifiable case of self-preservation. She’d plunged him right in the middle of a death trap meant to test their love and that bothered him. All she wanted was to stay with him, and she’d done the only thing she could think of to make that happen. Mayyalka wasn’t going to just allow her to stay because she cried about losing Breccon or if Breccon told her that they were in love. She wasn’t that kind of leader. She was too frightened of the truth of her people’s illness and too afraid of outside invaders to recognize either as legitimate. Breccon’s mother, for all that Katharine knew about her, spent her entire life protecting her people. Even if her son loved the human woman, even if she could save the people, Mayyalka couldn’t take the risk. Which was why Katharine took a risk for them all. She just didn’t think Breccon would have to pay for it too.
“I wanted to prove myself to you.”
Breccon stormed ahead of her, growing increasingly frustrated with every word. He was usually a calm, level man. The events of the last day made Katharine question that perception of him.
“How? By putting yourself in deliberate danger?”
“I don’t mind putting myself in danger. I put you in danger and that’s—”
“Katharine!” He spun to face her, eyes blazing. “I’m a warrior. I live for danger. Danger is how glory happens. Danger is how we protect the things we love and the things we care about.” Breccon sighed. The anger rushed out from him only to be replaced with tender disappointment. “I would take a million Kaal-Nokt journeys and vows for you. But you chose to do this thinking you would be alone, defenseless in a world you can’t possibly understand. Am I supposed to be happy about that
decision?”
With the uncertainty of what lay before them, Katharine couldn’t help but shiver. He’d go through a million of these for me, she thought, her heart swelling in spite of his frustration. Worse, she found herself incapable of hiding a delighted smile.
“What are you doing?” Breccon asked.
His incredulity only made it worse. What started as a private smile grew into full-on giggles.
“What is so amusing about all of this?”
She had to laugh. It was all so surreal. Her emotions had gone through such a ringer she could no longer do anything but weep or chuckle. She chose to revel in Breccon’s syrup-sweet declaration of love rather than the reality that they might be marching through the forest straight towards their deaths. Her hand flew over her mouth to muffle the sound, a gesture that only seemed to frustrate Breccon further.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“You like me,” she teasingly accused.
“What?”
Now that the dam was broken, Katharine was almost giddy. She loved this man, and he loved her. In the light of the forces fighting against them, that amounted to something great. They would defeat these tasks. They had to. Their love wouldn’t be denied. An invisible weight lifted off of her shoulders, not entirely, but enough that she breathed easier for the first time since being separated from Breccon her first day on the planet.
“You really like me,” she repeated, this time for emphasis before striding farther down the path. Their silent storming had gotten them farther into the forest than she anticipated, but there was no use waiting around for something to jump out of the trees and attack.
“Yes, that’s why I—”
His Human Bride Page 2
