Her Healing Warrior

by Roxie Ray

  “Shh. No. I am sorry, darling one—I should have told you sooner.” Coplan rested his forehead against mine, staring deeply into my eyes. “Gallix and Ronan have been dispatched to rescue her. Apex will aid them, as soon as they are able to make contact. They will save her. I am sure of it.”

  I blinked, then breathed a sigh of relief and nodded. “If you’re sure, then. I just… I hope she’s all right.”

  “She will be. And until you are reunited, you must not be too hard on yourself.” Coplan stole a kiss, then took my hands in his. “Come. You have been holed up in this room for far too long, and there is something I want to show you. Something that might help.”

  He guided me out into the great hall of Haelian’s palace, where Lunarians of all walks of life were gathered together for a feast. Some were injured, and almost all of them had been displaced thanks to the fallout of the battle at my wedding…but they didn’t look sad, or scared, or angry with me when I walked in at Coplan’s side. A few of them bowed to me. Others gave me gentle smiles.

  “See?” Coplan said, gesturing across the hall. “No one blames you for any of this. Your selflessness has not gone unnoticed, Savii. And thanks to your willingness to sacrifice yourself for the greater good, Lady Idria’s treachery has finally come out.”

  “I…yeah. Okay. I guess…if people don’t hate me…” It was too stupid to say out loud, but I’d spent my entire adult life pandering to the public. I didn’t want to admit it, but I’d been worried that everyone here on Lunaria would despise me for the way I’d brought a civil war to their lands.

  “They do not hate you,” Coplan said with a little smile. “Look there—I think you may even have a few new friends to make.”

  I followed Coplan’s gaze to a table at the head of the hall. Nion, Haelian and Kloran all sat behind it. With them were three women—three human women. They were all beautiful, and they were all waving Coplan and me over excitedly. One held a giggling toddler in her arms. All three were pregnant.

  “Oh.” I smiled as I heard them call out my name: Savii! Come sit with us! “These are the other women that you all rescued?”

  “Kloran’s, Haelian’s and Nion’s wives, yes.” Coplan chuckled as Nion snored, with his head resting on his wife’s shoulder. “I imagine they are excited to meet you. You have much in common, I think.”

  We sat down at the table with the others. Immediately, I found a plate of food shoved in front of me and a glass of glistening, crystal-clear water pressed into my hand.

  “We wondered when you were going to finally come out and introduce yourself,” the woman with the toddler said. “I’m Kloran’s wife, Bria, and this is Kalliope.”

  The toddler’s purple eyes widened as she saw me. She reached out a chubby fist toward me and I giggled as I gave her my finger, which she latched onto immediately.

  “We’ve heard a lot about you,” the blonde sitting next to Haelian said. “I’m Sawyer, and this is Alyse.”

  “Shh.” The white-blonde that Nion was currently sleeping on top of pressed a finger to her smiling lips. “I can’t be too loud right now, but we’re all so happy that you’re here. Even Nion—he’s just too sleepy to say so himself right now.”

  Nion let out a roaring snore in that moment, like he was trying to respond in his dreams. Everyone burst into laughter at the sound. It took me a second to realize it, but I found myself laughing with them too.

  “I am glad to see that Nion is finally getting some sleep,” Coplan said with another chuckle. “I think he was missing you too much back on the ship.”

  “I’m glad to have him back,” Alyse said. She rested her hands on top of her belly. It was big enough beneath her gown, she looked almost ready to burst. “In fact, I think we’re all glad to have all of you here.”

  “Do you want some fruit, Savii?” Bria gave me a wry smile as she pushed a bowl my way. “After the way you and Coplan have been hiding in your room for so many days… Let’s just say you look like you could use a bite to eat.”

  “I’d love one. Thank you.” Now that she mentioned it, I was starving. I took my finger back from Kalliope and plucked one of the pieces of fruit from the bowl without even looking at it. For some reason, that made Alyse, Bria and Sawyer all giggle—but I was too hungry to care why.

  “Savii—wait, do not—” Coplan spotted the fruit in my fingers just as it passed through my lips.

  The fruit burst between my teeth and flooded my mouth with sweet, tangy juices. I turned to Coplan as I chewed, confused. “What? It’s just a piece of fruit. Normally you like it when I eat!”

  “That is gilly-fruit, Savii,” Coplan said sternly. He watched me chew a few more times, then his eyes softened. “Do you…do you not find it sour? Unpalatable?”

  “Not at all. It’s really, really good, actually.” I reached for another and popped it into my mouth as well. “I don’t know what the big deal you always made about them was. This isn’t sour at all. It’s actually…” Abruptly, I stopped chewing. When I swallowed, I nearly choked on it as I realized why the other girls had been giggling. “Oh. Oh, fuck. But…my implant…how…?”

  “I…I do not know.” Coplan’s eyes were shifting through an entire rainbow of colors. Everything but red. When they finally stopped flashing, it was like he’d finally decided on an emotion: blue. Dark, deep blue, the same color as his hair. “I do not think I care.”

  Coplan grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the table immediately. He was rushing me back the way we came, only pausing to pull me close to him so he could press hard, passionate kisses to my lips.

  “Perfect thing,” he purred, shaking his head. He still seemed a little bewildered, but it was like he was too happy to really question it. “Perfect, perfect, darling one.”

  “I…I can’t be pregnant, though.” I folded my free hand across my body to feel for the implant in my arm. It was definitely still there. “I’m not supposed to be able to—the implant is supposed to stop that from even being possible—”

  “Well, it has failed. Your contact with the Rutharians, maybe—maybe stress—I do not know.” Coplan pulled me back into our room and slammed the door behind us, only to press me up against it and kiss me all over again. “I do not care. You are with child, Savii. My child.” He caressed my face, gentle, then hard, like he couldn’t believe I was real, then gentle all over again. “You are my mate. My true mate, and only mine. Now, I will have to make you my bride as well.”

  “I mean…you don’t have to…” I was reeling. None of this should have been possible, but unless Coplan’s weird fruit taste test had lied… “Coplan, I don’t want you to marry me just because a stupid fruit told me I’m pregnant. That’s…that’s insane. You should only marry someone because you love them. I think after everything that’s happened…surely we’ve learned that by now, haven’t we?”

  “Silly girl. Vringna. Ridiculous woman.” Coplan wound his fingers in my hair and traced the apple of my cheek with his nose. “I do love you. How have you not realized that by now?”

  “I…I love you too, Coplan.” A strange relief washed over me as I said it. I’d been bottling it up for so long now. I’d been prepared to have to hold those words in for the rest of my life. But now… now, it was out in the open.

  Coplan loved me, and I loved him too.

  But that didn’t mean that we didn’t have, well…other things to address right now.

  “Are you sure that I’m pregnant? This fruit thing…it can’t be very scientific, can it?”

  “Savii, I do not care.” Coplan pulled back to gaze at me intensely. All this time, the blue in his gaze hadn’t shifted…but a glance towards his lap told me that something else was. Something big. “If you are not pregnant already…then by the time I am done with you tonight, you will be.”

  A little smile played on my lips as the earnestness of his words washed over me. With them came a familiar warmth between my legs that pulsated up into my core.

  Yet another thing that I neve
r thought I was going to feel again.

  “Okay, okay, tiger.” I laughed as Coplan kissed my neck. His tongue flicked out, hot and slick against my collarbone, and his hands groped at my body like he couldn’t decide what he wanted to grab first. “You really want to do this? Have a baby together?”

  “More than anything,” Coplan breathed, dropping to his knees. He stared up at me with a stern seriousness, which only made me laugh harder. “More than I have ever wanted anything in all my life.”

  He stripped me down, sliding some of my clothes off, ripping others away completely. It was amazing that this could feel so real, so right…but I was done questioning it. Coplan loved me, I loved him, there was a good chance I had his baby inside me, and after all we’d been through together…

  “Oh…Coplan… I want you,” I sighed as his kisses shifted to my now-bare thighs. “I want you so much.”

  “Good.” Coplan’s hand moved over the hairless mound of my pussy, stroking up to my belly. He caressed it gently, even though his kisses against my hips were hard. “Then you will have me, Savii. For now—forever. You are mine, and I am yours.”

  He rose for just long enough to sweep me off my feet. Copan carried me to the bed and laid me down with care. I watched him in awe as he stripped off his clothes, revealing the bulging muscles of his body. They rippled with his every move.

  I parted my thighs for Coplan, and he slipped between them, easing his stiff cock against my slit as he clenched it in his fist. When he entered me, I cried out in ecstasy. His shaft stretched me, but I wanted him so badly, he slid right in. My wetness coated his cock as he moved inside me. I could feel him holding himself back, like I was suddenly some kind of terribly delicate thing.

  When we’d first done this, I would have hated him for that. I’d hated the mere idea of being delicate for so long now, it felt almost strange to feel Coplan, of all people, treating me with such gentleness.

  But as the heat rose up in my core and his kisses fell across my breasts…for once, I didn’t mind. His touch was tender, but his cock was hard and unyielding.

  After all we’d been through, I could handle being delicate for him now.

  At least, for a night.

  I awoke to the awareness of a soft, gentle light on the other side of the bed. When I blinked my eyes open, yawning, I rolled over to see Coplan sitting on the edge of his side of the mattress. In his hands, he held something small that glowed bright in the darkness.

  “What do you have there?” I pushed myself up to my knees and moved behind him. My breasts slipped against the bulging muscles of his back. I shivered as my nipples hardened against his bare skin.

  “Did you not hear the knock on the door? It was just delivered. One of the refugees, a former servant at the palace, brought it here. She…seemed to think you might want it.” There was trepidation in Coplan’s voice. “I was just thinking of how I would ask you what we should do with it.”

  I peered down through the bright glow to get a better look at what Coplan was holding. It was the device I’d been handed just before I walked down the aisle to my doomed wedding. My social media manager was still logged in. I bet if I went through the pictures, I’d find the one that I had snapped so I could pretend to post a message, like Lady Idria had wanted me to.

  Gently, I slipped down to sit on the bed next to Coplan. He handed me the device like it burned his hands.

  “Savii…I know that you likely left things unsaid back on Earth. Things that you might wish you could tell your mother, your father…all of your friends…”

  I laughed. “Coplan, I didn’t have friends.”

  “That is not true,” Coplan said. “I, ah… I looked. You had thousands of them. The device, it says so.”

  He pointed to my follower counts on the device’s screen. I was following around two thousand people, mostly political figures in the sectors and other influencers. My follower count, on the other hand, was up to over seven million—which was insane.

  “My friends are all here,” I told Coplan. “Or, as soon as we get Atlanta back, they will be. There’s nothing left on Earth for me anymore. Nothing except… I guess I feel kind of bad for my followers. They’ve been left hanging for a while now. I bet they’re wondering what my big update is going to be…”

  Nothing had been posted since the thing claiming that I had big news coming. Part of me wondered if the servant who’d been tasked with giving me the device and instructions in the first place had realized I hadn’t posted anything after all. It was pretty obvious, to me at least. But maybe, she’d been part of a resistance against Idria that we hadn’t even known about. We had allies on Lunaria that we hadn’t even realized.

  I hugged the device to my chest for a moment. Thank you, little wide-eyed servant woman. Whoever you are. I’m glad you’re safe.

  “Do you wish to say something to them now?”

  “Kind of…but I’m not sure what.” I scrolled through the comments quickly. It had been so long since I posted, they were all worried about Atlanta and me. It was touching, really—they actually cared about us and were worried about whether or not we were okay. “I hated these people a little, you know, back when I was on Earth. Because of them, and because of the things the sectors knew I could make them believe, I never had any hope of having a real life.”

  “And do you have a real life now, my love?”

  I smiled down at Coplan. “I do, thanks to you. But now…I feel sorry for them. We don’t know what Idria and her allies are going to do with Earth next. If the alliance between the planets still ends up going through and Earth enters the slave trade…they could all be in danger.”

  “Do you wish to tell them? You could send a warning, perhaps…”

  “It wouldn’t be up for long. The sectors are almost definitely watching anything that shows up on my feed right now.” I weighed the device in my hand. It was light, but my conscience was heavy. “But…it wouldn’t be right not to try. Even if just a few people saw it, word would quickly spread.”

  “I leave it up to you, Savii. This is your world. These are your people.” Coplan turned to me and placed a kiss on my cheek, the warm, soft kind. “Whatever you decide to do, I will support you.”

  “I think…I think I have to try,” I whispered. Already, my fingers were typing the message. I wasn’t sure what kind of picture to post with it, but ultimately, I decided on a plain white image with nothing in it.

  The story would have to be enough.

  I told them everything. That I had been manipulated by the sectors for my entire life, and my parents as well. That I had been kidnapped, and Atlanta along with me. I told them that I was safe, that I was healing—that I had fallen in love. The news about the baby, I decided to hold back. I wanted to be completely sure, even though I already felt like some small part of me knew that it had to be true.

  But most importantly, I told them to be careful. The sectors weren’t to be trusted, and neither was anything that our government offered anyone.

  Stay safe, I wrote in closing. No one deserves to be manipulated. No one is a thing to be owned. You have value, even when you might not feel like you do. Together, you’re all so much stronger than you know.

  I handed it over to Coplan when I was done. He hummed and nodded as he read my words.

  “I think it is a good message, Savii. You should send it.” He handed the device back to me. “But only if you wish.”

  I pressed send as soon as the device was back in my hands, then logged out for good. I was done with social media. I was done being the sector’s voice.

  I had a brave, strong warrior who loved me, his child in my womb and a life here with him for as long as we could keep it. Now, it was everyone else’s turn to realize that they could have happy endings of their own. I knew it wouldn’t be easy for the people back on Earth. For as long as the sectors existed, that was a guarantee.

  But if my people were willing to rise up, to fight for themselves against anyone who sought to make
possessions of them…

  Then maybe, there could be something better for them. Something worth having.

  It might have been a long shot, but as I looked over to Coplan and saw the love he had for me in his eyes, I knew that sometimes, those were the only kind of shots worth taking.

  For myself, my child, the future of everyone who had ever been taken advantage of…I dreamed of a day when no one would ever be owned ever again.

  24

  Apex

  The shuttle crash landed as it entered the atmosphere, shot down by Nightmoor’s defense system when it failed to detect an entry pass in their logs. Whoever my allies had sent me to complete this mission with, I could only hope that they were more fierce than they were clever.

  For the sake of the human we were meant to rescue here, it was the only hope I had.

  “Blood-spewing, garbage-burning, boot-licking piece of space junk!” I could hear the twang of crumpled metal being kicked just over the ridge where the ship had landed, then a roaring, “Yeowch!” as the kicker discovered that his crashed shuttle was still hot from entry.

  I came over the ridge to find who had been sent for me and groaned as I spotted them.

  Gallix and Ronan. Gallix hopped on one foot, bent over and clutching the smoking toe of his boot, while Ronan looked on with his lips tightly curled into a smile, trying not to laugh.

  “You should not have kicked her so,” Ronan pointed out. “She was a good shuttle. She got us all the way here, did she not?”

  “She could have done so without selling us out during the landing!” Gallix shot back at him. “How do you expect we will rescue anyone now? No ship. No intel. No Apex.”