by Diana Palmer
Komak and Kipling, and little Larisse, sat with Chacon and Lyceria and their son, Lomek, in the holon hookup to pump the Rojok warlord for his adventures rescuing the princess from Ahkmau, and helping, inadvertently, to form the Holconcom.
Mekashe and Jasmine sat with Dtimun and Madeline, and the emperor and empress.
“We seem to have compatible guests,” the emperor mused. He glanced at Jasmine and Mekashe. “Your news delights me,” he added softly. “I love my grandchildren. Each is unique, the product of millennia of evolution that brought us to this day.” He grimaced. “Many times I have chided myself for allowing the genetic manipulation that changed us so drastically.”
Mekashe just smiled. “We are the equals if not the superior of any fighting force we encounter,” he said. “It allows us to win battles against the most formidable of insurgents.”
“True,” the emperor replied. “But it has caused many problems.”
“Sir, now that we truly have the tech,” Jasmine said to the emperor, “is there a chance that Dr. Hahnson will want his mate back? She could be cloned with the same tech that I enjoy even now.”
“It is in discussion,” the emperor said, smiling. “We are hopeful that Hahnson will permit it. He has grieved since the Great Galaxy War for her.”
“He is a good man,” Mekashe said solemnly. “The best of us all.”
“In many ways, this is correct,” the emperor replied. “I feel that...!”
He stopped abruptly because Jasmine slipped to the floor and lost the small meal she’d just eaten.
“I’m so...sorry!” she said, sobbing.
“Stop that. You’re just pregnant, Cehn-Tahr style.” Madeline chuckled, motioning to a house worker to clean up the mess. “Mekashe, we’d better put her to bed, just for a little while. It’s all right,” she reassured him as he swung Jasmine up into his arms and followed Madeline down the hall to a bedroom. “She’ll be fine. I went through this. So did Edris.”
“Yes, I did,” Edris added, joining them. “The nausea is bad at first, but we have new medicines for it.”
“We do. Nothing that will harm the baby,” Madeline promised as she shot a drug into Jasmine’s neck artery with a laserdot. “You’ll be fine. But you should rest for a few minutes.”
“Call if you need us,” Edris added as she and Madeline went out and closed the door.
“Are you certain...?” Mekashe began.
Jasmine put her fingers against his chiseled mouth. “It’s a growth spurt. I read about them.” She stopped, stunned.
“What is it?” he asked, and then he, too, was very still. His lips fell apart. “The child,” he whispered in awe. “He speaks to me! How is this possible?”
“We’ll ask Madeline,” she said. She laughed. “How incredible! This isn’t possible with human babies!”
“Another product of the DNA manipulation, perhaps,” Mekashe said. He laughed. “But how delightful!”
“Oh yes!”
And for several minutes, they just listened, feeling the baby’s emotions as if it were already out of the womb.
* * *
THEIR LITTLE BOY was born just a few months later, in a delivery that was quick and painless, presided over by both Madeline Ruszel and Edris Mallory.
“Have you thought of names?” Madeline asked as Jasmine held the baby in her arms and Mekashe touched his small head with its mass of thick black curls.
“Many,” Mekashe confessed.
“Many, many,” Jasmine added. She laughed, weary but joyful as she looked down at the small baby in her arms. “But we found one we like.”
“Very much.”
“What is it?” Madeline asked.
Mekashe pursed his lips and grinned. “We will announce it at the christening, with all of you and our guests present. And you will not be able to read my mind or hers to discover it,” he teased, producing a white noise ball, one so powerful that it locked out even the emperor.
“Well!” Madeline exclaimed. But then she grinned.
* * *
THE CHRISTENING WAS attended by the entire family. Chacon and Lyceria came, with their brand-new son, Krusmok Maltiche Chacon. It turned out that Chacon was the Rojok commander’s surname. No one, except Lyceria, knew his true first name. And she never divulged it.
Even Rusmok came, with Chacon’s special permission. He was in line for promotion to commander of a new commando branch of the Rojok military. He had his own flagship and a brand-new human female who was their resident Cularian specialist. There were rumors, which Rusmok refused to dignify with an answer, that the new physician had Rusmok standing on his head.
The Cehn-Tahr priest performed the ceremony. When it was time to announce the name of the baby, the silence was profound.
“We have given our son these names,” Mekashe announced. “He will be known as Malford Rhemun Rusmok Chacon Tnurat Mekashe. But we will call him Mal. For his human grandfather.”
Malford Dupont had tears running down his cheeks as they made the announcement. Beside him, Chacon and Tnurat were beaming. Not to mention Rhemun, Mekashe’s best friend. Rusmok, in his dress military uniform, wiped something out of his eye that he said was an insect. There had never been an insect in the great facility in the capital city in its history.
* * *
AFTER THE CHRISTENING, there was a celebration at the Fortress.
Rusmok got to hold the child who would be his namesake. “He looks like his father,” he pronounced with a smile at Mekashe. “But I think he will have lighter eyes than most Cehn-Tahr.”
“I agree,” Mekashe said. He cocked his head and studied the Rojok. “I have heard much about you.”
Rusmok grinned. “And I have heard about you constantly for five years,” he mused, laughing at Mekashe’s surprise. “She hardly spoke of anyone else.”
“Or he, of any female except Jasmine,” Rhemun cut in. “Chacon says that you will have command of a new, deadlier operations group. Congratulations.”
“We will one day be almost as famous as the Holconcom,” Rusmok chided. “So be on your guard.”
“We will never fight each other again,” Mekashe said with a grin. He indicated Dtimun and Chacon, taking turns holding the new baby, who had a shock of blond hair like his famous father, along with the slit eyes. “They are too close to allow another conflict.”
“There will always be uprisings and insurgents, sadly,” Rusmok replied. He touched Jasmine’s baby’s soft hair. “Children are surprisingly interesting,” he said, almost hypnotized by the baby. “I never was so close to one.”
“They become addictive.” Rhemun chuckled. “Which is why we have two.”
“You should bond with someone and have babies of your own,” Jasmine told Rusmok.
He shrugged. “Alas. The only female I want does not want me.” His face hardened. “She has bonded. With an accountant.” He made the word sound like the worst sort of curse word.
“I’m truly sorry,” Jasmine said, because she knew that the Rojok, like the Cehn-Tahr, bonded for life.
“What do you Cehn-Tahr call it—karamesh?” he replied, using the word for fate.
“I suppose it was never meant to be.”
“You’ll find someone,” Jasmine assured him. She smiled. “You’re one of the kindest people I’ve ever known. Well, you were, until you landed me with that pirate who sold me a dresmok that had a depleted emerillium core and almost blew up the barracks when I used it!”
“It had depleted krelamok, not emerillium, and it was what you humans would call a ‘stink bomb.’” He pursed his lips. “You got many kuskons for that one. It taught you not to be too trusting of merchants.”
“I got him back,” Jasmine said smugly.
Rusmok rolled his eyes. “She had two of our friends hijack a skimmer from the admiral’s residence and park
it in front of my barracks. They were kind enough to add a sample of my DNA to the steering mechanism. I was put in the brig for two days!”
“At least it didn’t smell bad in there, did it?” she retorted.
Mekashe and Rhemun looked at each other. “Perhaps it is a very good thing that we don’t have the two of them together in the Holconcom.”
They laughed. So did Rusmok and Jasmine.
* * *
OF COURSE, THE BABY put limits on Jasmine for a short time. She had to stay at the villa and work at the local infirmary while Mal was little. But he grew at a surprising rate. Madeline Ruszel had told her about the accelerated growth of Cehn-Tahr children, but Jasmine hadn’t believed her until she saw the results. A Cehn-Tahr child—even a hybrid one—grew at twice the rate of a human child.
“Very soon, you’ll be back aboard the Morcai with me, and Mal will be in military school.” Mekashe sighed. “Time goes quickly.”
“Too quickly.” She looked up at him and pursed her lips. “Not that I don’t miss you. But another child might be nice. At the rate they grow, I won’t be out of active duty for very long at all.”
He chuckled at the wicked look she was giving him. “Suppose we discuss this, at length, later tonight?”
She sighed, smiling. “I think that’s a great idea!” She paused. “I think Mal might like to spend the night with his grandfather and learn to play chess.”
“Nice idea,” he agreed. He studied her beautiful face. “How convoluted our lives have been.”
“Yes, but we ended up together after all the trials and tribulations.”
“Life is strange,” he mused.
She pressed close. “Strange and beautiful.”
He drew her close with a sigh. “And endlessly satisfying.”
A sentiment with which Jasmine agreed wholeheartedly. She closed her eyes and let herself dream of the long, sweet path ahead of them.
* * * * *
Be sure to check out
Diana Palmer’s next spellbinding romance, UNDAUNTED.
When innocent Emma Copeland and millionaire Connor Sinclair bump heads, sparks fly—but a deep secret might keep them apart forever...
Keep reading to get a glimpse of
UNDAUNTED.
Drama and excitement explode in New York Times bestselling author Diana Palmer’s legendary Morcai Battalion series!
The Morcai Battalion
The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit
The Morcai Battalion: Invictus
The Morcai Battalion: The Rescue
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Undaunted
by Diana Palmer
EMMA COPELAND WAS sitting on the end of the dock, dangling her bare feet in the water. Minnows came up and nibbled her toes, and she laughed. Her long, platinum-blond hair fell around her shoulders like a silk curtain, windblown, beautiful. The face it framed wasn’t beautiful. But it had soft features. Her nose was straight. She had high cheekbones and a rounded chin. Her best feature was her eyes, large and brown and gentle, much like Emma herself.
She’d grown up on a small ranch in Comanche Wells, Texas, where her father ran black baldies in a beef operation. She could ride and rope and knew how to pull a calf. But here, on Lake Lanier in North Georgia, she worked as an assistant to Mamie van Dyke, a famous and very wealthy writer of women’s suspense novels. Mamie’s books were always at the top of the New York Times bestseller list. That made Emma proud, because she helped with the research as well as the proofing of those novels in their raw form, long before they were turned over to editors and copy editors.
She’d found the job online, of all places. A Facebook friend, who knew that Emma had taken business courses at her local vocational school, had mentioned that a friend of her mother’s was looking for a private assistant, someone trustworthy and loyal to help her do research and typing. It wasn’t until she’d applied and been accepted—after a thorough background check—that Emma had learned who her new boss was. Mamie was one of her favorite authors, and she was a bit starstruck when she arrived with her sparse belongings at the door of Mamie’s elaborate and luxurious two-story lake house in North Georgia.
Emma had worried that her cheap clothing and lack of social graces might put the older woman off. But Mamie had welcomed her like a lost child, taken her under her wing, and taught her how to cope with the many wealthy and famous guests who sometimes attended parties there.
One of those guests was Connor Sinclair. Connor was one of the ten wealthiest men in the country—some said, in the world. He was nearing forty, with wavy jet-black hair that showed only a scattering of silver. He was big and broad and husky with a leonine face and chiseled, perfect lips. He had a light olive complexion with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes under a jutting brow. He was handsome and elegant in the dinner jacket he wore with a spotless white shirt and black tie. The creases in his pants were as perfect as the polish on his wing-tip shoes. He had beautiful hands, big and broad, with fingers that looked as if they could crush bones. He wore a tigereye ring on his little finger. No other jewelry, save for a Rolex watch that looked more functional than elegant.
Emma, in her plain black cocktail dress, with silver stud earrings and a delicate silver necklace with a small inset turquoise, felt dowdy in the glittering company of so many rich people. She wore her pale blond hair in a thick bun atop her head. She had a perfect peaches-and-cream complexion, and lips that looked as if they wore gloss when they didn’t. Light powder and a soft glossy lipstick were her only makeup. She held a champagne flute filled with ginger ale. She didn’t drink, although at twenty-three, she could have done so legally.
She was miserable at the party, and wished she could go somewhere and hide. But Mamie was nearby and might need an iPad or her phone, which Emma carried, ready to write down something for her. So she couldn’t leave.
From across the room, the big man was glaring at her. She squirmed under his look, wondering what she could have done to incur his anger. She’d never even seen him before.
Then she remembered. She’d been out on the lake in Mamie’s speedboat once. She loved the fast boat. It made her feel free and happy. It was one of the few things that did. She’d been crazy about a boy in her class at the vocational school where she’d learned administrative skills. When he’d asked her out, all her dreams had come true. Until he’d learned that her father ran beef cattle. They were even engaged briefly.Unfortunately, he was a founding member of the local animal rights group, PETA. He’d told Emma that he found her father’s profession disgusting and that he’d never have anything to do with a woman who had any part of it. He’d walked out of her life and she’d never seen him again. After that, he ignored her pointedly at school. Her heart was broken. It was one of the few times she’d even had a date. She went to church with her father, but it was a small congregation and there were no single men in it, except for a much older widower and a divorced man who was her father’s age.
Her home life wasn’t much better. She and her father lived in a ranch house that had been in the family for three generations and looked like it. The furniture didn’t match. The dishes were old and many were cracked. Water came
out of a well with an electric pump that stopped working every time there was a bad storm, and there were many storms in Texas. Her father was a rigid man, deeply religious, with a sterling character. He’d raised his daughter to be the same way. Her mother had died in childbirth when she was eight years old, and she’d seen it happen. Her father had drawn into himself at a time when she needed him most. That was before he’d started drinking. He’d rarely been sober in recent years, leaving most of the work and decision making on the ranch to his foreman.
He’d never seemed to feel much for his only child. Of course, she wasn’t a boy, and it was a son he’d desperately wanted, someone to inherit the ranch after him, to keep it in the family. Girls, he often said, were useless.
She dragged herself back from her memories to find the big man walking toward her. Something inside her wanted to run. But her ancestors had fought off floods and cattle rustlers and raiding war parties. She wasn’t the type to run.
She bit her lower lip when Connor Sinclair stopped just in front of her. He wasn’t sipping champagne. Unless she missed her guess, he held a large glass of whiskey, straight up, with just a cube of ice in the crystal glass.
He glared down at her from pale, glittery silver eyes. “I had a talk with the lake police about you,” he said in a curt, blunt tone. “I told them who you worked for and where you lived. Pull another stunt like yesterday’s on the lake, and you’ll find out what happens to kids who take insane risks in speedboats. I’ve had a talk with Mamie, as well.”
She drew in a shaky breath. “I didn’t see the Jet Ski!”
“You weren’t looking when you turned,” he bit off. “You were going too fast to see it at all!”
She was almost drawing blood with her teeth. Her hand, holding the flute, was shaking. She put her other hand over it to steady it. “There was nobody out there when I started...”
