Valentine passed his hand over the hard surface of the book, feeling the etched title under his fingertips, then he settled into the seat and started reading the treatise.
A few hours later, he raised his eyes from the blurry pages. He was halfway through the book and had learned a great deal about the first breeding experiments, but no helpful revelation had sprung from the yellowed sheets. Focusing back on the read, he leafed through the remainder of the book, eager to start the next title. His head was heavy though, and he leaned against the back of the sofa to rest for a moment.
“Valentine!”
Mirella was screaming, her white dress marred by a large stain of blood that kept gushing from her abdomen until the fabric was saturated in red.
Startled by the vivid dream, Valentine awoke. Sweat pearled his forehead and his stomach hurt. He hadn’t drunk or eaten anything since coming onboard of Sidera Prime.
“Sustenance and electrolytes required.” His voice sounded cottoned, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Unable to do anything else, he closed his eyes while waiting for the food and liquids to be brought to him.
He might have slept for a minute at the most, but it was enough for the nightmare to resume in its gory details. The sight of blood had never affected him, but the image of Mirella’s gown drenched in it made him feel sick. Gasping, he stood and almost knocked off the floating tray with his meal. Before his eyes, dream and reality collided. For a moment, he remained suspended between the two worlds, then he forced his breathing to become regular again and the rest of his body to relax. Gradually, reality came back into focus. He reached for the tray containing a flask and a sealed bag and grabbed the soft pouch he knew held a savorless beverage laced with electrolytes.
By the time Sidera Prime approached the Coral System, food resources were too depleted, and synthetic produce was introduced in the diet when the hydroponic cultures couldn’t supply enough for the entire colony any longer. Fruits and vegetables became a memory of the past, supplanted by slushy porridge and colorless juices. Food was the only equalizer between humans and shifters. The gruel served daily didn’t resemble edible food any longer, but it was the same for everyone. Even the Brotherhood had to accept the tasteless meals if they didn’t want to starve.
Remembering so many meals gulped down without a thought, Valentine pierced the flask and drank the recycled beverage, then opened the bag and swallowed the gooey substance that was his dinner. Or was it breakfast? His internal clock was thrown off by the absence of natural light. It had taken some time for him to get used to the day and night cycle of Lupine, but now he wondered how humanity had survived so long in space, completely detached from anything that made life bearable. Werewolves had paid a high price when they had been severed from Luna’s influence; the Terran moon had anchored them, gifting them with the shifting ability that they lost in space.
Once the last drop of food slid into his mouth, he started feeling the regenerative effects of the carefully engineered meal. He blinked and tilted his head, stretching his neck and relaxing his shoulders, then pushed the tray away and picked up his next read.
Besides a few physiological breaks, Valentine kept reading, part perusing and part leafing through passages, but didn’t stop until he was done with the first five books he had taken from the bookshelf. In a race against time, he withdrew the next batch of titles and repeated the process.
Chapter Eight
Mirella followed Dragon and Crea into the harem with a mix of revulsion and curiosity.
A large foyer opened behind the carved door that Dragon held for her. A faint scent of fresh cut flowers, light furniture, and pastel colors gave the place a clean feeling. Not what Mirella had expected.
Several girls stood when she took a step inside. Dressed in the same soft hues of the rest of the room, Mirella had not noticed them at first. “Hi,” she said, waving her hand, then moved further toward the central area with the sofas and cushions scattered on the carpeted marble floor where the courtesans stared at her with wide eyes.
“Blessed Bride,” the girls said at once as they curtseyed to Mirella.
“Please.” Mirella motioned for them to sit.
The courtesans resumed their positions, some of them picking up books from the floor and the couches, but none started reading. Silence ensued.
“I don’t want to disrupt your evening.” Mirella walked closer to one of the girls. “Is it a good read?” She pointed her chin at the heavy-looking tome on the courtesan’s lap.
The girl blushed at first, then shrugged, and barely raising her eyes to meet Mirella’s, said, “Just interstellar economics, Blessed Bride.”
“I don’t think there is anything ‘just’ about the topic.” Mirella laughed, and a moment later the courtesan smiled. “Is it a subject you would like to study?”
Lowering her eyes to the book, the courtesan nodded.
“I’d like to know more about interstellar economics, but I’m afraid you would have to summarize the book for me.” Mirella smiled. “Are there any pirate stories in that textbook? That’s the whole extent of my knowledge on the matter. Appalling, isn’t it?”
Her comment elicited a chuckle from the girl who immediately shook her head and hurried to say, “Oh, no! Not at all, Blessed Bride. You have more serious things to think about.”
“I’m not sure about that, but thank you for your kindness,” Mirella said.
During the conversation, several of the girls shifted, slightly relaxing their postures but still sitting properly on the edge of the sofas with their backs straight. Even the courtesans seated on the carpet maintained an elegant bearing as any properly educated daughter of Lupine’s fashionable society.
Mirella realized that those girls had probably received a similar education to hers. The courtesans were raised to please their masters and keep them interested with their conversational skills and impeccable manners. Not so different from a blessed bride’s purpose in life, was it? Besides procuring an heir to her werewolf. It was a sobering thought. If Valentine hadn’t loved her back, she would have been no better than a high-end courtesan.
“I could lend you my notes,” the girl whispered, moving the tome aside to show the notebook beneath.
“I would like that very much, thank you—” Mirella smiled. “What’s your name?”
Her question startled the girl, whose eyes widened still. “It’s Nida,” she said after a moment, her voice so low Mirella almost didn’t hear her.
“Nice meeting you, Nida.” Mirella accepted the notebook from the girl’s shaky hand. “I promise I won’t make corners and I won’t write on it, and I’ll give it back to you as soon as possible.”
The atmosphere in the foyer had changed during the exchange. The courtesans were still holding their elegant poses, but they looked more at ease.
Dragon, who had remained a few steps behind with Crea, moved closer and whispered, “Blessed Bride, I apologize for interrupting, but I must escort you to the safe quarters.”
Mirella sighed, then brought the notebook to her chest. “Thank you, it will give me something to do,” she said, smiling at Nida.
Dragon opened his hand to the side, gesturing for Mirella to enter the hallway to the right.
“Have a great evening,” she said to the rest of the room as she walked past the couches.
A chorus of, “Blessed be, Mistress,” followed Mirella into the hallway.
Mechanical workers swept the shining marble floors, and a few servants were replacing the flowers in the vases with fresh cut blooms, perfuming the air with a sweet floral bouquet. Doors opened at regular intervals, and when a courtesan exited into the hallway, Mirella had a glimpse inside a bedroom when the girl paused and bowed to her.
Swathed in dust-pink and cream, the room was clean and orderly. From the girly décor to the spindly bookshelves and desk, it was clear it was a personal room, much resembling Mirella’s former bedroom back at her parents’ home. On the bed, nested between t
he cushions, there was a knitted doll, and an unfinished knitted blanket lay on the loveseat by the corner, the long wooden needles hanging from the seat’s edge.
Once the girl walked away, and Dragon stepped forward to lead the way, Mirella turned to Crea. “If the girls are amenable, we could open a school inside the harem, instead of dismantling it.”
“I’m sure they would love the idea. This place has been their home for so long, it would feel wrong to destroy it to build something else in its place,” Crea said.
Satisfied, Mirella walked behind Dragon, making plans for the harem’s future.
The Solarian escorted her to the end of the hallway, where he stopped before a gilded mirror and pressed his finger against one of the frame’s corners. The wall behind the mirror shifted, then swung backward, revealing a smaller corridor. Once they all stepped inside, the wall closed behind them.
“It looks like the Wedding Chamber’s entrance,” Mirella commented as Dragon operated a lever on the opposite wall where there was a hatch door.
The door hissed and slowly opened into a foyer.
“It will only be for a few days. I promise—” Dragon started to say, but Mirella’s anguished moan stopped him.
“Mirella!” the Solarian and Crea shouted at the same time.
Mirella couldn’t answer. A sudden and sharp pain gripped her midsection in a vice, and she couldn’t breathe. She heard Dragon calling for Aldo as Crea accompanied her to the adjacent chamber where her lady’s maid helped her to the large bed.
When the agony subsided long enough for Mirella to draw a few short breaths, she moved only to feel a sticky wetness between her legs.
“My baby,” Mirella cried, hugging her belly as she rocked.
Chapter Nine
The book fell from Valentine’s hand before he could catch it. The soft thump on the absorbent floor was enough to rouse him from a tangled nightmare. Screaming, blood, and wailing babies lingered in his mind for a few heartbeats before he shrugged the images away.
He picked up the book and opened it to the page he had marked with a piece of folded paper that had fallen from another tome. Trying to focus on the text, he squinted, but the words doubled before his eyes. To give his brain time to reset, he decided that some physical activity would help. He stretched his shoulders, then his legs, and wandered outside.
“The fastest route to my former dwellings,” he said once in the hallway.
Following the arrow, several minutes later he reached the quarters where he spent his youth.
At the hatch door, Valentine hesitated, then pressed his hand against the scanner. The air was still, and his heart slowed down as he entered the Spartan foyer that also composed his studio and kitchen. He had belonged to the one percent elite who could afford private lodgings. On a space station where several families had to share living quarters, Valentine owned a unit with a separate bedroom and attached bathroom. At the time, he thought nothing of the privileges his birth regaled him, but now he could see why his species wasn’t popular among the colonists.
He walked inside, looking around at the empty walls. “Turn on the screens.”
At his command, the gray surfaces lit a bright white at first, then images appeared as if emerging from milky clouds that soon dispersed.
“History channel.” Easily falling into an old habit, he called for the reclining bench to unfold from the floor. The low settee gracefully assembled in the middle of the room, and when the padded cushion was fully inflated, Valentine lowered his tired limbs onto the foam.
Ancient documentaries about Earth showed on the walls.
Relaxing his head on his bent arm, he said, “Louder.”
When he wasn’t reading about Mother Earth in the library, he would be staring at the walls of his foyer, learning about Terran humans and their planet. He didn’t need the audio to follow the too-brightly colored images, but the voices narrating the movies were familiar to him and soothed his tumultuous moods. Then and now.
But not for long. A few minutes into a documentary about the ancient ruins of a long forgotten civilization, Valentine stood and shut off the walls. He walked the few steps to his empty bedroom and looked at the opposite wall where his bed would deploy for his sleep-cycle. The scuff was still there. The station’s auto-repair program had not been able to smooth the sword’s blow he had inflicted in a moment of rage. Angry at his father, a young and reckless Valentine drove the edge through the wall and only stopped when the sword hit the steel metal layer underneath. His arms shook from the vibrations for hours. As per usual, a harsh and long punishment followed, feeding the vicious cycle of Valentine’s resentment against Marcellus.
Still unsettled, he left his quarters behind and wandered through the cold hallways, heading toward the library to resume his search. He knew his time on Sidera Prime was limited, and the clock was ticking. The fear that his trip would be fruitless weighed greatly on him. His mind couldn’t stop working, and on the tail of his bitter remembrances of his father, he recalled that Marcellus had kept a diary. Valentine knew of its existence because he had once seen it among Marcellus ’s private collection of books. The memory nagged at him as if it were of some importance, and he decided to take a detour.
“Let me in,” he commanded, raising his right hand for the scan before Marcellus’s quarters.
As the last Lobo alive, Valentine had inherited both his father’s and his uncle’s estates, including their properties on Sidera Prime. He had never entered Marcellus’s apartments during his previous visits to the space station, and if it weren’t for the persistent thought that he should take a closer look at his father’s diary, he would have turned and left.
At least ten times the size of Valentine’s quarters, Marcellus’s living pod was a replica of his Terran counterpart. In a show of extravagant opulence, his father decorated the twelve rooms of his home-away-from-home with wooden furniture, blown glass chandeliers in shades of blues, and silk rugs that covered the floor entirely.
Stepping inside Marcellus’s foyer affected Valentine more than he had thought possible. An impetuous tide of memories washed over him. He hadn’t visited with his father much when they both lived on Sidera Prime, and he was in his teens when he had entered those quarters for the last time, but walking through the richly decorated rooms brought him back to a time and place he still hated.
Marcellus had kept his personal library in a studio adjacent to his bedroom. Gabriel had once dared Valentine to enter Marcellus’s bedroom and remove a personal item from it, and thus he discovered the hidden chamber. Valentine had been surprised by the quantity of tomes safely preserved inside the ornate bookshelves that filled three walls of the large hidden room. Curiosity prevailed over caution, and he spent a long hour looking at the pages of books written in languages he couldn’t read. Finally, he found Marcellus’s diary, but wasn’t interested in his father’s rambling and carefully put it back. Surprisingly, on that occasion, he wasn’t caught by the former Master Lobo.
The memory brought a smile to Valentine’s lips. Ironically, one of the few good recollections of his youth belonged to a chamber he had only visited once. Striding from room to room, he reached the bedroom, and from there he walked into the studio. An unpleasant surprise awaited him. The room was bare. No large mahogany desk with the ball claw legs, no high-back chair with the burgundy cushion, no ornate bookshelves, and no books.
“Where are this room’s contents?” he barked, frustration adding to his fatigue.
When he inherited, he only took possession of his father’s and uncle’s art collections that were kept in the space station’s vaults, but sealed their personal quarters without touching anything inside.
“Marcellus Lobo donated them to the Brotherhood.”
It was strange to hear his father’s voice talking about himself in the third person.
“Where are the books?” Valentine asked.
“They were acquired by the Brotherhood Library.”
“Fastes
t route to the Library.” His tiredness forgotten, he hurried outside and started running.
A few times, his pace was faster than the arrow, and he had to slow down and wait for the signal to catch up with him. Once he stepped inside the library, he asked, “Master Marcellus’s diary.”
“Item not found.”
The answer frustrated Valentine even more, but then he said, “Master Marcellus’s book collection,” reasoning that the memoire could have been catalogued as a book instead.
To his left, an entire section of the bookshelves lit. He hopped on the closest staircase and proceeded to check out Marcellus’s books. Row after row, he dropped the hardbacks onto the jutting trays, looking for a leather-bound journal. His memories were blurred, and he couldn’t remember the color of the cover, but there was nothing among the books that resembled a diary. He was about to resign to the idea that he better resume reading through the breeding manuals when his hand touched a softer volume.
A black journal fell in his hand, opening to a page filled with longhand writing. Neat and linear, his father’s thoughts were etched onto the yellow parchment.
Sidera Prime, Year of the Voyage 856
Sophia is already weaker than she was a few days ago. We went for a stroll today, and she could barely walk to the hydroponic gardens. She’s well into her third trimester and complains she’s too big. My Blessed Bride is just perfect, but she doesn’t listen to me… I’ll take her to the artificial lagoon later, swimming in the pool will make her feel better.
Valentine read the words slowly, surprised to discover that his mother had not lived confined in the Vestal House aboard the space station. Curious, he jumped several pages ahead.
The medicus says it’s normal, but I don’t think it is.
Not knowing what his father was referring to, Valentine went back the previous page.
Sophia is sick. She’s losing weight and doesn’t want to eat. I called Doc Carentius, but he doesn’t seem concerned. I’ve seen other pregnant women, but they don’t seem to suffer as much as Sophia does.
The Fifth Moon's Lovers (The Fifth Moon's Tales Book 3) Page 6
