by Raven Dark
I heard a loud thud, as if Raul had hit something.
“Don’t you dare twist this into something it’s not!” he roared. “When we left, the tide had turned, and you know it. We won the war. The Rith had been all but destroyed, or we thought they had. And as for my father, if I’d have known he was dying, or that there were more Rith hiding in the Osark Nebula, I would never have left.”
“You expect me to believe that? You never cared about your father. All you have ever cared about was glory and honor and Order Business.”
“You listen to me.” Raul’s voice was low and growled. “I know what you are. You have been after my father’s throne for years. Looking for a reason to take the hammak from him. Biding your time. My father loved you, and that’s why he never saw what a snake you are. That is why Malek doesn’t see it.”
“How dare you—”
Feet scuffled and there was a loud bang against the doors. They rattled, and Laric grunted in pain.
“How dare I?” Raul sounded like he was right against the door, snarling through gritted teeth. “You think I wear this thing around my neck for show? You may not think I’m fit to be Hadu, but like it or not, I am.”
There was a thud near the door, like someone had fallen to their knees, making me jump. When Raul spoke again, his tone was level, but barely.
“Because you are Malek’s brother… because he loved you, and because my father loved you, I won’t kill you. But if you ever challenge my honor or my authority again, I will run you through.”
Laric gave a soft, wheezing laugh. Feet shuffled and the door opened. “I’d like to see you try.” He his eyes collided with mine and he glanced over his shoulder. “You know you have a spy out here listening?”
Raul cursed and I heard his blocker buzz on his bracelet. Blocking my translator. He barked something at him in Xandari. Laric laughed again.
“Gosht!” Raul thundered.
Out.
Laric stumbled out and slammed the door, rubbing his throat and clearing it. He shook his head at me, a smarmy smile on his stupid face.
He left without another word.
Z’pheer came to my side, shook his head in the direction Laric had gone, and sighed. He brought me to the doors of the bedroom and unhooked my leash. He placed a warm kiss on my temple and nodded for me to go in.
I took a deep breath and went inside, the doors closing behind me. The feeling of being trapped took hold of me, and I spun around, facing them.
I could feel Raul’s powerful presence like an unseen energy all but crackling in the room. Feel his seething anger. I could smell him, masculine, spicy, a vicious predator who somehow kept his need for blood in check.
I controlled my breathing and squared my shoulders. Buying myself time.
Damn it, I wasn’t a coward, and I wouldn’t let him scare me. All I could do now was hope he didn’t take his rage with Laric out on me.
Drawing a last breath, I turned around and faced him.
24
Stupid Girl
When I’d come into the room, I’d been too nervous to notice where Raul was upon entering, so when I turned around, I’d expected to see him standing behind me. He wasn’t.
Instead, he was sitting on the side of the huge bed that dominated the other side of the large room. Hunched over, head bowed, he appeared to be staring at something in his hand. The hammak dangled from his bared chest. The thick chain and the fist-sized stone embedded in the pendant was usually dwarfed by his powerful chest, but now the symbol of the world’s ruler looked heavy and burdensome.
I only half noticed that the room looked different than it had been the last time I was here, bigger and more open. Someone had changed the bedding. It had been red before, and now it was gold. For some reason, the detail leaped out at me.
They’d changed my mother’s bedding too, when they’d taken her away.
Suddenly my anger with him dwindled, fading to a dim ember. My heart ached, as if a small crack had sliced across unseen armor. My throat constricted for him, almost too tight to breathe.
“Kahn, nayna. Ipt.”
His words translated in my head. Come, nayna. I wasn’t sure what the last word was, though I thought I’d heard it before. I did notice the summons didn’t bear the commanding force behind it I’d grown used to. Instead, he sounded resigned.
Fuck, the blocker was still on. And so was my muzzle, so I couldn’t tell him. Much as I felt as if approaching him was akin to approaching a large bear, I’d have to go to him.
I walked across the room, stopping at the side of the bed. He didn’t lift his head or look at me.
This close, I could see what he was holding; a knife in a golden, jewel-encrusted sheath gleamed in the room’s low light. I swallowed, at once wishing I was back at the doors. Raul was the last man I should be close to when he was not only angry and probably still drunk but armed with a sharp object.
I gave a muffled sigh. Fingers still trembling, I reached out and set them on his shoulder, needing to get his attention.
Raul jerked his head up—stiffening, I hoped, because he hadn’t expected a slave to touch him. I gestured to the muzzle.
He put his head back down and said something with the word lenele in it. The word for muzzle, and I thought I heard a dull, humorless sort of amusement in it.
If I hadn’t been wearing the thing, I’d have cursed. How was I supposed to…
I touched his bracelet, the button for the blocker I’d seen him press before.
He growled in irritation and nodded, stabbing the button, apparently not having realized it was the blocker was on. He set the knife on a nightstand beside him and stood up. “You really need to learn our language, nayna. Then we won’t have to worry about this translator business.”
He reached behind my head and undid the muzzle, ripping it off with one hand and tossing it on the bed. Then he unhooked his end of the leash, letting it drop to the floor. “Have a seat.”
I stayed where I was. There was no force in his tone. He sounded tired, and almost…sad. The crack across my heart deepened, severely undermining what was left of my anger with him.
“Raul…I’m…” Oh God, I hated this. I wasn’t supposed to care, but my own past loss made it impossible not to. Malek was right, I could be a bitch, but I had a heart, even if I wished the hell I didn’t. “I’m sorry about your father.”
Raul made a derisive sound and strode slowly over to a wall beside the nightstand where an assortment of heavy-looking blades were mounted, arranged in an X pattern that looked ceremonial.
They were probably heirlooms, but that didn’t make me any less unsettled being alone with him in a room full of pointy things.
“I don’t need your false sympathy, nayna,” he muttered.
I bristled at that but forced myself not to bite his head off. He was grieving. “It’s not false, spaceman. I get it. More than you know.”
The muscles in his back tensed. He rounded on me, his mouth opening as if to snap something at me. Then he closed it and his brows scrunched. A moment later, his face cleared, all stone and stoicism.
“Sit down.” He nodded to the bed.
I still didn’t. I didn’t dare, not in this room. “Raul, we need to talk.”
He snorted, looking up at the weapons again. “Do we now?”
Ugh. The mockery in his tone scoured away some of my empathy for him.
“You have much to learn, Vahashatai, if you think you can come in here and make demands of me.”
I clicked my teeth.
He looked back at me, his eyes dancing, then dropped his arms. “And what would you like to talk about, nayna?”
As if he didn’t know. My fists tightened at the emphasis on the word slave.
“What you said to your father.” Some of that anger was creeping in. “About my having your children.”
He nodded slowly and faced me, hands clasped behind his back. “I am guessing you don’t wish to have them.”
I co
uldn’t tell what I heard in his tone, but for now, it didn’t matter. I heaved another sigh and squared my shoulders. “That’s not the point. I can’t. Have kids, I mean.”
“Is that right?” He put his chin to his chest, preventing me from seeing his expression.
“Yes. I had an IUD put in.”
He furrowed his brow at me.
“Um… something so I can’t have kids.”
“Ah. Yes. That.” I really didn’t like the knowing light that flashed in his eyes. “We replaced it.”
I blinked. Had he just said what I thought he said?
“Pardon me?” I rasped.
The corners of his lips turned up, the expression dark and insidious. “When you were in cryo-sleep on the ship. We replaced your birth control.”
If I thought I was already beyond angry with him, it was nothing to what I felt right now. Pure rage burned in my veins.
He took a step toward me, and my temperature immediately rose in response, every muscle in me coiling with the urge to knock him upside the fucking head. I forced myself to be still, refusing to reveal his effect on me.
“I’m guessing Z’pheer didn’t tell you. We replaced your birth control with one of our own. Which, I should add, is reversible.”
“No, he didn’t,” I gritted out.
He closed in a little more. “If I chose to, I could have you taken to the shelter’s infirmary right now and have him remove the device.”
I looked at the ceiling, desperation twisting in my gut as I felt my life, my independence being slowly ripped away all over again. “I don’t suppose it would matter if I told you I don’t want children?”
A smirk tugged at his mouth. He closed in until he was close enough that I could feel the heat of him. His eyes dropped to my belly, and then returned to my face.
It took all I had not to step back from him. His heat pounded into me, his scent driving me wild. He towered over me, making me feel suddenly trapped.
One of his hands slipped around my chin, caging it. “You don’t want children, Vahashatai? Or you don’t want mine?”
“You want the truth or a polite lie?” All right, so if I was honest, I wanted his permission before I said it. If he gave me permission, he couldn’t rightfully punish me for telling him the truth.
His eyes danced with delight. “Always. Always the truth, nayna.”
A master to the last.
I squared my shoulders again. “I don’t want kids right now, Raul. I’m eighteen, for Christ’s sake. And I don’t want yours at all.”
Or Malek’s, or Z’pheer’s, my mind added.
He dropped his hand, his teeth flashing. “Duly noted. You still hate me.”
“Yes.”
He turned toward the blades on the wall again, shrugging his gigantic shoulders. “That changes nothing, nayna. If I wanted you to have my children, you would have them. As many as I chose.”
Indignation and anger came roaring back. My fingernails bit into my palms. “This is my body, Raul,” I gritted out. “You can’t—” I cut myself off and licked my lips, forcing myself to face facts. I wasn’t on Earth. I was his slave. Earth sensibilities didn’t apply here.
He faced me again, and when he spoke, his voice was soft and low. “No, nayna. It is not. Not anymore. From the moment you came aboard my ship, your body belonged to us. I told you before. You walk, you talk, you breathe, because we allow it.”
I closed my eyes, trying desperately to rein in the anger, despair, and horror that roiled in me. I opened them and dropped my arms. “You’d force me to have your kid? Really?”
Once more, he closed in, this time cupping my nape with his hot palm. “If, I wanted them, yes.”
I blinked up at him. “Wait…if? What?”
His fingers tightened, his gaze burning into mine. “If I wanted children, you would have them. It is fortunate for you I have no interest in them.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m confused. You told your father you would fill his palace with the sound of children. You…you’re a king. I’m not an expert on royal protocol, but doesn’t that mean you have to have an heir?”
“Yes. It does.” He released me again, went back to the wall of swords and studied one, running his hand along the golden sheath. “Not that politics are any business of a woman, but I have no interest in the throne.” He took the blade from its mount and ran his hand along the hilt, his face clouding over. Grief darkened his features. “I intend to wear the hammak only until I find a successor. Therefore, as long as I find one within the allotted time, I am not required to have a child.”
I put my head back. “Then why did you tell him I would give you an heir?” I snapped. “And why didn’t you tell me you had no intention of having one?”
He rounded on me like a rabid wolf. “My father was dying, nayna. His only wish was to see his royal line passed on and this world in the hands of a capable ruler. I appeased a dying man.” He paused and pointed the blade right at me. “And as for not telling you. I am not required to tell my property anything, nayna. You have much to learn if you think I am.”
My eyes fixated on the blade. The tip of it was less than six inches from me. Panic at the idea of having a weapon pointed at my chest made me step back, regardless of the fact that it was still covered.
“Raul. Put the sword down,” I said slowly.
He didn’t seem to have heard me. “Do you have any idea what this is like, nayna?” He unsheathed the sword, running his hand along the long, silvery blade. The edge flashed lethally in the light.
“Raul.” I backed up again.
He flicked his eyes around the room without even seeming to see me now. “Everything here was his. This room. This bed. This sword.” He held it up between his giant fists. The pain in his eyes was like gold steel. “This world,” he added softly.
“Raul, please put the sword down.”
His shoulders fell on a long breath. Then he started toward me, a stalking wolf. The sword hung loosely in his hand, pointed down, but no less lethal. Perhaps he didn’t even realize what he was doing, coming toward me with a weapon in his hand, but I couldn’t quiet my panic. No one had ever come near me like this, armed.
“Laric is right. I left this world when it needed me most. I left him.”
I was near the doors now. I backed up toward them. He was still stalking forward, but holding the blade in both hands, across his chest. His eyes were looking through me, burning with anger.
With himself, I hoped.
“Raul, don’t do that to yourself. It doesn’t—”
“I. Left. Him,” he repeated darkly. “I abandoned my father, my people, my whole world to those vile creatures. If I had only been here, nayna. If I had been here, I could have stopped them. I could have helped him. Saved him.”
My eyes watered for him. “No. Raul, it doesn’t work that way.” My hands were raised.
“What do you know about it?” He cocked his head at me, then put the sword point to the floor, cupping the top with his palms like a cane. “What could you possibly know?”
“Everything!” I breathed. “Okay. I don’t know what it’s like to be king. I don’t know what it’s like to have to rule a world that is falling to pieces. I cannot imagine what that feels like. But I do know what happens when you lose someone you love.” My eyes were blurring. “You leave one day, thinking everything is going to be fine. They look healthy. Happy. And then you come back, and their just gone. It’s over. And you sit there, thinking, if I had only come back sooner. If I had only done this or that, I could have stopped it. But you can’t, Raul. You can’t. There’s nothing you could have done.”
I circled around back toward the bed as he still moved forward, closing the distance.
“But I could have,” he rasped, once more closing in, the blade downward in one hand. “With this.” He held the blade up. “And with this.” He held up his huge fist. “I should have been here. I should have fought for this world, with him. At his side. It is my birthri
ght. And I turned my back on it.”
My thighs hit the nightstand. Damn it, I’d cornered myself with a livid, very large, very armed barbarian stalking me like a tiger.
“Raul, put the fucking sword down. You’re scaring me.”
Three feet from me, he froze, and his eyes dropped to the blade in his hand. He looked at it, as if startled to see it there. Except when his eyes met mine, he didn’t put the weapon down.
“This? This scares you?” He waved it at me, his smile cruel.
“Yes!”
“Well, then, there you go. I could have scared the… what is that word you keep using… fuck out of the Rith. I could have done something. I am not an eighteen-year old girl whose only worry is how well she sings. I am a trained warrior, meant to kill beings like them. If I had been here, they wouldn’t have bit my father, so do not tell me there was nothing I could have done.” He pointed the blade at me. “Don’t you dare.”
I didn’t know why the hell I did it. For years afterwards, I probably would have been asking myself why the hell I’d done something so galactically stupid. Whatever possessed me in that moment, the next thing I knew, I’d spun to the nightstand and snatched up the small knife he’d been holding earlier. I rounded on him, slid it out of its fancy casing, and pointed it at him.
Raul drew back, the sword still in his grip, pointed at my chest. A smile yanked at his lips, menacing and almost evil.
“Do you realize what you are doing, woman?” he growled slowly.
I looked at the blade and rolled my eyes. Well, it was done now. “Put the sword down, Raul.”
“Obviously, you do not.” He nodded to the knife. “I don’t know how they handle an armed woman on your world, but here, I could have you beheaded, just for holding that thing, never mind pointing it at me.”
I licked my lips. “Put. The. Sword. Down.”
“Or what?” he asked. “What will you do to me? Do you even know how to use a blade?” He stepped toward me.
“I’ll cut you. I swear I will.”
