N’Maryah shakes her head in disbelief. “There is truly no more ceremony than that for your marriages?”
“Scraping to get by,” I remind her through clenched teeth. “Up until now we didn’t have any extra resources for stuff like weddings. But if you want a celebration. you can do it again at the next Harvest Festival. That’s what a lot of couples do.”
I’m no expert on nose ridges, but the way N’Maryah’s slow ripple tells me no, she absolutely does not want to do this again.
“Anyway, it’s now up to your incredibly kind new husband to punish you for your crimes. Just like you wanted,” I remind her.
“I could use some help with maintenance. And you look like you’re really strong. So I guess we’ll start with that,” Wang-Lei tells her with a shrug.
Come-uppance has never had a better description than the look on N’Maryah’s face. I doubt she’s ever been required to work a day in her life—especially doing something that requires actual physical strength, and I’m suddenly overtaken by the urge to laugh.
However, that urge dies a quick death when I see the expression on Dan’s face. Furious and malevolent.
I know that look. I got to learn it all too well growing up, whenever my parents gave me extra attention because of my leg. It was the kind of look that signaled pinches and putdowns as soon as they left us alone in a room.
With a sudden weight in my chest, I search the crowd for Nova and Glee. But I don’t see them. And I get a bad feeling it’s not because they decided they just didn’t feel like coming out to see the alien space ship.
I shift my gaze back up to Dan, still standing on that dais, and the current reality sinks in.
Dan is the settlement’s High Leader now. And I’m the powerless sister who not only just crossed him, but just messed up his crazy Punishment Ceremony plan.
I’ve won this battle, but I have a feeling I’ve started a war. And my stomach curdles with the certainty that this time my brother’s retaliation will involve a lot more than skin tweaks and nasty words.
Chapter Thirty-One
T’Kan
Four months later
There is no better feeling than waking up with my treasure, astride me, her sweet hot clinging so tightly to my diijo, we are as one. Zin’nia croons one of her word songs into my ear as she rides me, complimenting me, insisting that I make loving fun.
How can I not grip her waist and give her word song answer with the driving of my hips?
“Finally, you’re awake,” she says, laughing down at me.
We are in the main chambers of the seaside mansion where I was born. It had struck me as a gloomy place after my parents deaths. But it is full of life and happiness now that I have returned with my family.
I move my hands up to give my mate’s mammary glands a slight squeeze. “It pleases me very much to be woken up like this.” I return my hand to her waist and hold her still long enough to savor the sensation of her walls gripping me so decadently. “If I could, I would stay like this forever with you.”
“Me, too, honey.” She leans forward and plants a gratitude on my lips. “But we have to do this quick. Our little guy will be up any minute for his feeding.”
I chuckle, thinking of our babe, a male, swirled through with onyx and gold, as strong as his father, and as beautiful as his mother. He is also, unfortunately, a very early riser.
Taking my mate’s words to heed, I begin to move her sweet hot up and down on my diijo.
“You make me so happy, my treasure,” I tell her as we begin to climb.
She smiles and starts to sing again as she moves on my diijo.
“I cannot live without you.”
She abruptly stops singing and rises to stare down at me, her eyes blazing with anger. “But I can live without you.”
I shoot up from my sleeping mat, hearts beating furiously and my diijo at full rise.
Then I look around the dark room and realize…
I am indeed in the main chambers of my seaside birth residence in the royal city, but I am here alone. Zin’nia…our baby boy….it was all a dream. A cruel illusion my mind created to cope with not having my treasure by my side.
Four months. It has been four months.
Pushing thoughts of her away, I rise from my mats to take a gamma shower and don my uniform.
There is much to do today, and—the word song fades from my ears, there’s nothing I can do to get back…the dream.
Since the revelations of my uncle’s treachery, I have been forced to revisit many of the lessons he imparted while raising me after the death of his sister, my mother. But I still find myself abiding most faithfully to his edict to always do the hardest thing at the top of each morn.
Which is why after showering, instead of scrolling through the latest news stories on my holoscreen or reading one last time through the manual I have created for F’Syn or undergoing the vigorous training routine I put my own body through before overseeing the conditions of warriors under me, I force myself to head to the west wing of my mansion to the farthest door on the right.
To deal with more of the wreckage left in my uncle’s wake.
Two orange guards stand in front of the west wing’s suite doors. They are brothers, born before the time of the Extinction Virus.
“Any changes?” I ask them.
“No, Xar T’Kan,” the one on the right answers with a somber hiss, while the one of the left hands me a tray of food. They then both step aside, so that I can place my palm against the sensor on the garanthium door. Garanthium steel is considered the strongest in the universe, and usually reserved for the making of impregnable vaults. I ordered a door made of the stuff for the west wing’s main suite, along with an entire sliding wall, which now separates this part of the house from the rest.
Yet, I still fear it will not be enough to keep him in.
The sensor notes my high security clearance and the screen flashes blue, as the doors slide open.
I step into a nearly pitch black room and I immediately wince at the pungent scent permeating the room.
“Lights on!” I command.
The room illuminates, revealing what was hidden in the dark. Much of the metal furniture I acquired to replace the suite’s original pieces, now also lies scattered and disassembled on the floor. There are also a few piles of bodily waste scattered around the room along with green puddles of piss.
This explains the sour unsavory smell I think to myself as I set the tray down on the only non-overturned table, and study the new gouges on the walls. Claw marks, so deep, they feature smears of black blood.
“ESSSHHH!”
Before I am fully done taking in the destroyed room, I am tackled to the ground.
Fists pummel my face and chest at the same time sharpened teeth go straight for my throat.
This is why I have taken to wearing the long sleeved version of my uniform as of late. I barely have time to block his vicious teeth by smashing my armored forearm into his mouth, and it takes much effort to throw him off.
His body hits the same wall he gouged with his claws. But then he leaps right back to his feet with a great hiss, black blood now dripping from his mouth as he drops into another crouch.
“N’Thn! That is enough!” I rise to my feet, weary as if I had not gotten any sleep at all. “It is me. T’Kan. Your cousin. You are home. You are safe.”
At the sound of my voice, N’Thn narrows his silver eyes and cocks his head to the side. “T’Kan….”
I take a step closer only to earn another hiss. But his formerly crazed eyes remain clear as he says, “T’Kan…my cousin…you left me.”
I wince. There are a number of things he could have said to me but these words wound me as surely as Zin’nia’s arrow.
Especially given the news I must impart to him this day.
“I did not want to leave you. I thought—”
Usually I have to repeat the story every morning, as if we are reuniting for the first time all over again. But this morning he
bares his bloody teeth as he recites, “My cousin thought I was dead. He left me on that ship. Without making sure. Now he is Xar of Xalthuria. And I am…this.”
I have no words for him. His accusation is after all true. I left him, left him to become what I see before me today.
From what Kel D’Rek was able to piece together after analyzing the Kaidorian ship where Ki’Ra had been taken prisoner, N’Thn and many other warriors we thought had died in battle had actually been kept by the Kaidorians as prisoners of war. My uncle discovered his son was still alive somehow and instead of telling Kel D’Rek, negotiated a side deal with the Kaidorians. His son in exchange for leading the Kaidorians straight to New Terrhan.
My uncle fled shortly before he could be captured by Kel D’Rek’s personal guard as his daughter A’Ry had, but I often wonder if he would have agreed to the treasonous plan in the first place if he had known of N’Thn’s true condition.
All of the Xalthurian prisoners of war had been experimented on, beaten, and tortured. A few of them had even been used as fighters in the death battles the Kaidorians considered entertainment. One of those few had been N’Thn, apparently—at least for a little while.
According to Kel D’Rek, when they had found him, he had been emaciated to the point where his skin sagged around his bones, his once vibrant green skin rendered dull and pallid after going so long without our tropical sun. His head had been shaved and his talons yanked off. Scars lined his body, and chucks of skin were missing.
Those wounds had been fixed after the Kel’s elite force employed a sedation disc to get him into a medical repair unit. But his mind…
That was by far, the most broken part of him and it was something none of our superior technology had the power to fix.
His care has been my responsibility these past months and he has gained back much of the weight and muscle he lost, but the damage inside of him remains unhealed. He is prone to attack any staff who comes into this room, which is why I have taken it upon myself to bring him his first and last meals and clean up any damage he has wrought.
He grabs his food from the table and scurries over to a corner, hunching over it in a low crouch. “T’Kan thought I was dead,” he hisses, shoveling the meat and cheese into his mouth. “That is why he left me to die.”
“Yes, I thought you were dead. But you are safe now, cousin.”
Slowly he uncrouches. He has put on much needed weight since his rescue. His blue hair now falls just below his ears in thick waves. His color has heightened. He almost looks like the cousin I grew up with. But he is still different. “Safe,” he says as if testing the word on his tongue.
“Yes. The war is over.”
His ridges flatten. “Is it? Is it really? War…is never over.”
He’s right and there’s nothing I can say to change things. He has been saved…yet cannot be saved.
I cannot fix him. I realize that now after months of trying.
“Cousin…you have my apologies for everything you have gone through. It is my sincerest wish that I could take back everything that has happened to you but I cannot. And I have come to a difficult decision.”
He crooks his head at me. “T’Kan is my cousin. Where is my father?”
My nose ridges ripple. Yet another conversation we have had several times.
“Not here,” I answer, employing battle mind to control my frustrated hiss.
He raises his chin and looks down his ridged nose at me in a way that reminds me of his half-sister and their father. “You will bring him to me.”
“N’Thn, I cannot do this. Your father has run away, gone into hiding.”
N’Thn grins ferally, flashing the teeth the Kaidorians sharpened to points. “Warriors always underestimate intelligence workers. That is what my father told me. He does not run. He does not hide. He plots. Watch out, T’Kan. Take heed. Tell your Kel he should not underestimate. Or sleep.”
A chill runs up my back at his words, and his eyes. More lucid than I have seen them in months.
But I press on to the main point. “I will be leaving the royal city for a very long time, so a new protocol for your feeding must be put in place. We will now sedate you every morning, so that your room can be cleaned and two trays of food place. But other than that, everything that is mine is at your disposal. If you have need of anything other than food and cleaning—”
“T’Kan thought I was dead, so he left me to die.”
N’Thn laughs with loud clicks, as if he has made a great joke.
“Cousin…” I raise my hand but it falls to my side as he continues to laugh. “I will visit you whenever my new posting allows. Be well.”
“Be well,” he repeats, laughing even harder.
It has taken me months to come to this decision. I am still getting over the shock of discovering he is alive, was alive the entire time I mourned him. How can I leave the planet to take this posting? I asked myself so many nights.
But in the end, my decision was made by moments like this.
He has only gotten worse since his rescue. His time of lucidity have shrunk to maybe an hour or so a day.
I am considered Xalthuria’s greatest warrior, but in my cousin’s case there is truly nothing I can do.
“Be well,” he repeats again. Still clicking with laughter.
I give up. Head for the door..
And as soon as I do, the laughter abruptly stops. “Lights out!” I hear him click behind me.
I leave him there. Leave him in his rancid darkness.
He is alive. But I am still as helpless to aid him as I was when we thought him dead.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Zinnia
I come awake on a gasp, my hips still undulating from the nasty dream. My pussy slick with desire.
Oh moons, not again. You’d think after four months my subconscious would have stopped with the recurring dream of me waking T’Kan up with a fuck and a Fleetwood Mac song, trying to get an orgasm in before our son wakes up. But here I am, hot and bothered for reasons that have nothing to do with the hot season unfolding beyond the door of the little clay house.
I peep over my shoulder at Kira’s parents. They’re both breathing evenly on the other sides of the mats. Each with a hand resting near my swirled golden and near black newborn, Stevie. Just like the grandparents they swore they were dying to be when they took me in, after Dan refused to let a “race traitor” back into his house. They also make me call them Mom and Dad, and refer to Stevie as “little grandbaby.”
They’re so sweet, and I’m so lucky, so why oh why, am I still dreaming about T’Kan?
I watch the three of them with a guilty pang, wishing my subconscious would catch up already and be happy about my daughter instead of dreaming about a son I don’t have and life with the golden Xal who stole me.
Breakfast. I climb out of bed without the help of a stick and shuffle over to the red clay water jug we keep beside the hearth. The least I could do since I’m up early is pour some water into the mixture of oats and other grains Kira’s mom set out in the red clay cook pot the night before. I just hope I can get the right ratio of water-to-oats…
Don’t mess it up, Aunt Z.
The memory of Glee’s small voice hits me with another pang as I pick up the water jug. It kills me that I haven’t been able to see her or her mother alone in the four months since I got back.
According to Dan, Nova had decided to homeschool the girl, but I know that’s bullshit. He’s hurting them. Bad enough that Dan doesn’t dare let them out in public, except for the rare appearance where he makes a speech with them silent and looking miserable in the background.
A pounding knock on our door jolts me out of my reverie and wakes poor Stevie.
“It’s okay, little grandbaby,” I hear Kira’s father murmuring as I rush to see who would be knocking this early in the morning.
It’s Phil. The months since Kira arrived with an unexpected shipment of new supplies haven’t treated him kindly. The
extra infusion of crops and animals has set most of New Terrhan to thriving. All but one of the fields are in use now, the chicken house is full and bustling, and we’ve got so much food on hand, even our most sickly and thin colonists are plumping up.
For most this has been a good thing. But for people like Phil, it’s been too much of a good thing. His face has taken on a permanent bloat in the past four months, thanks to the now plentiful supply of corn liquor and grain alcohol. Now his nose and cheeks are red and cracked from the sun and alcohol damage with a big ol’ helping of dehydration on top. And dark circles have moved in under his eyes.
He’s still kind of handsome underneath the ravage of too much fun and sun, but I suspect not for much longer.
“Wanted to remind you, you’re due back to the field today,” he says, leaning against the door jamb. “Check-in for row assignments is at 6am sharp. Be there or we’ll have to take the time out your rations. Any questions?”
Yes, why in the hell are we still on rations if we have plenty of food now, thanks to Kira?
I don’t ask that question out loud, though. I already know the very, very stupid answer. Dan’s been telling everyone he’s stockpiling, just in case the talks go bad when Kira returns for the next round of breeding under the new accord. And what’s worse, pretty much everyone but me believes him.
I get it. After so many years of struggling to get by, it’s easy to accept the Xalthurians will change their mind about their new policy of open generosity. I can see why my fellow New Terrhans would trust him.
But I know better. Dan’s not saving up for a rainy day, he’s hoarding everything for himself. Making sure he has all the resources he needs to keep us completely under his control.
The revamped Breeding Ceremony is scheduled for less than three months from now. And I’d bet a batch of my homemade bread that if it goes sideways, it won’t be because of Kira or the Xalthurians, but because Dan decided to sabotage Kira’s goodwill efforts as soon as he was elected High Leader.
If the last four months have taught me anything, it’s that Dan and his cronies, liked things just the way they were when we were close to starving and biddable as sheep. Men like Dan would do anything to return to the old status quo, even if it means getting all of us human women truly enslaved to our alien overlords.
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