by Hart, Alana
He puffs out his chest. “I am your mate. Who you are with is my business.”
“Not when you leave! How the hell was I to know you were still waiting? And, actually, I don’t even call this waiting because, based on what you’ve said tonight, you had absolutely no intention of ever coming back!”
His nostrils go wild, like they’re auditioning for the Olympics. “I was trying to protect you.”
“And I was living my life, which is what you keep saying I should do. I mean, what the hell do you think living my own life is? Sitting alone in my room, knitting scarves for my imaginary boyfriend and crying into it while I watch The Notebook?” I was speaking hypothetically, of course. It’s not like I ever actually did something like that...
He shakes his head. “I’m not letting you go back to earth.”
Ha! “Good! I don’t want to go!”
“I am putting you on a planet far away from any man.”
Wait...“What?”
“Yes,” he says as his smile takes on a demonic blue light. “Far, far away where no man can touch you.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He slams his fist into the button that opens the door to the hallway. “I love you, Sally. But I can’t let another man have you.”
“Like hell you can’t! If you renounce our bond, I will be free. You may think you have a claim on me now based on the twisted, fucked-up rules on your world, but those rules mean nothing to me...especially since I didn’t even know I was your mate in the first place! I mean, you left for ten years, what the hell was I supposed to do?”
He grips the doorframe, muscles bulging.
“Darak, if we’re no longer a bonded pair, then none of this will matter. The bond won’t mean anything to you anymore.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he whispers.
“Yes I do. You are crazy jealous, and just plain crazy. Putting me on a planet with no men? What the hell does that even mean?”
“It means I’m going to take you to a spa planet.”
I frown. Well, that actually sounded kind of nice...if he didn’t expect me to stay there forever!
“I will protect you, Sally,” he says ominously. One last time, his deep blue eyes, stare into me, burning so hot I swear they smolder my soul. Then, he slams his fist into the door and it slides closed.
***
Not even five minutes later, the ship starts to move. I am, of course, given no warning and launch forward into the wall. I’m rubbing my head and cursing Darak when the door slides back open.
“Go away,” I ground out between clenched teeth. “I really don’t want to see you right now.”
“Sally?”
I spin around to find Raal smiling at me sheepishly.
“I could leave if you wanted, but I just thought—”
“RAAL!” I scream, rushing forward. “Darak has gone insane. He wants to imprison me on some sort of all-female spa planet.”
Raal sighs. “Darak has made a very difficult decision. Renouncing the bond is something that is never done.”
I gulp, suddenly worried. “What exactly does renouncing the bond entail?”
Raal glances up at me. “Castration.”
“WHAT?!?!?!?”
Raal shudders. “I know. It is disgraceful, especially for a Ta’aran prince. No man has renounced the bond in 1,000 unkas.”
I have no idea what an “unka” is, but it sounds like a long time and that doesn’t surprise me. “He can’t do this. This is insane.”
“I agree.”
“How do we stop him?” I ask, racing back and forth across the room as if running like a hamster on a wheel in a cage will help me think of something.
Raal sighs. “Only you can do that?”
I stop pacing. “How?”
“Well, the answer is simple, if not dangerous.”
“That’s alright. I will do anything.” Even if I wasn’t bonded to him, I couldn’t let him do this. Not after the magnificent orgasms he just gave me!
“You can go to the prince.”
“His brother who wants to kill him?” How the hell would that help?
“If his brother accepted his formal rejection of the crown, then there would no longer be a reason to go after him—or you.”
“I don’t know. Darak seems to be under the impression that his brother is trying to kill him.”
“Oh, that’s because he is trying to kill him,” Raal says.
“Okay. So what you just said right there is probably going to make it really hard for this plan to work.”
“Not if you go alone,” Raal says. “The prince knows he cannot kill you. To do so would be to incite Darak’s wrath. Maybe Darak wouldn’t be able to be king without you, his mate, as his queen...but he would also make sure that his brother would never be able to take the crown for himself.”
“Okay, so what? I go see his brother and...what?”
“If you, as his mate, tell him that you want nothing to do with the crown, he might believe you and spare Darak’s life.”
I cringe. “And if he doesn’t?”
“The prince will make sure that Darak will never be able to take the crown by forcing him to renounce his mate.”
“So...basically what you’re telling me is he’s going to make Darak do what Darak is planning to do anyways.”
Raal nods solemnly. “Yes.”
I take a deep breath. “I feel like all of this is way more complicated than it should be.”
“Well, Darak hates his brother, and the prince wants to kill Darak. The two have been at it since they were kids. Darak, in fact, was initially sent to earth because the poor queen was so worried for his life. Princes aren’t allowed to start trying to kill each other off until each has reached his fifteenth birthday. It was a very difficult time for both the king and the queen.”
“Wait, trying to kill each other is normal with you people?”
“Yes, of course,” Raal says. “There haven’t been two princes who’ve lasted past the age of 30 for at least 100 unkas. The last one was prince Taalak, who was castrated by his brother—”
I hold up my hand. “Alright, you don’t need to go into this.” Too bad Freud wasn’t alive when earth discovered the Ta’aran. He’d have a field day with this shit. Me on the other hand? I felt like I had just taken a trip through the teleporter. In other words, I felt like shit.
“So, you’ll help him?” Raal asks.
“Yeah.” And then, Darak and I were taking a nice long vacation away from his family and never coming back.
Chapter 14
Raal then grabs my wrist, programs my teleporter. He has just enough time to say, “Good luck,” (and I have just enough time to say, “Oh shit!”) before the bracelet starts flashing like one of those Japanese, seizure-inducing cartoons and I take off.
The third time is not the charm. I land about as gracefully as a wad of gak. I think I even make a similar sound as I plop down in the middle of the prince’s royal throne room.
Immediately, Ta’aran’s start shouting.
“Grab your spears! We are under attack!”
“Seize the creature!”
“Hey, isn’t that the traitor’s mate?”
I glance up to see a very familiar and very busted-up Ta’aran’s face.
Oh fuck. Darak wasn’t kidding when he said I didn’t want to see what I’d done to his face. It looked like it had been put through a wood chipper, and then the chunks had been handed to a first grader along with two bottles of that goopy, shitty glue and some rhinestones. But hey, at least he wasn’t dead!
“You,” he snarls. “You.”
He walks towards me, in front of the mass of battle-ready Ta’arans.
“Hi,” I whimper during a flurry of bubbles.
“You,” he hisses.
I cringe as he comes closer.
“You,” he growls.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
He crouches down, grabs me und
er my arms, and hoists me up until we are seeing eye-to-eye. My feet dangle at least a foot off the ground.
“Where is the traitor?” he bellows.
“I’m here to talk to the prince!” I bellow back with bubbles. They float into his face, popping on his raw, broken nose.
His forehead starts rippling as anger pulses through his veins. “You! The nerve! The...the...YOU!”
Suddenly, another Ta’aran appears. “If that is the traitor’s mate, then she must be taken to the prince. He wants her unharmed.”
“Fine,” the evil Ta’aran who holds up me rasps.
Then, he just starts walking.
I bring my hands to the fists that hold me up, trying to pry them open. “Hey! Let me down!” I shout, surrounding us with more bubbles.
“Shut up!” the evil Ta’aran wails. “Open the doors so I can get her away from me!”
I hear some gears turning behind me. Immediately, the Ta’aran tosses me backwards and I fly into the middle of the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen.
The lush purple carpet cushions my fall. The gold walls shimmer like Christmas balls. White lights slowly fall from the ceiling like snow globes.
“What is this thing?” a voice asks disdainfully.
I look over my shoulder to see the most fabulous man I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s dressed in some sort of open, flowy shirt that shows off his magnificent muscles. Tight black pants leave absolutely nothing to the imagination. He has some sort of glittery paste on his face that accentuates his sculpted cheekbones and slanted eyes.
I can’t stop staring. He looks exactly like Darak. Well, if Darak were attending a magical fairy ball, dressed as Prince Humperdinck.
He shakes his head, and his dark blue flowing hair ripples over his shoulder. “Speak! Why do you bring this repulsive creature before me!”
The Ta’arak I’d fought steps forward, bowing over one knee. “This is the traitor’s mate.”
“This?” the prince asks, standing. He prances towards us, hips swaying. He then brings the tip of his golden scepter to my chin and pushes it up.
He frowns down at me. “What kind of creature is it?”
“A human,” the bowing Ta’aran beside me responds.
“What is that?”
“From earth.”
“Oh,” the prince says. He leans forward, sniffing. “Do they all smell like this?”
“I do not know, my lord.”
Alright, there are only so many times a girl can sit and listen to people talk about how much she stinks! “Hey, I do not smell bad!”
The prince raises a brow. “If you say so.” He then looks back to his guard. “You seem to have redeemed yourself, Baru. I shall reward you handsomely.”
Baru cringes. “I actually did not gather her, my lord.”
“Oh?” the prince looks past us at the doorway. “Who was it then?”
“She came on her own,” Baru explains.
The prince frowns. “What? Why?”
I ball my hands into fists. Now is my chance. “Because I want you to leave me and Darak alone,” I begin. “Neither of us have any interest in...whatever it is you do here. I don’t want to be queen and he doesn’t want to be king.”
“Well, fine,” the prince says, shrugging. “In that case, he can renounce his claim—”
“No!” I yell. “He is not doing that either.”
“I don’t understand,” the prince continues. “If he doesn’t want to be king, why doesn’t he renounce his claim?”
“Isn’t that obvious?” I yell.
The prince’s frown deepens. “Isn’t what obvious?”
Oh lord. I really was going to have to spell this out for him. “Because I still want to have sex with him!”
The prince glares at me. “So you do want to be queen and produce an heir.”
“No. I want to be able to make love to my husband. Maybe we’ll have a baby or maybe we won’t, but I am definitely not letting any child of mine grow up in this fucked-up court. I mean, brothers killing each other? What is wrong with you people!”
“Oh, I get it,” the prince smiles snidely. “You thought you could trick me, didn’t you? Well, it’s not going to work. It doesn’t surprise me that the traitor’s mate is as power hungry and manipulative as he is.”
“What? No, you don’t get it—”
“Oh, I don’t get it? No, it is you who doesn’t get it. I am not going to let you take over everything I have spent so much effort to secure!”
This guy was crazy. Even crazier than Darak. And I know that I really shouldn’t be judging other cultures, but god damn what was wrong with these creatures?
“Okay, let’s back up,” I begin. “You read my file, right?”
The prince tilts his head to the side. “Are you referring to your file from Alpha Mail Order Brides?”
“Yes!” I say. “Well, did you notice the part where I put in there that my favorite way to wind down from a stressful day was by taking a bubble bath? Seriously, ask yourself: what kind of warlord queen takes bubble baths?”
The prince frowns. “Bubble baths?”
His guard beside him shudders. “She speaks the truth, my lord. The human creature has some sort of spiritual connection with bubbles.”
The prince rubs his chin. “You are right. She blew bubbles when she first entered this room, didn’t she?”
“Yes. And she blew many when she came out of the teleporter.”
The prince’s mouth twists with disgust. “And you bathe in these bubbles, do you? Because that would explain so much—”
Now it’s my turn to shudder. “No. Not in those bubbles. In…” Ugh, why did I have to bring up bubble baths! Of course these things didn’t know what those were. “I mean, I use bottled bubbles.”
The prince’s eyes widen in horror. “You mean to say you bottle other people’s bubbles up to bathe in?”
“What? Hell no!”
“And you mean to tell me that a creature such as yourself is not set on world domination?”
“No! please, you are not getting this. On my planet, bubbles are like the opposite of world domination!”
The prince raises his mighty scepter to the glowing heavens. “Take this creature to my chambers immediately, and make sure it ceases its lies! I do not know what my brother is plotting, but we must all be ready. The traitor is about to make his move!”
Oh dear, I think just before I am carted off. Sorry Raal. I think I just made everything worse.
Chapter 15
When I got to the prince’s room, I saw an old friend.
“Teddy!” I yell, pushing myself out of the guard’s grip and racing to the middle of the gigantic, circular, crimson bed. Then, I take Teddy into my arms and squeeze him like I’m trying to make him pop. I know it’s silly and childish, and I don’t care. I don’t know what I was expecting when I was teleported off to see my mate, but it sure wasn’t this. Yes, I’d dreamed of excitement, but there was such thing as too much of a good thing.
And there was such thing as too much of a bad thing, too.
“Hmph.”
I look behind me to see the prince with his magnificent purple shimmery arms crossed over his muscular chest.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, holding Teddy closer.
“I should be asking you that. This is my room.”
I guess he had a point there, but damnit I had one too. “You banished me here. If you wanted me to go someplace else, you should have banished me there instead.”
His eyes narrow in on the smiling cuddle of fuzzy love in my arms. “So, that is yours.”
“Of course.”
The prince grits his jaw. “Guards, leave us!”
The guards look at one another sheepishly. Finally, Baru steps forward. “But my lord, we can’t. The traitor’s plan—”
“Leave. Now.” The prince hisses.
“Yes, my lord,” Baru babbles, bowing and following the other guards out.
The pr
ince then watches the door close.
My heart starts beating inhumanly fast.
The prince turns to face me, and my breath catches. His eyes are so similar to Darak’s. In fact, if he wasn’t looking at me like I was a bug he wanted to smash underneath one of his moonstone encrusted white boots, I would have thought that it was Darak.
“Why did you bring that here?” he whispers.
I hold Teddy close. “Bring what here?”
“That!” the prince yells, pointing at poor Teddy.
“This is my bear. I’ve had him since I was a kid,” I explain.
He bites his purple lip. “Liar.”
“Look, I’m not lying. I don’t go anywhere without him.”
“No. You brought that...that thing...because you knew. Don’t tell me you didn’t.”
Alright, there was only so much crazy I could take in a day. “I have no idea what you are talking about. Please explain.”
He creeps along the edge of his room like a glittering purple panther ready to pounce. “It is one of my best kept secrets. I have never told another soul. Never. So, you are going to have to explain yourself. Why did you put it in your luggage where you knew I would see it? Are you trying to taunt me?”
WHAT?!?!? “Please tell me what you are talking about.”
Suddenly, he launches himself forward, eyes bugging out. “That thing you hold in your arms!” he yells, pointing at Teddy.
“My stuffed animal?”
“YES! Why did you bring it here? Don’t tell me you didn’t know!”
I close my eyes. What’s the right thing to do when someone starts talking crazy and you have no idea what they’re talking about? I don’t know. But I make a decision, then and there, that since he isn’t going to believe me I should just start lying.
I narrow my eyes at him, smiling with a gusto I didn’t know I had in me. “Ha! You found me out!”
The prince scrunches up his nose. “I knew it!”
“Yes, and I knew it too! I knew it first!”
The prince brings his fist to his mouth, stifling a growl. “Damn. How did you figure it out?”
Good question. “I have my ways.” I look down. “And Teddy has his ways, too.”
