by Susan Grant
And it roused his curiosity.
“All right, doll face, what is it about me or maybe men in general that you find so blasted distasteful? Is it that you like girls better and I’m just misreading the signs? If so, tell me now and put me out of my misery.”
“Girls?” For the first time her lush red lips formed what could almost be termed a smile. Almost. It was more a wry indication that she thought him a complete idiot. All right, he’d give her that because around her he felt like one. “No. I like boys.” She glanced up from the soup. “Men, actually. Maybe that’s the problem. I like men, not boys.”
“Ouch.” He spread a hand over his chest. “I’m not man enough for you.”
She made a fist on the countertop. “It may be hard for you to grasp, but I don’t want you. Or anyone right now.” A spark of anger flickered in her dark eyes. She was becoming more animated by the minute. He was definitely thawing her out, but he wasn’t too sure if it was in a good way. Well, he’d take it however he could get it. She was a challenge too good to pass up.
“Broken heart,” he guessed.
Her proud stance faltered almost imperceptibly. But as a runner, he’d learned how to pick up subtle clues. He was about to give her hells for loving and leaving some poor sot, but seeing her sudden awkwardness, he ditched the idea.
“Mawndarr?” he asked, gentler, knowing the battlelord was a fool for the warlord’s little daughter who had him wrapped around her finger.
She recoiled from the idea. “Aral and I? There was never anything like that. I loved his younger brother. Why are we even having this conversation?”
“I don’t know. I kind of like it, though.”
“I don’t. I don’t like any of it.”
“Not part of your orders?”
She glared at him.
“Sorry, doll face. Didn’t mean to rub salt in a wound I didn’t know about.”
“It’s a wound that’s not even supposed to be there. It’s old. It should have healed up and scarred over years ago.”
Kaz tucked her short black hair behind a pretty little ear. Unlike other Drakken he’d seen, she wore only one red earring in each lobe. They reminded him of drops of fresh blood. Must have matched her blood red Imperial Navy uniform. “He died,” she said. “In the war.”
“So did my parents. They were soldiers.”
She glanced up, her eyes suddenly wide, allowing him to see the person who lived behind them for the first time. “But you’re helping us.”
“Selfishly.”
“For an unnamed treasure.”
“Don’t mistake it for anything more.”
Gods. He’d dumped about his parents. He hadn’t thought of his mother or father in so long it took a moment to conjure their faces. He’d started it, so he might as well finish it. Pouring two glasses of whiskey, he offered Kaz one. With the tip of a manicured index finger she politely pushed it away. “They crossed paths on a troop carrier ship inbound from one of the bloodiest attacks of the war, both of them young soldiers with no business falling in love. Except they did. I was the result. They married the year after I was born, something they had no business doing, either.” But at Onsara Barracks, they made it work somehow. The glue that held the family together was their love for Keir and each other, and their hatred of the Drakken Horde, both of which they did their best to instill in Keir.
In his datapad was an old picture of him as a small boy, dressed up as a soldier. He opened it up. The glow lit up Kaz’s perfect skin and her eyes as she absorbed the image. “How cute,” she said.
“Yeah. How cute my parents must have thought I was, a little hero-to-be pretending to blast away Imperial soldiers with a toy plasma rifle.” He must have been no more than six cycles. Less than ten cycles later, both his parents were dead and he was out on his own, running as far from their futile heroism as he could. Spending those few months at Issenda Crossroads because he didn’t know where else to run.
“Son, this is my proudest moment, seeing you in uniform.” His father’s voice rang in his memory. Keir wore his dress blacks with his rook stripe on the sleeve, symbolic of a first-year academy cadet. Even now he could hear the gruffness in his father’s voice, could feel how tight he gripped him in his embrace.
Happy, bashful, Keir had insisted, “I’m just a cadet.”
“An officer cadet.” It was the only time he’d ever seen tears in his father’s eyes.
A few short months later it was a different story.
“I’m out of here,” he’d told the commandant of the prestigious Royal Galactic Military Academy after word came that his parents had been killed in action.
“Your father wouldn’t want you to take off that uniform,” the commandant of the prestigious Royal Galactic Military Academy said when Keir handed in his papers to resign. “Take time to grieve, son. Then come back.”
Keir shook his head at that. “No flargen thanks.” He’d acted disrespectfully to the commandant, but didn’t care.
He told Kaz, “My mother and father were considered heroes—and all it got them was this.” He reached above their heads and gave the small box that contained their wedding rings and various commendations for bravery a shake. “Hear that? A few small rattles.”
Kaz studied her hands, flat on the countertop—slender fingers, neat glossed nails. Here he was, telling a Drakken his sob story. Talk about times changing.
“I was a cadet at the RGMA when they died. They wanted to force me to finish the remainder of my mandatory service. I had to remind them that war orphans were exempt. They even offered to hold my spot until I came around. I’d already come around. I knew I wasn’t going to throw my life away.”
He held strong to that promise. It was the only thing that kept him from losing it during the farewells with the cadets who’d become his friends. He’d considered them his family away from home but even they didn’t understand his rejection of all things heroic or altruistic. To Keir, there was nothing complicated about it. “What I’m saying, doll face, is that there ain’t a person in this galaxy alive that doesn’t know about loss. Not to minimize what you feel, but why don’t you live a little? At least you get to. Live, that is. Your little friend upstairs. Who knows how long she’s got?”
“You make it sound as if she has a terminal disease.”
“What no one has died from on Coalition worlds for centuries,” Wren interrupted as she walked into the galley with Mawndarr. “But that people on our worlds do so with regularity. Because my father spent money on war and not medicines. He and all the warlords before him did the same. They’re my terminal disease. If I die it will be because of that.” She took a seat at the table, then sniffed the air. “Something smells delicious.”
Vantos shook his head. “On that pleasant note, let’s eat.”
BLOODIED, QUAKING with shock, Aral climbed to his feet—again. He would not flee his father’s fists. Never run—that was his mantra. Face the man and fight. For all his determination, it only made things worse. But he’d rather be beaten and defiant than cower in fear of his father’s wrath.
Karbon grabbed his shirt collar, lifting him off his feet to throw him into the wall. “Run, boy,” the man growled. “Show me what a coward you are.”
Aral climbed back to his feet, swaying some. Being hit in the head shook up his equilibrium. The key was not to let Karbon see. The more weakness he showed the longer the beating.
“Fool boy, you need to learn when to stay and when to give up.” Karbon was slapping him with both hands, alternating top, bottom, left and right, so that Aral never knew from where the blow would come. Instinctively, he used his hands to protect his head, face and gut. “Don’t you see the lesson I am trying to teach you? Worthless piece of freep—go. Get out of my sight, I say. Run away!” The back of his father’s hand sent him crashing to the ground. “You won’t beat me.”
Slowly, gingerly, for his body was a million points of agony, Aral picked himself up. Sometimes a week or a month would
go by without provoking his father’s rage. More than that when his father was on space duty far from home. Each time Aral hoped he didn’t return. But the man always did. Just as Aral survived the beatings when his father, drunk on sweef, let his temper go too far, Karbon enjoyed victory after victory over Coalition ships. He seemed invincible.
Perhaps his father thought him invincible, too.
“Run! You have to know when, boy. Know when to give up.”
Aral once more stood. His nasal passages were swollen nearly shut. Blood ran down the back of his throat. One eye was so puffed up he couldn’t see out of it. The other turned his father’s face into a blurry purple rose.
“Again, Aral? I’m giving you the chance to get away. To retreat. Back down and this will be over. Why don’t you?”
Because running would give his father power—over him. Over everything. His father wanted him to flee, but his legs refused to take him. His father wanted to break him, but he was no longer whole. He wanted him to cry, but the tears had dried. He was closed up, safe inside. No one could open the door.
“Aral!”
The scene shifted. He was in an unfamiliar building. Wren stood at the opposite end of a corridor. A bright light shone above her head. Then he saw four more lights, one by each shoulder and each foot.
Her violet eyes were haunted and wide. Afraid.
She needed him. He started to run to her, haltingly at first, then faster. The corridor seemed infinite. The longer he ran, the farther away she seemed to get and the brighter the lights until they all drowned out the small silhouette of her body.
White light engulfed him. Too late, he thought. He shouldn’t have let her go. He’d lost her now. Lost her forever…“No,” he bellowed, falling to his knees. “Wren, don’t leave me.”
“Aral. Please—wake up!”
He sucked in a mighty breath and jerked upright. He’d fallen asleep. Wren was leaning over him, her eyes pools of worry. The sight of her washed and lovely and dressed in borrowed night clothing brought him up short. She was so beautiful. “You’re here.” His voice cracked with relief. “I thought I’d lost you.”
“Is everything okay?” Vantos was nearby, looking disheveled, clearly dragged out of bed by Aral’s nightmare. This ship was far smaller than Nevermore, and with no real privacy. They’d have heard every blasted thing. Kaz hurried up behind him.
“I’m here,” Wren told them. “I’ll stay,” she repeated to Kaz when his second hesitated to leave.
He nodded at her, and she left him alone with Wren on a mat on the floor in the aft section of Vantos’s ship. A turning point, he thought, going from the hands of a friend to a wife. Wren would be with him through thick and thin. Through war and peace. Through grief and healing. For better or for worse. This, by far, was worse.
He should have told her of his impending madness. How hard he fought not to end up like Karbon. And how weary he became sometimes of the struggle. But he was too far along in his plan to derail it. For years he’d planned and plotted to destroy the empire, annihilate his father and rescue Awrenkka, bringing her under his protection. He’d pursued his plans to the point of obsession. Now she was with him and he realized he didn’t know what to do with her.
Because he still hadn’t ended his personal war, a war declared on a long ago day when he saw his school teacher murdered by a monster. His war with Karbon.
“Fool boy, you need to learn when to stay and when to give up. Don’t you see the lesson I am trying to teach you? Stubbornness equals stupidity to persevere for the sake of persevering.”
Giving in equaled letting go. Moving on. He’d told Kaz to move on. Apparently he couldn’t take his own advice. Or Karbon’s. Repulsed, he rose from the mat. He would not be reduced to the level of taking his father’s advice. Blast the dreams. “How much did you hear?”
“Enough to know you had a terrible nightmare.”
Urging him to run after Wren before he lost her. The five lights were dangerous. The dream told him so. If he took her to the treasure he’d expose her to more danger than she was in now. It was as close to reality as any dream he’d ever had.
He stalked to a sink to splash cold water on his face then scrubbed a towel over his face and neck. He fought hard not to throw the towel down then throw her down on the bed. Ever since the ice had been cracked between them last evening, he’d been painfully aware of her presence…the heat of her skin…her scent. And her voice, her manner, her eyes, her little nose—every freepin’ thing about her.
“You said you have trouble sleeping. Is it always because of the nightmares?”
“Yes. But I don’t recall having this particular dream before.” There were many versions of his past. He’d rather see none of them. Unfortunately, he was forced to relive all of them. His skull throbbed. Tipping his head back to stretch his neck, he stifled a groan. His throat ached, too. All things considered, he felt better than how he used to feel following a beating before nanomeds kicked in to wipe out the pain. Too bad the meds never could eliminate the pain on the inside, the pain no one could see. “Did I yell?” The very idea embarrassed him. He’d never showed such weakness in his waking moments.
“Only my name. You begged me not to leave you.” She searched his face, her expression worried, tender.
He crossed the room to don a fresh shirt over his tank. He felt the need to keep in motion around her. He wasn’t certain what would happen if he stopped.
“You need to go back to sleep. We’re going to be at Issenda tomorrow.”
“The only way I can is by exercising to the point of exhaustion, or drinking whiskey. I don’t care to medicate.” Numbing himself like his father did, he’d risk accelerating down the same path.
She lay down on his sleeping mat. “I’ll sleep with you.”
“Ah, fates. Wren, there’s no privacy. There’s—”
“Sleep with you. Not anything more.” She sighed. “Sabra was right when she told me that males had simple minds—sex and food, and that’s all.”
“That’s far from the truth.” Wasn’t it? “Sleeping with me is dangerous for another reason. I thrash about in my dreams. I may hurt you.”
That won him a withering look.
He heaved a sigh of defeat. Feeling a smile on his lips, he lay down next to her, on his back. She removed her glasses, then dropped her head on his chest as she slid her arms around him. He embraced her, carefully at first, then with increasing relief. She’d come to give him comfort. By the fates, he’d take it.
And so they lay there, Wren tucked close. Having her near steadied him as no meds, no shot of whiskey or even hours of brutal exercise could. None of those avenues brought a sense of safety, the knowledge that he wasn’t alone. His thoughts floated back to his childhood on the estate. The beatings he cared not to think of, but afterward, made pretty again by nanomeds, he’d run out to play with Kaz and Bolivarr, both of who remained inexplicably untouched by Karbon’s cruel hand. He’d run to them to be made human again in his soul.
Wren made him feel human again in his soul.
Aral stared at the ceiling, feeling warm and hollowed out, and oddly reassured. It wasn’t just her physical closeness; it was something else. Something more.
Something totally outside his experience.
Sex for him had always been a purely bodily pursuit. He’d never remained with a woman afterward, let alone actually spent the night with someone. Refusing Wren’s attempts to sleep with him had been a kneejerk reaction, a compulsion to distance himself that had become habit over the years. Yet it felt natural wanting to hold her like this, good, and right, somehow. They belonged together. Perhaps that’s what they saw in each other’s eyes that long ago day.
Judging by the sound of Wren’s slow, even breaths she’d fallen asleep. Carefully, he turned, holding her against his body. He let his eyes close, hoping perhaps sleep would come.
Sometime later—his sense was that it was hours later—the ship’s wake-up chime sounded, rousing hi
m and Wren from bed.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
He paused, thought about it, and let out a quick, quiet laugh. “I did.” He lifted up on an elbow, leaning over her as she drowsily searched his face, trying to see him without her glasses. “Sleeping with you could well become a habit.”
Heat radiated off her powerful little body, and his loins tightened. His initial intentions were not sexual, but her sheer proximity, her scent, her curves, her mouth, it was overwhelming, to say the least. “Other things may be habit forming as well,” he confessed, winning a grin from her as he ran a hand up her thigh. The muscles in her legs flexed at his touch. Someday, he wanted her to know the pleasure those strong thighs could bring them both, wrapped around his hips as he made love to her.
“Aral.” She sighed and brought her hand to his face, tracing his features, “seeing” him. He lifted her hand and pressed his lips to the heel of her palm. He followed the ridge of her tendons to the pulse on the inside of her wrist and felt her shiver. Her other hand slid around the back of his head to pull him closer, her lips parting.
“All right—everyone up!” Vantos was marching through the ship, banging on a pan to rouse them. “I’ve got Issenda on my scopes. No time to dilly-dally. This ain’t a hotel—”
He came to a halt by Aral’s sleeping mat. “Well,” he said. “I stand mistaken. Happy honeymoon.”
This time Wren turned red. Aral brought his mouth to her ear. “Let him think what he wants. Let everyone.”
A datapad dropped onto the mat. “Got the morning news. I think you two lovebirds might be interested. I know I was.”
Aral took the pad and sat up. “Bloody hells.” For a few blissful moments he’d forgotten about the galaxy they’d left behind. Now reality returned to slap him in the face. “Mission: Origins Seeks to Unravel Mystery of Ara Ana.” He scanned the text as he wrapped his mind around their new dilemma. “Ara Ana isn’t a person. It’s a place.”
