Wager: A Sci-Fi Romance (The Jekh Saga Book 4)

by H. E. Trent

  Ara would shrug and say, “Do what feels good. Do what makes you happy.” And if Valen was really lifting her skirts for Phillip, she’d probably tell Sera to simply make sure she was taking precautions, whether the precautions were for her body or for her heart.

  Obviously, there were many things meriting a discussion. She’d have to make a list of all the things that could potentially go wrong, but so many things could go right, too.

  She’d have more people invested in Elken. Marco and Jasper would forge an unbreakable bond, and on a sometimes-chaotic planet, friendships were one of the most valuable currencies.

  And if she had to be truly honest with herself, she’d recognize that she wanted more masculine energy devoted to her, too. She wanted to be adored and fawned over. Unlike her forebears, she didn’t want to hole herself up and only open her doors when they’d decided to make a baby.

  She wanted to be caught up in the thick of things—she wanted to experience the ups and downs, the fear the exhilaration, the usefulness.

  Sera wanted to live big, and having two men along side her seemed a prudent way to get started.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  In his short time on Jekh, Luke had already witnessed too many reunions to count, but Ona’s radiant joy upon listening to the ship’s computer relay again and again that there was a forty-eight percent genome match between her and Ais was especially uplifting. Luke didn’t think she was ever going to unhand the woman. She was hugging Ais hard enough to bruise and kept peppering her face with kisses.

  Luke had no idea what language she was muttering in, but the tone certainly seemed energetic, and her words must have been pleasant enough because Ais occasionally emitted a giggle.

  Owen shifted Michael to his other arm and rubbed his palm down the scruff on his chin. “Somehow, we’ll need to pry them apart long enough to go fetch Alex.

  “He stay,” Ona muttered from within the cuddle.

  “He’s Ais’s brother,” Owen said in a careful tone.

  Ona scowled. “What brother?”

  “Well, half-brother. Her father’s son.”

  “What father?”

  Luke gave Owen a nudge of his elbow. He didn’t think the woman was being entirely literal, but rather choosing not to acknowledge that the Hauge’s relationship statuses were illegitimate. Luke certainly understood the compulsion.

  Somehow, Ais managed to extricate herself enough from her mother’s grip to meet her gaze. “The biological connection is confirmed. We tested him and his father to be sure.”

  “No,” Ona said resolutely.

  “I know you don’t want to share her now that you have her,” Owen said. “Really. I understand what that feels like. I’m not a huge fan of Alex, either, but he seems to genuinely care about Ais and Michael. I can’t speak for his father, though. I’ve never met the man, and most of what I know about him is through news reporting and hearsay.”

  “He has no right.”

  Owen put up his hands in concession. “Listen. I agree with you. Like you, Ais put up with a lot of torment. In fact, she spent almost all of her life in captivity. At least you have memories of freedom from before. You were an adult before you were abducted.”

  Ona furrowed her brow. “Abducted?”

  “Taken,” Luke explained. “The Tyneali took you, right?”

  “Oh.” She closed her eyes and pressed the bridge of her nose in a pincer grip. “Abducted. No. A shame, but no.”

  “What do you mean?” Ais asked. “We assumed that the women being held in the bunker had all been stolen.”

  Ona performed a doleful shake of her head. “No. We were locked away, but not stolen. We were stupid. Agreed to go because they promised us.”

  “What did they promise you?”

  “They said they would fix the men, but they needed to study the women. Experiment.”

  “You mean the men’s hormone dependency issue?” Owen asked.

  She nodded. “I went, because I had nothing else. My sister had gone with her men, and I had no one. I was a maid. No prospects like hers. I did what I could to be someone.”

  “You were already someone. You got set up for the okie-doke,” Luke said.

  Ona canted her head and narrowed her eyes with confusion.

  Ais patted her arm. “You will get used to their odd turns of phrase.”

  “The okie-doke,” Luke explained, “is when you enter a situation having a certain understanding of what will occur only to have been deceived. And then you’re trapped.”

  Ona nodded. “Yes. That is exactly the truth. Were told we would be studied. Said nothing of babies. They were supposed to release us. In the end, maybe better to stay.” She shrugged. “Safe inside.”

  “Things are better out here now,” Owen said. “I mean, comparatively speaking.”

  Luke grunted. “We can’t pretend to know what Jekh was like before we arrived here. You probably even look at us and think about how people who looked a lot like us ruined the place you loved, but I promise, we want things to be better. We want you to feel like you belong here.”

  Ona pulled Ais against her breast again and tucked her daughter’s head under her chin. “Who is this man who would claim her? Why did he do this?”

  “He didn’t do anything,” Luke said. “Again, we’re not fans of the Hauges for a lot of reasons, but none have to do with the actions of the Tyneali. They took genetic material from men against their will. The best information we’ve been able to gather is that most of the men didn’t want this. They didn’t know what was done to them, and that’s the case with Ais’s father. He didn’t know about Ais until recently, but she is his daughter, and being who he is, he needs to handle the relationship a certain way.”

  “What do you mean, who he is? Who is he?”

  “A member of a royal family on Earth,” Owen said. “Most of the men who were violated held positions of power. They were meant to be pawns—tools—the same as you and the other women in the bunker. The Tyneali wanted to use the results of their experiment to damage any potential relationship between the Jekhans and the humans on Earth. They didn’t want Jekhans to go back to Earth. They wanted you isolated.”

  “I see.” Ona’s brow furrowed. She rubbed Ais’s hair, idly for a few moments, and then nodded with finality. “They fought. We never knew why.”

  “Who fought?”

  “The Tyneali. Those who came. The ones who prodded and abused us. They did not agree. They had different goals to this experiment, but we did not know what they were.”

  “Sounds like there was splintering even within the splinter group,” Luke said to Owen.

  “That’s what I think, too. But, shit, as long as they keep their fighting off the planet, they can do what they want. I don’t know if we’d ever be able to defend ourselves from them if some of them ever decided to return and burn everything down to the ground, but we’d try.”

  “There are powerful weapons. Can shoot ships out of the sky.” Ona grinned as if she hadn’t just suggested that equipment dangerous enough to start Armageddon existed on Jekh. “We have.”

  “Who?” Ais asked.

  Ona waved noncommittally and released Ais from her grip only to reach for Michael.

  Owen handed him over without fuss. Of course, the traitorous tyke immediately stopped fussing.

  Owen sighed.

  “In the bunker,” Ona said. “Probably others like ours, too. Don’t know where.”

  “Yeah, we got the feeling there were more,” Owen said. “But I want to know more about these weapons.”

  “You go look.”

  Luke scoffed. “We will certainly do that when we go back to fetch Alex.” And they were going to fetch him, no matter how ambivalent Ona might have felt on the subject. Hauge’s twins were probably beside themselves with loneliness at his absence. And if Luke was being perfectly honest with himself, he had to admit he was already starting to miss verbally sparring with the man.

  And looking at him, t
oo, maybe.

  He picked up Ais’s wrist and held the COM near his ear.

  No sound from the bunker except for Hauge’s continued, even breathing. He was alive, at least.

  “You have to go with us,” Owen said.

  Ona sighed. “Fine.”

  “I would have thought you’d want to get back to your friends,” Luke said.

  “Of course, but once they’re out, they’ll crowd and ask questions. They’ll demand you help them seek out their loved ones, and I want my own time first. I don’t want to…” She indicated Michael. “Let go.”

  “Ah. But there will be plenty of time,” Ais said. “When we get home, the others won’t be there. Only family.”

  “Family.” Ona rolled her gaze to the sky and swayed side to side for a few seconds, turning the word over in her mouth again and again.

  She may have believed she no longer had a family. So many people on Jekh believed they didn’t, and for most, the suspicion was true.

  For as much shit as Luke talked about his siblings, he wouldn’t have given them up for anything. He’d flown across the galaxy for his friend. He would have done as much or more for Marco and Ma’s Precious Maria.

  “Family. Fine.” With a great amount of reluctance, Ona handed Michael to Ais. “You stay here. We will return.” She pointed to Luke and then Owen. “We go. If you have rations, take them. Our food supply has been running low for months and we’ve had few options. I believe the women would welcome something new.”

  “For sure,” Luke said. “I bet Duke’s got all kinds of delicacies on his ship. I’ll go get them.”

  “Great.” Owen chuckled. “When he learns you’ve cleaned him out, you can face his wrath.”

  “I’m not worried.” Luke palmed the ship’s door open and stepped onto the landing perch.

  Getting Hauge a little hot under the collar sounded like a perfect reason to raid the man’s ship.

  He was so fucking sexy when he was angry.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Marco jolted at the yank of his earpiece from behind him, and whipped around to find his sister lurking.

  “The hell ya doin’?”

  “What do I look like I’m doing?”

  Arching a brow, Precious flicked his earpiece at him and then folded her arms over her chest. She was wearing her usual jumpsuit. She donned the monstrosity whenever she was about to make a trip to Earth. Most people on the farm had come to think of the garish turquoise thing as her uniform.

  Grunting, Marco held up a piece to a transistor he’d been trying to reassemble. He’d wanted to have made a lot more headway on the flyer to show Owen when he returned, but he’d been so damned distracted. He couldn’t blame anyone but himself.

  He got back to work, ignoring Precious’s looming presence behind him. He knew what she wanted. She hadn’t walked all the way out to the buttcrack of the property to look at his face. She was there to nag about some shit, and he knew what. The only thing he had going for him was Sera, and he’d been avoiding her.

  He had to. He didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

  Never one to be deterred, his little sister, she knelt beside him, unmoving, practically boring a hole into the side of his face.

  “What do you want?” he spat.

  “Court said she hadn’t seen you around the table all week. Most of the time, I don’t pay much attention to where you assholes are, but you and Luke being absent at the same time is kinda noticeable. Where’ve you been?”

  He held up the transistor again, and closer to her face in case her eyes had gone bad or something.

  She slapped his hand away and rolled her eyes. “So what? Working or not, you never missed a meal before. A week’s worth is a lot. So again, I ask you, where’ve you been?”

  “Working.”

  “Where’ve you been sleeping all week? Edgar said you hadn’t been in your room at The Tin Can.”

  “I’m a grown man. I didn’t realize there were so many people keeping tabs on me.”

  “You’d prefer that folks not give a shit?”

  Of course he didn’t want that. He wanted to be able to move about on his own and have some space to figure things out when he needed to.

  Precious picked up his wire cutters and toyed with one of the rubber grips. “Elken was looking for you.”

  “Elken?” He set down the transistor and craned his neck to see her. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing was wrong. She wanted you to explain something to her, but you weren’t around, and she wouldn’t let anybody else explain it. Said Marco had to tell her, because apparently she thinks you’re the only one around here with a brain.” She scoffed. “Maybe the opposite’s true, hmm?”

  “Buzz off.”

  “And so, Sera didn’t know what to tell her and didn’t know where you were. Seemed kind of embarrassed about that, too. I wonder why.”

  Probably because she didn’t know where her boyfriend was.

  He rolled his eyes at the thought. Boyfriend. Seemed such an insignificant title when the role needed to be duplicated.

  “Well, you found me,” he grumbled.

  “Hooray for me.”

  He hadn’t been hard to find. He’d simply moved a bit. He’d spent a couple of nights at the old hunter’s cottage, which was empty due to Owen and Ais being away, but then moved on to an unused equipment shed near the southeast corner of the farm. The location had good light and ventilation, and the portable heater inside still worked. The shed was also large enough for him to assemble the flyer inside.

  Mostly, since the evening Sera had made her declaration of polyamory, he’d been keeping himself busy and not thinking at all. If he put too fine a point on the situation, he’d certainly come to understand that he and Sera simply weren’t meant to be. If they were, she wouldn’t need or want anyone else. In spite of what she’d said, he felt like yet again, he wasn’t enough for someone.

  He should have been used to that, but Sera was different. She’d come to him.

  Precious nudged his arm. “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I don’t buy that.”

  “Whatever.” Marco installed the transistor panel and pushed himself to his feet. His back muscles were screaming for a stretch. “You’re wearing your ugly suit. Going somewhere?”

  “Yeah.” Clucking her tongue, she nodded. “As soon as Luke and them get back, I’m fueling up and heading out.

  “Haven’t talked to them.” In fact, he hadn’t talked to anyone in a week. He’d taken off his wrist COM and deadened the signal. That was probably the only reason Precious hadn’t homed in on him faster. Normally, his siblings could have located him with a couple of words to their COMs. “They due back soon?”

  “Yeah. A couple of hours.”

  “Who’s with them?”

  “Ona, of course, and apparently they’re bringing back some of the ladies from the bunker. Dorro’s already on hand to examine them when they get here. Nothing invasive yet. They’re probably too traumatized to let anyone get close with medical equipment. He’ll want to make sure they’ve all been inoculated against all the pathogens the Terrans brought here, and to do some general checks to make sure they’re healthy enough to be in the general population.”

  “You said some of them. There are still some left at the bunker? Did they not have enough room to bring them all?”

  “Between Luke’s ship and Alex’s, they had plenty of room. Some of the women were too wary to leave, and some wanted to leave, but thought they should stay back for security purposes. Now that they’ve gotten the door open, they want to make sure that if anyone stumbles onto the bunker, they can’t get inside and do any damage. I’m going to go there with Owen when I get back from my trip and we’re going to try to do a clean recode of the security system and also to catalogue the weapons in there.”

  “Were they able to get any data about other facilities like that one?”

  “They didn’t
do much looking, you know? They needed to get Alex out of there before the ladies decided to hold him for ransom or something.”

  “Ransom? You pullin’ my leg?”

  Precious rolled her eyes. “See, that’s what you get for going full-bore hermit. You miss shit, and I’m not gonna be the one to catch you up. I came out here to tell you they’ll be here soon, so there’s that.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” He pulled her arm close and checked the time on her COM. Nearly supper. The folks at the main house were probably scrambling to get enough food cooked for the visitors. “Maybe I should go help get things set up for dinner. They always have a hard time getting the table extenders put in.”

  “Yeah, go do that. I’m sure Elken is waiting by the door with her question at the ready.”

  “What kind of question could she possibly have needed to ask that nobody else would know the answer to?”

  Precious sucked her teeth and curled her lip. “Shit, how should I know? And don’t think I don’t know what you’re really up to.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Come on, Marc, you do this skit every time some chick has danced a jig on top of your heart. You’re too fuckin’ sensitive.”

  “That’s funny, coming from a woman who’s carved graphic masterpieces into her ex-girlfriends’ car paint. That last one… Mwah.” He kissed his fingertips and tossed the kiss to her. “Masterpiece. What did Luke call it? ‘Hoe-na Lisa’?”

  Precious gave an aggressive shrug. “Lisa was a ho, and I let her know. Not that there’s anything wrong with hoes. Some of my best friends are hoes, but if you’re in a committed relationship, you’ve gotta rein that shit in. Morals, Marco.”

  “Uh-huh.” He’d given up on trying to make sense of his sister’s convoluted code of conduct. She made leaps of logic that not even Einstein would have been able to extrapolate.

  She jabbed his chest with her index finger. “I mean it. What’s your dysfunction? Tell me. You know I’ll make you tell me eventually, and you always suffer less if you tell me sooner.”