It wasn’t something they spoke about often, not even among themselves.
“I suppose you’re right, Overlord,” the man said and sagged a little.
Rager looked at him sharply. He supposed Rager was right? At any other time, he’d upbraid the man for his insolence, but he was too tired to remind the man that even when he was tired, he should be careful of how he worded things.
Besides, his ego wasn’t that fragile, he decided.
“Good,” he said and snapped the file shut. “Let’s start getting the soldiers in bed in shifts, keep guards posted and lookouts ready. Keep the scanners running up here to check for violence as well. And let me know if there’s any news about the fires that are still burning.”
Some of the fights had caused fires to break out in some of the abandoned buildings in a sector that was normally empty. There were still resources there that could be used, and buildings that could have been refurbished. He wanted the fires out to protect what was left. The thought of the fires spreading to populated areas was not a good one either, so the crews were down there trying to get some of those out.
It had been a long night, he thought, and he looked out to see that the horizon had started to turn light already. It wasn’t bright, just a faint difference in the horizon, but he knew it wouldn’t be long before the sun was up. Hopefully, his mate would be home soon, and they could sleep the day away. He probably shouldn’t take any time with her, after he’d assured himself she was cared for and given medical care if she needed it. He should probably get right back to work. Make sure the uprising was finished and everyone put in their proper place and leave her to sleep off her ordeal.
Fuck that.
5
“That’s it, Ann. I can’t take it anymore. Set this thing down on the nearest thing that looks like ground and let me out.” Rex snapped up out of his seat and glared down at her, his face red with anger and with what she was certain must be petulance.
He looked like a child she used to babysit, that would wake up from his nap too early sometimes. He was always cranky then, that little child, and red in the face, ready to do a ton of whining. She would feel pity for Rex, but there was an alternative to the amount of time he’d had to hold off his body’s needs. He could have used the device on the transporter, but he was too good for that.
There was another thing that made her conscience twinge, but not too much. She hadn’t told him the lava, water, and rocky mountain tops were gone now, and she’d made him wait for as long as possible by doing that. She cast another glance at him before she looked down at the ground again to find somewhere that wouldn’t put them in danger.
This could be her chance, she thought and tried to keep her face calm. He was desperate to relieve his bladder now, and she hoped it would make him clumsy. She saw an open field below, clear of everything but grass and a few trees at the edges. She put the transporter down in the middle of the field and turned to get up.
He was already out of his seat, and by the section where the stairs would go down so he could get to the ground. When he heard her stand up, he turned and held his hand out to her, his face a snarl of anger. The Rex she knew and detested was back, that quickly.
“No, you stay right there. I don’t want you out there trying to run away. Stay there and don’t you dare move!” He picked up the alien weapon he’d brought along with him and headed out of the transporter. She watched him run toward the trees, her breath held. Was he really that stupid? No, surely, he wasn’t.
It would be so easy if he really did plan to leave her in the transporter. Her lungs started to feel as if they’d swelled in her chest and she took in a soft breath. She was too stunned to believe it for a few seconds, and she just stood there, in front of her seat, and waited for it all to make sense.
She watched as he dodged behind a tree and fumbled with the front of his pants. He was a good 350 feet away. She gaped at him now, her brain raced over how stupid he was. She’d known, she’d known for a long time that he was arrogant, but this? This went well past stupid and maybe straight into moronic.
Did she have time? She glanced at Rex, his head tilted back now, completely relaxed, as he relieved himself. What made him so stupid, she wondered, did he think she was glad he’d kidnapped her? Or did he not care and think he had her cowed?
With a raised left eyebrow and lips pursed in a smirk, Ann closed the transporter glass shell, every breath shallow as she waited for the glass to finally close.
“Come on, come on, close,” she muttered softly as the stairs lifted into the transporter and the glass came down. Each second was a second he might notice that she was about to flee, and she wanted to be protected when he did finally notice. She didn’t want a stray beam from the alien gun to blast through and hit her.
She kept her finger on the button to lower the shell, her heart pounding way too fast as the seconds ticked by. Slowly, it lowered, was it always that slow or was that something new? Was fate against her?
“Please, please close!” she begged the protective shell and watched as the gap slowly started to get smaller. She glanced back and forth, between that gap and Rex, her face scrunched into a grimace, as the glass edged closer to the closed point.
The shell finally settled into the groove that ran around the perimeter of the transporter and Ann started to lift the machine. She wanted to whoop in delight, she wanted to give him the finger as she lifted off, but she also wanted to get away from him. Right now, that was more important than anything else.
She saw Rex turn, his mouth hung open in shock, as she began to rise. Apparently, it hadn’t occurred to him that this was exactly what would happen if he left her alone in the transporter. What an idiot.
She could see he was down there shouting and gesticulating, but she didn’t care about that. All she cared about was how quickly his face disappeared as she escaped. There was nothing he could do about it from down there but scream and rant in the field. She was no longer his prisoner. Relief wanted to flood into her veins, but she clamped down on it, determined not to mess this up.
She started to pull the machine back away from him as it lifted higher into the sky, just in case. She didn’t want to be directly over him, where he could hit her, if he fired that weapon.
As if he’d heard her thought, Rex lifted the weapon and fired it. Ann flinched away and turned to face the other side of the transporter. She waited for an explosion, anything, but nothing happened. She turned back to see that the blue light just bounced off the transporter and didn’t make the slightest sound as it did so.
Ann laughed, a real laugh of amusement, and stood up to look down at Rex below. Slowly, with a grin of triumph, she held her free hand up and waved as she turned the transporter to head back towards California. It wasn’t a friendly wave, it was definitely a ‘haha, fucker, I escaped’ kind of wave, and she laughed again as she sat back down.
She hadn’t had a lot of time to think when he’d left her in the transporter, and she didn’t really think about too much now, she just took tiny little breaths and pushed the transporter further away from Rex. Away from the danger he’d threatened her with.
When the field was gone, and the ragged peaks of mountains came into view, she started to relax. Until that point, she’d been afraid that the engine would fail, or some kind of geyser would open up from the ground below and knock her out of the sky. Anything could have happened to mess up her escape, and she was well aware of it. Life wasn’t always easy, and just when you thought you were good, life had a way of laughing at you like a high school bully that’s just seen you fall flat on your face into a pile of dog poo.
She swallowed when she saw the first glow of the lava fields, took a deep breath, and lifted the transporter higher. The transporter kept the temperature inside at a comfortable level, if slightly cool, so she didn’t feel the heat, but she could see the glow of the unimaginable hell below. She was kind of glad she’d left Rex on the other side of that mess. He’d have to walk a l
ong way to get around that huge rift in the earth’s crust. Maybe further than a person could walk.
He could always fly across it, maybe, but he definitely wouldn’t be back in her part of the world anytime soon. Not unless Rager sent someone after him to deal with him properly. She didn’t know what her mate would do once she got back, and right now, she didn’t care.
She was safe and free of him, at last!
That’s when it occurred to her that she might have just sentenced him to death. Her hand on the joystick pulled back a little. Maybe she shouldn’t leave him out there in the wild like that? She should go back for him, right?
After all, deep down in there somewhere, he was still the boy that had taken her breath away for all of those years. They’d survived the cataclysm together, and then been stuck in a bunker for years together. Was it right for her to just… leave him? Would her parents forgive her? Would his?
Ann felt a twinge of guilt and something that might be regret. The transporter slowed its progress, but it didn’t stop. Her head turned, and she looked back, in the direction of where she’d left Rex, only an hour ago. Maybe she should go back and at least drop some food down to him. She had plenty in the cupboards on board the transporter.
She was just about to turn around, to head back to help him out, for old time’s sake, for Amanda, his mother’s sake, when her jaw went tight and she took a deep breath. No. She couldn’t offer someone like him help. She thought about the explosions that had woken her up, the people that had probably died, because of him, and the guilt melted away.
His words replayed in her mind, about how he was going to kill her baby, about how she was scum, and she remembered the way he’d treated her, especially after she’d been mated to Rager. Her hand pushed the transporter forward again. He’d just have to learn to survive or die out here. Maybe, if he was lucky, Rager would send someone out to take him to a prison somewhere far away. She didn’t know and she didn’t care.
Her heart hardened to him completely, after so many years of hope, adoration, and blindness to his faults. He’d been her first crush, the first man she thought she loved. But he hadn’t been. That was Rager. It might not make any sense, but she did love the alien that was her mate, she loved him more than she could have thought possible. And she needed to be in his arms, safe, locked away from the world. Whether it made sense or not, she didn’t care.
Exhaustion ate at her exhilaration, and even though she wanted to watch every mile that passed, she knew she’d have to sleep soon. She set the autopilot on a course to return her to the house and pushed the seat Rex had stretched out in into a flat surface, almost like a narrow bed. She used the facilities, had a long drink of water from a glass jar, and had one of the small snacks she kept in the transporter’s food area.
She wished she had her watch communicator again. She’d call Rager and her parents, tell them she was on her way back home, but she didn’t have it. The transporter might have some kind of communication device, but she hadn’t figured out where it was, if one existed. With a push against a panel, she found a thin blanket and a pillow, and put them on the chair. With a grateful sigh, she dimmed the lights and sank down onto the chair.
She was so tired, she thought she’d drop off right to sleep. Her mind whirled around, focused, and then span off again on some new line of thought instead. Was the house the right place to go back to? Had the sector been destroyed? How far had the fighting spread? What would be the repercussions?
It was all a tangle of thoughts that she tried to tease out, to settle her mind so that she could sleep. There was a low hum, not really a noise, almost like road noise, that came from the transporter, and the sound soothed her. Her thoughts started to slow, at last, and it wasn’t so hard to concentrate on one thing.
Rager. He was safe. She could feel it. When she got home, she wanted to tell him how she felt, that she loved him, but he wasn’t the kind of guy that whispered I love you into your ears now, was he, she thought to herself. He was an “I’ll fuck you ‘til your legs turn to jelly” kind of guy, definitely, and she loved that, but she wanted to hear those three little words, too.
Maybe she shouldn’t be so greedy, but she couldn’t help it. From the odd orange glow of his eyes to the tips of his toes, so far below his head she had to crane her neck to look up at him, she loved every square inch of her man. His tattooed skin was art she loved to trace, his skin was silky smooth and covered the hard planes of his muscles. His body, oh man, his body was art too. Everything about him made her melt, but it wasn’t all lust. She loved those parts of him, but most of all she loved his brain, the way he wanted to do everything right, the way he wanted to create this new world, and how intelligent he was about it all.
Sometimes, he’d argue, or growl that she didn’t understand, but he’d think about whatever it was, and usually come back and say she was right. That meant he was a good listener, and he valued her opinion. But was it love?
She pulled the red blanket beneath her chin and stared out through the glass of the roof. The sky was still dark, but there was a glow, the warning that dawn was on the way.
Did her mate love her?
Did it matter?
In the end, she supposed it didn’t matter, she was mated to him for life, whether they loved each other or not. He’d said once that their bond went beyond love, that it was deeper than just that physical and mental connection. How could that be, she’d wondered, but now, as she felt a warm glow in her chest, she understood. But was it love?
“You’re never happy, are you, Ann?” she said out loud and turned over in the chair. She stuck her hand under the pillow and wiggled her head around until it was just right.
Shouldn’t the father of her child love her? She let her free hand roam until she found the spot where she thought the baby was. She cupped that spot and smiled. Her baby. Her child.
She’d have someone to give all of her love to if Rager didn’t want it, she knew. Still, he would have her love, if he wanted it or not. She wouldn’t stop loving him, just because he didn’t say it back to her.
She started to drift, her thoughts almost on pause between each breath she took. She wanted to sleep, she wanted to think, until finally, there was nothing but peace.
6
Rager watched as the sun came up over the horizon. He was in his office, wrecked but ready for battle if it was necessary. He was a soldier after all. He hadn’t earned the top position on this mission just because of who his parents were. He’d earned the right to be king here.
He’d spent years in battle as his people fought to maintain control of their world. There’d been battles with alien races, races that wanted to subjugate his people, throughout their history. They had always overcome those threats.
The people of his world began to populate other planets over time, a grand experiment to spread their genes and to discover new worlds. His people wanted knowledge above all things and contemplated complex problems to gain that knowledge. They’d accomplished things other races had only dreamed about.
Even the people here had contemplated time travel, but they’d been too focused on war with each other to accomplish it. They would head in the right direction for a short time, they would discover something new to them, but then they would look at the wrong application of that new knowledge. They would use it to destroy rather than to explore.
It was a shame really, and one of the reasons his people had left them to destroy themselves. There was hope that the ones that had survived their own stupidity would be able to learn that life was not meant to be war and poverty, subjugation and destruction. He’d hoped to teach them a new way.
He could see now that the people would need a lot more education than he’d planned to implement. With a sigh, he ran his hand across his face, stuck his booted feet up on his desk, and leaned back in his chair. The sun penetrated his eyelids, made the burning orbs ache, so he put his hands over them.
She’ll be back soon, he told himself.
She could have fought it, denied that he was her one-true-mate, but she was sensible too. She’d wanted him as much as he wanted her.
And she’d given herself up to him. That didn’t mean she allowed him to walk all over her though. She’d found ways to get him to come around to her way of thinking, or pushed him into providing her with items or information only he could give.
Now, she would be the mother of his child. She’d faced that just as bravely as she did anything else. He was proud of her, proud of the way she faced her problems. It was more than he’d been able to do when she’d revealed her pregnancy.
He regretted his lukewarm response now. He’d thought about it quite a few times throughout the hours that passed. He hadn’t wanted a child so quickly, but it was on the way. He wondered now if it was a girl or a boy.
Would it look like her, gentle and breath-taking, or would it look like him? Fierce, harsh some might say, but definitely a warrior. An overlord.
His child, this first child, would be the overlord when his days were done. If it lived, of course. He had brought the technology the new world would need to ensure survival rates were good with each new child that was born. Things happened though, and the alien technology could perform miracles in many cases, but sometimes, accidents happened that did damage too quickly.
He had to stop thinking so far ahead, he reminded himself. Sometimes, you need to focus on the present, be in that moment, and make quick decisions. So far, he had done that for most of the night. Now, he had to make another.
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