Too Long a Soldier (Kingdom Key Book 3)

by TylerRose.

  Eyes blazing with the intensity of her thoughts, she glared down on him. No vomiting this time. No muddying of her mind. She overcame the dense crystal power of the planet easily this time, too iron calm and infuriated to allow the planet’s energy to touch her. Not this time.

  “From whom am I descended? The one who called himself Zeus? Or Earnol’s brother Taff, who just called himself God?”

  Jiogaard held her challenging eyes, reading that which she had not shared. She would not be denied this time. Nor would she be moved from this spot until she had what she came for.

  “Both. Taff was Zeus’ son by a Sistarian wife who did not go to Earth.”

  “How many generations down am I from Taff?”

  “You are his great grandchild.”

  “So Jesus Christ was my grandfather,” she said.

  “He was.”

  “Who is my biological father?”

  “Jesus of Nazareth had a son by Mary Magdalene. That son is your biological father. His name is Mik’Hial.”

  “Is he still alive? Given that my family is so long-lived, I would expect him to be,” she said.

  “He is and you know him. You can now look for him when you go back and he can know that you are aware of certain truths about your life. He has been waiting patiently for you to find your truths. We all have. Once again you are very early in accomplishing it.”

  “Taff is Earnol’s full or half-brother?” she demanded.

  “Full. They have the same mother and were born five years apart, Earnol being the elder,” Jiogaard answered.

  “Earnol wanted Taff to stay with him on Sistair,” she said. “He was furious at their father, Zeus, for the affairs he continually had with other women and how much it hurt his mother. And he hated that Taff wanted to go off with him to Earth.”

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  “Zeus divorced their mother to marry Hera. Specifically to marry her.”

  “Yes,” he confirmed.

  “That means Earnol’s anger is misdirected. He takes it out on me that his father and brother committed infidelities and their father left their mother for another woman. That Taff would then impregnate a native Earth woman was too much like what their father had done to so many others over the centuries. It also means Earnol is far older than he says he is.”

  “Yes.”

  She stared at him so hard he could almost feel a hole forming in his face.

  “Are you fucking yanking me?” she growled. “All this. My whole life of interference after interference and the truth he is so pissed about is a family squabble that his father and brother couldn’t keep their dicks in their pants?!”

  Jiogaard drew a cleansing breath. She’d figured out a large part of it. “Bluntly said, but yes. That is a part of his reasons. Shall we share a pot of tea and talk more comfortably in your garden?”

  She did not take his hand but went with him readily enough. “Imnytep was the one who invaded Earth and the Sistarians who were there waiting for me tried to fight him off.”

  “Yes, some of them did. Others fled to hide, knowing they were no match for his energy.”

  “So there are still some of the original group left on Earth, aren’t there?” she demanded.

  “There are, though I cannot tell you who they are,” he said.

  “Okay, but there’s more. I know there is. The Celestial Congress station didn’t start out as the Celestial Congress. The Congress is a few hundred or so years old. They moved it and parked behind Pluto to hide from Imnytep, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And to wait,” she continued.

  He sat her in a chair and took the one opposite her, her demanding eyes insisting he tell her.

  “Wait for the coming Immaculate,” she said. “An Eminent Doyen who would evolve into a planet and people maker. Like the Mother.”

  “Yes.”

  “So getting me away from Earth when Adamantine came was to keep me from having contact with Jerome and his Staff Power, and so that Earth would be destroyed and all those who were still waiting for me to learn all this and begin to advance through my evolutions would be killed.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he has tried to kill Earth in order to prevent me from having my circle of helpers. Not just Julian as Adjutant, but people with specific jobs in helping me grow and be ready to make a world and a galaxy like the Mother did.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who are they?” she demanded.

  “I cannot tell you specifically who. They have to find you and fall into place naturally.”

  “Nails,” she said. “He is one of them. I already knew that. What is his real name? Kevin is a cover. So is Nails.”

  “You will have to ask him. If you are free to speak, then so is he,” Jiogaard told her.

  “I’m free to speak. I am free to defend myself.”

  “Always,” he nodded. “Now that you know enough of the past again, you can go forward and make a life.”

  “So where do I go?” She halted herself. The K’Tran were going to give her Osan’s land. “If I am free to make a life then I am free to use all resources, knowledge and abilities available to me. I can seek profit and personal benefit by any means I choose.”

  “You can,” he confirmed.

  She suddenly thought of all the late nights when she had extended her strength to help someone leave an abusive spouse or parent. All those times she had refused to answer Landra Ahr’s questions about her thoughts. She had never called herself god. But they had called out to their god and she had fulfilled a desperate prayer.

  If she was here, then she had not done anything to render her Cause unjust.

  “You need not deny that you are a goddess,” Jiogaard said. “You are well on your way, Tyler. You are young, is all. Development takes time. When you died and came back in a cloned body, you lost all you had gained. You are starting over, and already making up for it in tremendous leaps and bounds. You are moving far faster than we thought you would. Things will happen when you are physically, mentally, and emotionally ready for them to happen.”

  “Over the course of four thousand years?” she asked.

  “Or more.”

  “The Doyen Confederacy,” she remembered. “Why have they never contacted me?”

  “Earnol kept them away. He forbade them from interfering with you.”

  “He told Solomon to kill me, too,” she realized. “I don’t know why I never saw that before. If we find the payment, we have proof. Can I confront him now? Can you bring charges against him? Judge him?”

  “Yes. Your last act as Witness will be your first as the Advocate: To expose him to the Congress and call for me. Do so when you are ready to, but make it soon. He has attempted to kill an entire planet in order to prevent the Immaculate from progressing. It is a crime on Sistair to try to prevent a Doyen from fulfilling their potential. It is a crime to try to kill an entire planet of people. There are many many more charges that he will face.”

  Fully satisfied, she sat against the back of her seat. “I really am free.”

  “Completely,” Jiogaard said.

  She smiled in a new way, an expression most pleased. “I gotta go.”

  Chapter Thirty Seven

  She returned to the warehouse, intentionally arriving on the roof with a need to be alone for a moment before entering the residence. The night was warm and calm. The energies around her were, for once, silent. She felt the heartbeats of five million people from all directions, stretching forty miles. Felt them as easily as she saw the lights of the city. Through the Rovan-induced Widening, she had become stronger than the forces oppressing her.

  They could not—No. There was no “they.” It was all the doing of one. Earnol could not touch her again. The end game of their conflict was about to be set into motion. She controlled it now. She decided when.

  Even if she’d not heard the metal stairs creak, she would have known Jerome was approaching. She’d felt him leave his room to pas
s though the apartment to the rear door, had felt him come outside.

  She sensed him more keenly now than before the Widening, sensed him from farther away and with better precision. He had shape now, definition of form, a signature. She was aware of his personal presence beneath the dark shroud of Staff Power. She could identify his soul now, could feel the essence that was Jerome T. Black. For the first time, she could feel him.

  She didn’t flinch as his arms slid around from behind. There was no spark this time as he held her close to his chest. She welcomed the intimacy of his embrace, immersed herself in the rightness of it.

  “You weren’t gone long. About ten seconds.”

  She only nodded.

  “Get your answers?”

  She nodded again, arms reaching up to place her hands at the back of his neck. Love. She allowed it into her soul and into her heart for the first time in eons.

  “I remember everything. I remember the stuff I forgot in coming back to the living.”

  “What now?” he asked.

  She remained silent, having no clue what now. All she could say was, “I’m free.” A pause and she laughed a sudden sound, loud and genuine. “For the first time in my life I’m really free.”

  He smiled to himself and kissed the top of her head. “I meant what are you going to do?”

  “I have no idea right now. If I had it in me, I’d be scared to death.”

  He could appreciate that, and stood with her in the silence as long as she wanted to. At last she turned in his arms and snaked hers around his waist to lay her cheek on his warm chest. So much between them. So much unsaid. Too much.

  “Thank you for being patient with me while I figured it out,” she said, and exhaled a satisfied sigh.

  The strain in her chest was gone, the ache in her bones at last healed. She could stand here with him for days.

  “Let’s go inside. I think you should go to sleep early.”

  “I’m not tired.” She descended the open ironwork stairs.

  “Wanna share a bowl?” he suggested.

  “Tempting as that sounds, no.”

  She stopped at the door and turned around to wait for him to be closer.

  “I’d rather share your bed and I don’t want to be high for it.”

  He knew exactly what she meant. She didn’t move as he reached past to turn the knob. She kissed him. A different kind of kiss. He pushed open the door and they went in with mouths fully engaged. Foot kicking backwards, the door slammed shut. A blind reach to twist the lock as her thumbs slipped into the loops of his jeans. She’d never done that before and he found it particularly intimate and erotic. He walked her backwards step by step to his room, passing the living room with four pair of eyes watching them.

  Soon as he shut his bedroom door, she was in his arms, lips crushing together and her previous control gone. She was ardent, demanding more of him as her fingers all but ripped the buttons of his jeans off in opening them. Jerome knew there would be no settling this time. Not just sexual release of hands and mouths. Not this time.

  He grabbed the bottom of her shirt and dragged it up off her. She almost never wore a bra, a fact he appreciated immensely every time she walked by. His own shirt off and in each other’s arms again, soft breast to hard, coarsely haired chest. Warmth of her smooth skin, his calloused hands grating like sandpaper over her back in a sensation that always gave her a shiver.

  He walked her toward the bed, both mouths continuing their demands until he tossed her onto it. Her stretch pants were all but shreds by the time he got them over her feet and his own erection pained him so that he was compelled to ram into her and use her hard.

  He took a breath to calm himself and take the moment to slide his pants off. Falling over her, landing on his forearms, her sweet, sweet thighs sliding up his hips.

  “I am not a gentle lover,” he said.

  She smiled. “I never asked you to be.”

  Her hands gripped the back of his neck and she pulled herself up from the bed to kiss him. His hand on her breast to grip and squeeze and she gasped into his mouth in mild climax. He loved the way her orgasm tasted. Metallic heat that stoked his own hunger for her. No other woman had done this to him.

  “You really want me to do this?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Look at me, Tyler.”

  Her eyes fluttered open, finding his smoky and intense. She whispered two words.

  “Please, Sifu.”

  He held her gaze another few seconds before his knees parted abruptly to open her thighs wide, taking command of the moment with no intention of giving it back. His right hand slipped through her hair to cradle the back of her head while his left reached between their bodies to guide his hardness to her virginal opening. He hadn’t been this hard for a woman in three years. Hadn’t felt so alive in nineteen months.

  “Point of no return,” he said.

  “Stop teasing me, dammit,” she growled, short fingernails digging deep and painful into his shoulders.

  He drove in, the squeeze of her tightness nearly as painful to him as his hardness invading was for her. She gave a brief yelp, tensing to hold tight to his upper arms as the jolt seared from belly out along nerve meridians. She shook with the shock of it, having forgotten just how much the first time could hurt. He saw it in her eyes, as their eye contact was broken only for the instant hers closed, and she came a hot flood of musk that made him shiver.

  He surprised himself with his restraint, holding still until she was able to relax under him and begin to move. The undulation of her own hips, along with a silent nod, let him continue. She was an experienced soul, only the body untried, and orgasmic to quantities and intensities no other woman he’d been with could come close to matching.

  He attempted to increase his speed, finding her tightness would not allow it yet. He didn’t want to hurt her by forcing it, decided instead to enjoy the sensations of a woman being opened fully for the first time.

  They moved together for an eternity of quiet breaths and tender kisses. Enveloped in moist warmth and sensation, there was no rushing. Neither was in any hurry to have the consummation of their still unspoken love end any time soon.

  His left hand cupped the curve of her buttock, stroked down the underside of her thigh to lift it. Keeping most of his weight off her by leaning on his right forearm, looking down on her radiance in love making. Her intense eyes said everything her throat would not. He wanted to hear her say it. He understood what Julian had said. She would never say it first.

  He stopped all motion, thunderstruck by her beauty and the pain of realization of an emotion he’d not allowed himself for far too long. Far, far too long. His fingers caressed her cheek.

  “I love you, Tyler. I have since that moment beside my car when a butterfly landed on your finger.”

  A spontaneous tear slid from the corner of her eye. A joyful tear for the words she’d wanted to hear for much too long.

  “I love you too.”

  Fierce heat in the joining of their lips, Jerome lost his self-restraint. He thrust hard, demanding her flesh accept him and surrender what he wanted. She met him in that passion, hips rising fast to increase their combined force. His ejaculation occurred so unexpectedly that he had no time to withdraw. He tensed into a shudder and a groan, slipping out of her soon as he was able.

  “You’re not on birth control,” he said.

  “I’m Sistarian. I can’t get pregnant yet. It’s a function of physical maturity, not according to a monthly biological clock,” she smiled up to him. “My cervix hasn’t opened yet.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  He got up to lie at the head of the bed with the pillows and she followed. He drew her in close for a long, quiet cuddle.

  “I’ve never had a virgin before.”

  “I have a virgin ass too. We’ll have to take care of that another time.”

  He chuckled. “How about that bowl?”


  “Hmmm, sure,” she said, turning onto her side to face away from him. “Race you to it.”

  “You can bring it here with your mind. You get it.”

  “Yeah, I can do that, huh?”

  She fell asleep that fast and was, for once, at peace.

  He smiled to himself and pulled up the sheet to cover her. For the first time in a long time, she slept through the night. And so did he.

  She woke at seven, alone in the bed. Jerome had gone early for his daily run. She moved the sheet aside, not seeing any blood on herself. Picking up her clothes, she teleported to her room for a bath. Rough as he’d been, she didn’t have any lingering pains. Still, she enjoyed a bit of a soak and finished herself off with a morning clit popper made more intense for the warm water encasing her.

  Finding a hole in a seam of a pair of stretch pants, she went to the closet to make new copies, relegating the old ones to her pajama drawer. Lace cuff pants in lavender with a long, light shirt in matching color over a white tank top. She liked these pants very much, and they would do well on K’Tran with the slightly warmer average temperatures.

  She went down to the kitchen to get coffee, knowing Landra Ahr had some questions. Seeing FIBER! in big black letters on her little bowl made her smile.

  “Can Gable come up?” she asked, pouring in a tiny scoopful. “We should all talk together when Jerome gets back.”

  She went outside to sit at the table with Roc and enjoy the morning’s warm sun and wait. Jerome came up the back stairs a few minutes later, stopping to bend over and kiss her from behind the chair, his hand sliding firmly up the front of her throat to cup under her chin.

  “How are you this morning?”

  “Fine,” she smiled.

  “Good. I’ll take a quick shower and be right out.”

  Another kiss and he went inside. Tyler looked out over the trees and sighed a particularly satisfied sigh. Landra Ahr came outside with Jerome and Gable, and sat on the specially made bench that could accommodate his weight. Starbird paused her work on the Torino to join the group.

  “What did you learn on Sanctuary?” Landra Ahr asked.