Paax had always had trouble communicating his thoughts to others. He thought faster, such was his genius, often made leaps, and grew frustrated waiting for others to catch up, such was his ego. He worked best directing a team where the males followed his orders and did not question him. They understood that Paax had thoroughly thought out the problem and trusted that his method was best. That was how his lab worked when he served as a geneticist. That was how the Judgment worked when he became warlord.
To have his mate doubt him, to have to explain every decision when he made countless decisions daily…
He should apologize. He needed to apologize, but not just yet.
He investigated the musicians Mercy claimed to admire and listened to their entire catalogue. Terran music was not disagreeable but the rhythmic melodies were an acquired taste. After the first dozen hours, he found his foot keeping that alien rhythm.
The insect musicians grew on him.
The Judgment was ready to enter the Gate. The journey through the Gate would take an hour. For a vessel the size of the battle cruiser, passengers would not notice the hour in flux. They didn’t even need to use a safety harness. It also meant that care of the Judgment rested solely with the navigator for the next hour and there was nothing for Paax to do but pace and unnerve Darian.
He decided to utilize the downtime and consume a meal. Food had been reduced to barebones sustenance. He drew no pleasure from food, not with his mate upset.
In the cafeteria he found his mate’s mother preparing a tray.
Dorothy looked up, surprise registering on her face. “Haven’t seen you around lately,” she said.
“I have many duties that require my attention.”
He watched as she spread a legume paste on a bagel. He found the paste too sweet but knew his mate savored it. Dorothy noticed him watching. “Mercy has been trying to come down for breakfast for an hour now so I decided to bring it to her.”
“She prefers oatmeal and honey for the morning meal.” It baffled him how a plain grain could satisfy her and keep her from hunger but she insisted.
“Unless someone is there to spoon-feed her, she’s limited to what she can eat with one hand.” She picked up an orange globe and gestured with it.
Shame flooded Paax. He should be the one to feed his mate. She should not struggle on his own. Only his pride kept him from her side.
It boiled down to pride. He might be bad at explaining his reasoning and logic but his pride smarted when his mate did not accept that he had her best intentions in mind. She consumed his thoughts and directed his every action. How could she doubt him?
Because he avoided her when she needed him, like an honorless dog.
Paax plucked an orange globe off the tray and bit into it. Acrid bitterness flooded his mouth and he spit out the offending fruit. “Terrans eat this?”
“We don’t eat the rind,” Dorothy said. She demonstrated on a second orange how to peel the fruit. “This is the first harvest from our very own orange trees.”
“This grew on the Judgment?” He peeled his orange, using his nails to separate the bitter rind from the fruit. He was imprecise and punctured the fruit, juice leaking down his hands.
“When I was a little girl,” Dorothy said, “oranges were commonplace. Every grocery store had them; stacks and stacks. You bought them pounds at a time and they were cheap. During the invasion, they vanished, like a lot of stuff. The groves were all destroyed in Florida and California, I heard. They only started showing up again in stores a few years ago.”
Paax said nothing as his mate’s mother rambled. He could not afford to offend both females.
“We had orange flavoring and artificial juice pumped full of vitamin C but not the real thing. Do you know this will be the first real orange Mercy’s had since she was a kid? Sometimes I can’t believe the way the world changed.”
Paax unpeeled the fruit and discovered that it had segments. He popped a segment in his mouth, savoring the acidity and sweetness. “What is this Terran fruit? I approve.”
“An orange.”
His brows furrowed. “My translator must not be working properly. That is a color.”
“It is also the name of the fruit. This is a navel orange.”
Terrans did enjoy words that had multiple meanings, almost as if they relished confusing their alien allies. He had interacted with enough to Terrans to believe this to be true.
“I should get back. She’s waiting,” Dorothy said, standing.
Paax placed a hand on the tray. “I will feed my mate, but first, please, I have three questions.”
Dorothy sat back down.
“What is my mate’s favorite color?”
“Aquamarine. She wears it often enough.”
Paax nodded, turning this information over in his mind. He would know the information she demanded if he were observant. “And her favorite food is… chocolate?”
“Obviously. Is there a point to this?”
“One more. What is her favorite song?”
Dorothy glanced over her shoulder, towards the kitchen. “Here Comes the Sun. Charles use to sing… He sang it to Mercy during air raids.” She sighed. “I haven’t thought about that in years.”
“Thank you for the information.”
Back in his quarters, he found Braith standing guard at the door. Inside, his mate was in the cleansing room. Steam curled from under the door. His sons slept. Terran infants slept a lot, he learned, just not always in successive periods of time.
His sons slept together in one basket that Mercy insisted calling a bassinet. the word sounded like a Terran fish or a basket for fish. Soon they would outgrow the fish basket and require separate accommodations. For the moment they rested on their backs, holding hands.
“Always be good to each other,” Paax said, his thumb brushing their downy hair. “You are brothers. You will need each other. Do not fight.” It was the most important wisdom he could think to impart. He continued, “I had a twin once. We were inseparable. He was part of my soul. Even when we drifted apart, we were always together.”
Omas had been his oldest and closest companion. For all his flaws, for all the cruelty that he would do as warlord, he had been a good friend and a better brother.
“Do you miss him?”
Mercy
Paax stiffened at the sound of her voice. “Daily. It is like losing a limb but the sensation remains,” he said.
“Or losing a horn?”
A hint of a smile played across his face. “Yes, just so.”
“Sometimes I forget he was your brother,” she said.
“Twin.” His expression softened. “When I think of Omas, I do not remember the end. I remember him as we were, before our warrior training.”
“When you were children. People change.”
“Even as warlord,” Paax said before a pause, as if searching for the correct words. “The cruelty only happened in the last years, after he lost his mate.”
“Are you trying to convince me that the man who threatened to murder you and rape me was good and kind?” She could still feel how Omas had loomed above her, leering. Then leaned down and sniffed her hair. She had felt dirty after that.
“It would break me to lose you, little star. Losing Naomi did the same to Omas.”
Mercy leaned against the doorframe. Paax stood over the bassinet. Axil or Drake, she wasn’t sure, made a cranky noise. Even as he tried to convince her that that scariest person she ever met in real life deserved compassion, he stroked their son’s back to sooth them back to sleep.
What kind of men did she want her sons to grow up to be? Ones with compassion? Ones who understood that the world was more than black and white, good guys and bad guys, and sometimes the ones who wronged you deserved empathy? Or men who held nothing tender in their hearts and only knew violence?
She’d lived a year now in the Mahdfel world and saw the violence first hand.
She wanted her sons to know compassion, too.
He snorted, swallowing a laugh. She loved that sound. Mostly he made it when he read something inaccurate or when he was surprised but she loved it more when she inspired his near-laugh.
Shyness overcame Mercy. Wet hair clung to her and dripped down her back. The silk robe was barely tied. She adjusted the front and tightened the belt.
His eyes tracked her movements. “I brought your morning meal.”
“Thank the stars, I’m starving.”
A plate with a bagel and peanut butter and an already peeled orange waited for her in the common room. She sat curled up on the sofa and pulled the plate to her lap.
“Your mobility has improved,” Paax observed.
“If that’s your idea of an apology—” She sighed. “I’m sorry. I told myself that I wouldn’t pick a fight the next time I saw you, so let me try again. Yes. I’m able to move pretty well now. I can even get in and out of a chair all on my own.” She picked up an orange segment, closed her eyes and breathed deep the scent before popping it in her mouth. “Oh, that’s so good. I haven’t had a real orange in ages.”
“Since the invasion.”
Her eyes opened in surprise. “That’s right.”
“Chocolate, aquamarine and Here Comes the Sun.”
She laughed. “Did you make a list?”
“You asked me to answer. I researched.”
“For a week? I need you here, Paax.”
His head nodded. “Now I am the one who must apologize. I have wronged you, little star, and it is difficult for me to know how to change.”
“But you understand the problem, right?”
He sat on the sofa next to her. His arm went around her shoulder and she curled next his warm body. It felt so good to snuggle, to be safe in his arms and share in his strength. She didn’t want to fight but she didn’t want to be a doormat, either. She loved him too much to let him walk all over her.
“I love you, you know,” she said.
“And I love you,” he said. “You consume my thoughts, my actions.”
“So why is this so hard?” They loved each other. Love conquered all, right?
“Because I am old and set in my ways. I have never had to explain my actions before.”
“Not so old,” Mercy murmured.
“But you agree about being set in my ways?”
“Try explaining your actions. I’m ready to listen.”
Paax reached over and handed her the plate. She nibbled on the bagel while he collected his thoughts.
“My mother lost many children,” he said. “That is the short version. Omas and I were our parents only surviving birth.”
“Twins.”
“Yes, which is rare.”
“Meridan threw a bunch of statistics at me.”
“As a child, I was too young to understand how dangerous it was for my mother to have so many pregnancies, how it wore her body down, but I saw the heartbreak.”
“That had to be hard on your parents.” She could easily picture her heartbreak if she lost one or, stars forbid, both of her babies. Her heart hurt just thinking about it.
“When I was older, I realized that my parents were not a good genetic match. This may have been the problem. So I made the test.” The genetic test that matched human women to Mahdfel warriors; the test that matched them.
“Just like that.”
He shrugged. “Do you want my story or do you want false modesty?”
“Wow,” she said with a reluctant smile. “How do you manage with your head that big?”
“My head is average,” he said with seriousness, like she was missing the point.
“I mean, can you wear a hat? Get a good night’s sleep on our tiny pillows? Can you even stand up? The weight has to be enormous.”
“You are teasing me.”
“I am,” she said, satisfaction soaking into her voice. “You’re just so teaseable.”
He grumbled under his breath but Mercy sensed he was pleased. Body language, relaxed and open, betrayed him. A hand on her back rubbed absently in a slow circle.
“So, after your humble brag, you…” she prompted.
He was slow to answer. “I wanted to spare you my mother’s suffering.”
“I’m not your mother.”
“I am well aware.”
“We’re a strong match.”
“Yes.”
“But you worry.”
“You consume my thoughts, I told you. Worry paralyzed me. The medic said the protocol was to keep the mother uninformed, to minimize emotional injury—”
“If Kalen thought it was a good idea, that’s your first clue it’s a bad one.”
“I accepted his judgment as sound.” He paused. “It was the wrong decision.”
Mercy snorted. “I took the birth control shot.”
She pulled back and studied his face for a reaction. “It’s not that I don’t want more babies, I do, just—”
“Kalen discussed birth control methods after your surgery.”
“What did I just say about listening to Kalen?”
“And I said that I would discuss it with you when you were ready. We agreed that you required at least a year to recover completely.”
Mercy settled back into him. “Thank you. That means a lot.”
“You do not have to explain the actions you make to your own anatomy.”
“That’s awfully magnanimous of you.”
“You are teasing me again.”
“Damn straight I am.” It felt so good to tease him. Things had been too serious between them.
His pulled her closer. She breathed in the warm, spicy scent of him. “I am not good at sharing my thought process. I am accustomed to giving orders.”
“And being followed?”
He grunted. “I will try to explain my actions but know there may not be time to share every decision with you.”
Her fingers twisted in the fabric of his shirt. “Just try for the stuff that impacts our family, okay?”
“Agreed.”
“Good.” Then, “I had an idea I wanted to discuss with you.”
“Your timing is suspicious.”
Mercy laughed. It felt so good to laugh. “It’s actually something I talked over with Daisy way back when. I think we need a welcome committee for the new brides.”
“And you would be this welcome committee?”
“Yes. Don’t you think the warlord’s wife should greet the new ladies? Give them a tour? Let them know they’re not alone.”
“Their mates should do that.”
“But do they?”
He grunted. “A new bride arrived yesterday and her mate failed to take her to medical for the required examination.”
“So there’s a need. Think of it as human resources.” Literally.
“Will you not be tired?”
“How often do we get new brides? Once a week? I can handle it. Dorothy can babysit or I’ll bring Axil and Drake along. Everyone loves cute babies.”
His arms tightened around her. “Axil. Drake.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t told she reached a decision on the names. “I settled on names.”
“I had a good suggestion after all?”
She lifted her head to look at him. “You planted all those terrible names so I’d pick the ones you wanted.”
“A necessary battle tactic.” He kissed her forehead, softly.
“Or, you know, you could have just said what you wanted, like a normal person,” she grumbled.
“I approve of your proposition,” he said, changing subject. “It will help acclimatize the females to the clan and make all of us stronger. And we will learn how to work together on this, like partners. You will be a great helpmate, and the other males will be jealous.”
“You say the sweetest things,” she said as her skin prickled with a half-remembered story. “Where did
you hear that phrase?”
“Eh?”
“Helpmate?”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s a phrase from an Earth creation story. Well, one creation story. We have lots.”
“Humans like the sound of their own voice.”
“Hush.” She jabbed a finger into his stomach, which was like poking a stone wall for all the good it did. “Do you want to hear it?”
“Enlighten me.”
“God created the universe. He—”
“Your god is male?”
“Are you going to listen or critique the story?”
Paax settled back into the cushions of the sofa. “Proceed.”
“So God separated the light from the dark and the water from the land. He made life, plants and animals. Finally, he created man from the earth.”
“A male.”
“A human, but male. Adam. God was pleased with his creation but Adam was lonely, so God made him a mate.”
Paax shifted, his interest peaked.
“Eve was made from Adam’s rib.”
“Not from the earth?”
“Look, that’s the way the story goes. God made Eve and presented her to Adam and said, ‘I have made you a helpmate’ or something like that.”
“What happened next?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s an old story. Really old. Helpmate tickled my memory, that’s all.”
“It is a good story,” he said with a nod of his head. “Adam’s mate was made for him, as you were made for me.”
He really did say the sweetest things.
Three whistling notes alerted them to an incoming communication. Mercy’s body tensed. Of course they couldn’t have a peaceful moment to themselves. Paax’s arm tightened around her, responding to her distress.
“This better be good,” he growled.
“We just exited the Gate, sir,” Mylomon said, his normally deep voice flattened through the comm. “I thought you might like to know about the Suhlik warship.”
Warlord's Baby: Warlord Brides (Warriors of Sangrin Book 5) Page 8
