Keeper of the Heart

by Lindsey, Johanna

  “What program are you running?” Shanelle demanded irritably. “Bolster-the-flagging-spirits?”

  “You always get depressed over this subject for no good reason,” Martha complained.

  “I’m no different than any other Kan-is-Tran woman, golden from head to foot. There isn’t anything unusual about me, Martha, to call for all that ridiculous flattery that comes out once men know who I am.”

  “Then you haven’t looked in a mirror lately.”

  “Oh, real cute. But you don’t hear warriors dumping out all that garbage.”

  “No, they just give you the sincerest form of flattery every time they’re around you. Take a look behind you if you think I’m pulling your leg.” Shanelle did, and found all four warriors following her with their eyes. “Want me to tell you what they’re thinking?” Martha added.

  Shanelle blushed. “No.”

  “Are you going to tell me you didn’t know they all want you, that just about every one of them has already asked your father for you?”

  “You’re putting me into a really foul mood for my homecoming, Martha,” Shanelle growled. “I don’t want a warrior. I want love. I want to be able to stand on an equal footing at least some of the time with my future lifemate. I want what my mother has.”

  In a soft, gloating voice Martha made her point. “What your mother has is a warrior.”

  Chapter 5

  What your mother has is a warrior. Martha left Shanelle alone as they traveled the long winding road leading up to Sha-Ka-Ra, but those words wouldn’t. What your mother has is a warrior.

  Well, no one could deny it, and that particular warrior happened to love. But he was the sole exception. Only Tedra didn’t think so.

  “It’s a fallacy,” she had once told Shanelle, “that warriors don’t feel love. They just think they don’t. It’s that damn calmness they pride themselves on, a warrior’s control. And they certainly have that. They never shout, never argue, never get upset the way normal people do. It’s like they have no feelings at all—but you know they do. You see the humor, the caring, even the anger if you know what to look for. Your father wouldn’t admit it until he thought I was dying, and that tore him up. He cried, Shani. He shouted to the heavens. He knew right then that he loved, and so did I.”

  That supposition was easy for Tedra to make. She had a warrior who admitted he loved her. But no other warrior would admit it. Even Challen’s friend Tamiron, who cared deeply for his lifemate, staunchly maintained that warriors didn’t feel the strong emotions their women did. Shanelle’s own brother said the same thing. “Women experience love, warriors do not. Warriors give protection and caring, no more, no less.” She’d thrown a pillow at him. He hadn’t even raised a brow.

  She hated their calm. And it stood to reason that anyone that calm couldn’t experience anything as wildly passionate as love. Was she supposed to put a warrior through hell to shake him loose from that calm? And even if she could, would that do any good?

  No, Tedra was wrong in this instance, and Martha wasn’t helping matters by siding with Tedra as she always did and pushing Shanelle in the wrong direction. Martha meant well, of course. She knew Tedra would be hurt if Shanelle moved off-planet permanently, and so Martha would do anything to prevent that. But Shanelle wasn’t going to beat her head against a wall trying to squeeze a few drops of emotion out of a man. It didn’t matter that she loved the look of warriors, that she could think of a half dozen right now whom she could probably come to love if she let herself. She wasn’t even going to try. She was going to put her energy into finding a man with normal emotions, one who would love her and admit it, and one who did not know beforehand who she was. But she had so little time …

  “If you don’t get out of those dumps you’ve slumped into, your mother’s going to think I’ve been browbeating you and pull my plug.” Martha’s voice drifted into her thoughts.

  “Well, haven’t you?” Shanelle said somewhat resentfully.

  “Not even a little. It’s called pearly-gems-of-wisdom. Browbeating is when I pull out the big guns and mention probables for the future, like a family devastated, a daughter who can’t come home because she defied her father, a mother never forgiving her lifemate because her daughter can’t come home, a father who—”

  “I’m going to pull your plug, you miserable loose-screw!” Shanelle hissed.

  “That’s my girl,” Martha crowed. “Put some color back in those cheeks, and none too soon, or haven’t you noticed where you are?”

  Shanelle hadn’t, and where they were was in the city already, with the park just up ahead. It no longer looked like a park, however. Covering the smooth green lawns were pavilions and tents of every color and size, and arenas roped off and crowded around by spectators watching the competitors test their skills against one another. Merchants of the city had set up stalls for food and drink; hataari were corralled everywhere. And Shanelle saw more warriors than she had ever seen gathered in one place before—and more visitors.

  It was so unusual seeing hair and eye colors other than shades of golden-to-brown in her city. Every other color imaginable was here now, making visitors easy to spot, even though the males had gotten into the spirit of local competition by donning the black zaalskin bracs of the Kan-is-Tran warriors,— at least those who were competing in the arenas did, some even wearing swords.

  Shanelle glanced back to see how her friends were holding up, and couldn’t blame them for all looking a bit apprehensive. To the Kystrani, warriors were considered giants. The average warrior was a little more than six and a half feet tall, some reached seven feet, some even more, and here were hundreds of them milling about, bare-chested, all muscle and brawn.

  Caris and Cira were probably having second thoughts about sex-sharing right now. Shanelle wasn’t. She was seeing a great many visitors who actually had the look of a warrior about them, maybe not so tall, but definitely well made.

  “It didn’t take long for your interest to start perking.” Martha chuckled. “All those bare chests, huh?”

  “My mood has improved, and I can see my father’s pavilion already, so do us both a favor and forget you have a voice, Martha.”

  Blissful silence, until another voice was heard from at her back. “The Martha’s feelings have been hurt.”

  Shanelle snorted. “You’re way off the mark, Corth. The Martha is sitting back gloating because she’s got my life all mapped out and I haven’t made any detours yet.” And Shanelle wasn’t going to say a single word to the contrary when Martha was listening to every word and monitoring her emotions with the Rover’s scanning sensors.

  “Your mother has seen you,” Corth said next.

  “Where is she?” But Shanelle saw her almost immediately, a flash of blue running through the crowds toward her. “Oh, Stars, I think I’m going to cry,” she whispered as she slid off the hataar.

  “Shanelle, wait!” Corth ordered.

  “I can’t!” she called back.

  She was running, too, unmindful of the crowds, dodging, weaving, and she was crying. And then her mother was before her, folding her in her arms, crushing her with the strength of her emotion. Shanelle didn’t care. She was hugging back just as strongly, and laughing, and still dropping those silly tears. It felt so good to be back in the embrace of this kind of love, where nothing could go wrong because her mother wouldn’t let it.

  “Oh, baby, never again.” Tedra leaned back to clasp Shanelle’s face, her aqua eyes devouring her as if she had never expected to see her again. “Twenty times I almost came to drag you home. I drove your father crazy. I drove myself up a wall worrying.” She laughed then. “But you’re here, you’re all right—you are all right, aren’t you?”

  Shanelle laughed, too. “Yes.”

  Tedra gathered her close again. “And you’ll stay that way. And you’ll stay here. No,” she whispered at Shanelle’s ear when she felt her stiffen. “You aren’t to worry. If I have to let you go, I will. I’ll even keep Martha on t
he Rover so she can take you out of here if necessary. But I will do everything in my power to ensure that it isn’t necessary.”

  “Even if it isn’t a Sha-Ka’ani that I want?” Shanelle asked hesitantly.

  Tedra leaned back again with a sigh. “You’ve made your choice, then? You’ve already met the one you want?”

  “No.”

  “Then we will worry about who he is after you’ve found him. Your father isn’t entirely closed-minded about this. He wants your happiness just as much as I do. But we’ll talk about this when we have more time.”

  That comment drew Shanelle back to the fact that they weren’t alone, that they were in the middle of a crowd on a lane between arenas, and just now the center of attention. “Why is everyone staring at us?”

  Tedra chuckled. “Well, for one thing, Corth charged right after you on that hataar you two were riding, knocking people every which way. You know you’re not supposed to leave his sight.”

  Shanelle glanced over her shoulder. Sure enough, Corth had caught up to her and was standing right behind them. “I guess I wasn’t thinking.”

  “And for another thing,” Tedra continued, giving her another squeeze, “I think I can safely say we’ve just made a complete spectacle of ourselves. Let’s hope this doesn’t get back to your father, or I’m going to be in trouble for running off without an escort.”

  It was Shanelle’s turn to chuckle as she looked over her mother’s shoulder and saw who else had just arrived. “Too late.”

  Tedra groaned and said, “Farden hell,” before she glanced back to say defensively to her lifemate, “I was not about to wait for her to reach me once I had spotted her, Challen. It would be totally unreasonable for you to expect me to after her nine months’ absence.”

  “Best you remember whose idea it was for her to absent herself,” Challen told her.

  “That’s right, run it into the ground, why don’t you,” Tedra snapped back.

  “Woman, you are coming very close to challenge for no reason.”

  “I am?” Tedra said with some surprise. “Then you aren’t angry with me?”

  “Not when your impulsiveness is understandable. Now do you release her so I may greet my daughter properly.”

  Properly was not to hug in public, and Challen began by merely looking Shanelle over from head to foot, lifting her face and studying it as Tedra had done. Then, to her immense surprise, she was drawn forward and engulfed in a warrior’s arms. Challen didn’t squeeze her, but she felt surrounded by his strength—and his love.

  “Your mother has missed you,” he told her formally, but with feeling.

  She grinned widely. You had to read between the lines with a Sha-Ka’ani male. It was rarely “I,” usually “a warrior,” or in Challen’s case, “your mother.” But she knew he was speaking for himself, and he knew she knew, and his own smile was incredibly beautiful.

  He hadn’t changed at all in the time Shanelle had been away, but then she hadn’t expected him to.

  In all the years of her life, she had never noticed her parents growing older, because they just didn’t look like they were growing older. But it was a known fact that the Sha-Ka’ani aged well. And Tedra, though not a Sha-Ka’ani, was still a Sec 1 heart and soul, and she had always taken extremely good care of her body, which in a good many cultures was considered a lethal weapon. Not in this culture, however, and not to her lifemate, who was just short of seven feet tall and had the strength to go along with such a large body.

  Shanelle grinned up at her father now, craning her neck to do so. “I’m so glad to be home. And I thank you for the airobus. That was a wonderful surprise.”

  “What airobus?” her father asked.

  “Challen, I think we should get back to the pavilion now,” Tedra put in hastily.

  “What airobus?” he repeated, looking down at his lifemate.

  “All right, the one we bought her. That is why we sent her to Kystran, to learn how to pilot. That is what she wants to do, something useful—”

  “Something her future lifemate is not likely to allow,” he calmly pointed out. “Did you consider that when you convinced me to let her go to Kystran?”

  “No, but you obviously did,” Tedra grumbled. “Why did you agree, then?”

  Challen put a hand to her cheek, suddenly grinning at her. “You can ask me that, chemar, after everything you did to get my permission?”

  Hot pink cheeks, fortunately, went well with the blue of Tedra’s chauri and cloak. Only the cloak needed to be blue or white to denote whose house she belonged to, but she was honoring Challen by wearing all blue today, right down to her sandals. Now she wished she hadn’t.

  She knocked his hand aside, but that just got a chuckle out of him. Her embarrassment was a subtle punishment for buying that bus without telling him. She knew it. She knew him too well not to know it. And she could only hope that would be the only punishment she would be getting. But a glance at Shanelle showed she was aware of it, too. Farden hell. That was all Shanelle needed, one more reminder that warriors were not the easiest men to get along with, when she had yet to experience any of the benefits of trying. And on top of that, to be told outright that her future lifemate wasn’t likely to let her fly … She could kick Challen right now.

  “You don’t know what her lifemate is going to do—or do you?” Her eyes narrowed the tiniest bit. “You haven’t made a decision without telling me, have you, babe?”

  Both women waited anxiously for his answer, Tedra ready to blow a fuse if it was the wrong one, Shanelle merely with dread, and it began by being not at all reassuring. “When a decision is made, woman, you do not need to be told of it beforehand. But no, such has not yet been decided.”

  Shanelle let out a sigh. That had been too nerve-racking. “Father, I need to talk to you about this decision.”

  “This you may do, yet is the decision mine to make, yours to accept.”

  Shanelle gritted her teeth. “I know that, but does that mean you won’t take heed of my own wishes in the matter? What if I make my own choice?”

  “Then it will be my hope that I can accept your choice.”

  Shanelle blinked. “Do you mean that? You’ll really consider my preference?”

  “Certainly, kerima,” he replied gently. “Did you think I would not?”

  No, of course he would. He loved her. He wanted her to be happy. But the key word was if. If he could accept her choice, then she could have her choice. If he could not, then she would have his choice. But that was still better than what she had been anticipating, that he would have made his decision before she found someone for herself, that it would then be if she could accept his choice.

  “Stars, you people are absolutely depressing,” Martha chimed in with blatant disgust. “What happened to the happy homecoming?”

  Tedra laughed. Shanelle’s frown was an exact copy of Challen’s upon hearing that.

  “Mother, it gives me the greatest pleasure to give you back your computer.”

  But Tedra stopped her from removing the computer-link unit from her waist. “Not yet. I’m sure you’re going to want to show those friends around that Martha told me about last night—”

  “She contacted you last night without telling me?” Shanelle demanded.

  “Well, I don’t know why she didn’t mention it, but yes, we had a long chat, and anyway, I’ll feel better if you have Martha with you in addition to Corth, and I’m sure your father will, too. With Martha there to whisk you out of any trouble— not that I anticipate any—your father won’t feel it necessary to send his warriors along with you. Isn’t that right, Challen?”

  But Tedra was still looking meaningfully at Shanelle, and Shanelle finally got the message, the unspoken message. She didn’t want Challen’s warriors dogging her steps, not today. Today was the one day she could be anonymous, but not with a full escort that would point out how important she was. Only Challen hadn’t even heard the question. Looking at the computer link had drawn h
is attention to what Shanelle was wearing, and his frown hadn’t changed any.

  “First she will take herself home to find the proper clothing. She looks like a visitor.”

  “Give her a break, damn it,” Tedra replied impatiently. “She just got here. And so what if she looks like a visitor. A quarter of the people here are visitors. For once it doesn’t make any difference, and she is cloaked, which is all that really matters. You wouldn’t really make her waste all that time going home when she has guests to see to?”

  “Your Martha could Transfer her—”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Tedra cut in dryly. “You’d let her Transfer when it isn’t an emergency, when you hate Transferring?” Challen was looking completely chagrined by now, so Tedra added, “And her friends have caught up with her. You’re not going to embarrass your daughter over something so minor, are you?”

  For that Tedra got a just-wait-until-later look.

  Shanelle got her cloak adjusted over her shoulders to cover more of her outfit, which she understood she was to leave that way—at least until she was out of her father’s sight.

  “The competitions will continue this rising and likely several more,” he told Shanelle. “You may view them with your friends, but Martha is to Transfer you to me if you have any difficulties with these warriors who do not know you. Is this understood, Martha?”

  “Crystal clear, big guy.”

  Shanelle’s friends did arrive then, along with the nobles from Century III, who arrogantly demanded Challen’s attention even before Shanelle could finish introducing her friends. So her mother shooed her off with a whispered “Good luck, baby,” a wink, and a grin.

  Martha was chuckling as they left. “My Tedra was in top form, wasn’t she? I love it when she talks circles around that warrior.”

  “You told her about my desire to be incognito, didn’t you?” Shanelle ventured.

  “Sure I did. I told her everything, kiddo. You knew I would.”

  Shanelle’s sigh was loud and long. “All right, Martha, if I have to be stuck with you for the rest of the day, try making me forget it.”