by Bethany Aan
Of course, she mentioned this to Hunter, who then went into geek mode. He delighted in pointing out all of the flora and fauna his men had cataloged so far. He was careful to show her some of the poisonous plants and beast-sign, and then laughed as she caught sight of a little bunch of kimis that were following the humanoids along their path.
“They will become tired or bored soon,” Hunter murmured, but leaned way down to present his palm to one of the creatures. The little kimi hopped into Hunter’s hand as though it knew it was welcome, then chittered at Arianna when Hunter plopped it onto her bosom. He took note of where they had picked the fluffy little thing up, so that he could release it on their way back.
Arianna made an adorable little noise and cuddled the kimi to her, lifting it so that she could touch noses with it and coo at it like a mother would a babe. Hunter’s arms tightened a little bit around her, his hands clenching on the reins. He could feel the instant, unconditional love that she offered to the tiny, furry creature, felt its response and delight, and heard its thrumming as it nestled against her bosom and accepted her petting.
He wanted that for himself, badly. He knew that she cared for him, knew that she was falling in love with him, but she had yet to say it definitively. Perhaps, on her world, the men were supposed to say it first? That seemed backwards to him, but he supposed he had to allow for cultural differences. On his world, though a warrior was not ashamed to love, it was traditional for the woman to admit to the feeling first, simply so that the man knew where he stood with her before declaring himself. But if Arianna’s world was the opposite… he should find out. Otherwise, they could go for years, waiting for the other to say it first.
Fortunately, because of his bond with her, Hunter was not too worried about the audible admission. He knew her heart, and knew that she would say it when she was ready. And he had a feeling that he would know when she was ready to hear it from him, as well.
Ri tilted her head back against his shoulder, looking up at him searchingly.
“What is it?” she asked quietly. He started and shook his head.
“Nothing,” he sighed, kissing her forehead. “Just thinking about the future.”
“Yes,” she breathed, looking around her as they began the ascent to the valley where his ship rested. “It’s so… exciting! There’s so much here, so many possibilities. Hunter, we have the chance to build a world the way it should be. We both come from civilizations that have learned much of what not to do. We can use that to shape this one, put laws in place that will protect the people and the world we live on. We can do this! The possibilities…”
“And the responsibilities,” he reminded her gently. “Yes, there is a lot we could do. There is also much we should not do. I think that once the entire database is combined, we should put our best minds, from each culture, to researching each others’ histories, find what has worked and what has not. We can send out exploratory teams, as well, to expand our knowledge of this world. We need to find out how to use the resources wisely, yet disturb the indigenous life as little as possible.”
She nodded, enthusiastic about the ideas swimming in her head. Hunter got a smattering of the images fleeting through her mind and chuckled.
“Later, sweet one. We have time to think of all of this. We are taking up a very small corner of this world right now. There will be time to decide how best to integrate our species’ into it.”
He clicked once more to the beast, then held her closer as the rider surged up the last incline to the crest of the small mountain they’d had to climb. Hunter brought the group to a stop on the summit, to let the women see a real space-ship for the first time.
“Oh my God,” Bev breathed, taking in the massive ship. Arianna gaped in awe, then shook herself as Hunter began the descent into the valley. A bell rang somewhere in the distance, and she realized that there must have been sentries on duty who saw the group coming in.
There were more crew members here, many more men than were back at the compound, though she thought she recognized a fair number of them.
“Wow,” she said, clutching Hunter’s forearms. “Um, Hunter… do these guys know about the women?”
He chuckled and nuzzled the curls at her temple.
“Yes, but they don’t care. The men who work in this area either travel to and from the compound when they need to work, or they are part of the Eshen clan.” She got the mental image of homosexuals from him and smiled. There was no censure in his thoughts, just acceptance and a rueful gratitude that there weren’t even more men vying for the women’s attention. She swatted his arm playfully.
“You’re awful!” she said. He grinned down at her.
“I do not wish to share you with anyone other than Jace,” he said fervently. “If that means that I am eternally grateful that there are men who do not care for female companionship, then so be it.”
“On our world, such men tend to be ostracized and excluded. They can’t even get married.”
Hunter scoffed at that, shaking his head. “On our world, we know that such things are a natural part of life, that people are born with certain desires, and that those desires don’t always match what others feel. It simply is. But they still have functioning, brilliant minds, strong bodies that they wish to use in military service to their people, and valuable knowledge and skills. Why would we exclude such resources, simply on the basis of sexual preference? That would be idiotic.”
Arianna grinned happily and leaned back against him.
“Exactly the way I feel!” she assured him. “It shouldn’t make a difference at all.”
“And it does not. When forming transport crews, we do ask sexual preference, but mainly that is so that we can bunk like desires in the same areas. It makes for fewer disturbances in the crew quarters, if men are not constantly kicked out of their rooms for their roommates to have a bit of fun.”
They rode in silence for a bit, Arianna’s eyes taking in every detail of the ship. It was banged up and singed in areas. There were spots where it had obviously taken heavy fire… artillery as well as laser. And one large section was completely hulled, but it appeared that a crew was working on using salvaged materials from the slaver’s ship to begin repairs there. A spot of color flashed in the corner of her eye, and she looked off to the side, where a neat little area rested with flowers, grass, and small stones. A breath escaped her as she sensed that it was a graveyard.
“Yes,” Hunter said reluctantly, following her gaze and her thoughts. “We have lost some good men. None who were in the damaged section survived. Most were simply… gone. The wounded,” he shook his head, his eyes showing the grief he felt at the losses. “We did everything we could to save them.”
“I know you did,” she breathed, stroking his arm in comfort. “You would do nothing less.”
“We have lost some to illnesses, as well. The first winter, before Jace and his teams were able to develop the current pathogen vaccines, we lost nearly a hundred of our crew. We have lost more through the years, to accidents and animal attacks. Several entire teams have been lost.”
He angled his mount toward the graveyard, then dismounted and helped Arianna to the ground. The little kimi that had been sleeping in her lap hopped away to investigate the flowers that had been lovingly planted around the edges of the small plot of land.
“It’s so small for so many men,” Arianna noted quietly. Hunter nodded.
“We do not bury our dead,” he said in response to the images of coffins in her head. “What is the good in that? We cremate them in ritual then we release their ashes to the wind. When no bodies are available, we make do with memorial stones. When entire teams are lost, we mingle small bits of each of their ashes and bury them beneath the stones, in honor of their bonds in life.”
Arianna thought that was a beautiful thing to do and told him so.
“It is the way of my people,” he said simply. She felt the heaviness of his heart, the loss he had suffered, and something more…
“Hunter,” she asked, touching his face lightly. He shook his head.
“Jace and I lost two brothers in the attack,” he admitted, allowing her to feel his grief. “They were younger than me, but older than Jace. Siae was my full brother, Kale was Jace’s, but we were a family.”
“What of your mother?” she dared to ask. “Sisters? Other brothers?”
“We had one other brother, Sean. He was older than me.”
“Warrior?” she asked. Hunter nodded.
“Warrior, Reader, and a Counselor. Sean had special gifts, skills that he somehow achieved through his Reading, and he had a very soothing mental touch. Occasionally, very ugly crimes visit our people. When such things happened in the past, Sean was called in to help with the trauma. If he could not help someone, then they were beyond help.”
“In the past?” she whispered. His heart clenched and she felt it. He had mentioned his brothers before, but had not gone into detail. Now she felt a loosening in him as he sighed and revealed a bit more.
“He was a member of our team. Though he was older than me, he spent more time studying to be a Counselor and working toward his master in that. I reached Commander before he did, so when I was given leave to form my command team, Sean was my first-lieutenant, Jace my second. Siae was head of security, Kale in charge of ongoing training and crew morale.” He was quiet for a long moment. Arianna waited, silent. “When our battalion was mobilized for the final Solvari attack, Sean was away on a counseling mission. I heard, months later, that his transport had been destroyed, all aboard lost.”
“My mother and Jace’s father were on another transport,” he told her, holding her closer. “And two of my sisters are Commanders, with their own ships. I hold out hope that they are all still alive… somewhere.”
“If they’re like you,” she whispered, “They are, and they’re making the best of their situation.”
For a long moment, they stood over the stone that honored Siae and Kale, then Hunter shook himself and turned away from his brothers’ stone.
“Enough of this,” he said briskly. “Today was to be a happy day for you, and a productive one for me. There is nothing to be gained from wallowing in grief.”
“Hunter,” she said, stopping him simply by cupping his jaw in her palm. He looked down at her. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He stared at her, his expression closing. She shook her head and dug in her mental claws, keeping him from shutting her out. She forced him to keep her gaze, looked deeply into him, though he tried to get away.
“It was not your fault,” she repeated in an urgent whisper.
“You don’t know!” he bit out. She nodded, closing her eyes.
“I do.” She sighed and cocked her head to the side, gently letting go of his mind. He scowled at her. “Love, what happened that day? When your brothers died?”
“I do not wish to discuss it.” He turned and walked a bit away, standing directly over his brothers’ stone, hands on hips, shoulders stiff with his pain. Ri watched him a moment, Read what he was broadcasting, then slowly followed. She wrapped an arm around his waist and held him to her.
“I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours,” she promised softly.
Hunter stiffened further, then very slowly looked down at her. The grief in her eyes was almost too much to bear, but he realized that she was willing to tell him what happened the day her family died, if he was willing to do the same. After a long, tense moment, he curled his arm around her shoulders and nodded once in capitulation.
“We were attacked, almost from out of nowhere,” he said quietly, his gaze now on his ship. His brows were furrowed with the bewilderment he’d felt that day. “We had no intelligence that the Solvari had developed cloaking technologies, but that’s what happened. Our scanners didn’t pick them up until they were close enough to fire. It was so quick that we were barely able to get shields up, and then only partially. The shield distribution starts with the most vital areas and spreads to the least. It took less than a minute between the Solvari ship uncloaking and the explosion.”
“Then why do you think it was your fault your brothers are gone?” Ri asked softly.
“Because I had sent them to those storage areas for busy-work!” he thundered, whirling away and pacing through the small memorial yard. “I sent them there for punishment, because they’d been bickering enough to drive Jace and me insane. So I came up with a need for a thorough inventory of the non-necessities storage holds, and sent them down there to either fight it out or figure out how to work together.”
“Where would they have been, otherwise?” she asked, just wanting to know.
“On the bridge, or possibly in the training room, sparring. I could have sent them there, instead. Either way, they would have been unharmed.”
“Hunter,” she sighed, “You could not have known. There’s no way their deaths are your fault, sweetie. None.”
“You don’t know what it is like,” he swallowed painfully, “To be the cause of people being where they’re not supposed to be, dying because of one simple decision that you made. Whether I knew the Solvari were coming or not, I could have done things differently. I will always blame myself for their deaths.”
“Okay,” Ri said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “I can understand that. So I guess we have that in common.”
He whirled to look at her, aghast. She tried to smile, but it tipped upside down.
“My family was going on a cruise to a small island where we’d rented a lodge for the week. Everyone had managed to be there. It was the first time in nearly twenty years that everyone’s schedules worked out so that we could have a true family reunion.”
“What happened?” he asked, though he knew.
“I was the last one to get there,” Arianna shook her head. “My boss wouldn’t let me off a few minutes early, not even when I showed him the video my cousin sent, of everyone waiting for me. I was working at the beach that year, which is how I found out about this island retreat to begin with. But my boss told me in no uncertain terms that I had to stay till my relief got there.” She shrugged, managing a small smile. “My relief had a final exam that day, so she was running fifteen minutes late.”
She turned tear-slicked eyes up to him.
“I could have said ‘to hell with the job’ and left when I needed to. I could have told my family to go on without me and caught a boat the next day. I could have just signed off on the register turn-over, instead of being there to watch the count. Leila would have trusted me. My register was never off. Never.”
“Ri,” Hunter breathed as her tears overflowed.
“I got to the dock just twenty minutes later than I’d planned. The captain had held the ship just for me.”
“So how is it your fault?” Hunter asked, caressing her cheek.
“That particular model of yacht was having really bad over-heating issues, though I didn’t know that at the time.”
“Arianna,” he began, but she shook her head.
“That boat exploded because I chose my job over my family.”
“The boat… exploded?” Hunter caught himself, not wanting to reveal that he’d known about her family all along. She nodded and sobbed once.
“It just… blew up. Right in front of me. I got to the dock, had my bags out of the car, and was turning to pick them up and run to the boat, but then it just… went up in a fireball. My entire family was standing at the rails, grinning at me, waiting for me, as the blast took them.”
“Ri,” he cupped the back of her head and pulled her to him.
“If I hadn’t been late, the engines wouldn’t have overheated, and my family would still be alive.”
“No,” he breathed against the top of her head. “If they were meant to die that day, that’s what would have happened.”
She glared furiously up at him.
“Oh, so that’s different in your world?”
He blinked down at her. His eyes widened when he realize
d what she was getting at.
“Hunter, if I’m not allowed to feel guilty about being the cause of my family’s death, then neither are you!” she whispered urgently, kissing his chest. “You couldn’t have known, and neither could I. Yes, perhaps their deaths were in part caused by our decisions, but neither of us are at fault. Because we didn’t know. We couldn’t know.”
Hunter’s throat worked as he tried to stave off the tears of release that her absolution brought on. She smiled tenderly up at him, through her own tears, and cupped his cheek in one hand. He felt her love, her acceptance, and her empathy for what he’d put himself through all these years, and he could easily see that she well knew the exact feeling. He closed his eyes and swept her up against him, burying his face in her hair. She wrapped her arms around him, holding him close, crying with him.
“It’s okay to grieve. I do it all the time. You’re not the only one who lost their family. All of us have, one way or another. I miss mine, too. Each and every day. And blaming yourself is a natural part of the grieving cycle. Believe me, I know.” She shook her head.
“We can’t stop living because they’re gone. That’s why we’re working so hard to build a new life here, right? So that we can create a family of our own, create the world that they will grow into and eventually inherit from us. And we both have so much love to give to that family, so much to teach them. We will treasure them more and protect them more fiercely because we know very well what it is to lose someone you love.”
