Sarazen's Hunt

by Isabel Wroth

  They were blue, the color of her eyes. Crystals that were not completely crystals. Reykar had looked at him so strangely when Kalix had asked for a small handful of the ash of Meg’s remains, but once the medic realized what Kalix was doing, the male had bowed deeply before leaving him alone to continue his task.

  “Crystals, created from the ashes of your sister’s remains. I altered them only slightly to take on that blue hue. To resemble her eyes.”

  Alec didn’t speak for a long time, just staring at the crystals, tilting her palm this way and that to make them catch the light.

  “You didn’t see her eyes,” she finally whispered.

  “I see them now.” Eyes that brimmed with tears, thickly framed by wet, spiky black lashes.

  It baffled him how Alec’s hair could be so fair, but the hair above her eyes, the hair that so thickly lashed them, was so dark.

  “Before he retired, the previous commander of this ship told me a story that his mate had shared with him, about how humans believe the eyes are the windows through which to see into the soul. I thought perhaps you might see Meg’s soul in these crystals.”

  Alec moved the four blue crystals around in her palm, saying nothing for long enough that Kalix grew worried she would not be comforted as he had intended, but feel an even deeper anger. Her breath hitched raggedly.

  “You put loops on the ends.”

  Kalix nodded, looking to the result of her weaving. The long, smooth ropes of her twelve strand braid.

  “You had no more beads to use, or any pieces of metal that are blue. I will take them away if I have upset you, it was not my intention.”

  She shook her head almost violently, closing her hand around the beads and pressed them to her heart.

  “No. They’re beautiful.” Tears dripped from her lashes, but Alec leaned forward to touch her lips to his cheek, murmuring a hoarse, “Thank you,” against his skin.

  SIX

  Alec rubbed her thumb against the crystals hanging from the bracelet wrapped around her wrist, the cool metal clicking softly, while she stood on the balcony of the fortress that was now her home.

  It reminded her of a castle from the stories the adults had told them when she and the others were little.

  It was still under a bit of construction. You wouldn’t know the structure was actually a few thousand years old, the stones still so strong and settled.

  Vines grew up the outer face of the fortress, softening the drab stone, and what had once been magnificent gardens were overgrown with weeds. Clary said it had once been the seat of the ruling clan.

  It was settled on a large hill, surrounded by trees with red leaves and golden trunks, large enough to house Alec’s people and likely three times that number with ease.

  The first world of Saraz, one of fifteen planets, was gorgeous. Its main attraction was the complete and total lack of Scylla.

  It was going to take Alec some time before she got up enough courage to swim in the crystalline green lake situated in the hills beyond the fortress, but the water was so beautiful, so peaceful, she was determined to do it eventually.

  If Alec shaded her eyes, she would have been able to look over the treetops and see the shadow of the mountains where Clary and the crew of the Aria had taken up residence.

  The mountain fortress had left them all in awe when they’d first entered it, but after a week spent nestled deep inside the stone, Alec and the others had begun to feel like they were being buried alive.

  Alec had asked Clary and her big ass husband, big ass mate, if they could relocate to the forest, willing to build more treehouses up in the canopy. Having lived in the trees for so long anywhere else just seemed too close.

  Clary hadn’t even missed a beat. She looked up at her mate and told him to get his warriors to start rehabbing ‘the old fortress.’

  Tarek had objected at first, rather loudly. Not wanting to leave them vulnerable to attack, but Alec snorted, albeit a little disrespectfully, and reminded him her people were used to being on guard against attack, having faced down things much more terrifying than a Sarazen in full shift and lived to tell the tale.

  The warriors on board the Fifth warship had been so reluctant to show Alec and her people just what exactly it was they could turn into.

  Alec had persisted over the weeks they’d spent traveling back to Saraz and finally, probably because she’d annoyed the hell out of everyone, Kalix had given his approval for it. Alec had expected Kalix to change, but it wound up being A’tarey who had done it, right there in the barracks.

  The kids had been all over him with curiosity.

  A’tarey’s coat was a shaggy brown, orange stripes interspersed throughout his fur, looking more like a demon in truth in that form. Frankly, Alec had been jealous as hell of the sheer size and power the creatures had.

  A’tarey had identified one of her people as his mate during the trip. He and Irina were now joined at the hip and never went anywhere without the other, which was slightly sickening to watch, since they couldn’t keep their hands off one another.

  The week before they’d arrived on the planet now their home, Kalix had finally asked Alec to come and speak to Clary and Tarek in the holo-room before her people were transported down to the surface.

  Thinking nothing of it, Alec had gone with A’tarey, kind of disappointed with herself how eager she was to see Kalix.

  Like some little girl with her first crush on a guy.

  Alec reasoned now—in favor of feeling the grief and loss of her sister— her mind had latched onto the opportunity to feel romance.

  Some defense mechanism to push the pain back so Alec could cling to Kalix and use him to make her forget.

  As soon as they’d hit the command deck, Alec had heard roaring and snarling coming from the holo-room.

  Alec glanced at A’tarey when he had stopped and cleared his throat uncomfortably. His lips jumped in a quick smile while he told her it would be a moment before Kalix and the Asho were ready for her.

  He must not have known that the last time Alec had talked to Clary, she had complained about that annoying habit the warriors had of talking over her head in the Sarazen language.

  Clary had laughed and sent an order to Reykar to give Alec a language converter. An alien microchip that allowed Alec to speak any language known in this galaxy, which equaled about two million dialects.

  Since no one but Clary, Tarek, and Reykar knew Alec had been given the injection, she pretended she couldn’t understand what was being said, loudly, on the other side of those doors.

  Pretended she couldn’t understand what Kalix had roared at the top of his lungs to the other person in the room with him.

  “The scent of Alec’s grief sickens me! I cannot stand to be around her more than a few moments before my beast is threatening to claw its way out of my chest!

  “She will go to the surface with the other humans, and I will hear no more of this. Do I make myself clear?”

  Alec had pursed her lips to keep them from wobbling, letting herself feel grief and anger as the fragile hope of romance was crushed beneath the commander’s bootheel.

  Letting the scent of it billow around her when she’d lifted her chin, ignoring A’tarey’s attempt to stop her when she walked right into the middle of the roaring argument going on.

  “Is this a bad time? Or are you finished?” Alec had bluffed her way through the rest of that particular meeting, eager to get the hell off the warship and away from the confusing looks Kalix had shot her way the entire time.

  As soon as her feet had touched the surface of Saraz, she was enveloped in Clary’s arms and thankfully had other things to focus on aside from Kalix’s distaste for her presence.

  Or how much it had hurt to know the truth about how he felt.

  Alec hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since that final day in the holo-room where he had made his aversion toward her so clear.

  It had been just over fourteen months since they had been rescued from
Moika. Well over half Alec’s people were now mated to a Sarazen, pretty much all of them having wanted to start over, start a new family.

  Tarek had told Alec she was welcome to attend the Breeding Festival, but she’d declined. What use did she have for a mate?

  She had Zhenya to look after, the other orphaned kids, renovations to their castle fortress to see to. Long exhausting runs to take through the forests to try and escape the memories she was haunted with.

  Alec had been worried eventually Clary would ask about how her parents had died, but the day before Alec had moved her people out to the old fortress, Clary had taken her aside and instead asked her how they had lived.

  Alec hadn’t expected to like Clary, having been jealous most of her life for the way Sage and Sully had constantly talked about their daughter. How proud they were of her. How much they missed her. How much they feared after so long without contact, she was dead.

  So Alec’s jealousy quickly turned to shame, and then to saddened curiosity, wondering how Clary had managed by herself all those years without her family.

  Functioning day to day without Meg was excruciating. At least a hundred times a day, Alec turned to ask Meg what she thought about the castle renovations.

  What Meg thought about Irina and A’tarey constantly going at it in any darkened corner they thought they had some privacy. If they were doing it in beast form.

  What Meg thought about their people so readily accepting the Sarazen way of life.

  Then, a hundred times a day, Alec remembered Meg wasn’t there. The lack of her humor, her ridiculously sunny smile, was more noticeable every day.

  Alec had just gotten off her weekly check in with Clary, the two of them arguing about how the warriors around Alec thought it was impressive she and the other women had survived for so long in the wild of Moika, without big strong men to protect them.

  Impressive in an amusing, ‘that’s so cute,’ sort of way.

  It had lit Alec’s ass on fire with indignation. Clary had tried to explain, but it had turned into a purposeful argument of Alec’s making. Alec knew it was wrong, but she could barely stand to look at the babies.

  They hadn’t done anything wrong, they were babies for fucks sake, but it was still excruciating to be anywhere near them. Even in holograms.

  She secretly found it kind of adorable the way the twins snarled and growled like that, but she wasn’t able to look at them too hard, for fear she’d burst into tears.

  Clary huffed with exasperation, shooting Alec a narrow glare with her pupils’ gone vertical.

  “I’m saying potential mates, making families is like.... sacred.”

  “So what, a woman’s worth on this planet is based on her uterus and its ability to pop out babies?” Alec was being rude on purpose, wanting to end this call, and this conversation.

  Because the babies were there.

  Because the topic made her think of Kalix.

  Because it was just pissing her off, more.

  “You crazy Russian... bitch!” Clary’s hotly started insult ended on a laugh. She put her daughter down, and the baby immediately pounced on her brother, tackling him to the floor to take his toy and crawl off with it at baby warp speed.

  “You’re bored, aren’t you?”

  Alec snorted, scoffed, and hotly denied it. “Bored? Like I enjoyed running from the Scylla all the time? Enjoyed having to kill my people to survive? I am not bored! And I certainly don’t need a man in my life.”

  Clary hummed a gentle sound. “I didn’t say you need a man. You’re so used to having to shoulder the entirety of the burden that you don’t know what to do now that it’s gone.”

  “Now who’s the bitch?”

  Clary sighed, her expression softening with understanding, making Alec have to look away and force her feet to carry her back and forth. Mostly because Clary looked exactly like Sage right then, and because she wasn’t wrong.

  Alec didn’t know what to do with herself.

  Zee was fine, for the most part. He was more serious and solemn than he’d been before, but he’d basically taken charge of keeping the handful of orphans looked after.

  Taking them into the forest immediately around the castle to build treehouses, rope bridges between the trunks. He kept them busy and out from under everyone’s feet while the renovations happened.

  One of the men from the Aria had been, or was, some kind of psychologist. He and his Sarazen mate had moved into the fortress with them, to help them acclimate better, Clary said.

  The problem was that Jonas was annoying as hell, always asking Alec how she was feeling, if she wanted to talk.

  She didn’t.

  Even if Alec had felt like talking about her feelings, D’nora probably would have clawed her eyes out. The Sarazen female went positively berserk at the idea that a single woman would be in the proximity of her mate without her present.

  It was kind of fun to see she and Jonas fight, then hurry off to ‘make up.’

  Meg would have laughed at her and told her to accept the passing of the baton. To accept Alec didn’t need to fight anymore.

  Alec could live her life, without worrying about the next time she was going to have to stand over the bodies of another one of their people.

  Meg would have loved it here. She’d have gone crazy with all the male attention and leapt at the chance to live life without the constant fear of certain death hovering.

  If she’d lived.

  *****

  Kalix finished his report, not having found a single trace of the last two human ships. They had located the Niangniang—what remained of it anyway—several weeks after they had returned Alec and her human crew back to Saraz.

  The Niangniang had crash landed on a still forming planet made up of active volcanoes, leaving only enough melted metal to identify the ship itself, but little else.

  The entire human crew had perished once the toxic gasses of the planet had found their way inside the ship. Better, Kalix thought, than burning to death.

  When he had named the ship and where it had been found, Clary had made a sadly rueful sound, rocking one of her cubs in her arms while Tarek held the other against his chest.

  The last two ships, the Starsong and the Guanyin, were yet unaccounted for. Kalix waited to receive further orders, but Tarek was busy frowning at his mate, who had long since fallen silent.

  “Your uncertainty grows, my One. What consumes your thoughts?”

  The Asho had to say his mate’s name twice more to get her attention and repeat the question.

  Clary forced a smile and shook her head, claiming it to be nothing important. Tarek remained unconvinced.

  Likely she was displeased with Kalix and his lack of results, which he felt he justly deserved, though Clary shot him a sincere smile and reassured him it was not the case.

  “It’s not you, Commander Kalix. I promise. I’m just thinking of Alec.”

  His beast stopped the constant pacing, ears perking as it spun around inside him for any news. Kalix hadn’t asked after Alec, knowing how quickly the damn creature would rush forward, even toward the sound of her name.

  The beast still filled his voice when Kalix bit out, “Why? Has something happened?”

  Tarek lifted his brow slowly, pinning him with a narrow, dangerous glare. Kalix clenched his jaw in order to say no more, demand no more from the Asho’na. Clary thankfully was distracted by her cub to notice his fury.

  “No, nothing happened. The Russians have mostly become Sarazens, well over half of them, which is great.

  “They’ve taken up residence in the old fortress and the renovations are going really well. For the most part, anyway.”

  Clary’s smile turned a little exasperated as she described the handful of cub’s activities, getting in the way of rebuilding the fortress.

  “It’s getting a little ridiculous. Every time the warriors go into the forest to cut down trees to build something, the kids who’ve made a really cool treehouse go insane,
insisting that the warriors can’t cut down this tree. Or that tree.

  “Alec had to restrict them to building their own rope highway up there to a certain area. I think she actually enjoyed the conflict.

  “But her little shadow swooped in and took care of the problem so fast she barely had to get past shouting at them in Russian.

  “She’s just... having a hard time acclimating. At a loss for what to do now that she’s alone.”

  Kalix swallowed thickly, imagining Alec wandering around aimlessly, with no purpose, no mission, struggling to find her place. It made his beast give a mournful little rumble, right before it resumed its mad pacing.

  “I can’t imagine what she’s going through. How excruciatingly hard it is to not have her sister there to talk to anymore.” Clary sniffled softly, lifting up a tiny hand from inside the blanket she held, rubbing her lips over the cub’s knuckles tenderly.

  “I can only compare it to having lost a limb, and how hard it has to be, trying to learn how to walk around without it.

  “I tried to get her to go to the last festival with the others, but she said no. It’s been a while, I’m going to ask her again.”

  Kalix shoved up from his seat so fast his chair shot back to slam against the wall. Dax leaned back in his seat, rocking slightly while he studiously looked at the table top, not trying very hard to conceal his sneer.

  They had come to a truce, of sorts. Dax said he understood why Kalix had not made formal announcement that Alec was his mate, but with narrow glances and disrespectful little digs, Dax never did quite let him forget his choice to leave her behind.

  Clary was frowning at him in confusion, looking at her mate for direction, but Tarek was busy trying not to smirk knowingly.

  “Is there a problem, Commander Kalix?” the Asho rumbled casually. Watching him struggle to contain the roars of ungodly rage, his vision blurring red as blood lust threatened.

  “No,” Kalix bit out, twitching slightly as he imagined Alec amidst the chaos of the festival being claimed by another male. One worthy of her. One who was not him.