He didn’t try to deny it.
“I won’t let you do this.” She bent toward him again and then started to tenderly caress his face, run her fingers through his hair, and deliver gentle kisses to his brow.
The tender whispers directly into his mind should have shocked him, but nothing about her was going to shock him today. She was impressive in her strength and determination. After a few seconds, he felt at peace, soothed despite the pain to his wrecked body. An overwhelming sense of calm and love engulfed him. The feeling was so pure and sweet he was at first stunned that such feeling could exist. How was she doing this? He’d always been puzzled by his change in emotions when around her. Even as a child she’d been able to impact his psychological wellbeing.
“Saina?” he croaked. His throat still felt clogged with blood even though it wasn’t. The ease with which she loved and cared for him seemed to permeate her every gesture, her touch and the way she looked him, such empathy. Her pain was the same as his, and yet she held on to him.
“Don’t try to talk,” she admonished. “You need to regain your strength. I need you to fight!”
“Let go, Saina. I don’t want you to hurt anymore,” he whispered through the pain.
“I can’t let you go. Help me heal your body, your mind. Why can’t I heal what’s killing you? I’ve stopped the bleeding and closed your wounds. What am I not seeing?”
“I don’t think that even you can save me. Conserve your strength. You’ll need it when I’m gone.”
“No! Tell me what happened.”
Thorne was shocked by the fire in her eyes and voice. Saina’s people were not known for excessive emotion. Her next words stunned him even more.
“I won’t let those bastards win.”
Thorne was fascinated by this beautiful creature. He smiled sadly. Too bad he wouldn’t be around to appreciate such a unique woman. He felt himself slipping even further away from her. The pain had now gone, but the weakness in his limbs and the dullness to his senses remained.
Chapter Two
Twenty years ago, Thorne had needed to harvest uranium from Earth in order to build weapons and a shield for Calison. His father had not been happy with his decision to visit Earth again to do it, despite knowing that Thorne had perfected his inherited ability for molecular travel and could now teleport to Earth. Others from Parth still had to rely on their advanced spaceships to travel to different planets. What took them hours to achieve, Thorne was able to do in seconds. King Stephen had considered that his efforts to harvest uranium were a complete waste of time, but Thorne was his own man and often did as he pleased.
Given the importance of the uranium to their defense, Thorne was able to navigate his landing to an exact location for the substance. His mission had been successful, as he knew it would be. On Earth, he had invincible powers and abilities. No one could touch him, not that he ever posed enough of a threat to garner that kind of attention or aggression from any of the inhabitants. Everyone on Earth knew him as the chairman and CEO of one of the largest pharmaceutical companies on the planet. He was well respected, revered even, and utterly reclusive. He very rarely made public appearances. And given the many centuries of his existence, he had been known by various names, but always he was a philanthropist, offering his assistance to the inhabitants of Earth whenever required.
While he had visited Earth on many occasions before and had stayed months at a time helping people in danger, or like his father would say, “playing hero,” Thorne didn’t see it that way. At six-foot-seven, over two hundred and fifty pounds, Thorne was an imposing figure. Adding his supernatural powers on the planet, there wasn’t any weapons on Earth that could stop him. There were too many evil and powerful men on Earth who took advantage of the weak among them.
However, on this visit, he inexplicably felt uneasy, and it prompted him to not linger but return to Calison after only a few days’ visit. On his return, he had met chaos. His father had been murdered. His head had been severed and his body burned in an act of vicious celebration by the king of Lokede, Anders Wedborn. Thorne’s mother, Lenora, and sisters, Marisol, Elizabeth, and Sharma were also taken hostage by Lokede.
On returning home, Thorne had wasted no time in rallying their warriors, defeating the remaining Lokede forces that had invaded their kingdom. However, to gain the release of his mother and sisters, the king of Lokede demanded that Thorne form an alliance with them and marry one of his daughters. Thorne flat-out refused. “Go fuck yourself,” had been his message to the king.
For starters, he and his father had only just recently signed a marriage contract between Thorne and the daughter of Gordon Bahar, the king of Europon. Stephen and Gordon had been boyhood friends. So, when Gordon’s wife, Queen Yvonne, had given birth to his daughter, their only girl after six sons, the men had wasted little time in drafting a marriage contract between their children. Thorne, having no real interest in marriage, or any strong opposition to it, had agreed on the contract to please his father. His mother had been from Europon as well, and he’d thought his mother was a woman beyond any other. Besides, the girl was a toddler and it would take years before he had to truly consummate the marriage or acknowledge its existence.
Thorne devised a plan to rescue his mother and his siblings. Everything had gone as planned. He and five of his father’s trusted soldiers had gotten into the hidden tunnels to the estate of the royal family in Lokede. Because of their dark coloring and size and the people of Lokede being so fair, it was impossible for them to easily infiltrate the mansion. Thorne knew it would be a suicide mission to ask his men to enter the high security compound. However, Thorne was able to teleport into the heavily guarded house where he thought his family was being kept.
Unfortunately, this seemed to have been anticipated. Only two of his sisters were present, and an alarm was immediately triggered. Although Thorne was released once captured, it wasn’t before he’d been forced to witness his youngest sister, Elizabeth, being murdered because of the attempt. King Anders promised that the next attempt would result in the death of his mother.
It had made him sick to be forced to link himself with the people who had brutally killed members of his family and his people. King Anders, realizing that he may have overplayed his hand and that there was nothing stopping Thorne from taking out his revenge even after the marriage, had both of Thorne’s remaining sisters married to his sons, despite the sons already being married. He also threatened that if Thorne retaliated in any way the women would be instantly killed despite their marriage into the family.
Having no choice, especially after the substantial loss of life on Calison, Thorne had married Anastasia, Anders’ eldest daughter. Anastasia was an extremely beautiful woman. Like most of the habitants of Lokede, Anastasia had pale ivory skin, golden hair, green eyes, and a slight feminine physique. Anastasia’s coloring and delicate frame were an exotic appeal for the men of Calison. Thorne never allowed beauty to cloud his judgment, and he hadn’t allowed it then.
From the onset, the marriage was doomed to fail. In her first act to show her commitment to the people of Calison, Queen Anastasia refused to have anyone on her personal staff that was not from Lokede.
Thorne understood her reasoning as he, too, had suspicions about how his father had been so easily ambushed and killed. To breach the security of Calison, Lokede had to have gotten inside help. Thorne no longer knew whom to trust, and therefore, he trusted no one. And since he had spent most of his adult life in a lab, his father’s generals were a mystery to him. Members of the High Council had also been unknown to him. His father had been a young man by their standards, only being in existence for five centuries. They gained adulthood after eighteen years, and then their aging slowed dramatically, usually allowing them to live for hundreds of years. Thorne was, for all intents and purposes, alone now.
Another act that ensured that their marriage would never be an amicable one was when Anastasia tried to have Thorne’s form
er toddler fiancée assassinated. Although Thorne had been forced to abandon the contract, he still felt a responsibility to the child, Saina. On hearing of the attempt on her life, Thorne had the baby transported from Europon to Earth with two of his trusted servants to care for her. This was an act that had devastated the king and queen of Europon. Thorne himself accompanied the group and ensured they were properly installed in a house on an island in the Caribbean, the last place anyone would look for the child. They had ensured that everyone on Parth thought that the toddler had been killed to lessen the attempts to find her.
Despite all of this, Thorne did try to honor his marriage because that was the kind of man he was. He prided himself on being a man of his word and a man of honor. After the first year, Thorne had to acknowledge that his efforts were wasted on Anastasia.
Not only had Anastasia not been interested in peace between the realms, she seemed to thrive on the petty political fights among members of the Council and stoked the fires of continued fighting among the four realms. With access to both the Lokede and Calison armies, she tried repeatedly to rage war and destroy Europon and Garmede. Thorne constantly had to monitor his wife’s activities and rescind these destructive orders, or he found himself fighting his in-laws. He spent far too much time fighting than in improving the wellbeing of his people. His long days in his lab were a thing of the past, as he had to be constantly on guard.
However, what was truly unforgivable was the fact that his wife was barren, and she and her family knew it before Thorne was forced to marry her. The laws of all the realms dictated that if a legitimate male heir could not be gained from the marriage then the heir would become the next male member of the family. Since Thorne had no brothers, Anastasia’s brothers became his heirs. Thorne only realized the depths of his wife and in-laws’ plot after the first attempt on his life.
They had been married for about five years when he had fallen suddenly ill. He had been presiding over a meeting of the High Council when he had started vomiting violently. He hadn’t stopped puking until there was nothing left in his stomach, until there was only bile. The severe trembling of his limbs began then, and blood started pouring from his nose and mouth. No one knew what to do, not even the talented doctors and scientists who were immediately summoned from his lab and throughout Calison. For hours they tried everything to help him. After no change in his illness, and which only resulted in him getting sicker by the second, they gave up and wheeled him into a sanitized room in case he was infectious.
Thorne started to hallucinate, despite no one being in the room, and felt as though people were crowded around him and were taunting him into a faster demise. Knowing that he would soon die and realizing his waning strength, Thorne teleported to Earth away from the eyes of people he wasn’t certain he could trust. On that less developed planet, he had always felt invincible and strong. Perhaps that invincibility would miraculously return.
Charles and Amanda were the only people he had trusted implicitly. After all, they had kept the existence of his ward a secret for years. Even Saina’s parents had no idea where she was or that she was on Earth. For hours Charles and Amanda gallantly tended to him, trying their best to at least make him comfortable before he died.
The feeling of strength and invincibility never materialized. Thorne was losing consciousness fast, and he had used all his strength to teleport to Earth. Anastasia had won. He thought of his mother, sisters and his people, who would suffer the most from his death. Now the king of Lokede would have another kingdom to pass to one of his sons.
His servants gave him a final bath, dressed him in a white robe, and, with tears in their eyes, left him in the master bedroom to die with dignity.
Thorne wasn’t afraid to die. He simply hated that his people would be left without anyone to protect them. He gave a silent prayer to the deity the people on Earth tended to pray to for solace. His breathing became labored and fractured. With blood leaking from his mouth, the pain in his body became unbearable. When he felt as though he had taken his last breath, a tiny child’s hand clasped his.
Almost in a dream-state, Thorne felt the most incredible sensation permeating throughout his entire body. He thought he saw a bright light engulf him, and his final thought was that death was not so bad. He might have smiled even because, for the first time in his life, he felt at peace. And then he felt nothing.
Thorne opened his eyes after what he felt was hours later. The pale light of day peeked through the closed curtains. His body felt whole, no pain, no vomiting, and no weakness. In fact, he had never felt so strong and at peace. He turned his head on the pillow, and his blue gaze collided with the warm regard of little Saina. She sat quietly at his bedside, holding his hand and staring at him with a wisdom that belied that of the six-year-old that she was.
“Hello,” Thorne croaked, his throat was still dry from the hours of vomiting. There was a slight whisper in his mind, but it was gone before he could understand what it was.
“Hi,” Saina said softly and nodded as though she understood what he was going through. She released his hand abruptly, stood, and left the room.
Thorne wanted to call her back, but his throat was too dry to accomplish even that. As soon as her touch was removed, he felt the light in him dim a little. He was surprised when, a few seconds later, the child returned with a tall glass of water. He could have wept with relief when Saina held the cold glass to his lips. He sat up in the bed, took the glass from her, and gulped down the soothing liquid with relish.
She held his hand again, and again the feeling of wellbeing engulfed him. The slight whisper to his mind came again but again disappeared before he could decipher what it was. The sound and rhythm of the message seemed to calm him though.
The door to the bedroom was suddenly thrust open by Charles, who was accompanied by two other men carrying a stretcher bed. Charles stood in the doorway of the bedroom in shock on seeing Thorne sitting up in the bed calmly drinking a glass of water.
“Your Majesty?” Charles shrieked out in disbelief. He opened his eyes wide, his mouth hanging open, and he seemed to be having problems breathing.
Thorne grinned. He couldn’t help how incredible he felt. He let his gaze settle on Saina, who sat stoically observing him. Thorne had never seen a child sit so still and contained. She was a beautiful little slip of a girl. With a skin tone of hazelnut, dark brown eyes, and her black hair in a curly Afro about her head, she would blend well with the people of the Caribbean island he had chosen for her. He’d bought this house on the Turks and Caicos Islands years before bringing her here. And Saina had lived there with his servants since she was a toddler. Whenever he’d come to visit in the past, she would come and sit in his lap as though she knew that she belonged there. He had made it a point to visit her on her birthday, at Christmas time, which the people on Earth tended to celebrate, and on their marriage contract date, even though she wasn’t aware of the significance of that date. Someday, when she was old enough, he would let her decide on what she wanted to do with her life. He didn’t want her to feel obligated to him in anyway.
He finally dragged his gaze away from the little girl’s and spoke to Charles. “Many thanks to you and Amanda for taking care of my ward.” He smiled as Charles continued to stare back at him in disbelief. “Please continue to ensure that nothing happens to her.” This was the same speech he always gave, and the older man continued staring at him silently.
Saina moved to sit in his lap as though his word reminded her of her place.
“But—” Charles seemed to be having problems speaking. He gazed at Thorne in awe.
“I have to get back to Calison, but I will be back soon for a visit.” This last statement was intended for Saina. He looked down at her and noticed that her brow was wrinkled in a worried frown. Thorne understood her facial expressions without her having to say a word. He didn’t know how he knew what she was thinking, but he did. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her fa
ce in the warm cavity. “Don’t worry, little one, I know now what I’m up against. I will take the appropriate precautions.”
“Please don’t go,” Saina whispered and tightened her arms around him.
“I have to protect my people,” Thorne told her softly. There was another gentle prod to his thoughts. The tender caress eased his mind and gave him a sense of wellbeing, which he’d come to recognize was only felt when he was with the little girl.
Saina stood then, nodded as if she understood what he was thinking, kissed the back of his hand, and edged around Charles and the other men as though the weight of the world was on her shoulders.
Thorne watched her leave with a feeling of loss, as though he’d just lost his best friend. He listened to Charles’ report on Saina, as he hadn’t been to see them in months. Soon after, he teleported to Calison. Not wanting anyone to see him, Thorne made sure he reappeared in his bedroom. He found his wife in the throes of passion in his bed with her lover. I guess this is her way of celebrating my being fucked up.
He was surprised that the lingering sense of peace still engulfed him, and he was not feeling any anger toward his spouse or toward the man who was currently thrusting so enthusiastically between her thighs. In fact, he felt quite detached when he walked farther into the room amid the moans and groans of the two lovers and calmly severed the head of his wife’s lover with his laser sword. Even with blood spurting from the big male body, Anastasia screaming at the top of her lungs, and servants racing into the room to assist, Thorne still didn’t feel any spike in his emotions. Obviously, Saina’s touch had done this to him. Coming from people of peace, Saina’s tranquil demeanor now started to make sense. It turned his normal volatile emotions to one of cold rage. More like, I don’t give a fuck.
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