Primal Heat

by Crystal Jordan

  An hour later, Bren checked the waterproof watch strapped to her wrist for the twelfth time. Her body still scraped, bruised, and aching from the wild river ride and hours of hiking, she sat alone beside a small fire. She’d used the driest wood she could find to keep the smoke to a minimum. No need to advertise their location. A headache throbbed at her temples, hunger gnawing at her gut. She’d found some berries to eat, but other than that she was going to have to wait for Farid to return. If he did. She closed her eyes. At this point, she wasn’t sure what she’d do if he didn’t come back. He’d been her only plan, and a half-baked one at that.

  If Emperor Kyber wouldn’t help her, she had no idea who else to turn to or how to get the whole world out of a pile of shit that was hip deep and only going to get messier from here. She didn’t even know how they were going to get to the emperor’s ship with Farid’s shuttle gone. How long would it take for his people to come looking for him? Would Farid and she be able to evade Arthur’s men long enough for them to hook up with the Sueni rescue party? So many complications, so many ways everything could and probably would go wrong.

  She pulled in a deep breath, forcing herself to remain calm. This plan would work. It had to. People who didn’t even know the danger they were in yet were counting on her.

  God, she was tired. Her eyes were gritty, her body heavy and sluggish. A chill mountain breeze whipped through her clothes, and she stretched her hands toward the fire for warmth. Farid’s razer lay across her lap, within easy reach. She needed sleep, but she couldn’t let her guard down while Farid was gone. Hell, she wasn’t even sure she could let her guard down while he was with her. A shiver ran down her skin, and she did her best to squelch it. She was too old to be this twitter-pated over a guy—the better part of two decades dating military men should have cured her of any illusions she had left about them.

  He’d seen the opportunity to fuck her and he’d taken it. She hadn’t done a damn thing to resist him. The power of it still shook her, scared her, and pissed her off even more. At him and at herself. She shouldn’t have wanted it so much, but they both clearly had, and their lack of focus had almost gotten them both killed. More than their lives were at stake here, so they couldn’t afford to lose it again. This was one mission that could not fail. She wouldn’t let her sacrifice of everything she’d ever worked for be in vain.

  A twig snapped to her left, and she had his gun in her hand before the feline Farid broke through the trees. His black-and-white-striped fur made him stand out in stark contrast to the rich brown earth and deep green leaves of the forest around them. He didn’t belong here. Alien.

  Two rabbits hung from his mouth, blood dripping from his fangs. His gaze locked on her in that unsettling way only cats could manage. Her heart tripped and then raced. She felt trapped, hunted. Swallowing, she fought the urge to flee and slid his razer into her ankle holster. It was an awkward fit, but it stayed, and she felt better for having the weapon. Then she lifted her chin to stare back at him. The feral side of his nature shone from his eyes, and they gleamed like mirrors when the firelight hit them.

  He approached her and dropped the rabbits at her feet. Take care of these, if you would.

  The smooth, polite voice in her head was so at odds with the wildness she saw before her. She swallowed. “I wasn’t sure you’d come back.”

  He tilted his head, a subtle tension running through his muscles. I said I was hunting for your food. Would I not have to return to give it to you?

  His tone made her insides twinge with guilt. Clenching her teeth, she fisted her fingers in the legs of her jeans. His feelings were of no concern to her. “Why don’t you go wash up in the stream? I’ll get the food ready.”

  Fine. The betrayed timbre turned icy and clipped, and she knew he was not happy with her.

  It shouldn’t have bothered her. She shouldn’t want to make the man happy, but she couldn’t deny—at least to herself—that it disturbed her.

  Considering he’d been her enemy only hours before, she had no real reason to trust him. Getting rid of Arthur was a benefit to him, and she wasn’t going to fool herself by thinking that a little sex, mental or physical, would change that he and his emperor would keep her around only as long as she was useful in achieving their aim. They’d said they were here to get a woman, a very specific woman that they hadn’t found yet. She could only pray that wasn’t a lie and that she wasn’t handing her planet over to a worse fate than Arthur had in mind for it. However, if they were lying, why hadn’t they attacked yet? Or counterattacked after Arthur had brought one of the Sueni ships down?

  Her headache gave an especially vicious throb, so she gave up on going over what she’d already been over a million times.

  When she looked up, he was gone, splashing into the brook to wash the crimson stains away. She shook her head and dealt with the rabbits, refusing to admit how deep her relief was that he’d returned safely. He was just her ticket to getting help from Kyber.

  It wasn’t personal.

  4

  “So, does every Kith have a One?” Bren’s question shook Farid out of his hypnotic stupor. They sat staring at the rabbits roasting on a makeshift spit over the warm fire. He stretched his paws toward the small blaze, sheer feline lassitude sapping his will to move.

  He rested his chin on his forelegs. Why the sudden curiosity?

  “Just making conversation. Small talk.” She shrugged. “You’re the politician, isn’t that what you do for a living?”

  Prickly as always. He snorted. It was unfortunate for him that he liked her acerbic bluntness as much as he liked the unexpected flashes of sweetness and vulnerability. No, not everyone has a One. They are seen as a great blessing from fate in my culture. Not only do you have someone whose mind is linked forever in perfect sync with yours, but children of such a couple are often more powerful than both parents. Something about the bond produces better offspring and more psychic power raises the prestige of a house.

  “Not everyone has one, but everybody wants one? Or a One, in this case.” Plucking up a little twig, she twirled it between her fingers. She smiled and shook her head. “Fate is kind of a bitch in your culture. It’s all about the haves and the have nots. Kith have cool powers, Kin don’t. Some people have Ones, some don’t. I like that in America, I get to choose my own fate. That way, if it all goes to pot, I have no one to be mad at but myself.”

  Speaking of Ones with his One was unsettling. Anticipation and uneasiness skittered through him. He pushed himself upright, shifted back into his human form, and moved to sit cross-legged on a smooth, flat rock by the fire. She watched him, but other than the barest shimmer of awareness passing through their link, she gave no indication that she even noticed his nudity.

  He cleared his throat and avoided her comments about Ones altogether. “It’s unsurprising that a woman raised in a democratic society where anyone can hope to attain the highest ranks of society—regardless of true ability to rule—would think that way, but my people believe fate gives us the power and ability we need for the social class we were born into.

  “Children with the highest ability in each family become heir to that house. Each heir is taken to the royal vizier and tested, their destiny foretold. The most powerful boy or girl is then trained to ready them for the rigors of the throne, and their house becomes the royal house. Typically, the throne remains in the direct imperial line, but not always. Destiny can occasionally reshuffle the power structure of the Sueni houses, but the emperor is always the most powerful, and thus he rules all the houses.”

  He didn’t say that sometimes a child would have the power, but not the restraint and fortitude to control their abilities. Cilji, as sweet and kind as she had been, and as much as he and his family had adored her, had been one who couldn’t contain her power, neither her psychic abilities nor her animal nature. Her One had been as bad or worse. Yet another reason not to lose himself to that kind of bond. He sighed, hoping Tylara didn’t suffer Cilji’s fate with
her own Sajan male. That family was well known for their passionate outbursts and unstable powers.

  “With the whole power and testing thing, will it matter that the emperor’s One is a human?” Bren tilted her head, and her braid slipped over her shoulder to dangle between her ripe breasts. “Or is that cancelled out by the One bond making better children?”

  He shrugged, hypnotized by the movement of that thick plait instead of the dancing flames. “Only the viziers could tell.”

  Her voice went so soft, even his sensitive ears had to strain to hear her. “Did the viziers tell you you’d have a One?”

  “No.” It was the truth. The prophets had only said that he would lead the Arjun house, anything else was hidden from their sight. Unfortunate for him, on so many levels.

  “So you might not have a One?” The almost hopeful tinge to her question made his belly knot and his gaze snap up to examine her face.

  His hands clenched into fists, and he found he couldn’t lie to her, but he also couldn’t tell her the whole truth. “I know I do.”

  “Congratulations.” She swallowed, her face wiping of all expression. “Since it’s such a blessing in your culture.”

  “You don’t think it would be for you?” Everything inside him froze as he waited for her answer. He knew it shouldn’t matter, but it did.

  “Having my mind no longer be all mine ever again? Being bound to someone forever?” Her eyes popped wide, something close to panic flashing in their ocean blue depths. “I can’t think of anything more horrifying.”

  “I know exactly what you mean.” They were probably the most honest words he’d ever said to anyone in his life.

  Surprise flittered over her face before she looked at the fire again. She tossed the little twig she’d been playing with into the flames. “But…I thought you had a One?”

  He stared at her, wondering if it would be easier to resist this pull she had on him now that he knew she was appalled by the very idea of the One bond. He hoped so. A smile quirked one side of his mouth. They were more alike than either of them would ever admit. Perhaps he owed her the truth about his motives, if he couldn’t give her what most Sueni craved so much. At the very least, if she ever found out the truth, she would understand why he’d never bond with her.

  “The One bond killed my family.” He pushed his fingers through his hair. “Not long after I came of age.”

  “I’m sorry. My family died when I was a small child. I never really knew them.” Her gaze met his, her voice soft. “Do all Ones go together, then?”

  “No, a person can live after their One dies.” He hadn’t spoken of his family in years. Their loss was a wound that refused to heal, one he’d learned to live with, to ignore, but coming to Earth, meeting his One, had ripped it open and forced him to acknowledge it again, to admit how much it had shaped him and the choices he’d made in his life. How it had taught him to deny what others only dreamed of finding.

  He closed his eyes for a moment. Discussing this was harder than he’d ever imagined. “My mother was a doctor who worked with those whose power was erratic. My father always thought it was too dangerous, but she was determined, and she was good at her work. The best. But…Father wasn’t wrong. Her work was dangerous, and one day the danger caught up with her. A very high-powered Kith male, Eetash Sajan, lost control during a session and rampaged. Neither of them survived the encounter.”

  “Oh, my God.” Her fingers splayed as though to reach for him. He felt a throb of her sympathy through the bond he’d narrowed to a mere filament.

  It was almost his undoing, but now that he’d started he needed to finish, needed her to know all of it. She deserved at least that much.

  He clenched his fists and plunged on with the twisted tale. “Father didn’t last the week. He got his affairs in order, turned everything over to me, including guardianship of my younger sister, and then he slit his wrists in bed one night. The servants found him the next morning with a smile on his face.”

  “Jesus.” He heard her swallow. “He knew he was going with her.”

  He stared into the fire, unable to look at her. “Yes.”

  He hoped that his father was right, that his parents were together now. They had loved each other dearly, and that love had sustained his family. He and Cilji had been lost without it. Its demise was what led his sister to her own end. Living without it was more than his father had been able to bear. Everything shattered and broken…by love. He closed his eyes. “That left just my sister Cilji and me in the Arjun house. She…was an incredibly gifted Kith. Powerful. Almost too powerful.”

  Bren leaned toward him, the end of her braid trailing perilously close to the fire. “More powerful than you?”

  “Oh, definitely.” He chuckled, a rare moment of lightness when he thought of his family. “She delighted in holding it over me, too.”

  “More powerful than the emperor?”

  He hesitated. “Possibly.”

  “And that was a problem?” Her eyebrows arched.

  “Socially? Not really.” He brushed his hands down his naked thighs, shifting his weight on the hard stone. “My mother was Kyber’s aunt, so we’re close enough in relation to the throne that it wouldn’t have been surprising.”

  She didn’t seem surprised that he was the emperor’s cousin, though the two of them bore little resemblance to one another. They both looked like their fathers. Bren’s forehead wrinkled as she considered this new information. “Shouldn’t Cilji have been the empress if she was the most powerful?”

  “No. She wasn’t in control enough.” He shook his head. Therein lay the problem—the final seal to Cilji’s fate, the reason Farid felt the need to always be in control. Not that that seemed to spare him where Bren was concerned.

  “She was unstable? Mentally?” She tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “Or…like the people your mother worked with?”

  “My mother’s interest in her field started with Cilji’s problems as a child. She’d improved a great deal, but when our parents died, she slipped beyond my abilities to help.” He struggled to draw breath, pain streaking through him at his own helplessness. Laying this bare was like dosing the wound with acid. “I’d hoped when she found her One, it would help her regain control, balance her out. If he was in control, even if he had lesser powers, it could have anchored her. In fact, at the time, I thought it would be preferable if he had fewer powers.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  Each beat of his heart was a heavy thud, and his throat closed. He had to clear it twice before he could speak. “Her One was Eetash Sajan’s twin brother.” He swallowed. “No good has ever come of that family. Barely more than animals, some of them.”

  “It sounds like she and her One probably shouldn’t have bonded.” She drew in a deep breath that lifted her breasts.

  Anun, but he’d rather have his hands on her soft curves than continue this story. “No, they shouldn’t have. But it would take a great deal of control to stop it.”

  “And she had none.”

  “Very little.” He closed his eyes, praying that someday he could think of this and not feel as though he were drowning. “But her One…blamed my mother for his twin’s death, said the Arjun family was responsible.”

  “Oh, shit.” Bren rose to her haunches, her whole body tensing.

  “Yet, he wanted my sister. How can anyone not want their One?” His hands lifted, his fingers spreading. “He wasn’t certain they should bond, though. She was an Arjun, and his grief made him even more unstable than he might have been normally. It was a toxic combination.”

  He looked away, still unable to believe how quickly his family had gone from whole and happy to shattered, broken, and on its knees. “Cilji bonded with him anyway. Against his will. She was vastly more powerful than he was, and she couldn’t control it. She just…needed her One. It’s what the Kith were made for. She loved him and thought bonding with him would change his mind about…”

  “About blaming your
family?”

  “Anun, why?” He covered his eyes with his hand. “How could she do such a thing? It violates one of the oldest tenets of Sueni law.” Twenty years later and he still couldn’t fathom it. He’d loved his sister so much, but he would never understand what she’d done. Meeting Bren had only made what Cilji had done more abhorrent to Farid. “Sajan was…very angry about her bonding with him without his consent.”

  “Understandable.” Bren gave in to whatever internal struggle she’d been having, rose, and walked over to his side of the fire to kneel beside him. She didn’t touch him, and for that he was grateful. “Did he hurt her?”

  “Not in the way you’re thinking. He brought no physical harm to her.” He swallowed but couldn’t meet her eyes, couldn’t bear to know if she condemned his sister or forgave her for her crimes. He still wasn’t sure which he felt most. Nuances, as he’d told Bren, were the key to understanding. But love muddied all of it for him. “Cilji should never have bonded with him against his will, no matter how powerful she was. If she couldn’t control herself with him, she should never have touched him, should have removed herself from the situation. I would have helped her in any way I could.”

  Bren’s tone was neutral. “She didn’t ask.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “She was impetuous. Impulsive. Wonderful and funny and sweet.”

  “She was your baby sister.” There was the slightest bit of wistfulness in her voice, reminding him that she had never known any family of her own. Which was preferable? To have had it and lost it like he had, or to have never known it at all? He couldn’t say.

  But a smile curved his lips when he thought of Cilji. She had been like a comet that had burned too brightly and was gone too soon. “She was, and I loved her dearly.” His smile faded as the old guilt stabbed at his soul. “My parents expected me to protect her.”