by Rebecca York
Her hands squeezed so tightly that she felt her fingernails digging into her flesh.
“Yes, I signed the paper thrust in front of me. But it’s not the way you’re making it sound. We were told it was important to go slowly with the project.”
When he only continued to give her that cold, hard stare, she went on urgently. “Rohan, the Council of Guardians is made up of old, suspicious men and women who have been frightened by years of war with the Jalarans. They have not lived with and come to know you as I have. The Guardians were afraid your leaders might have agreed to the matings to further some hidden agenda of their own---that you might have come here with ulterior motives. But I---that is, some of us have been working to change their opinion.”
“No.” Rohan spoke the single syllable without hesitation. “You wanted us for breeding stock, to give you children, but you never intended to give us anything in return.”
“Rohan, let me explain how it was,” she pleaded.
He shook his proud head. “Do not waste your breath. It is over. We are going home. I will find a true mate among my own kind.”
The terrible words fell on her like physical blows. She felt dizzy, and she reached behind her, her hand searching for---and finding---the edge of the dressing table to steady herself. Her breath was coming in little gasps, and her skin felt clammy.
Perhaps he didn’t want to listen, but she had to tell him. “I signed that paper before I ever met you, when I was frightened of what you might do to me.” She sucked in a ragged breath. “But really, I didn’t have any choice. We are not a free people. We do what the military dictates, or we suffer the consequences.”
“Then I am sorry for you,” he said. “But that does not excuse your actions.”
Her vision swam, but she was determined not to collapse in front of him. Jalarans respected strength and courage, and she did so want her warrior’s respect. “What about the vows we took?” she asked. “You said they bound us together.”
“You are the one who dishonored those vows.”
“No. I’ve been true and faithful to you.”
“In your fashion.”
She reached out, her hand stretching toward him, the news of the baby on her lips. In the next instant, though, she let her hand fall to her side, and the words went unspoken. If she told him of the baby, it might make him stop and think, but she couldn’t use the child to hold him to her. If he did not want her for herself, then she did not want him.
“It makes no difference that I love you?” she asked. “That I have been doing everything in my power to change the Guardians’ edict?”
She saw something flicker in his eyes. Something that gave her a tiny spark of hope. But before the spark could grow, he turned on his heel and left.
For a full minute, Elena stared at the closed door, listening to the silence Rohan had left in his wake. Then, with a strangled cry, she sank into the chair and burst into tears.
PART III
RESOLUTION
It was bitterly cold, so cold that the north wind swooping into the courtyard cut through Elena’s heavy furs and chilled her to the bone. Still, she came here often, because the air inside the stone corridors and living chambers of the fortress seemed stifling. As did the walls themselves. From here she could see the red sun hanging like a glowing coal in the sky and the craggy peaks of the distant mountains.
Rohan had taken her to the mountains. She cherished the memory of that trip. Yet she had never seen his home in the great forest. Nor would their son see it. Not ever.
Sorrow threatened to overwhelm her. Trying to outrun it, she moved rapidly along the stone walkway. She didn’t glance back, yet she knew that the guards, who kept her in view at all times, were following. Maybe they would freeze their worthless balls off out here, she thought with silent and bitter humor. What did they think she was going to do, climb over the wall and disappear with the precious baby whom the Guardians considered state property?
It had been three months since she’d seen her warrior or heard any word of him. Three months of dragging herself through each day as if it were an endless sentence. Damn the Guardians, she thought. Damn the timid, fearful society that had bred her. She didn’t belong here anymore. Not since Rohan had taught her to think differently. In truth, sometimes she did dream of running away, of going somewhere she could raise her son to be a warrior like his father.
But she had no place to go. It was only a dream, a refuge.
She knew that many called her a traitor, though never to her face. Maybe she was. Certainly she was changed, and she feared the changes in her behavior would make the Guardians decide it was best to take her baby away from her as soon as he was weaned. Her hands squeezed into fists. They didn’t know her strength. She’d fight to keep him, fight to keep what was hers, because he was all she had left.
Behind her she heard a startled gasp. Whirling, she strained to see through the dim light. One of her guards had fallen to the ground. The other was drawing his weapon, but he was too late. A hooded figure stepped out from behind a stone pillar and grabbed him around the neck. He grunted and went down, his weapon flying from his hand. Before it landed on the ground, the assailant grabbed it and began running toward her.
She might have screamed for help. Instead, she kept silent, nor did she struggle as he scooped her into his arms and slung her over his shoulder. Dashing along the walkway, he darted into a depression between the stone walls, where a low doorway had appeared, though she knew there had been no sign of one. At least, no apparent sign.
Her kidnapper bent double, clearing the arch without bumping her against the stone. Then he shoved the thick stone door shut behind them, throwing them into complete darkness, for the rocks here did not glow. Never slackening his pace, he pounded down a narrow passage, half crouched, carrying her weight as if she were no more than a sack of feathers. She could see nothing, hear nothing but his harsh breathing and the drumming of his booted footsteps. Yet the spicy scent of his body filled her nostrils and made her giddy.
“Rohan! I can run on my own feet, you know.”
“Quiet,” he commanded. “We are still in danger.”
Her heart pounded wildly in her chest. What if he knew? What if he had only come to claim his child? The idea tore at her. But then, she wondered, would he be bouncing her along on his rock-hard shoulder if he had known of the pregnancy?
He didn’t stop until they emerged from the mouth of a hillside cave. When he set her down, she looked to see that they were on the other side of the shimmering silver river that ran past the fortress, separating it from the forest of ironwood trees. The trees rose, arrow straight, toward the sky, and they stood at the edge of them, far enough back to be hidden by their graceful overlapping branches from view of the guards walking the parapets of the fortress.
While Rohan struggled to shove the large rock across the entrance to the tunnel, muscles straining as he inched it into place, Elena looked with wonder at her surroundings. The deep, dark forest was absolutely forbidden territory to her people, and she doubted any had dared venture into it. Truly, it was a fairyland. Through the fernlike leaves of the great ironwood trees, red light filtered downward, giving everything a warm glow, and beneath her feet, a carpet of tiny, star-shaped white flowers spread across the forest floor. Defying the cold, they shimmered in the muted light like snow and filled the air with a sweet perfume.
For the first time in months, Elena breathed deeply, breathed the scent of freedom.
Rohan, too, was breathing hard from his labors when he turned to her. Having obliterated all signs of their escape route, he lifted a large hand to touch her cheek, to brush back the blond hair that had fallen across her eyes.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked urgently.
She shook her head, staring up at him.
“I thank you for not calling out to the soldiers,” he said in a rough voice.
Her chest tightened as she realized he wasn’t sure he could trust her. “I would
never do that. But, Rohan, if they catch you, they’ll kill you.”
“They will not catch me,” he said with all the arrogance she remembered.
“But they’ll be looking for me. They won’t let the---“She stopped abruptly, feeling her stomach clench, waiting for some sign that he knew about the child.
He merely went on as if she hadn’t interrupted. “Your Council of Guardians does not know about this tunnel. Now I have given away the secret to you.” His face was tense, strained. His arms were stiff at his sides, the way he had looked the last time she had seen him.
She held herself stiffly, too. After all the long, lonely months, she had given up hope of ever seeing him again. She surely never would have imagined that he’d kidnap her. But why had he done it?
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes searching his. “Why did you come back?”
To her astonishment, he dropped to one knee in front of her, crushing some of the flowers, releasing more of their heady scent. She had never viewed her warrior from precisely that angle, and it was a strange experience.
“For you,” he growled. “I came back for you, if you will still have me.”
She looked down at him, and although hope was beginning to grow within her, she chose her words carefully. “You said I betrayed you, that you would find another---“She broke off, unable to repeat the terrible thing he had spoken to her, although it had been much on her mind through the lonely months.
His answer was a shuddering groan. “I was wrong to hurt you with those words, Elena. I would not seek another mate. Yet I have tried to live without you, and I cannot.”
She couldn’t hold back a little sob. “Oh, Rohan!”
Falling to her knees, she clasped him to her. Then his arms came around her, and they held each other, rocking together on the carpet of flowers, murmuring broken words and phrases.
“I missed you so much . . . so much.”
“I need you.”
“I need you, too.”
She lifted her head, and his lips found hers in a long, greedy kiss that made her blood sing.
“I dreamed of doing that,” he growled. “Dreamed of it every night. Your lips on mine, the way you taught me that first time.”
“Oh, yes. Yes.”
“It was wrong to leave you,” he ground out. “I was blinded by my pride and by what I have been taught to call honor. I could not accept that you had acted according to your own honor, in the only way left open to you. So I followed the orders of my commander to break off the marriage and return home.” He shook his head. “Our leaders are as irrational as your Council of Guardians, Elena. They have decided any commingling of the blood of our species would only lessen the Jalarans’ strength. A decree has been passed and sent to every city and village. No Jalaran may ever again mate with a human, and we are to keep apart from you in all ways.” He took a deep breath, his gaze raking her features. “But I had to disobey. And now I cannot go back.”
She clung to him more tightly. Moisture clouded her eyes and spilled down her cheeks as she stroked her fingers over the ridges of his forehead---once so foreign, now so dear to her. “If you can’t go back, what will you do?”
Tenderly he wiped away her tears. “Do not cry, my cresteran,” he murmured. “Everything is going to be all right now that we’re together again.”
She raised her gaze to his. “But where will we go?”
“Somewhere safe. You and I, along with some of the other mated pairs who were forced to part as we were---we will all be safe, together.”
Her eyes widened. “That’s what happened to Sophia! Karn came to take her, as you did me!”
Rohan nodded.
“We all thought she had wandered too far on a plant-gathering expedition and been captured---or killed.”
“She is not dead. She is with Karn.” With a smile, he added. “And it is plain that she is happy to be there.”
“But where is she?”
“Far from here. Across an inlet of the southern ocean.
She thought of the vast sea with its deep purple waves, dangerous currents, and huge predators. “How did you get there?”
“In air cars we captured in battle from your soldiers, then repaired,” he answered. “My people have been using them for years. Our night vision is much better than yours. We fly in the darkness when you would not think to look for us. Karn and I, along with three of the other Jalarans mated to human women, searched for weeks, and we have found a place where we can make a home. No one will find us.”
His expression took on a certain familiar smugness as he continued. “We’ve discovered a cave---an enormous cave with walls of rock that glows brighter than any I have seen. My friends and I found it with the mining equipment that I liberated from your engineers.”
“Liberated?”
He dismissed her challenge over his choice of words with a wave of his hand. ‘Our cave is big enough for a whole city. I have already started to build a house for us near one of the hot springs.”
Her eyebrows shot upward. “Hot springs?”
His lips stretched into a grin. “Yes, you will be able to take a hot bath whenever you wish.”
It sounded lovely, but still she had doubts. “Rohan, how will we live in a cave?”
Again, that smug look crossed his features. “We have taken the tools we need and enough stores from your people and mine to feed us for a full cycle of seasons. There are fish in the cool streams that flow near the entrance, and I have trapped pelds from the plains for breeding, so that we will have meat. The animals appear to be doing well, living in the cave.”
She nodded. Pelds were docile grazing animals that lived in herds. She had thought herself of raising them for milk and cheese, but the Guardians had vetoed the suggestion.
Rohan continued. “You are going to use the lights we have installed to grow food for us and the animals.”
She tipped her head to one side. “You counted on me being there to do that?”
Any trace of arrogance left his gaze, and his tone was utterly sincere as he spoke. “I hoped. I prayed to the gods that you would come with me.”
She gave him a fierce look. “I will follow you anywhere you choose to take me, if you promise never to leave me again.”
His eyes burned with an intensity that robbed her of breath.
“You have my word, Elena. My solemn oath as a warrior.”
That was enough for her: his solemn oath. “Rohan, I love you. I never stopped loving you,” she told him.
They embraced once more, and Elena felt the joy flowing back and forth between them.
Slowly, with clear reluctance, Rohan loosened his hold on her. “We must go,” he told her, helping her to her feet. His fingers clasped hers tightly, and his gaze smoldered as he looked down at her. “I want to kiss you again, but if I do, I will lose all reason and drag you down to the ground with me.”
The words and the desire in his eyes made her body turn to hot liquid. “Are you sure there isn’t time for that?” she whispered, yearning to join with him in this magical place of their reunion.
He growled something rough and urgent deep in his throat. “Do not tempt me past endurance, woman. I dream every night of mating . . . no, as you say, of making love with you. It has been too long since our bodies were joined. I need you, Elena, but I will wait until we are far from here, in a place where your soldiers will not search for you. And then I will make love with you---and give you the child I promised you.”
Her heart filled to bursting. He didn’t know about the baby. He truly had come back for her, and her alone.
She gave him a slow smile. “You already have given me what you promised,” she replied softly, taking his hand and slipping it beneath her fur so that he could feel the gently rounded curve of her abdomen.
He sucked in a sharp breath, and his dark eyes blazed with an emotion too intense to name. “My child is already growing inside you,” he said. Then his expression became grave. “Did
you know of this when I left?”
“Yes.” Her hand pressed more tightly over his. “I had just learned for certain the day before you came back from that trip with the engineers.”
“And you did not tell me,” he growled. “You let me walk away from you. From our child.”
“That day---” She gulped. “I was waiting for you, planning to tell you that I was carrying your son.”
He made a low, strangled sound. “A son.”
She nodded, then swallowed hard. “It felt as if the world had crashed down around me when you said you were going away. Yet I didn’t want to use the baby to hold you. I want our bond to be strong enough.”
He took her gently in his arms. “It was enough, my cresteran. But I did not know it then. I was not wise enough to understand the feelings that I have for you---this fullness in my heart you call love. Will you ever forgive me for leaving you?” He swallowed hard. “For saying I would seek another mate when I knew in my soul that the two of us were joined for all time?”
She clasped her arms tightly around him. “I forgave you the instant you scooped me up and carried me out of that wretched prison. My people lock themselves inside of it, believing they can create their own world. Their own reality. But the real world is out here”---she glanced at the forest surrounding them---“and this is the world I want to live in, with you.”
Leaning back in his arms, she met his gaze, and with the certainty of a woman who knows she has found her one true mate, she said, “Please, Rohan. Take me home.”
The End
HERO’S WELCOME
He was taking a risk. He could lose everything—the estate he’d been given and all the severance pay he’d invested in it. There was no guarantee he’d ever make a farmer. Still, Ben-Linkman felt a rush of pleasure as he activated the breaker jets and eased the bulky air truck downward fifty more meters for a better view of his property.
“Mine. The spoils of war.” He said the words aloud, savoring them as he swooped low over the small lake, winking in the greenish glow of the late afternoon sun, then circled the sprawling house. Catching his breath, he swung away from the landscaped grounds and roared over the broad, flat fields where oil-rich rokam had once grown.
