by Isabel Wroth
Tarek’s response was tinged with a tiny bit of amusement. “Forgive me, my heart.” Clary waved him off again and when her contractions passed, Clary released Cassie’s hand and Cassie shook it out, checking to see if it was indeed broken.
“You’re freaking me out,” Clary panted accusingly. “Was it really that bad?”
If not for the sickly sweet scent of Clary’s fear, Cassie would never have uttered a word in response. It was clear that the other woman thought Cassie could help her in some way, and Cassie wasn’t cruel enough to let Clary keep on thinking that. No matter how much talking about the subject of what it meant to have been in the eugenics program hurt.
“That’s not how the program worked. I never carried or personally delivered a baby, Clary.” A small hiss of sound from behind her was all Cassie heard for a second.
Clary had to look to Gwen for clarification. “My hormones are all screwed up, I can’t tell. Is she lying right now?”
Cassie did her best to not let the offense she took show on her face. The walls inside her went flying back up, and Cassie slanted a challenging look at Gwen, daring her to say yes.
“No, Clary. She’s not.” Gwen confirmed gently, trying to get Clary to start walking again to speed things up.
“I’m not walking! I’m getting to the bottom of this!” Clary snapped, pushing the power of her beast at Cassie in a way that made her skin crawl with uneasiness. “I’m not an idiot, Cassie. Your patches, they were clearly blue and gold eugenics. Green for breeding. I saw them.”
Pissed off now more than hurt or upset, Cassie made a sarcastically thoughtful sound. “You saw my patches, huh? Did you see these too?”
Cassie pulled her tunic up and the waist of her trousers down far enough to bare the two star shaped tattoos on her lower belly. Tattoos Falken had previously claimed to love while he’d licked at them. Cassie had loved that for the first time in her life, the marks weren’t just further proof of every screwed up second of her life after she’d hit puberty.
Cassie went on, overacting the motion of looking down at the stark black marks. “The eugenics officers put them on me so they wouldn’t have to hunt around for my ovaries. Much more efficient to suck out how ever many eggs they wanted from me at the time when they had a clearly marked target zone. Then after fertilizing those eggs, they shoved them up inside some other woman to gestate and grow.
“She got to carry around my kids, experience all the joys of birth, and I never had to do anything but be one of the best humanity had to offer. Lucky me, right? Smart enough to have my genetic material re-populate the next generation of the human race.
“Sat around all day eating the best food on the ship, relentlessly chased around by all the eligible guys on board who wanted to earn their chance at proving what studs they were by becoming a prime breeder via my body. Pumped full of fertility drugs to optimize my cell growth for all those fun little procedures. I only puked my guts up for days afterward because of the anesthesia. Sounds great, huh?”
Cassie let her clothes snap back into place and refused to allow herself to soften in the face of Clary and Gwen’s rather horrified expressions.
“I’m not denying you information or reassurance because I don’t want to tell you what it’s going to be like to have babies. I’m not telling you, because I don’t know what it’s like, Clary. I never got the chance to know and I probably never will.
“I’m sorry that you’re frightened and worried about what’s going to happen. I truly am. All I’ve got to offer is some bits and pieces of your ‘hardy bastards’ speech. The memorable bits. Will that help you?”
Clary was suddenly laughing and crying at the same time, and Cassie oomphed as the overburdened woman threw her arms around Cassie and squeezed the breath out of her.
Uncertain what was going on now, Cassie patted Clary’s back awkwardly. “Are you laughing or crying?”
“Both!” Clary sobbed, hiccupping around a giggle. “Everyone is being so nice and promising me everything is going to be fine. But I needed that.”
“Needed what?” Cassie looked around to Gwen, who shrugged and mouthed, ‘hormones’
“I needed you to get in my face.”
“Um…No problem.”
“Cassie, I’m so sorry.”
As smashed against the other woman as she was, Cassie couldn’t deny the scent of Clary’s honest apology. She struggled to retain her bitchiness, but feeling the writhing around going on where her stomach was pressed to Clary’s…there was just no way.
“You’ve got a pretty good excuse for a few more hours. Can I ask you a favor?”
“Definitely.” Clary gasped out.
Cassie used the most neutral tone she thought she was capable of using, wanting out of there as fast as non-humanly possible, and carefully asked, “If you’re about to have another contraction, could you crush Tarek instead of me? He deserves it for having implanted you with twins.”
Clary’s laughter gave way to another agonized groan. Just in time for Tarek to take Cassie’s place and let his mate cling to him. The big Sarazen didn’t even flinch when Clary sank her claws into his shoulders. All ten of them, right in there.
*****
Excused from the event about to take place, Cassie didn’t hesitate to haul ass out of the Asho’s suite and head back for the safety of her own. Unfortunately, she had forgotten about Falken. She got past three of the ten pairs of guards in the hallways before he caught up to her. He snatched her up off the ground with one arm, pulling her into an alcove to give a paltry illusion of privacy.
He ducked his head, his golden eyes glittering down at her with so much concern it was all Cassie could do to keep hold of herself. The tears were right there, burning their way up her throat to pour out of her in gut-crushing waves. Cassie pushed at him, but Falken was relentless, crowding her until she couldn’t look anywhere other than up at him. She sucked in a ragged breath when he spread his hand over her belly and rubbed at the tattoo situated right over her left ovary.
“You never told me where these had come from.” he accused softly.
Coldness. Cassie needed to find her coldness. Her armor. Her protection. Where the hell was it?
“You never asked.”
Falken hissed out a soft breath through his teeth. “I had thought they were markings of your lineage. It never occurred to me that they would be anything else. You said yesterday you hadn’t imagined having to suffer another experience or betrayal. Is this what you were referring to?”
Cassie licked her lips and touched her tongue to the corner of her mouth, surrounded by all Falken’s heat. Saturated by his scent, his heaviness. It was impossible for her body to not respond, even as she detested her lack of self-control.
“Among other things.” she managed to force out.
“Other…What other things?” he demanded incredulously, “What could possibly be worse than having cubs not even created, taken from inside you?”
“I don’t want to talk about this right now. Probably not ever.”
“Let me in, Cassie. Tell me. No matter how you feel I’ve wronged you, I would never hurt you with purpose.”
“Please. I don’t want to-”
“You are my one, Cassie. I will not give up on mending the discord between us. Whatever I must do, no matter what truths I must face of how I’ve hurt you. I will bear it all without complaint. You were right to accuse me of not listening to you, of being too busy. I’m listening, Cassie. Tell me. Tell me anything.”
Scrambling for any excuse, Cassie shot a glance to her left. “Right here in the hallway where anyone could hear us?”
In response to Cassie’s weak attempt at a sarcastic snarl, Falken swept her out of the alcove and down the corridor. Her feet barely touched the polished stone floors the whole way, as though Falken was rushing to get ahead of any protest she might have been able to come up with. The door to their quarters shut and Falken repeated his words to her.
“I am listeni
ng, Cassie.”
Over his shoulder, Cassie saw Ilaria shimmer into her field of vision. The other female nodding to Cassie as though telling her it was time. Time to just let it all go.
The crushing enormity of all the pain bottled up inside had Cassie stepping back and to the side to sink down the wall until her ass hit the floor. Falken didn’t give her any space at all. He followed her retreat and dropped down to let his knees bracket her hips, his big hands pushed her hair aside so she didn’t even have that to hide in.
“What could be worse than having cubs not even created, taken from inside you?” he repeated.
Cassie noted that Falken’s voice had an edge of hesitance to it now. Like he worried, from her reaction, it might be more than he could take. Some perverse part of her hoped it was too much. Hoped he would prove all her fears correct and drop her like a hot potato.
“After we were rescued from the Aria, did you watch any of the recordings?”
Falken nodded, his thumb cruising over the edge of her cheek. She hated how it made her feel better. How that one touch had her struggling not to turn into the tenderness and soak it up like she was starving for his affection.
“I watched the feed live from the warrior’s helmet recorders from the command deck.”
“You see any of the children’s bodies?”
“I did.” Falken murmured gravely.
Cassie nodded, rolling her eyes up towards the ceiling in hopes of keeping the tears in for a little while longer. Maybe after Falken was gone, she would let them go. But not now. Showing any more weakness would no doubt lead him to thinking her even more incapable than before.
“They were mine.”
*****
Cassie’s hoarse rasp made the fine hairs on Falken’s neck rise up. A frigid chill raced down his spine as he straddled her legs, crowding her in hopes she would take some comfort from his presence. He could see the tears she refused to cry, trembling on her lashes as she rolled her eyes up and fought to breathe evenly.
His beast was writhing inside his chest, demanding freedom to fight an enemy alive only inside Cassie’s memories. An enemy who had left poison inside her, pain that was destroying her slowly. An enemy Falken couldn’t kill or fight with his fists or his words. All he could do was hold her while she purged the poison left behind by those who should have cared for her.
“You said you have not carried cubs-” he tried to reason his way through what she had said. Praying he simply wasn’t understanding what she meant.
“I didn’t physically carry them, no. But they came out of me. My eggs, fertilized and implanted in other women on our ship and one or two of the other ships, I think.”
“How could you know?” Falken was grasping at thin air and he knew it. He could see the certainty in Cassie’s expression.
“I was fifteen when they did the first extraction procedure on me. There were twenty five children aged twelve years old, all born within a month of one another on board the Aria. I hacked the database in the lab a week before we attacked.”
Cassie made the confession to her knees, as though it was something to be ashamed of. Wanting to know what had come of what sounded like a torturous experience for her, he could do nothing but listen, because she was nowhere near finished.
“Restricted to the eugenics level, I never got to see any of them. My parents told me that once the eggs left my body, the kids weren’t technically mine anymore, so I shouldn’t worry about it. When I refused the treatments, refused the tests or procedures, I was drugged.
“I was told it was better that way. They knew best, I was too young to understand why it had to be that way, and it wasn’t good for me to upset myself. I woke up in the recovery rooms, usually strapped to a table with people standing over me. No one listened to what I wanted. They didn’t care so long as I did my duty to ensure the survival of our species.
“I was sequestered to keep me from being prematurely bred by an unauthorized male. It’s less efficient, you see. A human female is born with hundreds of fertile eggs, yet she can only carry one or two children at a time. That would take too long.
“If I was pregnant, they couldn’t harvest any more eggs from me. And they wouldn’t have terminated an unauthorized pregnancy, my genetics paired with even an inferior male would have potentially produced an exceptional human child.”
Falken struggled to understand what Cassie was telling him. But it was as inconceivable to Falken as what had been done to Ohlen’s mate, Andi.
“Your parents-”
“Drugged me.” she cut him off flatly. “My intelligence rating lifted their social status and gave them special privileges. They were proud that they had produced offspring with enough intelligence to be used as the foundation for the next generation. I’m sure they got a secret thrill whenever they saw the little curly blonde kids running around the ship, knowing where they’d come from.”
Cassie shook her head harshly, sucking in a ragged breath to continue. “I was glad when the ship was initially attacked, you know. I was thrilled for about an hour, until I realized we’d been boarded and everyone was going to die.”
“Why were you glad?”
“Well, I was about to be discharged from the eugenics program, because I didn’t have any more eggs for them to pull out of me. So when the first explosion hit, the fool I was about to be married to hit the deck and pissed himself in terror.” That particular memory had Cassie laughing a bit, biting into her lip as finally the tears began to fall.
Falken wasn’t laughing. Married was the term the humans used to describe their version of bonding. The attack upon the humans by the Na’ah had prevented Cassie from being bonded to another male.
He had asked Cassie what could be worse than having genetic material taken from her to be implanted into another female. Well, now Falken knew.
To have been drugged by people who were supposed to care for her.
To be ignored and told she was too young to understand.
To know that offspring had come from her body and been given to others, but not know who those little ones were.
To never have seen them, yet know with all certainty they were dead.
Certainty, because with her own eyes Cassie had seen their bodies as she had been taken from what remained of her ship.
Certainty, that by his actions and lack thereof, Falken was just as bad as all the others who had claimed to care and then turned around to abuse and betray her.
Having been conditioned with so much evidence to support her beliefs, Falken knew there was nothing he could say to Cassie that she would believe to assure her he was different. He would have to show her.
It was a daunting task, a mess he could have avoided making all together had he been more careful. More observant. Falken had lost Cassie’s trust and it would be near impossible for him to win it back without their bond in place. Without that connection to allow her to sense and feel his emotions. The truth in his words.
Cassie’s beast would give her the scents to help her make her decisions and give evidence to when someone was telling truth or lies. But at the moment, Falken was certain Cassie would doubt those senses even still.
His heart breaking for the loss he hadn’t even imagined she might have suffered, Falken bent forward and touched his brow to hers. Kneading his fingers into her hair because he knew how much she enjoyed the sensation.
The scents rolling off of her were a crushing mix of distrust, pain, grief, sadness. He understood now why he would catch hints of jealousy in her scent when she was unable to control her emotions. Understood now why she had been so uncomfortable when Clary had summoned Cassie to her suite this morning.
“I will find a way to make you believe in me again. In us.” Falken whispered the vow to his mate with all the conviction he possessed.
“Falken-”
He interrupted her weary sigh with a soft kiss. Fighting himself and his beast when the taste of her spun him around inside as though he’d been thrown
head first into a cyclone. He wanted nothing more than to take her to the floor and curl himself around her, but the stiffness in her body kept him from doing anything other than giving her that one, far too brief kiss.
“I will find a way, Cassie. My one.”
Eight
The citadel vibrated with the sounds of celebration.
Clary had delivered the first pair of cubs born to the ruling family in over two thousand years. Hybrid twins, a boy and girl, who would be the future of the Sarazen race. There wasn’t a single person not making noise about it. From the lowest level of the fortress to the very top, music and laughter rang out to rock the foundations.
According to Gwen, there hadn’t been any complications and the pair of babies were quote, “the most beautiful babies I’ve ever seen.”
Clary had invited her to come and see the newborns, but Cassie had, as politely as possible, declined. She hadn’t wanted to look at the babies and feel anything other than happiness for her friend, and Cassie wasn’t sure she could accomplish that.
She had felt it better to just allow the ruling pride leaders to enjoy every moment of their new additions without the resentful, ugly green demon attached to Cassie’s back making itself known. It would be required of her and Falken both to attend a naming ceremony in which the cubs would be officially welcomed by the entire pride.
It was a few weeks away, as Tarek was even more anal about the security of his den than usual. Cassie wouldn’t be surprised if the new family would opt to just use a live holographic feed for the ceremony.
When she had declined the initial invitation, Cassie had caught Falken looking at her with an expression both tender and concerned at the same time. Her stomach had flipped circles inside her and she had immediately retreated to her little holo-room to avoid any more contact.
Unfortunately, Falken hadn’t been content to leave her be. Relieved from duty as he was, he now had more than enough time to dog her steps and continue to go about trying to win back her trust. It made Cassie feel like a caged animal, constantly watched. Or maybe she was just so defensive, waiting for the next wound to be delivered. He seemed to be on the offensive, ready to play dirty to win back her trust.
