“Then back the fuck off, Bloodling!” she shouts back.
Gunnar steps away, working his jaw back and forth with his large hand.
Slade grins. Tiny frog.
“Thanks for the help, Slade,” Beth shoots his way.
He shrugs. “He won't hurt you—he is your sire.” No Bloodling would ever hurt his female kin. It is not done.
“Pfft. The manhandling is a deal breaker.”
“Three slang,” Gunnar says with a slight sneer as mild irritation finally begins to bleed through his jovial exterior.
Beth frowns, keeping a close eye on him. “What of it? It is my job, you know—to jump.”
Gunnar smiles, pacing a circle around her. “And what else is your job?”
She turns with his movements as she answers automatically, “To uphold The Cause.”
“Your mother held the Thirteenth in the highest regard.”
Beth swallows hard, and Slade feels a wave of pity for her that is so strong, it staggers him.
“Forsake not The Cause,” she recites softly.
“Yes,” Gunnar hisses in obvious resentment.
Beth's curiosity is an ill-fitting mask that covers all other emotions. Yet she stays the course. Slade's admiration for her swells. Beth has the heart of a lioness nightloper.
Her chin rises. “In the end, it is all we have.”
Gunnar waves away her words. “Yes, yes, yes. The precious Cause—the murderer of your mother.”
Beth pales, and the hand holding the blade, which she snatched off the ground, trembles ever so slightly.
“Murdered?” she whispers. “By you?”
Gunnar throws back his head and howls into the sky.
Beth drops the weapon to cover her ears. The call of a Bloodling is a beautiful thing, and it restores Slade at the primal level. For a partial-blood like Beth, with her acute Reflective hearing, it would be a discordant scream.
Gunnar strides to Beth, and she backs away, hands still over her ears, forgetting her weapon in the trampled grass.
He jerks her hands from her ears and holds them against her sides.
Beth doesn't struggle.
Nothing in the known thirteen sectors is stronger than a Bloodling. They're nearly unstoppable.
Slade does not believe Beth's aware of the tears that trace down a face so filled with loss, the scene etches his mind as her grief unfolds before him.
“No,” Gunnar says in a tight voice of raw agony, “I loved her—with the blood that pumps within my veins, with the thoughts of my mind, with each breath that entered and left my body. I loved her.”
His fangs gleam as he hisses his anguish.
The Bloodling towers over his small Reflective daughter, but they are somehow a match, their genetics more alike than not.
“Then who killed her?” Beth’s tears soak her Reflective uniform. “Who. Killed. My. Mother? If not you, then who?”
Slade sees thoughts of vengeance wash over her face like water sheeting off glass.
“So many, my little hopper.” He thumbs away her tears, and Beth shivers. “But ultimately, it was your own Commander Rachett who ended my Lucinda.”
“No!” Beth backs away, hands covering her mouth, shock widening her eyes.
Gunnar holds up a palm, stalking her. “It was mercy, not murder. Lucinda was too damaged to heal herself.”
Surprise momentarily blanks her face. “Who?” Beth repeats.
His hand falls. “Nightlopers.”
Extreme emotions do battle across her features as seconds transform into a full minute. Slade watches her regain hard-won composure. “Why didn't you come for me?”
“Come?” Gunnar's eyebrows hike.
“Yes!” Beth says, spinning, her laughter holding a slight edge of hysteria. “I was a pariah as a Reflective. They had a whole jeering section for Beth Jasper. Female—mongrel.”
Gunnar flinches at her wounded tone, grabbing her with his massive hands. “You are no mongrel. You are the daughter of a union between Reflective and Bloodling warriors. That is supremacy, not inferiority.”
Beth's struggles with her painful emotions, moving out from underneath Gunnar's hands.
“I was unaware of your existence,” Gunnar explains.
Beth whirls, facing him. “What? Why?”
“I do not know. Your mother would have her reasons to keep the knowledge of a daughter from me.”
“We do not leave our offspring,” Slade interjects, walking slowly toward Beth as though she's a skittish colt ready to run.
“You did.” Her nearly black eyes pin Gunnar with accusation, but he shakes his head in the face of it.
“No,” he replies softly. “I did not. Your mother understood full well that if I had known I had offspring—especially with her—I would jump here and take you away from this life of hardship.”
A sigh full of longing seeps out of Beth. “Why would she keep me a secret? What could be gained from that? Why would she not claim me herself?” Beth bites her lip to stop its quaking.
A sad uplift touches Gunnar's mouth. “My speculation is she sought to protect you.”
“From what?” Beth’s brows pinch together.
“From whom?” Gunnar looks at Slade, and he clamps down on his expression. Slade believes he knows exactly why Lucinda chose to keep her pregnancy secret. She could have easily hidden the birth if she was willing to compromise the Twelfth.
Slade excavates his memory and finally remembers the second-to-last directive: Disturb not the Continuum.
Yes, it would be possible for Lucinda to go through an entire pregnancy and give birth in any sector other than Ten or One, and no one would have been the wiser, even Gunnar.
“Who raised you?” Slade asks suddenly.
“Adoptive parents.” Beth’s voice is full of unresolved shock.
“The life of a female Reflective is wrought with conflict, and proving yourself constantly,” Gunnar says.
“No shit,” Beth comments with an uneasy laugh.
Gunnar frowns. “Your mother said her life within The Cause was not an easy one.”
“It would have been worse than anything I went through—she was even earlier than I was.” Beth tugs at the end of her braid, working her finger through the tail. “My mother,” she adds softly as though speaking it aloud might conjure her.
He nods solemnly. “She must have seen your role as a female Reflective warrior as the lesser of the two evils.”
Beth smiles, then begins to laugh. She brays like a donkey, slapping her thighs and whooping as tears stream down her face.
Slade and Gunnar glance at each other, frowning in unison.
“Yup! That whole Reflective beat down was a barrel of fucking monkeys to live through.” Beth slaps her chest with her hand. “But now it's what I am.” She bares her teeth at them. “I am Reflective. I was born to be. I just wish to Principle that even one person had been in my corner. And principledamned Rachett knew all along. All along.” Beth's voice begins to warm with her rage.
“And how in hades did I know who you were?” Her eyes leap from Slade's to Gunnar's.
“You are my kin—the fire is proof of that, though it fades after time and proximity.”
Gunnar touches his finger lightly to his own chest.
Beth follows, laying her palm across her own.
“Now what?” she asks, tossing her braid behind her and putting hands to hips.
“Why now, we may return to One, of course” Gunnar says with a self-assured smile.
Slade tenses. Somehow, he doesn't think this is how Dimitri sees things happening.
Beth's brows knot, and her mouth opens and closes. Her lips part again. “Uh—no. I'm not going anywhere,” she replies slowly, as though Gunnar is a somewhat dimwitted child, and throws out her palms. “The Cause must be restored. I have unfinished business—Threes who need me, and Jeb—” Beth bites her lip, and Slade is instantly on alert at the mention of the Reflective male’s name. He reads her fa
ce and scents her emotions. He knows the taste of her blood.
Even now, the remnants pound through his veins.
Slade senses Reflective Merrick thinks to claim Beth.
Over my dead blood.
Beth lifts her face to Gunnar, hands flying to settle on her hips again in clear dismissal. “I am Reflective. I will not be remanded to One. It's not where I belong.”
Gunnar steps forward, never breaking eye contact with Beth. “It is the only place you shall ever belong.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Merrick
“Beth!” Jeb roars, spinning slowly in a circle. Each raw pulse point of his body feels like small incinerating spots of scorching heat.
Voices explode all around him.
“What the hades was that?”
“Did you see that? Was that male a One?”
“Bloodling, for sure—”
Jeb stops spinning. He scans for Beth with his eyes, and finally lets his mind do it instead.
He reaches far and wide, spreading out feelers as antiquated as time to find his soul mate.
Jeb ignores his twisting insides. Beth is out of sight, and he was finally doing so well emotionally. He didn’t go insane when she insisted on putting herself in danger, he gave her space, and he was courteous when his every nerve ending was on fire to make her his—claim her.
Now she's gone. A Bloodling and a Reflective companion who felt all wrong have jumped with his soul mate.
The tailwind is the finest ribbon, already dissipated as he stands in a shell-shocked stupor.
Jeb plows through the mob of Reflectives, who moments ago, thought they would control Beth.
It should be funny really, though Jeb can't see the humor.
Before, they wouldn't have deigned to think of her as Reflective. But when Reflective women are scarce, even a half-breed like Beth holds appeal.
But she is mine.
Jeb clips the shoulder of a Reflective on his mad dash to the fountain. “Hey!”
Jeb shoves him aside, sprinting for the trail still lingering beside the fountain.
He reaches forward, scooping the glittering remnants, and brings them toward his face.
He wafts his palm backward and forward.
Got it.
Jeb can't jump the same trail, but he knows where it goes. He turns his gaze on the throng, his brows sinking.
“Silence!” he bellows.
The crowd of male Reflectives quiet. “I'm ashamed at the majority of you.”
Sullen and watchful, he takes them in. Jeb's got his work cut out for him. Five years is a hades span of time for the lot of them to be unmanned.
“Beth Jasper is a fellow warrior of The Cause—not a bone to be fought over. You know what she is to me. What that means.”
Eyes cast themselves to the ground. But one gaze meets his in challenge.
Jeb's hands fist. I don't have time for a battle when Beth is missing.
“And your supposed soul mate is with a Bloodling? That does not bode well,” Reflective Conan challenges.
“No. That is why I must pursue her, immediately.”
“And what of the Reflective male?” Conan presses.
Jeb shakes his head. “Do you know him?”
Jeb doesn't know every Reflective, but he considers himself familiar with all their faces after so much time together.
That Reflective was unknown to Jeb.
Verbal measles break out, and Jeb leaves the group like the disease it’s become. He hikes toward a streetlamp, praying to Principle that the reflection portals still work on command.
“Wait!” Calvin rushes to catch up with him.
Jeb keeps striding, his eyes focused on the tall lamp just ahead. “Not now, Calvin.”
Calvin grabs his arm, spinning Jeb around, and it's all he can do not to strike him.
“Let me come with you.”
Jeb thinks of Jacky and Maddie.
His eyes sweep over the crowd. He doesn't see them.
“Where are the Threes?” Jeb asks tersely.
“With Kennet.”
Jeb's shoulders drop. At least that much is in order.
“Fine, but they”—Jeb points to the group of Reflectives—“need to stop worrying about the one female that is mine and start strategizing a way to reacquire our women who've been scattered to the sectors.”
Calvin’s eyes level on Jeb, and he nods. “Agreed.”
Their gazes shift to the hidden pocket where the portal is.
“You don't still have your device?” Calvin asks.
Jeb shakes his head. He misplaced his pulse device while on One.
“We'll use mine.” Calvin brushes his thumb over the dock pad, and the hidden pocket alongside the streetlamp housing opens like a reluctant eyelid.
A mirror winks at them.
Jeb gives a covert eye flick to the crowd of Reflectives still arguing behind him.
With a disgusted shake of his head, he concentrates on the small square piece of glass.
He sees his eye blink back at him—and jumps.
His destination is the burned out quadrant of Adlaine. Beth's home quadrant.
*
Jeb jogs in a large circle upon his final jump. He moved through only eight portals before landing in Adlaine.
Even his usual lack of sympathy for the dregs of Papilio is plucked with what fills his vision.
The tavern where he was treated so abysmally is completely gone. A few sorrowful bricks serve as testimony to a chimney that warmed the bar in the cooler months. Damp soot clings to every surface like ashy tears mourning the devastated architecture
Jeb sighs.
Calvin bumps into him. “Sorry.”
“Klutz,” Jeb says without heat.
Calvin smirks. “You sound so Three.”
Jeb shrugs, beginning his perusal of the immediate environment.
Beth is not here.
His eyes track footprints—fresh ones.
“Look here,” Calvin says. The light reflecting off the charred buildings dulls his platinum hair.
“I see.”
Calvin is pointing to an obvious post-jump landing. Two sets of footprints are proof of a smoothly executed jump.
The other set show a staggering dump off.
Calvin says, “Looks like one of them took three steps then collapsed.”
Jeb walks to the mess of footprints and sinks to his haunches. He traces a fingertip through the revolution of misplaced gait then an obvious full-body imprint.
Calvin closes his eyes and tips his head back. “I smell—vomit.”
Jeb smiles grimly. “Someone's not a jumper. The male is not Reflective.”
“He sure looked the part.”
Jeb nods. He had—but not. “Superficially. But remember, even that prick Conan said he'd never laid eyes on him before.”
“Merrick, you know we don't know the entire command. Beth stood out as female. But the rest of the men blend, especially the inductees.”
His comment makes Jeb think of Lance Ryan, who is still unaccounted for.
Marvelous.
“But you didn't know him?”
Calvin shrugs. “No.”
“He would handle a jump better than a drunk swagger and vomit session.” Jeb's palm sweeps the remnants on the mashed grass.
Calvin frowns, scrubbing the blond stubble at his chin. “Yes,” he admits slowly.
“So we are dealing with a Bloodling who took Beth for reasons unknown.”
Calvin's eyebrow rises. “Or known.”
Jeb glowers.
“Merrick, you have to consider the possibility that it's a blood reprisal or some such bullshit. Beth was on One long enough to make enemies.”
“Fine. Perhaps. But the other male? He is no Reflective. So why would they go to all this trouble for a female from Ten? It's suicide to come in here for one female.”
Calvin shakes his head. “It sure would be if everything was as it was before. When Rachett was overs
eer. When the Reflectives worked for The Cause and only that. Now, with the turmoil and dissension, it's a perfect time for Ones to come in and stir the pot. Those who can jump.”
Jeb's restless feet take him around the perimeter of the main set of footprints. They grow wide then suddenly disappear.
“She wouldn't go with them voluntarily.”
“I wouldn't think so,” Calvin agrees.
Jeb gives him a sharp look.
“Merrick, she's your soul mate, but her timepiece is not degraded. As far as she's concerned, you're a player—arrogant but trustworthy. She doesn't look at you the way you look at her.”
“Principle!” Jeb yells. “This is so damned frustrating!”
Calvin exhales roughly. “Let's find her, Jeb.”
Jeb knows where she is.
His eyes seek what he needs.
A decorative fountain, once the focal point of this quadrant sits nearly dry.
Jeb sees a reflection.
He claps Calvin on the back, gesturing toward the fountain.
He watches Calvin study the quarter meter of murky water.
“Living dangerously, Merrick.”
Jeb grins for the first time today. “Always.”
They jump.
The small surface doesn't reflect well, but Jeb slams them through, using his determination and the home world advantage in his favor.
Their travel is short.
Beth's domicile is not far enough for the jump to last more than a few seconds.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Beth
Now that the initial shock of meeting her father has leveled off, Beth's hunger comes to life.
She's also so tired she can hardly stay standing.
Gunnar doesn’t seem likely to kill her, and she knows Slade won't. With the immediate threats of physical danger gone, thoughts of Jeb crowd out Beth's other concerns. He should know she's not in imminent danger. Though all Ones are considered enemies by rote, Gunnar seems to be an exception, if a little maniacal and strange.
Beth can't stop staring. He's a massive male. Gunnar is as big as Slade and so scary to look at if she wasn't certain he meant her no harm, she would constantly be on guard.
Beth still feels edgy despite what he calls “kinship recognition,” an antiquated reference Beth has read in The Cause historical volumes as a term hailing from Three, the world of spheres. It's an expression used to describe the odd surge of heat felt within when two or more people are related and in close proximity.
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