by Abel, Regine
Although he didn’t show any emotion, Varnog was deeply touched by the acknowledgment. He craved belonging, and that recognition from a former enemy further validated the sacrifices he had done to become more than the monster the General had meant for him to be.
An idea suddenly struck me.
“Tabitha, can you spare four shields for the Scelks accompanying me?”
“Yes,” my mate immediately responded.
“Please, do it.”
Seconds later, the Scelks stiffened at the sudden intrusion in their psychic minds.
“It’s all right. You just got Shielded against the disruptors. I will need your necklaces,” I explained.
Varnog’s eyes widened in understanding. Without a word, he removed his necklace and handed it to me, a move imitated by the other three Scelks. There had been no time and not enough material to create more of them for my brothers or the Vanguard. We also hadn’t been certain the women of the Vanguard would have been willing to Shield the Scelks.
“Good hunting,” I said to all of them, bowing my head in goodbye.
“And to you, brother. Thank you for everything,” Legion said.
My hearts soared, and my throat constricted to be thus claimed in such an unexpected manner. I nodded again, spread my wings, and took flight. The last image that burned in my mind was Varnog’s smile as he gazed upon Legion. With those words, the Vanguard’s Leader had earned the Scelk’s loyalty. No matter how ugly this battle turned, Varnog would see Legion safely returned to the Ravager.
As we approached the gated sections, a cold shiver ran down my spine at the deviousness of the traps. Locked in on four sides by slick, metal walls, at least five meters high, the Warriors had little choice but to fire everything they had at the Drone Swarm spilling over from the plateau at the top of the north wall. Five of the Warriors had formed a line, shields up, bashing and slicing the Drones that managed to fall into the pit.
A couple of the Warriors were spitting acid and mouth darts at the east wall. Thanks to the Crinax enhancing the potency of their acid, it pierced small holes into the wall big enough to allow the Warriors to haul themselves up as one would wall-climb.
In a half-circle at the edge of the disruption zone, five Vanguard shuttles were firing at the Drones on the plateau and at the few remaining towers from whence Soldiers pelleted the Warriors. Fury burned within me as I watched my brothers lifting some of the Warriors out of the pit only to find them riddled with shot wounds despite having their shields held before them to at least protect their vital organs. My brothers would fly high enough to clear the disruption zone, then the Warrior would go limp in their arms, having Portaled out into a new Shell. My brothers would then dump the soulless Shell and dive back down to rescue another Warrior.
A few of them didn’t make it back down, getting shot mid-air and plummeting to their deaths. Thanks to their Shield or necklace, their souls all managed to find its way to a new Shell. As I reached the pit, I tossed the necklaces to some of the Warriors at the back firing at the Drones. They needed no explanation. In less than a minute, most of them had Portaled out, taking the necklace from the lifeless form of the previous Warrior who had used it. I hauled a few of the Warriors that had made it halfway up the wall onto the other side. As my brothers dove in to fly out the last of the Warriors, the five in the front dashed to the back, four of them grabbing the necklaces, wrapping them around their necks seconds before the rabid Drone Swarm reached their bodies. I snagged the fifth one—Rage—and flew off.
Shield in hand, he did an amazing job covering our retreat, despite the singed tip of my right wing. Naturally, he refused to Portal out and requested to be dropped on the other side of the wall. As soon as I put him down, he grabbed my wrist, preventing me from taking off. His gaze, devoid of any aggression, bore into mine.
“I am glad she found a good man. She deserves all the happiness in the world. See that you get back to her in one piece.” Without giving me a chance to respond, Rage took off running to catch up with his brothers racing towards the main tower.
With Wrath’s unit also rescued from their pit, my brothers and I flew around the guard towers to eliminate the last of the snipers and turrets. While we’d been rescuing the trapped Warriors, Chaos’s unit had been taking out their ground-to-air missile launchers with the assistance of two Scelks easing their advance.
Within two hours, Chaos’s unit and the rescued Warriors that had made it over the wall, finally reached the control room within the main tower. With both the ships and psychic disruptors disabled, we decimated the remaining Kryptid forces in no time as our fleet of chasers moved in for the kill. It almost felt like a crime to mow through them with half of the Soldiers standing like helpless statues, robbed of their minds by the Scelks. But these were not opponents worthy of a fair battle. They were bugs to be exterminated.
The battle on Zekuro was won. The Coalition would take care of the cleanup and deal with the Workers and whatever other species might be held prisoner here. Bone weary, I flew in the same vessel as Legion and Rage on our way back to the Ravager, a single thought on my mind: holding my woman again.
But another nightmare awaited me when we landed inside the battleship’s hangar.
It was Myriam, and not my mate, that waited for me to disembark. I had been surprised that Tabitha hadn’t come to pick me up herself from the surface. But with all her responsibilities, when her shuttle had left the field, I’d assumed she’d been called away on other duties. But the commiserating and worried look on Myriam’s face set all my senses on high alert.
“Where’s my mate?” I asked, my consciousness immediately seeking Tabitha’s. My blood ran cold at the murky unresponsiveness I got from her. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Tabitha is in the med bay,” Myriam said in a soft voice. “Bane, she’s not doing well. But we’re not yet certain what’s wrong.”
I broke into a run, psychically shouting for Rogue to come at once. He was still in a shuttle with Chaos, a few minutes away from the battlecruiser. I burst into the med bay, and my knees nearly buckled at the sight of my woman.
Her naturally pale skin almost looked translucent, aside from her shoulders and the sides of her neck. They had taken the same grayish tinge as our mothers’ skins, with that dried mud cracking effect. Tabitha trembled, her skin damp with a feverish sweat. The beating of her heart, far too high, caused the monitor to beep erratically, and her labored breathing came in short gasps.
“No, no, no, no, no!” I whispered, rushing to her side. “Tabitha,” I called out, taking her hand it mine.
It felt clammy and lifeless, unusually warm. I wiped the sweat from her forehead with my other hand. She was burning. I could tell it was reaching critical levels. Tabitha’s eyes rolled in her head, her lips moving, making unintelligible sounds. I looked up at Diane with pleading eyes.
“Help her!” I begged.
Diane shook her head, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t know what to do. Everything we’ve tried has failed. She rejects every treatment. It burns right out of her system. There’s… there’s some kind of mutation happening.”
Ghost claws shredded my hearts to pieces as I faced the truth I’d been trying to deny.
“I did this. I did this to her. Me and my fucking tainted blood.” I gathered Tabitha in my arms and pressed my cheek on top of her forehead, rocking her gently. “I’m sorry, my love. So very sorry. My mate. My Queen…”
Diane pelted me with questions. Had she eaten or drunk anything unusual on Arkonia? Had she been stung or sustained any injury? What was involved in the hybrid’s bonding? Did I have any known illnesses? Could I recall when Tabitha would have shown the first signs of her illness? The questions ran into each other, barely registering in my brain. I believe I responded to all of them. But they were unnecessary.
I was the cause.
It had been foolish of me to think there could be a happy future between us. Everything the General touched eventually died. An
d I was the embodiment of his evil, the twisted fruit of his sick experiments on human females. Except, he had modified our mothers to be compatible with him, not for their offspring to be compatible with humans. I should have foreseen this. In my selfish desires, I had put my mate’s life at risk. And now, my love for Tabitha was killing her.
“Brother, let her go. I need to examine her,” a familiar voice said. I understood the words, but I felt too numb to respond. “BANE!”
This time, Rogue’s voice registered. My head jerked up, and my gaze landed on his beloved face filled with concern.
“Help her,” I pleaded in a broken voice.
“You know I’ll do everything possible. But you need to let me examine her,” Rogue said in a gentle voice.
I nodded, laying Tabitha back down with much reluctance, though I kept holding one of her hands. My brother ran a handheld scanner over her, focusing on the dying skin of her shoulders. He frowned at the results which appeared on the display.
“Did you run blood tests?” Rogue asked Diane.
“Yes,” she answered promptly. “Here you go.”
Diane extended a datapad to my brother who flicked through the results of the analysis, his frown deepening.
“What is it?” I asked, my throat almost too constricted to speak.
“Give me a minute. I have my suspicions, but I need to be certain,” Rogue said absentmindedly. “I need another blood sample and to reconfigure your analyzer,” he added, staring at Diane.
The Soulcatcher—who had also worked as a surgery nurse—handed him the analyzer before drawing another blood sample from my mate with a stylus. Rogue frantically tapped instructions on the device before extending a hand towards Diane. She gave him the stylus with the fresh blood, and he stuck the pointy end into the analyzer.
We all held our breaths while awaiting the results. Even though only a few seconds had passed, it felt like an eternity before the device finally beeped. Rogue glanced at the results, scrolling the pages up on the interface, and then a triumphant smile stretched his lips.
“It’s good? You know what’s wrong?” Chaos asked.
My head jerked towards him, his voice startling me. To my shock, Legion, Wrath, Ayana, Myriam, Dread, and Reaper were all standing in the room. I couldn’t even say when they had come in. But the results were all that mattered.
“Do you?” I echoed, turning back to look at my brother.
“Your bond is incomplete,” Rogue said. “Tabitha’s body is trying to sync with yours, but it can’t. So, it’s eating itself alive trying in vain to produce the bonding essence it needs to complete the bond. You need to bite her.”
I recoiled, looking at him in horror. “My essence is killing her, and you want me to give her more?”
“No, brother. Your essence isn’t killing her, it’s the lack of it that is. Trust me,” Rogue said with conviction. “The sooner you do it, the faster she will stop needlessly suffering.”
That struck a nerve. Every time we had made love, my fangs had ached with the need to bite her again. I had silenced the urge, thinking it would eventually pass since we had already bonded. Had it been a mistake? Had my body known hers still needed more of my essence? One look at Tabitha’s pale face and trembling body convinced me to proceed. My fangs descended, but I had to deliberately spur my mating glands into action as worry had silenced the arousal that usually got them filled to bursting.
“No!” Rogue exclaimed as I leaned forward to bite my mate’s right shoulder, next to the original one. “Bite her other shoulder.”
That struck me as odd, but I didn’t argue and proceeded as ordered. A strangled cry rose from my mate’s throat, and her back arched off the examination table.
“Don’t stop!” Rogue said, when I began to pull out upon hearing the panicked beeping of her heartbeat through the monitoring devices. “All is fine. Your body will tell you when to stop.”
“Rogue…” I telepathically said, hiding none of the dread I felt.
“Trust me, brother. Trust your Dragon to protect your mate.”
And my Dragon instincts indeed wanted me to give her more. I complied. After a few seconds, as abruptly as her pulse had spiked, it suddenly dropped, gradually falling to a more natural rhythm. Tabitha inhaled deeply, then let out a drawn-out sigh, her labored breathing slowly returning to normal. I looked up at Rogue, my gaze questioning. He smiled and ran the handheld scanner over Tabitha.
“Let’s keep your mate under observation for a couple of hours. All her life signs are stabilizing,” my brother said in a reassuring tone. “Shadow had strengthened his bond to his mate five times before his mating glands stopped acting up. Listen to your Dragon. It knows what your mate needs.”
“We bite our mates regularly to strengthen their immune system, expand their lifespan, and… to pleasure them,” Legion said, looking slightly embarrassed at the last part. Under different circumstances, I would have been amused by his prudishness. “Without regular injection of our essence, our mates would start aging again within five years from the last injection.”
“Then, as I suspected, your bond is incomplete,” Rogue said. “That would also explain your fertility issues.”
“What do you mean incomplete?” Legion challenged, a sliver of outrage in his voice.
Rogue’s gaze flicked to Ayana, who stared back at him wide-eyed. “She doesn’t have your mantle. Her neck and shoulders are bare, but for the scar of your bond bite.”
“Mantle?” Ayana asked, confused.
Rogue took a scalpel from Diane’s medical tray and brought it close to Tabitha’s neck. I instinctively caught his wrist, stopping him.
“Trust me, brother,” Rogue said at my shocked expression.
Of course, I trusted him, but this wasn’t the type of object I wanted near my female’s neck. With much reluctance, I released him, eyeing his every move with extreme wariness. He carefully scraped the dried, cracked skin on her right shoulder. It fell off, almost like old paint, revealing soft, dark scales that would grow to have a similar shape, pattern, and color as mine.
“What the fuck?” I whispered, flabbergasted.
“This is the mantle of the true bond,” Rogue explained. “Your own is incomplete. Remember how many more golden scales Shadow had?”
I instinctively looked down at my chest, realizing that I had indeed too few golden scales in comparison.
“You never noticed Clara’s scales because the people of her colony always covered themselves from head to toe,” Rogue said in a sympathetic voice. “I only know because I was her doctor.”
“So, this is all normal?” I asked, hope surging in my voice. “My mate is going to be fine?”
“I have every reason to believe so,” Rogue said, giving my shoulder a reassuring squeeze before turning towards the Xian Warriors. “And when we reach Khepri, I hope we can fix what I believe is merely a hormonal imbalance. Once true bonded, your mate shouldn’t need more injections of your essence to remain young. It should merely be required to help her heal faster when injured, or to enhance her pleasure.”
The Warriors and their women questioned him further, both about his theories regarding them and about Tabitha’s status. But I wasn’t listening anymore. I pressed a gentle kiss on my mate’s lips, collected her in my arms and, my cheek resting on top of her head, I wrapped my consciousness around her soul, sheltering her with my love.
Chapter 14
Tabitha
I remained unconscious for nearly forty-eight hours. Most of it was a dark void in my memory, but I distinctly remembered walking by the Seine in Paris, my first trip in Europe with my parents. Except, I had been in my current adult body instead of the twelve-year-old brat I’d been at the time. It hadn’t been a normal dream, but it had been intended to give me peace and joy. I instinctively recognized it as Varnog’s doing. It struck me then that if he had managed to draw me into a dream-walk while in a semi-comatose state, maybe he could do the same with the hybrids’ mothers.
> As he, the other Scelks, and the entire hybrid fleet had gone back to Arkonia to escort the Brides Ship to Khepri, he was too far out of range for me to contact directly. Not wanting to give the men false hopes, I asked Ayana who was far too happy to relay the message. Unfortunately, Varnog said their case was different from mine as I’d merely been sleeping, while the mothers’ minds were already trapped in a world he didn’t have access to. However, the way I’d escaped his mind trap had given him an idea. Ayana explaining how Liena and Raven taught us to rescue other people trapped in a mind-walk using a doorway into a safer world gave him additional ideas on how to maybe tackle the challenge.
I had tried to pull Bane’s mother out that first night after we’d visited them on the liveship. But I’d hit a complete wall, failing miserably to touch her mind. She’d gone too far down that rabbit hole for me to reach her. Maybe if I’d been a rank five psychic, I might have been more successful. However, I hoped that the Scelk leader, master of mind manipulation, could get through to her.
It took three more days after I awakened for the skin along the sides of my neck and shoulders to completely fall off. It looked embarrassingly like peeling after a sunburn. At least, the maddening itching had stopped along with the nauseous dizziness and fever. Bane had clearly been terrified that I would resent him for having caused some kind of mutation in me. Truth be told, I’d been mostly relieved to no longer be dying and, above all, that my body hadn’t in fact been rejecting our bond, but merely wanting to strengthen it.
That said, my scales had freaked me out at first. However, once I saw them gleaming like onyx in a graceful mantle over my shoulders and contrasting beautifully against my pale skin, I was sold. It didn’t hurt that they provided extra armor in combat and that the other girls were drooling with envy.
Eat your hearts out, bitches!
Still, those three days had me on the verge of committing murder—make that a massacre. Over a year ago, we’d all thought Legion had been ridiculous when he’d reunited with Ayana on Jaylon after thinking she and I had died on the liveship. But now, Bane and the lot of them had taken it to the next level. Everyone was constantly on my ass, checking if I was fine. I couldn’t make a move without multiple pairs of eyes following me, not very subtly examining the edge of my scales for signs of infection, or ‘accidentally’ brushing against me to make sure I wasn’t displaying signs of fever. Even Chaos, who had threatened to knock out Legion if he didn’t stop hounding Ayana back then, was also on my case.
