by Alix Nichols
Through his agony, he managed to open his mouth. “Don’t shoot!”
He made to step in front of her, but that required using larger muscles, which were completely paralyzed.
His lips and tongue were rigid too, and it took all the will, all the energy left in his body to force them to move. “Let her go… take me… I’ll do anything.”
The cyborgs came closer. Two of them grabbed Marye. The others formed a circle around him.
Their alpha trained the controller in his hand at the Ra-dragon and held a key down. “On your knees!”
He obeyed, a pang after red-hot pang searing his brain.
They stayed like that for some time—he wasn’t sure how long—until an airborne carriage his captors referred to as “transport” landed by the lake.
The man called Chev stormed out of it, running toward them. He took in the scene. Ra-dragon. Marye. His eyes lingered on her disheveled hair and the unbuttoned front of her dress.
He clapped his hand to his forehead. “She’s his woman—his mate!”
Turning to the alpha cyborg, he grinned. “I thought it was his family he was pining for, thought it was them responsible for his wasting away. But it was her.”
“He’s like Risp, then,” the alpha said. “A mated dragon.”
Chev nodded, rubbing his hands together. “I was right to bring him here. His Grace will be very pleased. We solved the problem at hand, and what’s more, we found an additional means of controlling the dragon.”
The alpha cyborg frowned.
“You fool.” Chev rolled his eyes before surveying Marye. “We’ll take her with us and use her the way we use Risp’s wife.”
“No!” Ra-dragon roared, his voice thick with panic. “Don’t do it.”
He paused, dizzy with pain, before coughing up a few more words, “Let her go home.”
“Can we just abduct her like that?” The alpha cyborg looked from Ra-dragon to Chev. “She isn’t some hapless menial. I understand she’s a noblewoman from a prominent family.”
Chev shrugged. “Not our problem. Lord Boggond will come up with an explanation.” He turned to another cyborg. “What do you think, Captain Voqras?”
“I think two hundred wing demons are worth some extra effort,” Voqras said.
“Of course, sir!” The other cyborg—clearly no longer alpha in Voqras’s presence—brought his heels together and straightened his back.
“I’m glad this op turned out to be a success,” Voqras said to Chev. “Have a safe trip back.”
“Wait!” Marye cried out, as the cyborgs nudged her toward the transport. “My Father! He’ll lose it with worry! I just need to tell him I’ll be all right!”
“I’ll tell him you volunteered your services for an assignment of capital importance. And that you’ll be fine,” Voqras sneered. “In a manner of speaking.”
A short time later, the transport took off with both Ra-dragon and his mate fettered to the floor and Chev humming a happy tune under his breath.
Geru’s gaze traveled over the heaps of smoking rubble that used to be a hamlet just outside of the compound.
He turned to the cyborg on his left. “Was it me—I mean, my alt-shape—that did this?”
“Yes.”
“Were there people inside? Did anyone get hurt?”
“We evacuated the families,” the cyborg said looking at the wreckage.
Geru could only hope it was the truth. He turned away and followed his minders back to the detainment center.
It had been three and a half weeks since they’d brought him back to Tastassi. Him and Marye. Chev had told him she was his mate. With a falsely warm smile, the scumbag had promised Geru he’d be allowed bed her if he did exactly as he was told. If he was good.
Should I believe any of it?
The chaos and confusion in Geru’s head had gotten worse. Where there’d been just a glaring void before the trip to Hente, now he’d started having bursts and flashes of what could be memories. Or madness.
He kept thinking of Marye—the kindhearted, brainy, dependable confidante of his. The daughter of Mother’s deceased friend. The girl he’d known since they were toddlers, his closest pal… Was she something else to the dragon?
Was it mutual? Consensual? How far had his “pre-alt” gone with her? That half man half dragon Chev told him he transited through when he shifted—had he mated with Bookworm?
What exactly had gone down between them the day Geru found himself naked on the floor of Marye’s room with his arms wrapped around her? Had he bitten her like he’d done in the Iltaqa prison’s sick house? Or had he… done something else?
As if his guilt over Etana and Areg’s fate hadn’t been enough, he now lived with the possibility he’d forced himself on a woman. On his best friend, for Aheya’s sake!
And then there was an even more harrowing possibility that he might do it again in his pre-alt form. That he might claim his reward for being “good” as if she had no feelings or was simply an object to him.
I have to know.
He had to ask her, had to see her, talk to her… But to be able to do that, he had to be “good” no matter how crushed and disgusted with himself he felt.
Back in his cell, Geru reached out to Risp again. Since his return, the other dragon shifter hadn’t tried to make contact, and never responded to Geru’s attempts. Was he ill? Or was he dead, like Hassine before him? Had something happened to his wife?
To Geru’s astonishment, Risp answered this time.
The shifter told Geru he’d been “tied up” due to a series of back-to-back experiments that drained so much energy out of him he was unable to mind-talk. Even though his words were calm, Geru felt the dull, helpless anger painting all Risp’s thoughts and emotions black. Then, some of the darkness receded and empathy illuminated the dragon’s mind.
“What about you, my friend? What have you been up to?” he asked.
Geru told him about Hente, and about Marye.
“Ha!” Risp interrupted him. “I knew you were mated.”
“Only I can’t remember much”—Geru swallowed hard—“except this image of a woman’s beautiful back and ass, and… I don’t know if it’s Marye.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled slowly before adding, “I don’t know if I violated her.”
“Why in the pit of Xereill would you think that?” There was genuine astonishment in Risp’s question. “It’s never like that between a shifter and his mate. Never!”
“Your experience doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone. I’m shape dissociated, remember? And quite possibly crazy…”
“What else do you recall?”
Geru hesitated before answering. “Biting Marye’s neck.”
“You mean, playfully?”
“No. I mean for real.”
“Funny you’d say that.” Risp’s comment came with a swarm of so many tangled emotions they overwhelmed Geru for a moment. “I’ve always wanted to bite Ertvi too, for real, but something’s always held me back.”
“It’s possible I haven’t actually done it,” Geru said. “It may be a fake memory—a madman’s hallucination.”
“Have you asked your mate about it? When was the last time they let you visit her?”
“They haven’t as yet.”
“Oh.”
“How often do they let you see your wife?” Geru asked.
“Once a week.” Sarcasm lined Risp’s voice. “When I’m good.”
Their connection flickered and disappeared for a moment, before Geru could hear Risp again.
“Sorry for that,” the shifter said. “I’m still a little groggy.”
Something told Geru “a little” was a huge understatement.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“A kingdom-realm on a Silver Path planet called Ju. Ever heard of it?”
“Ra-human Expansion geography wasn’t my strong suit at school,” Geru said. “Sorry.”
“No worries. I’d never hea
rd of Hente, either. No schools for menials where I come from.”
Geru felt self-conscious about how privileged his life had been until recently.
“Would you believe it,” Risp said, “Ertvi and I came here of our own free will? I’d been hearing a voice in my head telling me my future lay on Tastassi, a better life for both of us, a destiny to fulfill… When Chev turned up with an offer, I jumped on it.”
“You couldn’t know.”
“I should’ve been wary.”
“Well, look at me and Marye,” Geru said. “Horbell abducted us with total impunity, because our realm’s caretaker governor is rotten to the core.”
Their link weakened again, and Geru hurried to ask something that had been on his mind ever since his first conversation with Risp. “Tell me, what exactly happened to Hassine? You said she self-destructed. Why? Did the TIC make her do it?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“Horbell and Chev wanted to see what she was capable of if they pushed her further than ever before.”
“What happened?”
“She ignited from inside and burst in a ball of plasma. The explosion released so much energy the effect was similar to the forbidden fusions bombs.”
“What?”
“There’s an archipelago off the southern coast,” Risp said. “A dozen big and small islands which used to brim with life. They are nothing but ash now, burned to the ground.”
“By Hassine?”
“Yes. Chev’s people took her there and induced a shift. When she exploded, she took with her all of archipelago’s vegetation, animals, insects. Houses. People! Everything went up in smoke.”
Geru didn’t respond, wrapping his mind around it.
“They told the realm it was a natural catastrophe,” Risp said. “A rare solar storm.”
“Why did she explode? What had Chev done to her?”
“He had her mate murdered, and his dead body dropped on that archipelago, right in front of Hassine.”
There was a long moment during which neither of them spoke.
“Do you know if she’d ever tried to escape?” Geru asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Tastassi isn’t that small. It may be possible to survive outside of the terraformed area.” Through his desperate eagerness, he picked up Risp’s sadness. “Have you tried that?”
“No.”
The curt answers surprised Geru. Was Risp ashamed to admit his lack of initiative, his fear?
“There are two of us here now,” Geru said. “We can communicate. Our captors don’t know that. Together, we could come up with a plan, have our mates help us get rid of the TICs, grab them and—
“I can’t.”
“Why not? We may fail, but shouldn’t we at least give it a try? I can’t imagine that you prefer spending the rest of your days in captivity.”
Risp didn’t respond.
Geru tried again. “Isn’t any alternative better than being experimented on, used as a living weapon, and maybe ending up like Hassine?”
“My alternative is worse.”
“How so?”
The depth of Risp’s despair staggered Geru. “Ertvi can’t leave our compound, even if I somehow managed to snag her from under her guards’ noses.”
“Why not?”
“She wouldn’t last a day outside.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chev’s people have diminished her,” Risp said. “They’ve substituted her heart with an artificial one. A defective artificial one.”
Comprehension and sympathy flooded Geru’s mind. “I’m so very sorry!”
“Not as sorry as I am.” Risp’s words rang with a helpless rage. “They’ve turned my wife into a backup means of controlling me. She needs unique drugs and daily procedures that must be performed on-site only. She can’t survive anywhere but here.”
“They may be lying.”
“We’ve considered that possibility. But even if by some miracle I could break free, find a transport and take her to a level-two hospital somewhere in the Homeland Arm, I wouldn’t try it. I won’t risk her life to find out.”
They fell silent, the link fluttering.
A blood-chilling suspicion began to form in Geru’s mind.
Risp spoke again, putting Geru’s fear into words. “They’ll let you see Marye after they’ve broken her… like my wife.”
14
Marye turned away from the thick, transparent panel that sat flush with the wall and pretended to be a window. Biting her nails, she checked the clock on the wall.
It was past midday, which meant Geru wouldn’t be taken out to the enclosure today. His “conditioning” sessions always started in the morning and lasted through late afternoon. He was given one to three days of respite between. Clearly, today was going to be a respite day for him.
She stared out the window some more. From her third-floor room, she could see some of the site’s ugly buildings and, in the distance, the enclosure. Thaissa, Chev’s lab assistant and one of the rare women on the compound, had given Marye a small telescope a few days into her captivity.
“A special gift from the Governor,” Thaissa had told her.
With its help, Marye was able to watch Geru from afar when the cyborgs would lead him out of the detainment center. They’d shove him behind the tall fence of the enclosure, and Chev would make him shift.
On some days, the dragon would be treated to blaster fire and get stabbed by various weapons, on other days they’d make him break things, or fight nightmarish creatures that were part beast part machine.
Marye watched it all, even the gore, when the dragon smashed his attackers’ skulls or gutted them.
She never gave up on him, never gave up hope.
Not because she refused to do that, but because she couldn’t. When you truly loved someone, giving up on them was harder than not giving up.
Every day, every night she tried to reach out to him, to restore the link they’d shared after the bite. But it was in vain. All her attempts had failed. Her calls and pleas had remained unanswered.
She turned her back to the window.
It seemed that her lot in life was a cursed, star-crossed love like in that novel by Lustratta, Lovers and Soldiers. Set during the Empire War, it followed a young couple whose happiness was crushed by the Mastredeles Dynasty’s bid to dominate the galaxy.
Marye had cried when she read that book many years ago when Mother was still alive. Back when Marye and Geru were in their early teens, and her feelings for him could still be called an infatuation.
Both of them had grown up in happy, affluent homes, in times of peace. Marye hadn’t expected this tragic fate for either of them. She’d never imagined her and Geru’s story would be a reenactment of Lovers and Soldiers with Tastassi’s menial-born governor in the role of the high and mighty Emperor Mastredeles.
Wringing her hands, Marye began to pace back and forth between the walls of her room.
She glanced at the piles of books her captors had obtained to “make her stay at the compound more pleasant.”
How very thoughtful of them! Not.
Books, no matter how much she loved them, didn’t help to alleviate her worry for Geru and Father. Her mouth pressing into a thin line, Marye paced harder.
Someone knocked on the door and opened it from outside. It was Thaissa with her usual polite smile pasted on her face.
“May I see Geru today?” Marye asked. “You’ve been telling me ‘soon’ for weeks now.”
Thaissa shook her head. “Not today.”
“All right,” Marye said, hissing a slow breath. “Could you ask Chev to take me to Hente for a day? My father must be so worried! Please?”
“That is impossible,” Thaissa said. “But we could bring him here if that would make you happy.”
“To turn him into a helpless prisoner like his daughter?”
“Not quite like his daughter.” Something evil flickered in Thaissa�
��s poised smile. “He’d be here to keep you from worrying your pretty head about him. You are here to spread your legs for Geru.”
Marye dug her nails into her palms, fighting the urge to drive a fist into Thaissa’s impassive face. “I’d rather he stays on Hente.”
“Marye.” Thaissa’s expression softened. “Be reasonable. Make peace with the fact that you’re never going back home, not even for a day. Geru is one of the governor’s biggest assets. You’re his mate. Your place is by his side.”
“Is that why you’re keeping us separated?”
Thaissa ignored her jibe. “Think of it as a privilege. Try to feel proud of your purpose. And by that, I don’t mean your immediate purpose of servicing the dragon, but the bigger, much bigger role you’ll play when the time comes.”
“What role?”
“You’ll be the spark that will set off a fire to end all fires,” Thaissa said mysteriously.
Marye narrowed her eyes.
Thaissa’s expression was almost dreamy. “It’ll be beautiful.”
“Go to hell,” Marye spat out with an uncharacteristic rudeness.
Thaissa chuckled. “Don’t panic, it’s not for tomorrow. In fact, tomorrow you’re going into the hospital wing. That’s what I came to tell you.”
“What are you going to do to me?”
“A standard procedure our medics will perform under general anesthesia. You’ll be back on your feet in less than a week.” She pointed at Marye’s books. “I’d pack a few of those. Hospital stays can be dreary.”
“What sort of standard procedure?”
“It doesn’t matter. What matters is that afterward, you’ll see Geru.” She flashed a fake smile and pressed her hands together in front of her mouth. “Aww, you’ll finally see your mate! Isn’t that exciting?”
“Please leave.” Marye’s tone was calm but firm.
Thaissa’s smile vanished. “We’ll pick you up at seven in the morning. Have your things ready.”
When Thaissa locked the door behind her, Marye sat on the floor in the middle of the room and closed her eyes.
Momma, if you’re watching over me, please help me through this!
A strange sense of peace descended on her, enveloping her in a soft cocoon.
