by M. A. Church
“Excellent. Keyno, my dear, release him.”
Keyno did as he was told, but he stayed close to Malk.
“Now, Hamza? I love you dearly, my young, but it’s time for you to reevaluate this quest for vengeance. No.” Jolak waved his hand, cutting off Hamza. “This is not the time for you to speak. Now you will listen.”
There was a knock at the door.
“Perfect timing.” Jolak granted permission to enter. He stood out of the way as every one of their friends and family trooped inside. Before the door closed, Jolak motioned for one of the guards to step closer. “Short of another attack, we are not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Any circumstances, do you understand?”
The guard glanced at Hamza.
Jolak stepped into the guard’s line of sight. “I am still King Consort, mate to the late King Duran. My young will ascend to the throne, but at this very moment, he hasn’t. I gave you a direct order.”
“Yes, King Consort!” The guard bowed and hastily stepped back.
Jolak stared at the door for a couple seconds, then turned around. “Welcome friends and family. Please, have a seat. We have much to discuss.” Once everyone was seated, Jolak motioned at Hamza. “You too. We’re going to be here a while, so get comfortable.”
“I’m very busy, Atat. I don’t have time for whatever this is.”
Jolak narrowed his eyes. “You will make time. Now, sit.”
Hamza growled softly, but he sat.
“Thank you.” Jolak adjusted his shirt cuffs. “Captain Ti, will you speak first? I think we need to start at the beginning, and the beginning is the war between Onfre and Tah’Nar.”
Ti nodded to Jolak. “I will be happy to. Hamza, we are a simplistic people, who tend to mind our own business. We live in tribes, and our villages appear primitive. We may live simplistically, but we are also brutal.”
Cielo nodded.
“Tah’Nar attacked because they wanted our resources. I wasn’t planetside when it happened, but I have friends who were. The assault came with no warning and was vicious. Many of my people were killed in the bombings. Many Onfrevians died and entered Di-shala, our warriors’ final resting place. We rallied our forces and repelled the invaders. But grief spread through our lands, and it didn’t end there. Our Leaders met, and a course of action was decided. We seeded Tah’Nar’s atmosphere with a chemical called FIVEBASE LR8E.”
“Which destroyed the female part of the Tah’Narian reproduction system that produced eggs,” Doc said.
“Anger ruled my people. At first, I agreed with this plan. My homeworld had been attacked, you see. I lost loved ones. You’ve now lived through something like this, so you can relate. The damage, the suffering.” Ti crinkled his nose. “And for what? Resources—something Tah’Nar had plenty of. An uneasy truce was declared, and the years passed. We avoided each other. Then space pirates attacked my ship.”
Keyno picked up the tale. “By this time the last scheduled harvest had taken place on Earth. Dale, John, and Cielo were taken in that one. We were three unit days out from Tah’Nar when we ran across a distress signal. Space pirates had attacked a ship in our vicinity.”
“I remember thinking I didn’t know which surprised me more—that someone attacked an Onfre ship and managed to disable it, or that Keyno offered assistance to the Onfre, and they accepted,” Doc added. “It was a stressful time. This was the first interaction between us and the Onfre since the truce began. Dale and Chad had stopped by Medical to visit John when we went to Red Alert. They had to stay there.”
“Doc wasn’t happy,” John said. “No one knew how things would go. Then the Onfre arrived.”
“Good grief, everywhere I looked there were tails skidding across the floor, ears laid back, and fangs flashing.” Dale rolled his eyes. “And that was just the Tah’Narians in the room.”
“He’s right. My men and I were tense. Keyno and his men were tense. I debated not transporting over, but the pirates caught me off guard. Our sensors never alerted to them. Next thing I knew, they had decloaked, and my vessel had taken several hits. Many were wounded—I was wounded—and Medical had sustained damage. I was fully aware there was the possibility things might end badly. Then Keyno introduced his mate, Dale, who proceeded to invite me to share a meal with them.”
“Lord, damn near every mouth in that room was on the floor.” Chad elbowed Keyno. “Am I right?”
“I was only slightly horrified,” Keyno admitted.
“Hey! It wasn’t my fault. There was this uneasy silence after you two had spoken, and I jumped into the lull.”
“Yeah, by saying the first thing that popped into your head,” Chad said. “As usual.”
“I remember thinking what the hell was the problem? I’d offered a meal, not my damn body.” Dale shrugged. “But it worked.”
“It did indeed,” Ti said. “I met Cielo there too.”
“My story isn’t as heartbreakin’,” Cielo said, picking up the story. “Well, not in the beginnin’. I was a gangbanger, and Earth unloaded a bunch of us death row inmates on the Tah’Narians. I wasn’t happy.”
Dale hooted. “Not happy he says.”
“Yah, okay, I staged a revolt and tried to crash Keyno’s ship. Dale was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We threw down. He got ‘em some good hits, but it was Keyno who almost killed my ass dead.”
Hamza goggled.
“He’s not exaggerating, you know. Keyno was ready to kill him,” Dale added. “Damn near did, actually.”
“I mean, I hurt his mate,” Cielo said. “I get it now. I later met Ti and mated him. Some of his people decided they didn’t like that, the fuckers. I got Tah’Narian DNA just like Dale, John, and Chad. I can get pregnant, which was kinda the whole point of the harvest. So those snake fucks attacked Ti and me during estrus and injected me with some freaky shit. It just so happened Ti had already knocked me up. I was pregnant with Takeo, and they shot some shit in me. They did it because I have Tah’Narian DNA. That’s it. Their reason.”
“What he’s not telling you is he almost died. Again,” Dale said. “Certain Onfre hated Tah’Narians so much they attacked Cielo simply because he had Tah’Narian DNA. Oh, and thanks to what they did, Cielo’s womb was scarred. He and Ti never had more young.”
Keyno spoke up. “Now let me tell you my personal experience of us attacking the Onfre.”
“I’ve heard,” Hamza said.
“I know you have, but this time you get the unsanitized version,” Keyno said. “I was mated before. Did you know that? His name was Faylor. It was arranged by King Vesh. He’s the one who ordered the attack on the Onfre. Vesh owed Faylor’s family a favor, and they wanted ties to the royal family. I was the tie. Faylor might have been my mate, but I didn’t love him. We were so mismatched.”
“I didn’t know,” Hamza said.
Keyno brushed his knuckles down Dale’s cheek. “I don’t think of him often. He was my mate, but Dale is my chosen.”
Dale nipped Keyno’s knuckle.
“Anyway, all Faylor and I did was fight. When the Space Studies Program announced they were opening recruitment, I jumped at the opportunity. I was accepted into the Captains’ Training Program. I spent as much time away from Faylor as I could, but eventually he got pregnant. Things went from bad to worse. It was so awful between us that he stayed planetside while I went to space.”
Dale covered Keyno’s hand with his.
“I was promoted to captain. As I was new and untested in battle, I wasn’t part of the strike against Onfre. I was studying an exploding star in another galaxy when we received the news about how the Onfre retaliated. It took us three unit days at star drive to get home.”
Ti looked down.
“As soon as my crew, and any others who’d been off-world, stepped onto our soil, we were infected. The virus caused hours of horrible agony. It felt like my insides were being scraped raw as our surculas and egg tissues were eaten away. It was unrelenting, and none of our narco
tics or anesthetics touched the agony.”
“The pain….” Doc shuddered.
“But it was worse for those pregnant. The virus’s protein flooded the surculas, killing the young. Then it ate its way through the surculas and attacked the pregnant Tah’Narian’s body. Hamza, Faylor was literally dissolved from the inside out. He died, and so did my first young.”
“God, Keyno, I am so sorry.” Hamza dropped his gaze. The pain in Keyno’s eyes was a living thing.
“He died alone. In excruciating agony and terror.” Keyno’s voice broke. “You can’t imagine what I came home to—the madness, the horror, the fear. It was pure chaos, which led to Duran overthrowing Vesh. That led to more chaos and pain, but it had to happen. Vesh was a cold leader. Uncaring.”
“I refuse to go back to what it was like when we were at war with the Onfre, Hamza. That was a horrible, horrible time,” Jolak said. “The aftereffect of that virus led to what the humans called the harvest.”
Dale cleared his throat. “And now it’s my turn. So, the harvest. Exactly one week before my twenty-third birthday, a human extraction team arrived to collect me. I was terrified. My parents were distraught. My mom was on her knees, crying in the kitchen. Dad was pinned against a wall. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to them. For the longest time, their last memory was of me being dragged out of the house.”
“Same,” Chad whispered. “My number had been drawn in the lotto. I was so damn scared.”
“And I was there when he was taken too,” Dale said. “I saw the fear in his face. I lost my best friend that unit day. I honestly thought I’d never see him again.”
John blew out a breath. “The extraction team showed up to collect me while I was assisting a bone marrow transplant. The extraction team—the human extraction team—removed me during the transplant. They contaminated the surgery, and that scared me more than what was going to happen to me. The Tah’Narians were willing to wait. The humans wouldn’t. I freaked. They dragged me out screaming and kicking.”
“We involved other races in something that should have remained between us and the Tah’Narians,” Ti said. He waved at the room in general. “Most of these males didn’t want to be taken from their worlds. But they were, and the Onfre have to live with that. I have to live with that.”
Chapter Fifteen – Hamza
THEIR WORDS echoed in Hamza’s head, buzzing madly. Each person there had a story. His heart ached for the loss Keyno suffered. And for what? Resources they didn’t need. Ti’s remorse came through loud and clear. There was Cielo’s anger at being shoved off on the Tah’Narians like he was garbage, then later assaulted because of his DNA—his Tah’Narian DNA.
Dale’s pain.
Chad’s terror.
John’s helplessness.
Cielo’s anger.
“And now it’s my turn to tell my story,” Kia said.
Hamza almost begged Kia not to speak. He wasn’t sure he could handle more.
“As you know, my planet is a female-dominated government. The males are nothing more than slaves to be used sexually. There are no relationships, no lasting bonds. When a female wishes to reproduce, they either shop or elevate. Shopping is when she picks a male to reproduce with from the Merrket.”
“Fancy name for a brothel,” Dale muttered.
“When she’s done with him, he’s returned. Or, she may choose from the personal males she keeps at her household. If she does this, then his status is elevated temporarily. Afterwards, he returns to his regular duties in her house. The females of my planet don’t think much of familial bonding. Offsprings, especially female ones, are not allowed to interact with their fathers or have any kind of parent-child relationships.”
“That’s horrible.” Horrible was absurdly insufficient to describe what that was. He’d had a close and loving relationship with both Duran and Jolak. What would he have been like if they ignored him? Would he have grown into the male he was today?
Like a hajar to the back of the head, it hit him. What he threatened to do, that was not the male Duran and Jolak had raised. Dabba would be horrified. Horrified.
Oh gods.
“Females govern, own businesses, have access to money, own property, have a license to pilot any type of ship, and so on. Males have no voice, no rights, nothing. They are objects. Property. They are good for one thing, and that’s sexual relief.” Kia’s face was completely blank, his eyes empty.
Malk’s pain-filled growl raised the hair on the back of Hamza’s neck.
“Males are trained in the art of seduction and sex from an early age. I was deemed worthless because I had trouble satisfying females. Of course, it was because I preferred males, but my preference didn’t matter. I was the lowest of the low. My home was the Merrket. I… I was… I was often s-sexually t-t-tortured for amusement. Things were shoved in my b-body, things that did not fit. I tore. I bled. The m-more I screamed, the more they laughed at my pain. There were times I w-wanted to die.”
Malk pulled Kia out of his seat and into his arms. “You’re okay, Ipo.” Malk ran his hand over Kia’s thick braids. “It’s okay. Don’t lose yourself to those memories.”
“My gods,” Hamza breathed. He actually thought he might throw up. Tears rose in his eyes. What had he done?
“Tah’Nar first approached the Ne Reynians about mates many years ago,” Jolak said. “It did not go well. The lack of respect and outright contempt shown to us was astounding, and it was not subtle. The Tah’Narians were treated as less for no other reason than they were males. It left a bad taste in Duran’s mouth.”
“I was there, Hamza. The females treated us as they treat their own males,” Malk said. “It led to fights, both verbal and physical. We were told to leave in the most abusive way possible. I took Kia as a mate. I saw the scars left on his body from what they did. The scars in his mind are still there.”
“A few Tah’Narians wanted to go to war,” Jolak said. “It’s why we never tried to negotiate for more volunteers as mates.”
Kia raised his head from Malk’s chest. “Volunteers. Seeing as I was one of those ‘volunteered,’ I can tell you there was nothing voluntary about it.”
“The same with us,” Chad said.
“I was given away,” Kia said. “Like a useless object. Males are nothing.”
Neo finally spoke. “You threaten to commit genocide in your quest for vengeance. So, what about Kia?”
Hamza blinked. “Huh? What about Kia?”
“He’s Ne Reynian. At least he was before mating Malk. And you’ve asked Malk to be a blood general. How do you think he feels about you wanting to erase his mate’s race?”
“I think I was pretty clear earlier,” Malk said. “The males are innocent. Hell, maybe even some of the females are too. I don’t know. But their queen? Not so much.”
“Kia was a victim of those females. Just like you,” Neo stressed. “And what about Laken? He’s my best friend and also a hybrid, like many of us, but his genetic makeup is also part Ne Reynian. Do you hate them? What about the males who fled—the ones on that shuttle the Unity saved. They had been beaten, and all because they wanted a better life.”
His stomach rolled uneasily. Nauseated, he swallowed repeatedly.
“The Ne Reynian government sent a battleship after them, love. A battleship. If Captain Munn hadn’t offered them asylum, they would’ve been killed. So, do you hate Captain Munn? He is Tah’Narian, but he did offer those Ne Reynian males asylum, which led to the Bellatrix firing on the Unity. Which, in the end, led to the attack on King Duran.”
That wasn’t exactly right, but he’d get into that momentarily. Hamza ran a hand through his hair. “No, I don’t hate Kia, Laken, or Captain Munn. I don’t hate the Ne Reynian males we offered asylum to.” Hamza’s shoulders slumped. Good gods, when had he lost his way? Hamza had heard those stories before, but never with such emotions attached. “All of this… all of you are somehow affected by us attacking the Onfre?”
“Yes. W
e almost exterminated your people, and by doing that, we forced you to find other ways to ensure your race’s survival,” Ti said. “Every Tah’Narian hybrid mate exists because of our reaction to being attacked.”
“Hamza? Why can’t you see that what you’re threatening is no better than what the Onfre did to us?” Keyno asked.
“This is what happens when anger rules,” Ti said. “It’s something many of my kind regret to this day. Don’t make the same mistake we made. Some things can’t be undone, no matter how much you wish they could be.”
“If you do this, you’re a monster. The Hamza I love is not a monster,” Neo said. “Don’t lose yourself to this. Don’t sacrifice my love for you to this need for retribution.”
It was too much. All the pain and sadness in the room battered him in waves. Forced to look beyond his own personal grief, he saw how every single person in that room had suffered from one act. Just one horrible, destructive act. And he was on the precipice of doing the exact same thing. It was up to him not to repeat history.
Hamza finally broke. The pain he’d buried at his dabba’s death finally, finally pushed its way out. The sob that tore from his throat was deafening and full of pain. Neo was around the desk in a flash. He crawled into Hamza’s lap and held him tightly. “I have you. You’re okay. I have you.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Hamza sobbed. “I almost shamed not only myself but my dabba’s memory.”
“Shhh. No. No you didn’t. You just lost your way for a little while. There’s no shame attached to you. I love you. We’ll get through this. Together.”
Hamza sensed movement in the room, and he glanced over Neo’s shoulder. Their family and friends were hurrying toward the door. He wanted to be alone with Neo, but there were things he had to say. If they could relive those memories to help him, then he could wait to break down until later. “Please, wait. Everyone wait.”
Jolak stood at the door. Tears dripped down his face. “We were going to give you privacy.”
“I appreciate that. But there’s more we need to discuss. Please stay.” He patted Neo on the thigh. Leaning in closer, he whispered in Neo’s ear, “Later. You and I will talk later. Just us. I need to tell you how sorry I am in private.”
