by Wells, Juno
“Oh,” he breathed, and lowered first his head and then his whole body until he was on his knees.
The goddesses had never wanted that kind of behavior from their people, he knew. They hadn’t been like the kings that had followed. They’d wanted to be friends with everyone, to know people.
But the reappearance of a woman whose image he knew off by heart from spending years learning about her in museums, of paying respects to statues, sent him to his knees.
Others had the same response.
Hannah remained standing the longest, staring with wide eyes. Wraxic wondered if she even recognized the goddess GOD.
“Don’t kneel,” GOD told her when she looked ready to sink to the floor with the others. “None of you should kneel.”
No one spoke. No one dared to speak to her.
She laughed. “I’ve been away too long, I suppose,” she said. “Come on, stand up.”
Wraxic felt numb as he looked at her.
And then the anger came thick and fast and he had to clench his teeth. Of course they’d been away too long. All the women on the planet had mysteriously disappeared and there hadn’t been a peep from the woman stood in front of him now. They’d been left to their own devices, left to struggle.
But he didn’t say a word of this now. He was angry, but he wasn’t disrespectful.
He would vent later, if he survived that long.
“You need to broadcast their message,” GOD said to the man at the front of the room, all amusement gone. “You need to broadcast it now.”
“I—” he stammered, moving to his desk a computer, that presumably controlled things, sat. “I— yes, of course. Yes, yes,” he continued to say as his fingers moved rapidly over the trackpad.
“Why now?” Veiko asked, and Wraxic thought he was the only one in the room with the ability to question. “Why here, and why now?”
“Because this is the right course of action.”
“This wouldn’t be the right course of action if you’d intervened earlier.”
The room was so silent Wraxic could hear his own heart thudding. The goddesses had never been malicious, had never hurt people who didn’t deserve it, but it was much more than Wraxic would have dared to say.
“Yes,” GOD said. “You’re right.”
“You should send out a broadcast of yourself saying so,” Veiko said. “That’ll be believed.”
“I don’t want to intervene more than necessary.”
“So you’re not coming back permanently, then? I’m still going to have the be the interim leader until we find someone more suited?”
Wraxic nudged Veiko’s boot with his foot. This was too far. Too rude. Wraxic’s tongue was still tied, he couldn’t say a single word even if he wanted to.
“This is a one-time reappearance,” God said, and her tone was harder than before.
Veiko didn’t respond.
A tense silence sat over the room, and then the image on the television at the front of the room changed. Their faces disappeared, replaced by a new message. GO TO PARNU TEMPLE. SEE THE BETRAYAL OF THE KING.
“Wow,” Hannah muttered. “He’d appreciate what classes for journalism back on Earth nowadays.”
GOD disappeared before anyone could say anything else.
“Motherfucker,” Veiko hissed, clenching his hands into fists.
And then suddenly the room was flooded with king’s men.
“Shit,” Wraxic hissed.
“Wait.” It was a booming voice. One Wraxic knew intimately.
The king was here.
After the reappearance of GOD, seeing the King was nothing. He walked through the masses of fighters toward the four of them. Wraxic was ready to teleport the second things turned south, but he wanted to hear the man out.
Some part of him still hoped it could be salvaged somehow.
The goddesses could have salvaged it, if they’d wanted to.
“How did you stop the teleporting?” he asked Veiko, as if they were talking over dinner rather than facing each other before a fight for the throne.
“I didn’t.”
“GOD was here.” This was the man in charge of the broadcasting team. The unimpressive status of the king compared to GOD must have infected him too, for him to speak so familiarly with the leader. “She just appeared, right there. She stopped the teleportation. She must have. Then she just vanished again, just like that. I can’t believe we didn’t capture it with anything, this would—”
The king gave him a sharp look, and words died on the man’s tongue.
“It’s true,” Veiko confirmed.
The king was speechless for a moment. “The goddesses are back?”
“Temporarily.” This time Veiko was lying, but it was necessary. “Are you going to step away from the throne?”
“For the goddesses? Of course.”
“For the person the goddesses blessed as their successor.” Twisting the truth again, but it was enough to make the king pause.
He had to know he’d lost already. He had to know that this was where he could respectfully bow out without it getting even messier.
“It’s over for you,” Veiko continued. “The message has gone out. People will have travelled to the temple already, they’ll have seen what you did. They won’t respect you anymore.”
The king stood, looking like a meek figure, in the center of the room. His back was hunched, and his eyes bored into Veiko’s.
Wraxic felt like an idiot.
All his life spent devoted to this coward. He squeezed Hannah’s hand.
He had something new to devote his life to now, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way.
The king opened his mouth, and Wraxic imagined his voice as feeble and pleading as he accepted that it was over, as he begged Veiko for mercy.
Instead, he disappeared.
He teleported from the room without a word.
Veiko and Aavik lurched forward together, but both were too late.
The silence in the room was deafening.
“That’s… it?” Hannah asked. “He didn’t even have anything to say for himself?”
“He’s a coward,” Wraxic said, surprised by the vitriol in his own voice. “He’s been a coward all his life. I’m not surprised he’s running.”
“Running to where?” she said. “I mean, it’s not like he can flee to another country. There’s just the planet.”
“There’s a whole galaxy of planets. I’m sure he can find somewhere that will take him in.”
Hannah frowned. She looked around the room, down at the gun that sat on her waist, and then laughed.
“For a moment I was really disappointed that it was so anticlimactic. I thought I was going to make a difference, to see some action. My priorities have been so fucked up my entire life.” She ran hands through her hair, and then gathered her mates to her. She wrapped her arms around all of them, kissing each of their chests. “All I want is to be with you, and to be happy.”
They stood huddled together for a good few minutes, all of them obviously half-expecting the king to make a reappearance. People whispered in low tones, but there was no doubt about what they were discussing.
Who was going to lead them now?
Were the goddesses really back?
Eventually Veiko pulled away. “As much as I’d like to teleport you to the nearest bed available, I think we have a planet to stop falling into chaos.”
Epilogue
Hannah
Stopping the planet falling into chaos short term wasn’t the issue.
Hannah’s mates filmed a broadcast that was played on repeat for a solid two days explaining everything that was going to happen. They stood together—Hannah stayed out of the shot for fear of alienating people who were still against humans on Vaher—and said they would be taking over the leadership of Vaher.
The rhetoric was good, she had to admit.
Talking about the goddess’s return, and with them a return to the days when they
had been led by a group rather than just one person. The interior guard, the best fighters in the whole of Vaher, would rule together.
It seemed like they had a pretty non-interventionist government anyway, and so people weren’t as up in the air about it as she’d expected.
Everything seemed to just continue as it had done before.
Better, actually.
She stretched, hands up and toes down. Veiko stirred beneath her, still snoozing. Aavik was sat up, reading something on what looked like a tablet. Wraxic took up most of the bed, star-fishing himself. He kept on hand firmly planted on Hannah’s ass no matter what strange position he took up, though.
They were in Veiko’s house rather than the palace. No one cared for the huge, empty building. It had been peaceful.
They’d spent the time in bed, mostly. They were insatiable, now the immediate threat was off the table and they’d all given into the fact that they loved each other. They’d not been able to get enough of each other.
But in between the exploration of each other’s bodies, they were having to face the real question.
What the hell were they going to do about the Hystians?
Vaherians might not care that there’d been a change in leadership, but they’d sure as hell care when the Hystians appeared in the sky and started attacking them because the Vaherians hadn’t delivered on their promise to provide the tricanite.
None of them had come up with a solution yet, and all were at a loss.
Their leadership might prove to be a short one.
Aavik put down his tablet and stroked Hannah’s hair. “Sleep well?” he asked in a low voice, not wanting to wake the others.
“So well,” she said, stretching again. “I can’t believe I hadn’t tried sleeping on a pile of men until now.”
He grinned. “I’m glad to be part of your first man pile.”
“Do you think we’re going to have to drag ourselves out of bed today?” she asked, running her fingers over Veiko’s hard chest, which rose and fell softly with his quiet snores. “Maybe we should tell people. Someone other than us might have an idea how to fix this mess.”
“That’s Veiko’s decision,” Aavik said, and didn’t seem perturbed by the idea.
“No it isn’t. It’s all of yours.” They might have always acted like a team before now, but that was only when it came to fighting. “Maybe Veiko has final decision when there’s something you disagree on, but you have to try and work together.”
He grunted. “Maybe,” he said. “I much prefer being able to just sit back and follow instructions.”
“This is only temporary,” she replied, though she wasn’t entirely convinced by her own statement. She had no idea who would succeed them to the throne of Vaher, or why. No one was groomed for leadership on this planet. At least her mates held authority as the best fighters. “I wish we could get into contact with the goddesses again.”
It was the only trips they’d made from Veiko’s house: to go and visit the temples in the hope of the goddesses appearing and giving them some advice as to what they should be doing next.
No one had come, and they were in no better a position to make decisions that would drag their planet out of the hole it was in.
Most importantly to Hannah, though it was a selfish thought, was that she now thought of Vaher as her own planet. This was her home. She never wanted to go back to Earth, certainly not permanently.
“We have to open up the planet,” Aavik said, and it was the first time any of them had dared to say it aloud. “We can’t just sustain ourselves anymore.”
“Is there something Earth has that you can use, beyond women?” she asked. “I’m sure America would be willing to give up some natural resources, or whatever, to get the technology you’re offering.”
“I’m not talking anything like that. I’m talking us. Vaherians. We’re born fighters. We’re the best resource on the whole planet. There’s an endless market for warriors. We can keep the planet alive that way.”
A chill ran down her spine, and she finally shifted. She clambered over Veiko’s slumbering body, moved her ass away from Wraxic’s hand, to get close to Aavik.
“And you've turned those offers down all this time?”
“We’ve had no reason to accept them until now. But things are changing. We have to stay alive. If that means making use of the talents we’re born with, then maybe that’s just the way it has to be.”
“So you finally said it?” Veiko asked, speaking with eyes closed and no other indication he was awake. “We’re going to have to sell ourselves out to the highest bidder.”
“You’ve obviously been thinking it too,” Aavik said, defensively. “I’m not saying we have to.”
“It’s the only viable option,” Veiko said, lip curling. “We both know it is.”
Hannah moved again, so she was comforting both men at once. She, for a change, withheld her opinion. She couldn’t say anything about the future of the country. Not when it was something like this.
All she could do was try and make her mates feel better about the hard choice in front of them.
From the smile on Veiko’s face when she kissed her bicep, she thought she might be doing an all right job of it.
Wraxic stretched and blinked his eyes open, looking at the three of them who were awake and smiling, then frowning. “What’s going on.”
“We’re talking about Vaherians working in mercenary units,” Veiko said, voice blank.
Wraxic’s face fell. “Oh.” Then he sighed. “It would only be people who volunteered for it. We wouldn’t be forcing anyone.”
Veiko sat up a little, raising a brow. “I thought you’d be the most against it.”
“The king’s decision has been a wake-up call. I don’t think we should just take a decision without telling people why it’s being taken. We should give them a choice, let them have an input. If people are against the idea, then we’ll think of something else.”
“You don’t think that telling everyone the planet is on the brink of collapse will send us into chaos?” Aavik asked, putting down his tablet for the first time. His fingers still absent-mindedly carded through Hannah’s hair.
“I think they deserve to know and choose. I think they’ll surprise you. People are going to wonder why the king was trying to mine the tricanite anyway,” Wraxic argued, pushing himself up on his elbows. “It’s not my decision, but we should consider it.”
Silence reigned for a few minutes, everyone lost in their own thoughts. Hannah ran her hands over skin, chewing the inside of her cheek on the urge to both distract them all from the hard decisions in order to make them smile, or to give her own uninformed opinion.
Eventually Veiko said, “You’re probably right.”
It was what she’d hoped he’d say. Democracy was ingrained in her consciousness. She would always think it was the right decision.
With that, she felt comfortable pressing her lips to Veiko’s neck in a teasing kiss, to gauge his reaction.
They’d all acknowledged it, all considered a realistic possibility for how they’d cope with Vaher, and now they needed time to think it over.
Hannah was very good at wasting time when it came to her mates.
Within minutes they were a pile of intertwined limbs, kissing and sucking and touching.
The only thing running through any of their minds was pleasure. In those moments, Hannah couldn’t give a shit what happened to Vaher, because she was here with her mates feeling as good as it was possible to feel.
Nothing else mattered. She was in love, and she was happy.
* * *
I hope you enjoyed Mated to the Alien Warriors! Keep reading for a preview of Alien Warrior’s Captive Bride!
More Juno Dragons: Alien Warrior’s Captive Bride
Chapter One
As Larok moved through the small shuttle, he inspected every single operating system, corrected every tiny mistake, and recorded every action he took. The queens didn’t
tolerate mistakes, and his queen was stricter than most. It was the reason his brethren were careful to avoid making her angry. Nothing good ever came of being noticed by a Draconian queen. Every being in the ‘verse desired life, and lone sentinels like Larok were no different. Executing his duties perfectly was his best chance at staying alive.
Watchmen like him were chosen for their diligence, attention to detail, and ability to work alone for long periods of time. Larok was one of many such guards assigned to patrol the area just outside the mother ship’s sensor range. If another ship encroached on their territory, their duty was to sound the alarm. Sentries like Larok were the first line of defense for the massive mothership.
Draconian queens were in constant conflict with one another, as legions of them fought over territory, planets, and riches. Thousands of ships roamed millions of parsecs of space, looking to assert their dominance. Warriors like him were thrown into battle on the whim of a queen. In an environment where only queens mattered, simple warriors were simply expendable.
Larok couldn’t allow himself to be expendable, not now. He had a secret worth protecting. Sequestered deep in the underbelly of the mothership, his little hatchling sat safely concealed in the makeshift chamber his family had created. However, its shell would offer little in the way of protection if Queen Abraka discovered it.
Draconian queens were particular about whom they bred with. They were renowned for destroying any eggs they didn’t fertilize themselves, and even their own if they suspected it of being less than perfect. Since she had not chosen him as a breeder, Abraka would not only destroy his little scion, but deal harshly with Larok and his family for attempting to conceal it from her.
That’s how he ended up on this lonely assignment. It was the only way his sire could keep his breeding from being noticed on a ship packed with almost a thousand warriors. The older commander, Larok’s father, was charged with managing security aboard the Draconian mother ship. The job of performing regular inspections of every shuttle fell to him and him alone. This had afforded his sire the opportunity to collect Larok’s egg during an inspection ten cycles ago. Now, his unborn child was under the care and protection of his family.
