Chapter One

Jag

 

 

A ren strode toward me along the rock-walled tunnel, her dark, cropped hair glinting under the solar-powered halolights set at regular intervals into the stone, the knife strapped to her thigh clinking against the sheath at each step.

Once they’d realized we were firmly aligned with them, the Resistance had dropped their insistence on disarming all who entered their massive underground complex. Not that they could ever totally disarm a cat shifter; they could take our weapons but, with fangs and claws at the ready, Herc, Leo, Khal, and me were always prepared.

Over the last couple of weeks, I’d learned Aren was always prepared, too. Not that she had any shifting ability, unlike Khal’s mate, Lyrie, but whether we were in the desert or the Resistance headquarters, she always carried the huge, curved Dragarian blade, revealed with each stride as her loose, desert-colored robe billowed around a lithe form that was far from soft.

Despite the missions we’d run together, rounding up the Refugees—a scattered band over which Aren seemed to hold unofficial leadership—I’d yet to see if she knew how to use the knife.

Everyone here needed to know how to fight. Time would come that she’d need to rely on that blade. Somehow, I’d have to figure a way to get her to allow me to instruct her, so she could at least protect herself when I wasn’t around.

Glia had been at war for a decade, with the Queen publically beheaded by the resource-hungry alien invaders, the Regime. The Glian survivors had been torn apart, splitting into three groups; the Resistance fled to the desert, building an underground stronghold, where they’d been led by Lyrie for the last decade.

Other Glians remained in the Regime compound, many clicks to our south, either working for the invaders, or barely subsisting as beggars and purchase-mates at the sleaze-easies that peppered the army base.

Yet others, the Refugees, wandered the desert, unwilling to affiliate themselves with either the Resistance or the Regime. But, starving in the increasingly arid, hostile climate and decimated by disease and injury, they had, at Aren’s urging, slowly started to trickle into the Resistance stronghold. Most sought protection, but some were willing to join the war against the Regime forces, who now massed in a force of hundreds outside our guarded walls, preparing for one final purge of the Glian rebels.

“Jag.” Aren nodded as she greeted me, though we’d only parted ways a couple of hours earlier, exhausted and dehydrated from our latest mission and sorely in need of a quick shower. Sleep would’ve been a welcome luxury.

Damned if my heart didn’t kick as her green eyes roved over me. I could never tell whether she was checking me out as a man, or assessing what weapons I carried. Despite our many nights in the desert, her customary reserve meant I knew little about her, except what my own eyes told me; the nomadic life wasn’t what she was accustomed to, she had neither the carriage nor cunning of a natural hunter, a survivor. Yet there was an alertness, an underlying anger to her disposition, that made me wonder what motivated her. And, though she showed no overt control, her commands terse and almost disinterested, her people remained ridiculously faithful to her leadership, despite their lack of home or hope. As though they clung to the memory of a different woman, and trusted her to lead them in from the wilderness of their choosing.

Aren wouldn’t share her past, simply regarding me in sullen silence when I’d tried to initiate some sort of campfire conversation. Yet I’d have to be blind to miss the fact that the knife she carried was a pair-blade, and, more importantly, the blue gleam signified the bond had been activated; she was paired to a Dragarian warrior.

Which made no sense. Leo’s bondmate, Janie, had told me that Aren’s man was dead. Nothing unusual in that, Hells, people were dying like teezter flies out here, picked off by the Regime’s laser-armed drones and scouts, the sand vipers and armor spiders vying to feed on the weak and injured left behind.

But the thing was, Dragarian soulmates didn’t survive without one another. When one died, the glowing blade would be used to speed the reunion of their souls, the blue fire quenched with blood.

There again, though Aren’s skin was achingly pale—protecting it from the murderous desert sun probably accounted for the long robes she customarily wore—she clearly wasn’t Dragarian, lacking their distinctive ice-blue eyes and snow-blond hair.

I pulled to a halt in front of the room we’d been summoned to. Damn, I shouldn’t have given a thought to what lay beneath her robe, but there was something about this woman, something that made me want her. A purely instinctive, animal urge.

As Jaguarkin only came together for breeding, that sure as hell wouldn’t fly with Aren.

Hands shoved into the pockets of my dun-colored uniform pants, I hid the stirring in my groin. Was all her flesh that remarkable translucent color, the veins coursing purple beneath her fine, smooth skin? The Jaguar in me growled hungrily at the thought, though the Felidaekin hadn’t tasted human flesh for generations.

I wanted to eat her.

But it wouldn’t involve my teeth.

I ducked my head in a terse nod, scowling at Aren. As her clear eyes met mine unflinchingly, there was, as always, something about her, something that stirred a faint memory, whispering against my brain like the brush of a wint’s flight. I couldn’t stop damn well looking at her, trying to force the recollection into focus.

Didn’t hurt that she sat mighty easy on my eye.

Ripping my gaze away, I thrust open the door to the strategic planning room, and followed her in to the conference, pretending I wasn’t inhaling deep of her womanly perfume. Sure as beetric shit had more important things I should have my mind on.

“Cap.” I nodded at Herc, who leaned over a three-dimensional model of our surroundings. Not our immediate surrounds, buried, as we were, like lorkus beneath the desert. But of the topside, the ragged, parched mountain region the cave system was entombed beneath, and the surrounding leagues of desert, with the distant Regime-held compound sprawled across the southern fringe of the map.

Even hunched over the map, Herc towered over his bondmate, Maya. Damned if I knew how the two of them had ever managed to get it on—not that I spent a great deal of my time thinking about it, though it’d been hella-fun to stir Herc when he was in the throes of bonding. Not that he’d moved on from there, much. Guess love—or lust—had found a way.

“How many did you bring in this time?” Lyrie asked from the far side of the table. Although she was acknowledged queen, following her mother’s murder, no one person in the strategic planning room held more sway than another. We were all fighting for our lives.

“Twenty-six,” Aren said. “Mostly elderly. Not much use to your cause.” She tossed the words as though they were a challenge, but I had to wonder if it was because she felt a shade of guilt that the followers she brought to the caverns were more burden than bolster to the Resistance’s forces.

Lyrie’s sister, Maya, didn’t seem to see it that way. “Excellent.” She smiled. “The classrooms can always use some mature input. Keep the kids on the right path.”

“With tales of a lost history, you mean?” Aren sneered, arms crossed over her chest, one leg thrust forward through the slit in her long shift, revealing her thigh and the dagger.

Yes, her skin was all pale, the veins purple.

I coughed to hide the growl that surged in my throat.

Maya lifted a shoulder. “Isn’t all history lost? That’s why we teach it. To learn from our mistakes.”

“Are the new residents with Janie?” Leo interrupted. I guessed he didn’t need to know, but saying her name gave his mind permission to focus on his bondmate.

Aren’s gaze flicked to him, and she gave a tight smile. She seemed to have more time for him than she did for the rest of us, and damned if that didn’t stick a thorn in my paw. It was probably because he’d brought her in from the wilderness. And, the way I’d heard it, she’d been the one to keep him and Janie together. “Yeah. She’s doing the med checks. Sorry, Leo, you won’t be getting her back anytime soon.”

Commander Fen picked up his cup of cava. “None of us will be finished here anytime soon, anyway. Did you two eat?”

I’d shoveled in some cold roast pillion that the hunters had trapped, but Aren shrugged disinterestedly. Could mean anything, but I’d learned on patrol that she rarely ate. Said she had no need, when her people were starving.

I poured a cup of cava, threw in a spoonful of beejuz and added a splash of milk, from the dairy beetrics kept deep in the bowels of the mountain and sustained by an ingenious underground system of lights and ventilated fresh air. I handed the cup to Aren, ignoring her scowl, and poured myself a cup, straight black, as Fen addressed her.

“Will you be able to get out there again?”

Aren grabbed a handful of desert thorns and used them to widen the broad arc of prickles around the southern foothills of the mountains on the three-dimensional map. “Regime have reinforced along here. It’s getting too risky to run any more rescues. What remains of the Refugees will be better off taking their chances in the desert, now.”

She broke off, the flash of tears deepening the blue-green of her eyes, disconcerting me.

I spoke quickly. “We need to switch focus to reconnaissance patrols, keep an eye on the Regime forces. They’re massing, and the livestock they’ve brought in are dwindling. Tennant will have to attack soon, before his army starts losing condition.”

Lyrie nodded, staring down at the map. It was still new to her, she’d only been back in the caverns for days, but the rest of us had memorized it over the weeks, adding details to enemy numbers and placement each time we returned from a sortie. For weeks the enemy had milled, bringing in arms and supplies and had seemed to be settling in for a long siege. Which suited us fine. With a hidden aquifer below our caverns and a robust agricultural system, we could wait them out. They’d fry in the desert before we starved. But now Intel told us that their commander, Tennant, had arrived, and it looked like things were about to start happening.

Khal had moved behind Lyrie and, her focus still on the model, she leaned back into him. His hand moved to cup her belly, an odd, almost protective gesture. I snorted and shook my head; all three of my surviving brothers-in-arms had bonded with women from this gods-forsaken planet, though Khal and Lyrie were different from the other couples, almost volatile, both strong and opinionated. Guess that was to be expected when you mixed a cheetahkin and a griffin.

Lyrie took a deep breath. “What are our comparative forces?”

Fen looked grim. “Not something that we even want to compare. While our entire population might rival the force gathered at our gates, our fighting ability is sadly lacking. We’re compromised by lack of numbers, lack of weapons, and lack of superior firepower.”

“So, we just stay underground?” Lyrie said.

Fen shook his head. “We could outwait the Regime, hidden in the caverns, but eventually our people will be affected by the lack of natural light and the fact that they are incarcerated, despite how large and well-appointed the surrounds. Once madness strikes one resident, it spreads quickly.”

Lyrie shuddered, and Khal tightened his grasp around her emaciated form, dropping a kiss onto her hair.

Maya patted at her sister’s hand. “Before you came—home—we’d determined that we need to go on the offensive. But, to be honest, we didn’t expect Tennant to commit all the forces from the compound to this attack.”

Herc rubbed a hand over his drawn face, the bristles rasping against his palm. “We are sorely outmanned, and the Regime has the advantage of superior technology. Without access to tech, any forces we commit are nothing but cannon fodder.”

“But Aaidarians have tech,” Khal interrupted slowly.

Leo lifted one hand in question. “Yeah, bro. And other than us four—who, in case you’ve not noticed, are remarkably tech-free—the Aaidarians are on Aaidar.”

“Right where the Regime is desperate they should stay!” Lyrie interrupted breathlessly, swiveling to Khal. “That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it? Hartlin’s fear?”

Fen’s cup slopped contents onto the table, the room silent as we all grappled with sudden hope. “Fear? What fear?”

Khal drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “Hartlin was shitting himself that the Aaidarian government would discover the Regime’s DNA project. Sampling shifter genes to create a mutant army is in contravention of the Galaxy Living and Welfare Agreements treaty.” He lifted both arms in a shrug. “But how does that help us, Lyrie? We have no way to contact Aaidar.”

“Yet obviously the Regime were in contact with your officials to have you posted here, right?” Lyrie’s excitement bubbled over and she whirled toward Herc. “Right? You were assigned here by your government, so there had to be a communication trail.”

“Sure,” Herc agreed, scratching at the back of his head. “Orders always come through channels, we get sent all over the cosmos. Working for whoever offers the best deal.” He shot a quick grin at Maya, as though they shared a private joke.

“Leo,” I forced myself to lower my voice as sudden excitement gripped me. “Can you hack into the Regime’s mainframe and access their communication channels?”

“Nah, bro,” he rumbled. “Bare minimum I’d need one of their comm units equipped with a vid screen. When we ran, I didn’t bring anything like that with me. And we don’t have the tech here. Everything the Regime own is locked to their own algorithms and frequencies. Even if I could knock something up, I couldn’t access their mainframe.”

I deflated. Damn, for a moment, I’d had the gleam of an idea.

Lyrie spoke into the defeated silence. “But if we could get into the Compound, get hold of the tech, you would be able to get into their systems from here?”

The room went quiet, except for the tick of a centrian making its way slowly across one wall. Leo stared at her for a long moment before answering. “Potentially. Depending on how strong the signal is, what satellites it’s bouncing from. I could crack their codes, that’s not the issue.”

“The issue is,” Herc dismissed the idea with a wave of his hand, turning his attention back to the map, “that we do not have one of the units, nor any way of getting one.”

“Unless we have Resistance sympathizers on the inside of the compound?” Lyrie swung to Khal. “Neer? Would he do it?”

Leo added disagreement. “Unless this guy is a techie, he’s not going to know the right kind of equipment to grab. And how would we get hold of it, anyway? They’re not going to let him saunter in and out of the compound, any more than they’ll let us in.”

Aren moved to stand over the model, her finger tracing tiny outposts that marked the last known locations of her people, the Refugees. “But if someone did have access to the compound, could walk in and out without question, you could tell them exactly what kind of equipment you need, Leo?”

“I can draw a picture,” Leo scoffed, “but that place is locked down tighter than a diseased purchase-mate’s nasty. Nobody’s going in or out.”

“Except for the prodigal daughter,” Aren straightened her back and gathered her robes, her hand moving to the hilt of her Dragarian knife.

Even the centrian stopped his march across the wall, everyone’s eyes on Aren.

Lyrie dropped the piece of tallar she was using to sketch the model onto a sheet of paper. “Prodigal daughter? Who the hells are you?”

Aren’s face tightened, pain flashing clear behind her eyes. Her hands fisted, her words were, for the first time since I’d met her, hesitant. “I know how you all feel about him. And yet none of you have more reason to hate him than I do.” Her eyes fastened on mine, her teeth clenched on her bottom lip for moment as her nostrils flared with the effort to remain composed. “Commander Smithton is my father. He believes I was kidnapped and murdered by the Resistance. If I return, he has no reason not to welcome me with open arms.”

Maya gasped and Herc’s arm immediately encircled her waist, as though his touch would secure her. She had a history with the man who had been our Commanding Officer. And Herc had an itch to break the C.O.’s neck, one I’d advised him against acting on a number of times.

Looked like I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

The challar snapped between Lyrie’s fingers, her tone flat and hard. “Smithton’s daughter? Then what the hells are you doing out here, living like some filthy armatote? Why aren’t you ensconced in the luxury he bought with the blood of my people?” She flung the broken challar across the room, narrowly missing the centrian. “You wouldn’t even have to share it with his murdering whore anymore. Spike took care of her.”

Aren’s gaze never left mine. “I ran because my father ordered the death of all the Dragarians. Not me. He had other plans for me.” Her jaw clenched, as though she bit the inside of her cheek, then she shook her head a fraction. “He murdered my friends. Though I’ll never forgive him, I chose to disappear, and forget him. However, it seems that his actions continue to hurt my people. People I care about.” She whirled to Lyrie, her eyes spitting sparks. “For them, I will seek vengeance.”

Herc nodded. “You reckon you can get in there? I guess it could work. Best option—only option—we have, unless someone else has something brilliant up their sleeve.?”

“Smithton’s unhinged. Aren can’t go in alone.” I knew I should’ve taught her how to use the blade. Even then, I’d not have allowed her to go alone.

Leo waved a hand to call attention. “I’ll go. I’m the only one who knows what we need to grab.”

My knuckles popped. Aren and I’d been working as a team. That was my place, not his. “No—”

Aren shook her head. “How would you get past the guard, Leo? You don’t think they’re on the lookout for strangers—especially your type?” Her eyes ranged back to mine, and her hand worked nervously over the hilt of her knife. “However, my husband could return with me. Though Tracin is Dragarian, Smithton doesn’t know I was aware of his plan to annihilate the race. Tracin has information Smithton wants. He’ll pretend we’re welcome while he tries to work out how to get that information.”

“What?” Janie blurted. “You said your husband is dead.”

“He is.” Aren paused a moment, her lips pressed tight. “But I believe there is a way he can be impersonated. By an unbonded male.”

Again, the look, direct at me. Almost an appeal. I stepped toward her. “I’m unbonded. Always will be.”

“Then you shall be my husband.” Her back rigid, she strode from the room without waiting for further questions or recriminations.

Great, I got to play her dead husband? Well, the undead version, I assumed. And one who was in possession of some secret information that I didn’t have a damn inkling about. It took me a second to collect my wits enough to dash after Aren.

She hadn’t gone far. I found her with her back braced against the wall of the tunnel only one turn from the conference room. The glowing blue blade in her hand, she stared in fierce despair as, the point hovered near her stomach.

As I approached warily, trying not to startle her, she looked up. Her ocean deep eyes fixed on mine as though she was drowning in pain.

“Jag,” she whispered. “One way or the other, I’m going to die. I need you to fuck me.”

 

 

Watch for the conclusion of this series,

CAT SHIFTERS OF AAIDAR: ENDINGS,

coming January, 2019.