How could she tell him that she was pregnant? He would find out eventually. Jenny kept no secrets from Marik, and even if she kept that one, Marik too would be able to sense her impending child. He was a natural healer like Jenny, and she knew it was far better for Jeval to hear it from her than to hear it from one of them, but fear kept her silent as they entered her home.

The table that one of her fellow Revants had made from a few bits of wood and stone was pretty, and the flowers she had plucked and set into a small drinking vessel and water that graced the center of that table lent a bright splash of color to it as well. The figs were in a bowl and the honey in a container made of some clever material that was clear. The sun lit the flowers, streamed through the golden honey, and sent a wash of light through the room.

Her heart ached. She understood why so many who had had so much back on Old Earth felt they were being downgraded, but for her, that simple place with its simple furnishings and pleasures was the best place that she had ever known, and she felt a pang of sheer love for it—and for the being who stood in the center of the one-room structure, gazing at her with his incredible eyes and a troubled expression on his face that hurt her to the heart. She asked, “I have bread too; would you like…we can have a small meal.”

He strode across the room. His hands cupped her face, and he stared down into her eyes. “Why is it you are so able to hide from me?”

“You can’t read people or beings unless they let you in, or you go into them. You never have with me.”

And she really hoped that he wouldn’t try it just then either. She had a lot to hide.

He said, “That’s not what I mean. I mean most beings, well, humans anyway, wear everything right on their face. Their expressions and body language make it easy to know just what they are thinking and feeling but you…you always keep everything hidden. You seem to be happy and smiling, but you aren’t, most of the time. I can see that. I just don’t know why you hide one or the other.”

“Most humans do.” Her throat was so raw that the words hurt. She swallowed back a salty lump. “Jeval, I love you. You have to know that.”

“I do.” His eyes didn’t move away from hers. “You have to know I care for you too Margie but…but we cannot be mates. We can’t be life mates.”

“Why?”

Everything was in that question. She knew every answer he would give, and she knew that for every answer he gave, there would be a massive blow leveled onto her heart, but she knew she had to hear him list them, so she could argue against them.

Above everything else the Revant were logical. They valued that, they valued logic over emotion, and maybe if she could make him see that his fears about a child, and falling in love, and life mating were emotional things, she might be able to convince him that it was only logical that they remain together—that they be life mates.

She expected him to say any number of things. Nothing could have prepared her for his answer. “I might not live much longer.”

Every cell, every nerve, every fiber of her being, went taut and tingling. Her body went so rigid that pain from those stiffened muscles traveled upward, exploding agony into her skull. Her mouth hung agape, and she squinted at him, trying to puzzle out the meaning behind those words. “Jeval…what? What are you saying?”

He looked away from her then. He swallowed so hard she could see his throat working. “We need to talk.”

She struggled to drag air into her lungs. Her legs were so stiff she couldn’t unlock them long enough to move, so she just stood there, rooted to the spot and staring at him. “Please tell me…”

His hand propelled her to the chairs at the table. He pulled one out and sat her down. Her bottom hit the hard wood and she sat there, clenched like a fist and with that pain traveling all through her, rocketing across every inner system and leaving a sick and dazed feeling in its wake.

Jeval was dying?

No.

Please no!

His hands lay on the table. Their fingers were so close, close enough that if she moved hers just a bit she could take his hands, but that shock kept her immobile, kept her from reaching out. There was a hard and sharp stone just below her breast, and the weight of it made her body sag a bit. Tears went running down her face, but she didn’t notice them. Her lips finally shaped out words. “What is it? What is happening?”

He lifted a hand from the table and ran it through his hair. “You know as well as I do that the rebellion has been small and widely flung until now.”

Horror rose up. “Are you saying it isn’t anymore? We have thought for a long time that it would grow and that the rebels would decide to take on The Federation head on, but so far they haven’t.”

“They are now.”

Her blood went to ice. “What? How…wait. What does this have to do with…?” She could not say the words. “With what you just told me?”

“I just threw my hat into the ring with the rebels.”

Her eyes went to the closed door. “Bates might have spies posted. You shouldn’t say such things.”

“Bates is a rebel.”

That took her so aback that her mind went blank and her body went numb. “No.”

“Yes.”

Had everyone and everything in the entire universe somehow managed to go insane? She reached for his hand and held it in both of hers. “What does that have to do with… with you…” It hit her then. “No. Don’t do it. Let them have their war without you, Jeval.”

“I can’t. If they are going to succeed, I have to help them.”

“You’ll probably die.”

Tears came again, making her cheeks and eyes burn. He didn’t look away from her face, and she read sorrow in his then. His head nodded up and down. “I probably will. The Federation is likely to try to bomb us just to prevent us from doing what it is that we will try to do. But you will be safe here. Nobody in The Federation will know that anyone here had any part in it.”

“How can you say that?”

His smile was harsh and drawn. “Because if we fail, we have our own bombs and the place we are aiming for will be dust, and we will be dust right along with it.”

Dust. He was talking an atomizing bomb or a neutron displacement bomb, something capable of leveling entire cities and even small planets. There was savvy in that, of course. It would be impossible to find evidence after such a thing as there would literally be nothing left, making it impossible to identify any particular being, especially since even their cells and DNA markers would be in space and impossible to catch and trace.

That sick feeling just got worse as she considered that. Her fingers clamped down on his. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I do.”

She persisted, “Tell me why you have to. Why, Jeval? Why can’t you just let Talon and Jessica go, and don’t even sit there and try to tell me they won’t be the first ones up. They both claim they want peace, but we both know that neither of them will ever be satisfied until The Federation is destroyed.”

He didn’t answer. His fingers moved, shifting so that his thumb could stroke along the top of her hand, Desperate now, she said, “Why not just reduce it to dust in the first place then? “

“Because we need some of those who are there to help us determine if there are other places like it. If The Federation has duplicated the place and the research being done there. Bates has plenty of access, but not full access to that, despite his rank. The Federation is wily and suspicious even of itself and its highest members, and there are always secrets upon secrets upon secrets. Before we can char it, we have to know, or it will all be for naught.”

“What if you find out there is another, and then you have to destroy yourselves? What good will that knowledge do then?” The acrid bitterness in her throat leaked downward, right into her heart. “What then?”

“It won’t be for naught. We will have hi-tech comcasters. The intel will go out even if we do not go on.”

No, a hundred thousand times no. A million times no. She couldn’t let him do it. That gift of his, it was so strong, and yet it was so deadly, and not just to those he leveled it upon, but to himself. It would consume him if he used it to the degree that Bates wanted him to use it, and he had to know that.

He did know that. That was why he had said he was probably going to die.

Between the consequences of using his gift and the probability that The Federation would swoop in with their warships and make the rebels have to drop that bomb to hide their true intentions and identities, he would probably die.

“You agreed to the bomb to protect us, to protect this planet.”

“I agreed to it for you, Margie. I can’t die knowing that there is a chance you will suffer for this.”

He did love her. He loved her so much he was willing to let himself get blasted to dust to protect her. She could not tell him about that baby now, not when he had so much on his shoulders. He would go; there was no way to stop him from it, and she knew it. He would do what he felt he had to do.

“Why now?” That was the only question left to ask.

Jeval took a deep breath. “The Federation has found a wormhole.”

“So?”

“It leads to a different universe.”

Everything went gray and black. A sharp buzzing sensation was followed by the most numbed sensation she had ever felt. Visions came into her head. Aliens like they had never seen ripping through a wormhole that The Federation had opened; a wormhole that the other universe had known about and closed to keep them out. War so horrific that none in their universe would survive. Planets tumbling into nothingness. Entire systems failing and falling into dust. Cities crumbling before a tide of weapons such as they had never seen and had no ability to fight against.

That other universe was peaceful but war-like, able to defend itself, willing to defend itself, against any and all other invaders—against The Federation that was small and weak in comparison to them.

“Margie?

The vision snapped and broke. She stared at him, dazed and unsure. Everything had just been shown to her, but she didn’t know how or why. “The research lab, it’s on Orional.”

He went white. “How do you know that?”

“I…” her tongue wet her lips. “I don’t know.”

How did she know it? She had no idea; she just knew what she had just seen wasn’t just her imagination working overtime and his words, his affirmation of some of the knowledge that had just gone hurtling across her mind, proved that. “I don’t know, Jeval. I just know that whatever is on that other side will destroy this entire universe and there will be nothing any of us can do to stop it. The Federation…they think they can rule there too, but they’re wrong.”

He stood so fast that the chair fell to the floor. He came around the table, and his arms slid around her, pulled her up and out of the chair. His eyes locked onto hers. “Tell me…what just happened?”

“I don’t know.” She sagged against him. Despite everything, the sensation of his body against hers sent trails of desire and a heated flush rolling across her lower body. Juices slid from her inner core, dampening her inner thighs and her lower lips. Her breath was a hard gas that was a combination of fear and ardor. “I don’t know. I just saw…I saw it all. I saw them coming through the wormhole and killing the entire universe. I saw people dying and worlds falling. I saw…I saw The Federation buckle and crumble like a child’s toy that is useless to its owner now.”

His hands slid up her arms and then went around her. He held her up and close. She rested her face on his chest, her cheek turned so that her ear rested just above his heart, and that steady thump and pound there below her ear reassured and steadied her, helped to pull her back from the brink of madness she was sure she had been about to cross in the wake of those visions.

The feel of him, solid and there, and the heated need that stroked along her skin and in her inner walls brought her all the way back to him, to the present moment and to the fact that he was about to go and die to keep what she had just seen from happening.

His hands fisted her hair and tugged her head upward so that his lips could meet hers in a ravaging, senses-stealing kiss that took her breath away and left her heart pounding way too fast and her pulse racing.

His hands went to her dress, tugging it upward. His hands found her breasts even as his mouth continued to press down on hers, his tongue meeting hers in a fast and immediate kiss that left her legs weak and her fingers reaching for and then blindly holding onto his wide shoulders.

His head dipped low, and he took one of her pink nipples into his mouth, sucking hard. The sensation that shot through her body was incredible. Her whole body shivered and shook as his tongue swirled around her nipple, causing it to go pebble-hard and erect. Her hands worked their way up underneath his shirt, and she found his nipples, flicking her fingers against the taut small buds while her lower body ground against his. His dick, thick and throbbing, pressed against her pubic mound and juices flowed from her core, spilling along her inner walls and slicking them.

Sensation built and built. Everything in her wanted him, wanted to feel him inside her. She wanted to ride him, to feel that thick and stiff rod of his inside her body. She wanted to kiss him and be made love to until the horror faded away from her mind and everything else faded too because she could not stand it anymore, just couldn’t.

The whole world was splintering apart, and she wanted to believe that if they just stayed there, skin-to-skin and heart-to-heart, bodies joined for long enough that somehow everything would be made whole again, that everything would be fine, and they could have a life together, one not always threatened by the promise of war and devastation.

His mouth met hers again as his hand delved between her thighs and then his fingers explored the folds and creases of her outer lips before thrusting inside her with an immediate penetration that left her gasping and wanting more.

Her whole body trembled as she worked her fingers down his skin, the smoothest skin she had ever felt in her life. The tactile sensation was overwhelming as always. The smell of him filled her nose, making her senses reel off and her inhibitions fly away as well. This was not going to be slow and sweet; this was a rough refusal of death, a sharp denial to death and a celebration of life.

His fingers slid along her body, stroking every single inch of her skin and she shivered, her skin rising up into gooseflesh as her nipples stiffened and her body shivered again and again, her eyes fluttering open and closed and the sight of his face filling her vision.

His rod nudged against her lower lips. More fluids spilled from within her body, coating those lips and making his thrusts into her easier but no less urgent. He filled her instantly and immediately, his thickness parting her swollen inner flesh and going very deep within her body.

Her inner folds clutched at that heated and pulsing organ of his. Her body quivered, and her legs wrapped around his waist, her fingers raking down his back, leaving little trails there from her nails. Her cries were buried and muffled by the skin of his shoulder. His ass clenched and lifted, and he thrust and withdrew, his breath washing through her hair and his body shuddering as he began a faster pace, taking her over the edge and toward an orgasm.

Margie closed her eyes. There was just this. The feel of him inside her body, the smell of him and their breath. Their joined flesh and their skin rubbing together, creating friction on her flesh and within it as well.

She began to come, her walls constricting and then opening again. Her toes curled, and her heels dug into the mattress as she arched higher, trying to give him a better angle of penetration so that he could take her all the way, take her from the first pulses of an orgasm right into the shuddering depths of her climax.

Heated oils splashed from her core and onto his rod. She cried out again, gasping his name as he moved faster still, the tension and friction within her walls as they fluttered around him, cradled him and milked his prick, sent him right into a climax of his own.

The heavy twitches of his cock, the feel of his seed bursting into her, splattering and running through her tight sheath, sent her orgasm blasting back from where it had been fading to and she rode that wave, that hard and cresting spike of passion that left her shaken and shaking as he slowed then stopped his body, going first rigid and then limp.

The heat and weight of him on her body felt so right, and so perfect. She held onto that even when he withdrew and drew her into his arms, cuddling her close to him.

His hand stroked her hair away from her brow. His lips found hers again and she closed her eyes, letting her tongue touch his and the sweetness of that replace the heated urgency that she had felt earlier.

He said, “You’re afraid.”

“I am.” She shifted a bit so that she could see his face. “Are you not?”

“Of course I am. But being afraid is no reason not to do something. In fact, it’s usually the best reason to do something, or so I have found.”

She lay there, thinking of that. Her eyelids grew heavy, and so did her breathing, but one thought remained at the top of her mind even as she drifted toward sleep.

She had to go with him, and she had to hide the fact of her pregnancy from him.

Margie woke much later. Jeval was gone, though proof that he had been there hung on her linens and skin. She rolled over and stared at the darkening shadows in the corners. It would be time for the communal meal soon, and she should get up. She had not done much work that day, but given that she had just returned from a spy mission, she was sure she had a pass on that.

She sat up and swung her legs to the floor. The room dipped and spun, and her head ached.

Her hand went to her belly, and a gasp rose up high in her mouth. Her belly had been perfectly flat earlier, but now it was pouched out and hard, a small ball of fat and the weight of the baby within her.

She knew that Revants had a shorter cycle with pregnancy, about five months. Clare had gotten pregnant four and a half months ago and had begun to show almost immediately, though she hid that with draped and artful clothing so she could continue to go on missions under the cover of carding and gambling.

But she had come back from her last mission recently and had been declared unable to travel for fear of injuring the child because she was so close to birth.

“Oh my God.”

Margie stood, her eyes pouting down to her belly. Sure enough, there was a noticeable bulge there!

“No! Oh no, no, no! If Jenny or Marik don’t tell on me, you will! You must not, don’t you know your father’s…”

The words broke off. An image came up, shimmering in the air before her and not in her mind. That flummoxed her so much she could not even breathe.

She watched as Jeval climbed aboard the ship waiting and the door closed.

“Oh my God.”

She swayed on her feet as she understood it then. It had been the baby that had shown her that vision of what would happen if the wormhole was opened and The Federation attempted to take on that other universe! It was the baby who had just raised that nearly holographic image in the hut she lived in.

“What are you?”

There was no answer. Hunger whistled up from her belly, and she staggered toward the wash basin, her mind trying to shut down and ignore the thing she had just seen, had just figured out.

Her baby was gifted in its own ways, and she had no idea if she wanted to know what that meant.

Jeval had said most babies born to those with gifts like him didn’t survive. She had known, before that moment, that it was possible that both she and that child would die, but now she was even more scared.

And more determined to try.

That baby was not just in there, swimming around in some senseless state. It could think and feel and everything else, and it could see what was happening, both in the future and at that moment. It was not just a nameless lump of flesh growing into a child: it was her child, hers and Jeval’s, and she had to protect that girl.

That girl.

Her hands stilled. Water and soap dripped onto the floor of the bathing stall. The slow trickle of water suddenly increased and then, it heated. The warm shock and pressure of it startled her so much that her fingers released the cloth she had been holding. It landed atop her right foot, and she stared down at it dumbly.

“You’re a girl,” she whispered. “Make the water a little faster if that is a yes.”

The water came faster. So fast that the small drain drilled into the floor could not contain it. Margie exclaimed, “Okay! Okay!”

The water slowed. She bent to pick up the soapy cloth and began to wash. Since the water was still coming fast enough to do so she washed her hair, a luxury she usually only engaged in twice a week because of the length of time it took to do so.

She cut the water off and stepped out of the little chamber, navigating the slippery boards and stones of the floor carefully for fear of falling and injuring her daughter in some way.

She dried and dressed quickly then sat down on the bed to brush her hair. She stared at the wall, unable to process the huge thing that was true, and part of the child within her. She asked, “Can you hear me? I think you can. How do you know those things?”

No answer.

Margie went out the door. Dusk fell so fast there that it always stunned her a little. Night had come in, right behind that brief dusk, and now the terrain was cloaked in darkness. The solar lamps and wind power lit up the communal eating area, and as she stepped into the pavilions, she felt the tension and hush that had come over her fellow citizens. They were all nervous as hell, and with good reason since there were Federation officers and guards and soldiers in their ranks now, all busy eating not just the printed food they must have brought down from the ships, but the fresh stuff that was the bounty of the planet.

Jeval sat with his siblings. Jessica and Jenny and Clare all sat huddled at a small table by the side of the pavilion and fresh worry hit. The brothers were rarely without their mates, but tonight they were seated with the general that had come down earlier, and many soldiers. What was happening?

Everything is well, a soft female voice whispered from within her. Be still.

She went to the serving lanes and took food then went to the table where the other women sat. They all gave her long and grave looks. She looked down at her plate. Normally the sight of freshly caught fish and harvested food would have ignited her hunger, but just then worry ate into her, stemming off her appetite.

She whispered, “Have they said anything at all?”

Clare shook her head. Lavender circles had cropped up under her eyes, and she shifted slightly, the high mound of her belly moving as her child moved in its sac. “No. Well, yes, but…”

“Jeval told me.” Her fingers went to the silverware. “I can’t let him go. He will die, and then what?”

Jessica said, “I don’t want this. I know everyone thinks I am so hardened and so willing to war that I would be reveling in the chance, but this I don’t want.”

That made Margie pause. “Talon isn’t going?”

Jessica’s smile held sorrow. “Of course he is. He is the best captain in the universe, and everyone knows it. Where he goes, I go. I don’t want to die but…but if he dies, I will die from a broken heart or some such silly thing. I can’t believe I am even saying that. I am not at all that sentimental.”

Only she was, and she was that loyal to the being she had mated as well. Margie hurt for her, for all of them because she knew right then that they would all go.

I can’t go. I have this child to consider, and I can’t let it die. I just can’t.

Jenny said, “I will go too. I can heal—and I can kill. I can use the weapon Marik opened in me to help save them, if at all possible.”

Jessica said, “I’ll fight for them, and for us.”

Clare whispered, “I can’t go. I can’t. My child comes any day, and Renall has refused to allow it. He has refused to consider it even. He says we must survive and lead this planet. There will be those from our sister planet who come to help, but we must stay.”

Just then, someone stood. It was a young woman, and her voice shook as she cried out, “Are we not to know what goes on here?”

Renall and his siblings stood. Margie’s eyes filled with tears as she stared at the four of them. They were all so brave, and they would give their very lives for this place and these beings upon it, for a chance at real freedom, and she was stricken by the beauty of that, by the selflessness of it, so hard it was like a punch to the heart.

Renall spoke slowly. “Old Earth is no more. It has been destroyed by The Federation. We are to stop sending people back there and to cease our attempts to aid there at once as there is no further need. All who are on the way here from there will be welcomed with open arms. Any ships that were headed there have turned back toward here. That is all.”

The shock wave that went through the crowd was palpable. Jenny whispered, “He could hardly tell them the rest of it, I suppose, and I know that, but all he has done is make them even more afraid of The Federation.”

Jessica said, “With good reason. They can’t know the truth. It is not something they need or want to know and if they do know, they may talk, even if it is just amongst themselves. They cannot communicate beyond this planet but if they were to be questioned, not knowing would be a blessing.”

Margie toyed with the food. Hunger came back, and she felt a hard and powerful thrust in her midsection, a demand for food. She began to eat. The fish came away from the bone in succulent bits of pink flesh and oil that satisfied hunger in a way nothing she had ever had before coming to that planet ever had.

This was her home, and she had to do whatever was necessary to save it.

I can help. I must go. I can see far, and I know things. You must take me with them.

That voice came from within her skull. Margie wanted badly to believe it was her daughter speaking, but she was horribly afraid that it was not, that it was her own mind speaking and pretending away the grave danger that would face her child if she went.

Clare broke into her thoughts by saying, “Margie, will you go?”

Will I?

Her fork trembled in her fingers. She would not be able to hide her pregnancy much longer, especially not from Jeval, who would see her naked. She said, “I will but…but all of you must swear to say nothing about the child that I carry.”

Jenny asked, “Are you sure you want to hide that from him?”

She wasn’t, not at all, but she knew that if she told him, if anyone told him, he would not only refuse to allow her to go, but he would leave there angry at her. “I can’t tell him now. Not with this happening. I will tell him, but I want to do it when the time is right.”

Time.

There might not be any time, but she had to do whatever she could do to help save not just him, but the universe.