Chapter Eight
“I can’t believe we still haven’t come up with a firm plan other than, ‘we wait and watch for our chance.’ What kind of a half-baked, shit plan is that?” Blake whispered fiercely, pacing up and down in front of Rhaegar in the huge, common holding area all the prisoners had been moved to later that afternoon.
Rhaegar watched him in fascination, no longer wondering what the king had seen in this little human. He was actually beautiful, with his eyes blazing and his blond hair shining in the sunlight that was filtering in from the big barred windows overhead. He had more energy than just about anyone he’d ever seen, and Derrick looked at him like he’d hung the moons up in the sky. Rhaegar would have been jealous if he hadn’t known their true relationship. Hells, he might be a little jealous anyway. It might be nice to have someone look at him like that.
A few of the other prisoners had taken notice of Blake and of Derrick too. Rhaegar had already had to warn them off and station a few of his men on the outsides of their little group to head off any of the prisoners who got too close to Blake or his gorgeous Tygerian son. Rhaegar had Derrick sitting next to him now, as a matter of fact, since he’d seen the Lycan slavers watching him with hungry expressions on their sly faces.
Those big bastards were bad news, and he and his men tried to avoid them when they could. He hated slavers like these men who dealt in other people’s shame and misery. He’d already had to caution Derrick not to take any particular notice when the men called things out to him and his omak. Exceedingly rude things that they’d like to do to them and things that probably weren’t anatomically possible anyway.
Blake was ignoring it all, saying they were idiots, and he was used to it by now after living with Tygerians for years. He made those cryptic little comments a lot, and Rhaegar found himself fascinated by them. Derrick had explained to him his theories about parallel universes and then further confused Rhaegar by saying they were originally Rhaegar’s theories. That he was the one who had first told Derrick. Or at least the parallel version of him had told him, he said, which Derrick claimed was now a part of Rhaegar. Inside him, and sharing his mind and body. It was all a bit much, really.
Yet, this boy knew intimate details of his life and his history. Some of the details were a little off, but mostly he got everything right, even down to a mole Rhaegar had high up on his thigh, in the crease right next to his balls. He then proceeded to whisper to him exactly how he knew and how he’d traced that mole with his tongue and what he planned to do to Rhaegar when they were alone again. Rhaegar actually started blushing. He also got a raging erection that still hadn’t subsided.
For now, their goals were the same—to escape this planet and leave Tveir far behind them. As for what came after that, he’d wait and see. It was a strategy that had stood him in good stead over the years. But as for letting Derrick get away from him—that was out of the question. Assuming, of course, that they didn’t both wind up dead in the next few days. He had to find a way to get them out of this. And if his wait and see policy didn’t pan out, he’d have to do something more proactive. He just hadn’t figured out what yet.
Blake was still pacing with all that nervous energy and got a little too close to the group of Lycans, who had been steadily shifting and moving down their way. One of the Lycans suddenly reached for Blake and pulled him over toward him, holding Blake by his shoulders as he stared at his body, looking him insolently up and down.
“You look tired, pretty man. Why don’t you have a seat on my cock?”
Blake gave him a smile, then brought both his arms up between them and knocked his hands off his shoulders. When the big man growled and came back, leaning toward him, Blake grabbed the back of his neck as if to pull him closer, but instead brought his head sharply down to meet his knee, which was on the way up. The collision made the big Lycan howl in pain. Then when he was still roaring about his nose being broken, Blake pulled up his knee and gave him vicious jab in the balls. The Lycan went down like he’d been hit with an axe. Some of his friends shouted and jumped forward to help him, but Blake danced nimbly backward, laughing at them. When they followed him, howling with rage, they met Rhaegar and his crew, who closed ranks around him. They might have fought except for the guards, who fired a round of live ammo directly over all their heads, grazing one of the Lycans and narrowly missing Rhaegar.
The fight broke up pretty quickly after that.
Soon after that, the call came for the prisoners to line up to be taken aboard the ship. Rhaegar took Derrick’s arm in one hand and Blake’s in another to keep them close by him. The guards glared at them when they boarded, but allowed it, directing them down a long corridor in the hold of the ship to the large, group cells located there. Rhaegar grimaced when he saw the Lycans filing in behind them into the same cell. He found a seat for Blake and Derrick near the wall and stood in front of them. It looked like they were in for a bumpy ride.
****
Blake had begun to feel better about their chances the second he heard Rhaegar’s voice taunting the guards as the guards had dragged them to their cell that morning. He had tried really hard not to lose his temper with the Neanderthals that had come to take him from the king’s residence at the prison. Davos had spoken to them for a long time and quite sternly, when they arrived before handing him over to them, but as soon as he closed his door, they began sneering at Blake and making rude remarks about him in their strangely accented Tygerian. He didn’t understand all the words, but the contemptuous tone came across loud and clear.
He’d managed not to react, even when they called him the king’s new whore, but when they took Derrick from his hospital room, pushing and shoving him and calling him names, the shit hit the fan, as far as Blake was concerned. He had waded in on them, slapping one of them on his face—a high insult back on his Tygeria and apparently not well thought of here on Tveir either. That guard managed to hold onto his temper, but when the other one pushed Derrick to the floor and kicked him while Derrick was in chains, Blake picked up the nearest thing he could find, which happened to be a wooden chair, and shoved the high back of it right into the guard’s groin.
From that moment on, it was a struggle for the two guards not to attack Blake. But their fear of Davos was greater than their hatred of him, apparently, so they took out some of their frustrations on his poor son. By the time they got to the prison and started walking down that aisle between cells, he had begun to fear they’d take things too far and really injure Derrick. Threats to tell Davos helped a little, but not enough. Then he’d heard Rhaegar calling out to them. Even over the raucous jeering of the other prisoners, he had recognized that gravelly, sexy voice.
Since Blake and Derrick found Rhaegar and his men again, it wasn’t that their situation had improved. Things were just as bad as they’d ever been—they were still all on their way to the capital city of this planet to stand trial, and Davos still didn’t remember either him or Derrick, and Blake had no idea if they’d ever manage to make it back home. But somehow, his spirits were higher and Rhaegar seemed to recognize Derrick, at least on some level. Hell, it was a start.
He looked at Rhaegar now, wearing all black and looking lean and slim in the outfit, despite his broad shoulders. His hair stood out around his head in a dark halo and he looked wild and alien and more than a little dangerous. Not for the first time, Blake was glad to have him on their side.
Rhaegar had put him and Derrick against the wall and Derrick was holding tightly to Blake’s arm as the spacecraft took off, levitating straight up and then zooming off at a high speed, making them and many of the other prisoners stagger and struggle not to fall. They finally evened out the speed and Rhaegar turned back to look at them.
He leaned forward, speaking in a soft voice. “The trip to the city will take a few hours. Try to get comfortable—nothing will happen until about halfway there.”
Blake gripped his arm. “What do you mean? What do you think will happen?”
He shrugged and glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Rumor has it that the Lycans are going to make their move.”
“What kind of move?” Derrick whispered back to him. “What are they going to do?”
“I’m not sure. But they have plans to do something. I can practically feel it in the air around them. Stay as far away from them as you can. When it starts, both of you hit the floor and let me handle things.”
Derrick rolled his eyes at him. “I’m not helpless, Rhaegar. We’ve talked about this. Well, I suppose you’re going to claim you don’t remember, but trust me…we have. I’m not hiding on the floor and covering my head while you’re fighting. That’s just stupid.”
“Of course not, because that would be the sensible thing to do and when have you ever done anything that made the slightest bit of sense? Listen here, princeling, you stubborn young ass, I’m going to get you out of this mess you’ve gotten yourself into and then I’m washing my hands of you. You hear me? I’m walking away! You’re way too much trouble!”
“Good!” Derrick said, pushing his face right up into Rhaegar’s. “Who needs you anyway? I can take care of myself and my omak too. And I don’t need any stupid Drex pirate to get in my way.”
Rhaegar growled at him and Derrick took an immediate step back, raising his fists and squaring off to fight him, but Blake stepped in the middle between them. “Stop it right now. What’s going on here? Where is all this coming from? We don’t need to fight each other!” He peered closely into Rhaegar’s eyes. “And why did you call him princeling? I never mentioned that he was a prince. Wait—do you remember him?”
Rhaegar ran a big hand over his face, and shook his head. “No…I…I don’t know what happened or what I’m saying. I guess it’s the way he acts. That’s all. I’m sorry.” He glanced over at Derrick, a blush beginning to stain his cheeks.
Derrick couldn’t meet his eyes. He lifted one shoulder and sighed. “I guess I didn’t mean to say you’re stupid either.” He raised his head then and met Rhaegar’s gaze. “I’m sorry too.”
Rhaegar stepped closer as if drawn by a magnet and they swayed closer to each other until their mouths were only an inch or so apart. Derrick sighed and parted his lips. Blake was sure they were about to kiss when Rhaegar appeared to think better of the idea. He straightened quickly back up and took a step away, mumbling something under his breath.
“Just…just try to stay near the floor if something starts. Please. Both of you. Believe me, I’ll be there too. Excuse me a moment. I-I have to go talk to my men.” He turned quickly to make his way through the crowded room as Derrick stared after him.
“Will he come back, do you think?”
Blake smiled. “I think it would be hard to keep him away. But, wow,” Blake said softly, “what was that about?”
“I-I think we started to fight. Argue, anyway. We do, you know. All the time.” He blushed and gave Blake a sidelong glance. “Sort of like you and Father always do. We make up though, because neither of us can stay mad at the other for long. I love him so much, omak.”
“Uh huh. Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but you were acting like you used to when the two of you first met. You referred to him as Drex. And he called you princeling.”
“Oh, that’s right. I’ve noticed that no one calls pirates Drex here. And yet he never seemed to notice. He used to call me princeling all the time—especially in bed.”
“Okay, too much information. The point is that I think our Rhaegar is close to the surface. A lot closer than Davos is, anyway. Maybe it’s that mating urge the Lycans have. I’ve always heard it’s pretty damn powerful.”
“I hope you’re right,” Derrick said softly. “I miss him being in love with me.”
“Oh, honey.” Blake put his arm around his son’s shoulders. “That man is crazy about you. Don’t you doubt that.”
“He didn’t kiss me. I thought he was going to.”
Blake smiled. “He’s fighting it. Just like he did back in our world. But he’s losing ground fast. Just give him a little time, baby, and he’ll come around. His memories are close to the surface.”
“Are Father’s? Will he remember, so you think?”
Blake sighed. “I think he’s getting there. Your father is a stubborn man. And this version is set in his ways. I’d say definite progress has been made though. C’mon,” he said, sinking to the floor and tugging on Derrick’s sleeve. “Let’s sit down and try to rest. We need to be ready to move if something happens.”
“What do you think the Lycans will do?”
“Knowing them, something stupid. And violent. We need to be ready for anything.” They sat down with their backs to the wall and waited. It wasn’t long before Rhaegar made his way back over to them and sat down on the other side of Blake, not looking at Derrrick.
“The word is that the Lycans are definitely going to make a move,” Rhaegar said.
Blake nodded. “Then we wait. And be ready for whatever comes.”
****
Davos had stayed on the bridge of the ship for the first couple of hours of their journey. He’d left only a short while ago, going to the captain’s small cabin that he referred to as his “ready room.” It wasn’t his quarters, but a place for him to meet with his officers, and also boasted one of the best views on the ship, outside of the one on the bridge.
Davos stood at the windows and looked down at the terrain far below. They were flying in the lowest level of the planet’s atmosphere, because of a violent storm that had been detected higher up. This sphere, the lowest, was an unstable layer where the air moved constantly too, but on this day, it was still safer than being any higher up.
One of the down sides of choosing this planet for their resettlement had been the sun of this star system. The star had long been known for the intensity of its solar storms. Electrons and protons released by the solar storms added to the number of solar particles that interacted with this planet’s atmosphere, and these charged particles struck atoms and molecules in the atmosphere, releasing energy. The basic ingredients used to make a storm were unstable air, providing energy, moisture, from the very water they needed, and lift, which was created by differences in air pressure, mainly over the numerous mountains on the planet. Hence, the storms were frequent and plentiful.
Added to that was the fact that the tilt of the planet affected the way that the sun shined on any particular part of the planet. This meant that the days got much shorter in winter, when the northern hemisphere was tilted away from the planet’s sun. The Tygerians had loved the stability of their old weather on Tygeria, which had no tilt, before their atmosphere had been destroyed by the Alliance.
Twenty-five cycles before, the Alliance had launched a vicious, surprise attack on his people, taking advantage of the thick cloud cover over Tygeria and some new technology they had developed to hide their ships. Up until that time, Tygeria had never been directly attacked, nor had they attacked Earth’s home planet, because of the innocent non-combatants who would inevitably be destroyed. It seemed Earth forces had no such qualms.
The king at that time, his uncle, had fought them off valiantly, but the human weapons were crude and had damaged Tygeria’s atmosphere irrevocably, ripping a hole in their lower third layer of atmosphere. The layer had a high concentration of ozone, which absorbed most of the ultraviolet radiation reaching the planet from its sun. Once that layer had been destroyed, there was no way of repairing it. Over the ten cycles it took to completely deteriorate, they had to scramble to find another place to live, a planet that would sustain them and which had sufficient oxygen and water. Then came the massive effort of relocating to this new planet because Tygeria was no longer capable of sustaining a large population. They had the humans to thank for that.
This planet had only about six hours of sunshine every day. That had been, perhaps, the hardest thing to get used to when their people had first arrived here. Back on Tygeria, visitors had often found the planet depressing they’d said, because of its thick, dark cloud cover, and some had also found it too cold, but there had still been longer days, and the Tygerians loved their climate and disliked harsh sunlight. It was difficult still to think of this place as home, but that’s what it was now, and the long nights on this planet had taken a lot of getting used to.
The weather had been the greatest challenge to resettlement on this planet and had almost made the Tygerians keep searching. The atmosphere had the perfect amount of oxygen and hydrogen for them, however, with the added bonus of it being not quite as comfortable for humans, if they ever tried to invade the planet, though humans could adjust to it eventually if they had to. There was also plentiful water here, along with building materials.
Winter was coming soon on this planet, and Davos dreaded it. Temperatures could drop down really low in the winter. He needed to get back to the capital before the weather turned colder, with the resulting snow and ice. And he’d need to buy some more furs to wrap his little human up in. The idea of the human excited him and made him restless. He wasn’t sure when he’d decided to keep Blake—it seemed like it had always been somewhere in the back of his mind since the first moment he’d seen him. He was a good deal of trouble, and his mind was disordered, but he was endlessly fascinating and beautiful. His rantings about being mated to Davos were annoying, but possibly Davos could get the physicians to research some medicines for him. Human medicines that might work. What they’d given him so far to calm him hadn’t done much for his hallucinations. He’d told the doctors he didn’t want Blake sedated so they had come up with the idea of a special blend of hormones designed to make him more compliant. They hadn’t worked either, so far as he could see.
Perhaps though, Blake could continue his medications and it might all be well worth it. At any rate, the idea of getting rid of him wasn’t anything he wanted to think about. Not yet, at least. He wished he could have taken him to his quarters here on the upper decks and not put him in with the rabble downstairs, but there would have been too many questions and Blake wouldn’t have been happy leaving his “son” anyway. Davos supposed he was going to have to intervene in that situation too. He didn’t like the idea of the boy going to prison for reasons he hadn’t really examined yet. Besides, it would make Blake happy and keep him quieter. Perhaps he could find a place for the boy as a member of his household staff, closely supervised, of course. He needed to investigate further too and find out more about these other so-called children of Blake’s and discover if there was any truth at all to this mysterious Tygerian mate of his.
Davos glanced down at his communicator and saw the time. They’d be arriving back in the capital city in a few more hours, and he needed to get some work done. That was why he’d come in here in the first place, after all. He’d spent far more time than he’d planned to at the prison and he needed to get back to civilization.
The prison they were traveling away from was located hundreds of miles from any of the new settlements or cities, a distance easily covered in a short time by the transports, but one that would take weeks of walking to reach if any of the dangerous prisoners housed there managed to escape. It was a second line of defense against that possibility. The sometimes harsh and unpredictable weather on this planet would no doubt prevent an escapee from making the journey to any civilized area.
He had just turned to go sit back down at the table to get some work done, when the shouting started from the bridge. Jumping to his feet, he raced to the door and flung it open, glancing first at the wide viewing screen on the bridge to see if there had been some kind of attack. Instead, he saw an interior view of the ship, focused on the large holding area for the prisoners on one of the lower decks. A fire had broken out inside the pen and the scene was one of chaos, with some of the guards attempting to get the panicked prisoners enough under control that they could enter.
Blake was inside that pen. The thought blazed through his mind like wildfire, and he raced over to the lifts that would take him below decks. He heard the captain calling out for him, but he couldn’t be bothered to stop or listen—he felt an urgent compulsion to rescue Blake from the danger he was in—from the danger Davos himself had allowed him to be in! He struck the walls of the lift in frustration, feeling sick with apprehension. Arriving seconds later, Davos started running down the crowded corridor, filled with soldiers streaming in to help. Pushing them all aside, he made it to the doors of the holding pen, dodging the just-released prisoners crowding the doors, who were stampeding out and filling the corridor. Thick, acrid smoke clogged the air, and there was a cacophony of sound—soldiers yelling, injured prisoners screaming, and a few lone voices calling out for order. The panicked prisoners were way beyond listening, though, fighting to get away from a fire that had been started in the middle of the pen.
The gods only knew what they had used for fuel, but it was some kind of accelerant that had made the flames blaze up to the overhead of the compartment. There was no telling how they had managed to start it in the first place, but the fire had blazed up hot and out of control so that some sparks had already leaped toward the bulkheads, so they were blazing up as well.
Davos pushed his way in through the thick smoke, his gaze scanning the chaos for a blond head of hair. Then without warning, a huge body slammed into him from behind and took him to the floor. He lay facedown and stunned, trying to get his feet and hands back under him, when he was suddenly surrounded by Lycans, crouching over him and holding him down. They were shouting back and forth to each other in their own language, one Davos only knew a few words of, and one of them yanked his head up and back by his hair and pressed a sharp blade of some kind to his throat. Leaning over Davos, he growled at him in rapid Lycan, his breath foul and hot and gusting down in Davos’s face.
Was he really about to die here with a fucking Lycan on his back, disgracefully blindsided like a soldier fresh out of training? Taken down because he was so focused on rescuing his human bed slave that he didn’t see the danger around him? Was that to be his legacy? The idea was insupportable, infuriating him. Using all his strength, he managed to get his hands under him and heaved upward, spilling the bastard Lycan onto his back beside him. Other hands were reaching for him, trying to stop him, but he shook them off, his blood high as he felt the change overtaking him. If he shifted here and now, he’d kill not only the Lycans, but most of the prisoners and even the Tygerian soldiers around him, so he tried to fight it down and push his beast away, while still hurling the Lycans away from him.
Then from the corner of his eyes, he saw a small, blond blur rushing toward the fight and leaping onto one of the men, clinging like a burr to his back and trying to wrap his hands around the Lycan’s thick neck. Right behind him was the Tygerian boy Derrick, looking fierce and dangerous as he smashed his fist into another one’s face and plucked Blake off the first one’s back so he could smash his fist into his stomach. Davos started toward Blake, anxious to reach him before one of the other combatants did, when he felt a crushing pain on the back of his head. The world blurred around him and he staggered forward a few steps, then crashed down to his knees as the lights winked out and the sound faded to nothingness.