Chapter Five
When his security forces had first sent him the footage of the human Blake Cameron sneaking out, and asked how he wanted to handle it, Davos had only been a little surprised. Something was exceedingly odd about the man and the way he kept insisting Davos was his mate, and Davos knew his behavior had to be some kind of ruse or trick, no matter how inexplicably drawn to him he was. Or how much he wanted to fuck him. He was curious to know what he was up to, so he sent back a message to keep him under surveillance, and that he would be coming over soon to handle the situation himself.
By the time he left his office, he’d had word that Blake Cameron had reached his destination, the place where they had consigned the young pirate they’d taken off the pirate ship. It had been clear to Davos right away when he’d met the young Tygerian that he was putting on some kind of act. He kept demanding his soldiers take him to his “father,” King Davos, for one thing, and he claimed to be a prince, though he was wearing the same type of clothing as the pirates and even sporting a gold ring in one ear like the pirates often did.
Then the same crew he was traveling with attacked him and he and his soldiers had to save the boy. Under interrogation, the other pirates claimed not to know him at all, leaving Davos to wonder what kind of game they were all playing. And of course, he was curious as to how a Tygerian got to be traveling with pirates in the first place. Had he been kidnapped? Perhaps even as a child? He seemed well-educated, though, and well-spoken. Surely nothing he could have learned from pirates.
It wouldn’t be the first time the bastards had kidnapped someone, however, as Davos knew only too well.
He shook his head to dispel the bad memories that threatened to rush in, and pushed them to the back of his mind, where they usually resided. At any rate, the handsome young Tygerian had been so incoherent and confused with his insane story that Davos had directed him to be placed in the prison hospital until the doctors could figure out what was wrong with him, and who he really was.
But Blake Cameron had gone straight to the boy’s small cabin like a shot. When Davos first arrived, he had watched the camera footage the guards showed him on their communicators in fascination as the beautiful human sneaked across the yard in the dark and tapped quietly on the Tygerian prisoner’s door. When the door opened, the young man took Blake in his arms and gave him a passionate embrace, then pulled him inside. Davos had been a bit surprised at the rage that had swept through him at that. Rage at the deception and the lies, that is—certainly not because he was feeling oddly jealous and even betrayed by the human.
Davos had actually begun to believe the human’s lies. Or at least he was convinced Blake believed the wild stories he claimed. Had even felt pity for him and directed the doctors to give him injections of medicines that would calm him and make him feel less agitated and less aggressive, and not because of the pity he felt for him. Not at all. But because he entertained the idea of perhaps making the human his lover for a while if his psychological problems could be lessened. He’d even been afraid one of the guards might hurt the man if he kept challenging them the way he was doing.
Davos had a good control over his men and they both feared and respected him, but Tygerians despised humans these days, not only for the many, many lives that had been lost during this interminable war, but because of the destruction of their home planet. They might attack him in a sudden rage if he provoked them too far.
Davos had gone with the guards as they broke down the door, but then turned on his heel to leave, finding it uncomfortable to watch Blake’s face as it cycled through fear and betrayal and outrage. He left, directing the guards to arrest the two and bring them to an interrogation room in the guard house. He’d just had word they were inside now and waiting for him.
When he arrived for the interrogation, the captain of the guards reported that after he left, the young Tygerian had attacked the guards when they put their hands on the human. He had fought them fiercely—no doubt trying to protect his lover—that is, until he’d been knocked out. That’s when the human had waded in, fighting them with a strength none of them had previously guessed at. The captain told Davos he seemed to be in a blind rage as he punched one of the guards in the face and used some kind of sideways kick to bury his bare foot in one of the guards’ groins. The guard had clutched himself and fallen over like he’d been hit with an axe.
In the end it had taken three guards to take the blond human to the ground and keep him there, his knuckles and his face bleeding from the scuffle. The captain of the guards had finally had to intervene—Davos had given him strict orders before he left not to injure either of the prisoners. However, one of the guards lost his temper and drew his weapon, aiming it at Blake’s head. The guard had been breathing hard, looking uncertain, until the captain grabbed his arm. “Are you as crazy as this human? The king said not to harm them!”
After giving his report, the captain had stared curiously at Davos and he knew the captain must be wondering why they hadn’t been allowed to just shoot the prisoners and be done with it. Not that Davos gave a damn what the captain or any of the rest of them thought, but he still clarified it for him, and for himself.
“I didn’t want them harmed, because I need answers from them both.”
The captain apologized again, lowering his head. “I understand, Your Majesty. We can shoot the human in the arm or leg if you like, and that way he can still answer your questions.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Davos replied dryly, breathing a little hard himself. The idea was actually tempting at the moment. “For now, that’s enough. He’s been subdued, and we’re not the barbarians the humans are. Take them both to an interrogation room and call me when it’s done.”
The guards had saluted and taken them away, one guard dragging the young Tygerian by one arm and another throwing an unconscious Blake Cameron over his shoulder. A part of Davos didn’t like that much, and he wondered, not for the first time since he’d encountered these damn pirates, what in the four hells could be wrong with him?
Davos had never considered himself to be a kind and benevolent ruler. Or much of a diplomat, for that matter. His father, who had been the heir to the throne, had been killed by pirates the year before his grandfather’s death. The title and the throne had then gone to his uncle, and at that point Davos had thought it unlikely he’d ever be king. Then one by one, each of his close family members had been killed in the war, and his uncle, almost broken by his losses, had tried for one more heir. The baby had been born just a few months before his death, but it was a female, so according to Tygerian law, ineligible for the throne.
Upon his uncle’s death, Davos had become king. Since then, Davos had tried to be a fair ruler, but these were savage and dangerous times, and he felt a real duty to be strong for his people. He still felt that need to be uncompromising, even ruthless, so that he could protect this planet, the last stronghold and refuge of the Tygerian people.
He wasn’t sure what the presence of these pirates here on Tveir meant. Were they working for the Alliance in some capacity? He wouldn’t put treachery past any pirate. They had obviously lied to him, and then the blond human had shown up and seduced him on top of that. He had pulled back the covers on his hospital bed to display his body to him and the others in the room, then later, he’d climbed onto Davos’s lap, kissing him and making love to him.
He didn’t look forward to the coming interview with the prisoners, and the probability that he would have to use force, perhaps even torture on them. The human presented the biggest challenge, because his angry feelings for the man were all mixed up with desire and lust. No matter how much he disliked getting rough with these two pirates, however, they could be acting as spies for the Alliance, and it was necessary to protect his people. Unless they voluntarily told him what he needed to know—and the truth serum obviously hadn’t worked. Something told him neither of them would be especially cooperative.
He came into the room and saw the two, sitting side by side. The young Tygerian was slumped in his chair and had scratches and bruises forming on his face, while the blond kept his hand resting possessively on the young man’s leg. Coddling the boy again, like he’d done with all the children, making him weak. Is it any wonder the pirate was able to seduce the boy?
The thought came into his mind and was gone again like a flash of lightning over the ocean, lighting it up briefly so it could see where to stab the horizon. Davos wasn’t even sure the thought had ever been fully formed. The oddness of it was disturbing, and he sat down hard and fast in his chair, picking up the file folder and pretending to study its contents to hide his confusion. On the table was an assortment of torture devices, left there for intimidation purposes.
He glanced up to find Blake gazing steadily at him with a fiercely defiant expression on his handsome face. An ugly blue bruise was forming on his cheek bone and Davos winced a little when he saw it. Whoever had hit him had come close to breaking that bone. Blake’s lips were puffy too and a tiny trickle of blood came from one corner. A physician was leaving the room as Davos entered, having just finished forcibly giving them both injections of whatever drug it was that the doctors had said would keep them calm and make them tell the truth. Davos doubted it would do any good whatsoever, since their serums hadn’t appeared to work yet.
Davos spent several more minutes looking down at the papers from the file folder, pretending to pore over them. The file actually contained very little except for the surveillance reports, but he had found that it often made prisoners nervous to wait for an interrogation to start, and he needed all the advantage he could get with this human. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did.
The younger man’s eyes were closed, and he occasionally let out a soft moan. He seemed to be only about half conscious. Blake leaned over to say something in the boy’s ear that made him nod and stop making those sounds, and then Blake gave Davos a glare of such intensity and heat that he wouldn’t have been overly surprised if his hair hadn’t suddenly burst into flames.
After a few more long minutes of pretending to look at their file, he put the folder down, put a communicator in the center of the table and began speaking into its recorder.
“Fourth month, 48576, case file 4520. Beginning interrogation session.” Davos glanced over at the blond human. “State your name for the record.”
“Peter Pan, Commander of the Armies of Neverland and this is my aide, Captain Hook.”
Davos leaned back in his chair to study him. Neverland? Was he making jokes again?
“What is this…Neverland? Is that a planet? What star system is it in?”
“The Milky Way. But you can only reach it at sunrise. Second star to the right, and straight on till morning.”
Davos glared at him, realizing he was enjoying some private joke at his expense, though he had no idea what he was talking about. Ignoring the obviously ridiculous answer, Davos kept on. “Why have you come here to Tveir?”
“In an unofficial capacity. We were looking for a vacation spot, you see, and I thought the Lost Boys and Tinkerbell would particularly like it here.” The words suddenly brought a half-formed image to Davos’s mind of Blake sitting with a redheaded child in his lap, reading to him from an old bound volume of papers. He shook his head to dispel the image and barely managed to contain his growl.
“I see you enjoy your little games, Blake Cameron.”
“No more so than you, if the last five minutes you studied that mostly empty file folder are any indication.”
Davos frowned at him and slammed the folder down on the table. “You must have remarkable resistance to the injections the doctors have given you, if you’re still able to make these asinine, so-called jokes. I wonder if your young lover has the same ability.”
Blake glared at him across the table. “Derrick is not my lover; he’s my son. Don’t be disgusting, Davos. You know good and damn well who he is! And he needs a doctor.”
“Since when does a human care so much for a Tygerian?” Davos asked.
“Since I gave birth to him.”
Davos made a scoffing sound. “When are you going to start telling me the truth?”
“Stop this, Davos—you know I’m telling the truth. And why the hell are you interrogating us anyway? Aren’t you the king here? Surely you have people to do this kind of thing. Or do you just enjoy torture? Will it make your dick hard to use some of those on me?” he asked sneeringly, gesturing toward the devices on the table.
“I’ll ignore the insolence, since you’re in enough trouble as it is. For now. And yes, I do have people, as you say. But I’m taking a special interest in this case. You say you’re my mate, after all. And now you say he’s…what? My ‘son,’ isn’t that right?”
“You know it is.” He jumped to his feet and pointed his finger at Davos. “I know you’re in there Davos, so you’d better wake the hell up and get your ass in gear.”
Davos drew back, a little stunned by that remarkable comment. Was the human still trying to pretend insanity? No one had ever spoken to him in such a manner and lived to tell of it.
“Sit your ass down,” he thundered, “before I knock you down and tie you to that chair.”
Blake glared at him, but then huffed out a breath and fell back down in the chair, crossing his arms over his chest.
Ignoring Blake for the moment, Davos refocused his attention on the young Tygerian. He was a handsome young man with high cheekbones and long eyelashes. He seemed a bit stunned by all that had happened or perhaps his current condition was just from the fists of the guards. A large bruise had come up along his jaw, and Davos found he didn’t much like the fact they’d obviously ignored his orders and hit him so hard, which was ridiculous, because since when had he cared for the health of his enemies? Especially when that enemy was a filthy pirate? This young man, despite the fact he was Tygerian, was quite obviously one, with his gold earring, sent to spy on Tveir for some reason. The earring alone was enough to infuriate Davos, and he hated the sight of it.
When Davos had been fourteen years old, and still in training to be a warrior, his father, Prince Jahkav, the heir apparent to the Tygerian throne, had come to pick Davos up in his personal craft and take him home for a rare visit. The war was raging, with many casualties on both sides, so Davos and the young men who were in training with him, only stayed in the camps for two short cycles before leaving for their first post, and Davos’s time was almost up. He had been so proud of his handsome father, then only thirty-three years old and in his prime. He was a fierce warrior, the Dyson of all the Axis armies, and a prize apparently too tempting for the pirates to pass up.
They had attacked his father’s ship, and in the terrible fight that ensued, his beloved father was struck down right in front of him. The pirates took Davos then as their consolation prize. They’d had to beat him half to death to subdue him and when they finished, their captain, who had also worn a gold earring, tied him up and brutally raped him. Then he passed Davos around to his men. By the time his uncle’s ships had responded to their distress calls, a few days had passed and Davos was near death. His uncle had attacked, killing the pirates, and even had allowed Davos to carve the still beating heart from the pirate captain’s chest, but Davos had collapsed as soon as it was done, and spent the next quarter cycle in a hospital, recovering from the physical and mental trauma. Part of that time he’d been on suicide watch. He had long since recovered and buried the memories down deep inside him, where they rarely saw the light of day.
“State your name, pirate filth,” Davos said to the young pirate in rapid Tygerian. The young man looked up at him, his eyes bleary.
“Father? It’s me. Derrick.” He turned dazed eyes toward the human. “Why is he asking me my name, omak?”
“Because he’s an unmitigated ass,” Blake replied, glaring at Davos. “Stop calling him names and get a doctor in here to look at him, will you? Those bastard guards of yours kicked him too hard!”
“Kicked him? On his face?”
“Yes, on his face! They’re assholes, like I said!”
“Tell me why you were in his room. Why is he calling you omak? Admit that he’s your lover and that you’re a pirate like he is! You were plotting something together. Tell me why that pirate ship was in our airspace. How did you get on our ship and why were you traveling separately? Tell me what game you’re playing, and I’ll send for a doctor for him.”
“I’m not answering any questions until you get him a doctor!” Blake shouted back at him.
Davos jumped to his feet and came around the table to yell in his face, bending over him. “You don’t make the rules here! You’re going to tell me what I want to know!” he thundered.
Blake looked up at him and raised one eyebrow. “No.”
Davos wondered if he’d misunderstood. “No?”
He drew back his hand to hit the human but found himself frozen with his hand in the air. He wanted badly to strike the man for his insolence and his defiance, but he couldn’t find a place on that face to hit. And the human was staring right up into his eyes. He yelled out in frustration and turned to slam his hand down on the young Tygerian instead, but Blake grabbed his arm with both hands and hung on grimly.
“Stop it! Please, Davos, think what you’re doing! That’s Derrick! Your son! You’ll hurt him and he’s already injured!”
For a moment, only a moment, the image of Blake holding a red-haired baby and smiling up at him from a hospital bed flashed with lightning speed through his mind. It was gone before it fully formed, but it rattled him badly, and Davos dropped his arm, breathing hard and he took a hasty few steps backward. He leaned back against the table to hide the trembling in his legs. What the fuck had that been? Could this be what was known as a shared hallucination? He thought he might have heard of that. Something was certainly happening to him, and he was pretty sure this human was responsible. This man was making him as insane as he was. He glared down at the human, who was still holding his arm.
“Davos, please get him a doctor. I’m begging you. I’ll do anything.”
He glanced down at Blake, torn between a crazy desire to please the man by granting his request and his jealousy over the human’s continuing concern for the boy. He didn’t believe for a moment that Blake was the young man’s omak, despite the crazy vision in his head. The boy looked nothing like the human—he was full Tygerian.
In the far distant past, when human males were more commonly used to procreate, they were given certain hormones that suppressed their own DNA, so that the children looked only like their fathers. But that practice had died out long ago. Now, and for the last fifty cycles or so, if on the rare occasion a Tygerian wanted a human or some other species as his child’s bearer, no suppression drugs were used in the hormone shots given to the male bearers. The children were thus born naturally, with genetic characteristics of both parents. But why were they both pretending Blake Cameron was the Tygerian’s omak and not just the love slave of the boy’s father? Blake said he had given birth to the boy.
When Davos had first met the young man and he’d insisted on calling Davos his father, he had merely thought he was either suffering from some mental illness or on some bizarre quest to confuse and distract his captors in an effort to get better treatment. He had put him in the hospital, mostly to get rid of him until he could sort it all out. He hadn’t liked the idea of putting a Tygerian in with the pirates, to be honest, not to mention the other hardened criminals in the prison, but he’d felt something else for the boy too, if he was being honest. Something he didn’t understand. He felt almost protective of him in a way, but once the young Tygerian had been taken away to the hospital, he’d almost forgotten about him, especially since this odd little human had arrived so soon afterward, distracting him and driving him crazy.
His voice, when he spoke, sounded a bit shaky even to his own ears. “If I do agree to get him a doctor, will you give me information about the spying?”
“I’ll tell you everything I know. I can promise you that.”
He stared at Blake, the air so full of tension, it almost crackled. Davos found himself tapping his fingers nervously against the table and stopped himself with an angry snarl of his lips. Finally, he made his decision and ended the session, placing a quick call to security. “Send up a physician with his bag,” he said, and without waiting for a reply, he ended the call and slammed the communicator back down on the desk. Blake had turned to watch the young man carefully, obviously worried about his condition.
He looked up at Davos angrily. “How could you let them kick him like that?”
“I didn’t let them, I told you! Besides, he’s a pirate and a damn spy.”
“He’s your son.”
“This again.” Davos slammed his fist on the table. “Damn you! Stop your lying! It’s ridiculous!”
“No, you’re being ridiculous! I know you recognize him! You have to. Snap out of it and really look at us!”
Davos shook his head and made a sound of disgust. “Stop your shouting or I’ll gag you.”
Blake glared up at him. “Try it, Davos, and I swear to God…”
“Enough! How dare you argue with me? How dare you threaten me?” Davos roared at him, straightening up to loom over the small human again. The man looked up at Davos without a hint of fear on his face.
“Go ahead,” he whispered tauntingly. “Hit me.”
“I could kill you with one strike of my hand.”
“You better hope it only takes one.”
Davos almost laughed out loud at that remarkable show of bravado. The little human barely came up to his chest and Davos was much taller and outweighed him by a considerable amount. What was there about this human that made him want to smile at such outrageousness when a similar remark from someone else would have made him beyond furious? His lips twitched as he fought back a smile and he turned away to hide it.
The doctor arrived with his bag and came inside to examine Derrick, who had gone back to dozing in his chair. He looked him over thoroughly before straightening back up.
“He’s merely stunned and bruised from the beating. No concussion—his eyes are normal and his pupils aren’t dilated. I think he just needs rest. I’ve given him a mild sedative to help with that.”
Davos nodded and went to the door to signal the guards. “Take him to the hospital for treatment. Lock him away until I finish my interrogation.”
Blake put his hand on the boy’s arm. “Let me go with him. Please Davos.”
“No.”
Blake gasped and tried to strike Davos, but he caught his fist in his hand and twisted the arm behind him, bringing his body up to his, while the guards shifted uneasily. It was treasonous to strike the king.
“Calm yourself, lieutenant!” Davos said, looking down into Blake’s stormy and thoroughly surprised eyes.