COMMANDER JAYLIN BRAKIN
"I have called this meeting in reference to the raid. I believe we should postpone it. I think we might have a spy among us, someone that has been communicating with the Belvenreed outpost."
There were ample grumblings of anger at my words, as there should.
"But we need the supplies. We have to do the raid," a warrior said in response. There was agreement all around.
"Calm! I feel that we should move the raid until we are certain. Or we will cancel it altogether and make do. It is too risky."
"You have grown weak, Commander!" a familiar voice rang through the meeting. I turned to see Prana in opposition to me. Of course he would be. "It is the Kalazaron way to take what we want. We will be strong! We will go in and raid and come out victorious!" he shouted.
The crowd shouted in agreement and I knew that he was appealing to their sense of warrior pride. I was going to get nowhere with this and knew that I needed to speak with the official alone, without the interference.
"Prana is right. We will move forward with the raid. I will speak to the official about the planning of the day and time. For now, we still have a few things that need to be worked out in order to get that fence down. You are all released," I said to them.
I gave Prana a look. I knew this wasn't over for him. He wanted Serena. He had already had a taste of her, and after sampling her myself I knew that it was impossible to give that up. I knew that I wouldn't. He was now an enemy of sorts because he wanted my property. I did not know what lengths he would go to to get it, but this little outburst let me know that he was not afraid to do it in front of our Kalazaron warriors.
After I released the warriors to go back to training, I paid a visit to Official Treen, who was expecting me because of the escape pod debacle. I knew exactly what I was going to tell him.
"Commander, your slave human attempted to escape in an escape pod. She should be punished. She should be put to death, execution," he said to me.
"Official, I am the one that put her up to it. It was part of the plan to expose a communication leak. She is not to blame. She was only following orders as she is my slave and does not have any say over what I tell her to do. As you know, she must follow orders as a slave must."
"What communication leak do you speak of? Why did you send her in an escape pod only to bring her back?" he said as he sat down to listen to me.
"I told no one of this plan in order to figure out once and for all if we did have a spy among us. The plan was for her to look like she was trying to escape in an escape pod. I would then go after her in a personal ship. The reentry would be spontaneous and unplanned and not in the system. Because it was a short amount of time, I would know if we had a communication leak. When we reentered the atmosphere and approached the Blue Mountain, we were fired upon by the Belvenreed outpost. We were not directly over it. They were expecting me. They sought us out. They knew."
"You are right. That was a good plan, Commander. It does seem that we have a communication leak. Do you suspect who this spy might be?"
"No, but because I do not know, I do not think that it is safe to go through with the raid. It is possible that the Belvenreed outpost knows of our plans. They will be waiting for us."
"I will take this into consideration. For now, continue with the target practice."
"Yes, Official Treen," I said as I left his side. I was relieved that I was able to turn Serena’s escape into a plan. This would at least save her life.
Over the next week, I made love to her over and over. I moved her from her private quarters into mine. I enjoyed waking up to her naked, human female form under the sheets next to me in the morning. I loved our playful time together and now that she had brought down her defensive walls, we got along better. Though we still had heated debates over certain things, for the most part it was just part of her defiant spirit. Everything had changed in such a short time, and it caught me off guard. I was one that had not planned to take a mate. I had not planned to have a human female slave. Yet it was forced upon me, and now I had fallen for this human female, Serena.
We had suddenly become an inseparable couple. Something I thought that would never happen to me, especially not with a human female. But this one was unlike any other human female that I had ever met. She had gained my trust. Now that she had attempted an escape, I think she got it out of her system. I let her roam the base freely and visit the females that she came with from the Earth ship. She seemed to be happier. We had grown playful and I knew that I was falling for her.
It was something that I did not want to happen, because I had great duties to attend to. Love for a human female would only mean distraction, but I could not help myself. I knew that what had happened between her and Prana was put behind her now. Though I did not think he understood that fact. I started to see a change in him. I no longer saw him as the eager, wide-eyed warrior. I saw him as a calculating individual that I did not trust around Serena. To me, he was a danger to her.
On one afternoon, I went in search of her. I wanted her to sit with the warrior that was going to shoot the control panel on the fence to see why he was still not making the target. I was coming down the mountainside when I saw her walking across the village forum. I saw Prana eyeing her from a distance and then he moved toward her. I quickened my pace. I watched as he moved in front of her and she tried to sidestep him, moving away. He blocked her movement. I could hear her shout, "Leave me alone!"
He grabbed her arm and the anger boiled within me as I finally reached them. I heard her say again, "I don't want to do that with you anymore. I belong to the commander."
"That never stopped you before," he said.
"Leave her alone. You are not to touch her," I said as I stepped between them. Prana's face fell from the smile to an ugly scowl. He was pissed off. I understood why. It was one thing for me to tell him that he could not have Serena. But it was another for him to hear it from her. At first she had been obliging toward his advances, and now she did not want him. This is what pissed him off.
He looked at me up-and-down and then he looked at Serena and gave her a dirty look. That won't going to help his cause, I thought to myself, laughing at how foolish she was being. Then he stepped aside and moved away from us. I grabbed Serena by the hand and led her to her destination. This was becoming more complicated.