The Reaper.

The Lord of the Black Hall truly was the last person Zar wanted to speak to.

Nayanors weren't a kindly species, not to others and not to their own. The members of the warrior race bore no special love toward each other. They weren't loyal to the home world and their people like Brions were, nor were they territorial like Corgans who protected their holy worlds no matter what.

Despite that, most Nayanors felt some kind of bond between them. It was a sort of kinship that made them fight for each other's continued existence even if they preferred the others did the existing as far from them as possible. In short, Nayanors weren't very social, which made the long night even more unbearable, being cooped up together in large halls that barely housed them all.

Amongst a species like that, Zar still reserved a special loathing for The Reaper.

The harbinger walked on the bridge in a grim mood. Killing his own officers was never a good thing, as good as it was to get rid of bad blood.

"Harbinger," Gados saluted him. "The Reaper is waiting. I can put him up on the command throne's screen."

"Do it," Zar ordered roughly, making the officer of the watch practically run away from his clearly sullied mood.

Better to get this over with so I can return to Ashley.

He sat in the command throne that he rarely used. The place of a Nayanor wasn't hiding in the ship, but on the battlefield. Generally Zar left the running of the ship to his officers, bothering to show up to check on the bridge and learn a few new names every few months.

The image of The Reaper came up on the screen.

Zar hid his disdain as well as he could. Not only was The Reaper his least favorite person to talk to, the Lord of the Black Hall was also damnably ugly to look at.

The silvery hair of his species didn't suit The Reaper's uncharacteristically pale skin, making him look old and sickly despite being in his prime. Tied behind his head, the tail The Reaper insisted on sporting pulled the lines of his face into a harsh, unseemly grimace that Zar avoided seeing whenever possible.

He had to deal with the man nonetheless. The Reaper was the heir to the Black Hall, a massive dark fortress passed down for generations of his forefathers. It was so old no one knew who had built it or if they had been Nayanors at all. The gargantuan scale of the building told Zar that it had originally been intended for a species larger than Nayanors, practically giants by their standards.

His warrior soul had always ached to see those ancient beings, considering that at an average height of seven feet, Nayanors weren't small either.

Zar liked the Black Hall. It oozed history, even if he didn't know it. In his more peaceful days, usually after a raid, to take his mind off lesser men celebrating finding their mates, Zar liked wandering the endless walkways of the Hall.

When he'd been a small boy, his parents had taken him to seek refuge there during the long night. Like all the other boys, Zar had immensely enjoyed climbed on top of statues whose heads he couldn't see from the floor. He liked sitting on thrones large enough to have houses built on them.

After The Reaper took ownership of the Hall, Zar had visited it less, much to his dismay.

The Hall was, in great part, the reason why Nayanors were even still alive. No other fortress housed a fraction of what the Hall could bear.

"Zar Kohora," The Reaper said, sounding like he pressed every word through his teeth like always. "Is the Foront coming home?"

"It is," Zar replied, thinking of his people back on Luminos. "We have a good haul and we should dock in a day, no more."

"Good," The Reaper murmured, searching his face as if he had some authority over him. "How many females?"

"Around two thousand," Zar replied noncommittally.

The Reaper regarded him with his cruel light blue eyes that only added to him looking like a corpse walking.

"Are the rumors true, Zar?" The Reaper asked then, clearly unable to avoid the topic further.

"What rumors?"

"Don't play dumb with me, harbinger!" The Reaper snapped. "I received some troubling reports."

"That is indeed troubling," Zar cut in. "If you receive reports from my ship, I have to find that someone and make him a head shorter."

The Reaper's thin lips curled into a sneering smile.

"Always the joker," he said with obvious disdain. "I used to like that about you, Zar. Our people aren't known for their sense of humor and it gets so impossibly dull sometimes. I thought I warned you a long time ago not to take it too far."

Zar said nothing. He was thinking. The image of Ashley appeared before his eyes, gorgeous and smiling, so proud in her firm belief that she was doing the right thing.

He admired her for that spirit, which was why he was so determined to answer with the same. If a Terran female could afford herself the luxury of pride after having lost everything, so could he. Zar was a Nayanor harbinger. He feared no one.

The Reaper was now frowning.

"So they are true, I see," he said. "Confirm it for me then, Zar. Did you let three females escape your ship? Even though you had the chance to enact righteous revenge upon them?"

"Yes."

The look of surprise on The Reaper's face was a sight well worth seeing.

"You admit it freely!" the Lord of the Black Hall roared at him. "Have you lost your damn mind, Zar? What's even worse, I hear you were about to do what was right, but your new female intervened? Is your mate calling the shots now? This is a sad day for our people."

Zar's blood was boiling, but he managed to cool his nerves for just one more time.

"My mate has a fierce spirit," he admitted. "She managed to trick a warrior of mine. You don't have to worry about that, I already dealt with the idiot stupid enough to not check his orders with me. As a result, she freed three of her friends.

"She is a remarkable female. She'll bear me strong sons."

The Reaper had a cruel smile on his lips.

"Will she? I'm beginning to doubt your suitability as a harbinger, Zar, if you let your mate influence your better judgment like this."

"How lucky for me then that you don't get a say in what I am or am not," Zar replied calmly.

"You insolent upstart!" The Reaper howled. "Don't forget who I am!"

"I wish I could," Zar said. "Believe me."

The Reaper growled, but before he could say another word, Zar cut in.

"No more jokes then," he said, his deep voice dropping to a furious growl. "You and I both know the truth. To say we liked each other would be a lie and an incredible improvement on the hatred I imagine we both feel. Even so, we've managed to coexist so far.

"You need my ship and I need the Hall. Three females managed to escape my ship. Don't bother pretending they're the first to manage to get away before the ships enter the wormhole. Are you going to start a war between us now over them? Because I can take the Foront somewhere else, if need be. To Lord Rozara, maybe."

The Reaper bristled. Zar waited, weighing the fate of the people in his domain and on his ship against the other warlord's damn unpredictable temper.

He'd spoken the truth, however. Recently, the raid ships had been getting into trouble with the Union. Worlds like Terra whose females Nayanors favored were kept under close scrutiny. There had been several clashes with the Union ships, so far to the favor of Nayanors, but both Zar and The Reaper knew the luck wouldn't last.

The Foront had never been caught and the hauls Zar delivered were always as good as his word. The Reaper knew that better than anyone, refusing to leave Luminos and preferring to sit in his dark fortress while other warriors did the work for him.

He could name the price, of course. When the long night came, there was no match for the Black Hall, as much as Zar would have appreciated to have that leverage over The Reaper.

"Three, you say," The Reaper murmured. "Three isn't much. You just better hope that my fated mate wasn't among them."

"I'm sure fate wouldn't be that cruel," Zar said, hoping he managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Am I good to land?"

The Reaper sighed dramatically as if he was doing him a great favor by letting Zar run his own ship the way he liked it.

"Yes, yes," The Reaper said. "The Black Hall awaits you, Zar, as always. Tell me just one thing. I believe several of your warriors might have had the same justified questions as I did. Have you dealt with them? I have no use for you if you lose your head in a mutiny on your next raid trip."

Zar grinned.

"I keep the order on my ship, thank you for being concerned," he replied venomously. "One more thing, Reaper."

"Anything for my favorite harbinger," the other warlord replied, the tone of his voice making it very clear how much he would have liked to see Zar dead before his feet.

"My fated mate is coming with me to the Hall, of course," Zar said. "If you take it upon yourself to take revenge on her, I will make sure you never get to see whether your own mate was among the lost females or not."

Before The Reaper could reply, Zar shut off the call. He'd had enough of the Lord of the Black Hall for one day.

He headed back to his quarters, thinking what he could possibly say to Ashley to make sure she behaved as well.