Chapter Thirteen
Ten days had passed, and I still didn’t have an answer. Tihar’s silence was frightening. Zarek said Jinjira had been destroyed and a fierce battle raged at the western front. I kept telling myself once the war was over, Tihar would return for me.
Poor Musa missed her daddy as much as I did. With KeeKee along for the ride, she emitted high-pitched cries as she flew around the cavern looking for Tihar.
Detja came up with a great suggestion. Tanith had a pest problem. She wanted Aunt Tess to train Musa to catch and kill the Tanezumi, ratlike creatures that infested the underground cities. My aunt loved the idea, and Musa seemed to enjoy hunting down the varmints. KeeKee had a good time zapping them with web balls.
While I was stuck in limbo, my body began to change. Dark gray scales formed on my skin, but no buds or tentacles had appeared, yet. In the speed department, I wasn’t superhero fast, but a four-minute mile was a piece of cake.
Life moved on without me. Zandar, the gaunt Coletti that turned the Legionnaires into chop suey, claimed Sam. She soon found out that once a warlord had chosen and marked you, there was no escape. Not that my cousin didn’t try. Poor Zandar had his hands full keeping her in line and rebuilding his home planet of Sobek.
Voss finally found his mate, and yep, she was a Jones. Zoey ran circles around the Battle Commander and unleashed her own brand of whoop-ass to discourage his pursuit. My favorite was the skunk perfume. Warlords were persistent buggers, and he finally corralled her. Zoey loved the bad-tempered jerk. Go figure.
My cousins and Uncle Derek decided the best way to fight the Tai-Kok was to become Coletti. Uncle Derek returned to Earth to help Uncle Saul find the traitors taking down our defense systems. Quinn, Jake, Caleb, and Ethan were in the Coletti version of boot camp.
Uncle Saul rescued Casey from an island in the South Pacific and put her to work in his office. To everyone’s surprise, Hothar, Voss’s nephew, and Casey became best friends. In the Jones tradition, Casey managed to stir things up. General Tasker was not pleased. Like we cared.
The biggest shocker was Hank Benson of Earth First was our long-lost cousin Bree’s adopted father. Even more amazing, Bree’s dead sperm donor had been a Coletti warlord who’d crashed-landed on our planet. And the ultimate stunner? Bree was the Overlord’s granddaughter. Small universe.
Jaylan, Zarek’s best hunter, had been sent to Earth to eliminate Earth First. Luckily, after Bree zapped him with a cattle prod, Jaylan decided she would make the perfect mate, and the chase was on.
Bree and Jaylan’s bonding ceremony was a complete disaster. Before the ritual could be completed, a very pregnant Kaylee was kidnapped by the Shani Queen Mother, a psychotic alien bent on conquering the universe. I wasn’t permitted to leave Tanith and missed all the excitement.
Kaylee described in minute detail how she was forced to give birth, alone, in the middle of a battle with only a baby Tabor for help. Her son, Thor, was adorable and very unique. He had abilities only a much older child would have. Considering how powerful his parents were, I wasn’t surprised. The Queen Mother? She died like she lived. Grotesquely.
Just when I thought Tihar had forgotten he had a mate, I would feel him in my head, and for a moment, the aching emptiness would vanish. He needed me as badly as I needed him, but something was stopping him from contacting me for more than a minute. Before I could yell at him for leaving me, the link would vanish. It made me madder than a rattlesnake at a Thai wedding.
Going nuts with boredom, frustration, and anger, I gave my guards the slip and borrowed a shuttlecraft for a joyride around Tanith. I figured if I flew low enough, the Coletti version of radar wouldn’t pick me up.
Let’s just say the Overlord was not amused. He invaded my mind, tore me a new one, and gave me the knowledge on how to fly a Talon fighter, one awesome piece of spacecraft. To say I was grateful was an understatement. I wanted to hug the Overlord, but damn, he was one scary dude. I settled for a salute.
Zarek assigned me to the War Hawks combat wing. It was our job to escort freighters from the market world of Illowra to Tanith and back. Fighting off pirate attacks was a full-time job. By the time I finished my run, all I wanted to do was sleep.
That was when I started getting brief midnight visits from Tihar. A kiss. A big hand caressing my body. The sensation of being stroked with a feather sent goose bumps skittering over my skin. A nibble on that special spot behind my ear. A hot tongue licking my clit. It was driving me nuts. I wanted all of him.
One night a loud boom jerked me out of a deep sleep, and something slammed into me. Agony roiled through my body as jagged pieces of metal and plasticrete pelted me. Sonovabitch. That hurt. A lot. I frantically surveyed my room. What in the hell was going on? Was Tanith under attack?
Then it hit me. Tihar! It was his pain. He was injured and had instinctively connected with me. In his scrambled brain, I could pick up random thoughts. Bomb. Base under attack. Shields down.
“How badly are you hurt? Where are you? I’ll come to you.”
A groan was my only response as Tihar struggled to rise.
Summoning all my psychic abilities, I surged into his head and took control. “Open your eyes.” For a moment, everything was fuzzy. His vision cleared, and I could see funnels of black smoke rising from the destroyed compound. All around us was chaos, violence, and death. Askole warriors were ebony blurs as they fiercely fought off the rebel invaders.
I poured every ounce of energy I had into Tihar. “Get up and fight, dammit. I’m not losing you now.”
“Sarah?”
“Yes, I’m here, and I’ll never leave you.”
His fury hit me like a blow. “Have you lost your senses? Go. Now. Do not contact me again. It is too dangerous. Snoor cannot know about you.”
“Snoor? The rebel? Dangerous? I’m a fighter pilot and face death every fucking day. Do not use that as an excuse.”
Our link snapped.
“You goddamned sonovabitch.” I searched for him and found nothing. My psychic bond with Tihar was gone again. “Arrgh!” I kicked the shit out of a trash container.
After that, I was still able to catch a few fleeting glimpses of Tihar’s life. Mostly when he was in a dim shithole of a bar and drunk on his ass. Was he blowing off steam with his warriors? Or blending in with his enemy? Why did he think Snoor was a threat to me?
* * * *
Almost a year later, the rebels were finally defeated. There was still sporadic fighting along the western front, and even though the head rebel, Snoor, had escaped, Tihar had to be entitled to a little R&R.
A part of me was giddy with excitement at the thought of being reunited with the love of my life. Another part of me was sick with worry. Had the long separation damaged our mental bond? Did Tihar still love me?
Instead of getting a message from Tihar saying he was coming for me, I was notified that Sariel wanted to speak with me. My gut clenched in fear. Please don’t let Tihar be dead. Please don’t let Tihar be dead.
Sensing my distress, Musa flew into the room and settled on my shoulder. She jabbered urgently at me. I petted her head. “I know. I know. It’s gonna be okay. You’ll see. Tihar will come for us.”
KeeKee scampered up my leg. “Tihar come?”
“That’s what we’re going to find out.” I touched the icon, and Sariel’s fierce features filled the view screen. His expression was one of distaste as he spat a bunch of Askole gobbledygook. A mechanical voice translated it. “My son has realized you are not his chosen.”
Every bone, every muscle in my body reeled in shock. It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be true. “What are you talking about?”
There was a pause as the computer interpreted my words and the High Commander rattled off something in the Askole’s native tongue.
“You are inferior, child-size, and weak. You lack tentacles. You don’t have the skills to survive in our culture. Tihar has found an appropriate full-blooded Askole female to bear his children. Your bride contract had been nullified, and the credits returned to the Overlord.”
“What? None of this makes any sense. You said if we broke our psychic link, it would cause serious brain damage. You wanted me to mate with Tihar.”
Sariel spouted a bunch of guttural grunts and groans and some clucking. The translator said, “You misunderstood the situation.”
“The hell I did.” Something was rotten in Denmark. Tihar wouldn’t do this to me.
KeeKee asked, “Why he mean?”
A damn good question. “Where’s Tihar?”
The mechanical voice shot back, “My son is too busy to deal with you.”
But the Askole High Commander wasn’t? “Too busy doing what?”
“That is none of your concern. Once the contract was terminated, you lost all mate privileges. Any further attempt to contact Tihar is a breach of our laws, and you will be dealt with harshly. For your inconvenience, we will allow you to keep the Draconic, Musa,” the voice answered.
My inconvenience? Allow? I literally saw red. I bared my nice sharp fangs and in my best command voice demanded, “I want to talk with Tihar, face-to-face, now!”
“That is not possible.” The view screen went black.
That rude SOB had cut our vid link. Like that was going to stop me? I hit the Communications icon. A computerized voice announced, “The link is no longer available.”
Crap. The rebels had taken out the major satellite relay systems when the war began, and communications with that part of the galaxy was difficult at best.
All this time, I had come up with excuse after excuse for Tihar’s behavior. My rotten father-in-law was keeping him from me. The war had stopped his midnight visits. As commander of the western fleet, Tihar was too busy to link with me or Zarek. Or he was protecting me from some unknown danger. But, oh no, it was my lack of tentacles. I wanted to punch him right in the kisser.
The fucker had screwed my DNA all to hell, and I didn’t even merit an apology? Or the courtesy of a face-to-face meeting? Was I suddenly that repulsive to him? I thought he loved me.
The sense of loss hit me like a freight train. My knees buckled, and I hit the floor. God, I felt like such a fool. Was everything Tihar told me a lie? I kept telling myself he loved me. I tried so hard to keep my fear and doubt from clouding my judgment. But now? I didn’t know what to believe. If he loved me, why hadn’t he contacted me? Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. I quickly brushed them away. No tears. Not until I knew the truth.
Musa rubbed against my face and chirped soothingly.
“We here. We no leave,” KeeKee said, snuggling under my chin. “Love you.”
“I love you too.”
Aunt Tess was suddenly in my head. “What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath and told her.
“God, I’m so sorry.” She gave me a mental hug. “He’s an alien. Happily ever after isn’t in his vocabulary.”
“All I wanted was for Tihar to love me as I loved him.”
“Oh, honey. A little tequila and a ton of chocolate will fix you up.”
“Will it?”
“Probably not, but it’ll numb the pain until we can come up with a plan to make the bastard and his father pay,” Aunt Tessa responded.
“Tihar’s on the other side of the galaxy.”
“We’re a bunch of devious bitches. We’ll figure something out.”
Poof. Rho and Aunt Tess appeared in my room.
I shrieked, “What’s he doing here? He’s one of them.”
“I needed a lift, and he’s leaving now.” Aunt Tess nudged him. “Right?”
After giving me an appraising look, Rho vanished.
Bree and Zoey teleported into the room, carrying beer, chocolate, chips and salsa.
Musa and KeeKee made a beeline for the food.
Just kill me now. “You told them, Aunt Tess?”
“We Jones girls stick together,” Aunt Tess said, handing me a shot of tequila.
I downed it. The warmth eased the knot in my stomach. I wasn’t alone, forgotten, or abandoned. I had my family. The not so jolly black giant was about to find out what that meant. Hurt one of us, and you dealt with all of us.
“Tihar just made the biggest mistake of his life,” Zoey said, squeezing my shoulder. “He threw away the best thing that ever happened to him. You.”
Bree wrapped an arm around me. “Feel like killing something?”
“Oh, hell yeah. What did you have in mind?”
“Naugers.”
The image of a bulbous body with a long snakelike neck and the head of a raptor flashed through my mind. It wouldn’t be as satisfying as killing the Tai-Kok or kicking a certain Askole warrior’s ass, but they’d do. “I’m in. Where are my favorite Barets, Rio and Cokie?”
“Jaylan took them hunting Tanezumis in the lower caverns.”
Detja and Kaylee appeared in the room, carrying our armored battle suits.
“When a Coletti mates, it is for life. Lothel would have never abandoned you. Your Askole has no honor. You were a fool to accept his claim,” Detja admonished.
That’s me, the gullible halfwit. Go ahead and rub it in, why don’t ya. “Yes, ma’am, I failed to listen to you. It won’t happen again.”
“Good.” She handed me my battle suit.
Aunt Tess refilled my shot glass. “They say love is blind, and in your case, that’s really true. I did some research, and did you know when an Askole enters the mating frenzy, they excrete a hormone that jacks up your sex drive?”
I was going to need a lot more liquor. “You don’t say.”
“Rumor has it, the Askole who injects the gene-altering enzymes into their lust-crazed victim can reverse the damage done to their prey’s DNA by stinging them again,” Aunt Tess confided.
That caught my attention. I looked at Detja. “Is that true?”
“The Overlord did ask if you were sure you wanted to become Askole.”
“He did. I wasn’t thinking straight. You know, all those hormones?” I flinched when Detja narrowed her eyes and bared her fangs at me. Yikes. My tone was a bit snarky. When had I become suicidal?
“It’s too late for Zarek to reverse the transformation, but I will inquire if Tihar has the ability.”
“Thank you.” I stripped down to my underwear and pulled on the battle suit. “Time to kill some monsters.”
Kaylee laughed. “Thor wanted to come too. I had a devil of a time talking him out of it.”
“He is his father’s son,” Detja stated proudly.
I nodded. “That he is.” Thor was adorable, where Talree was someone I wanted to avoid. When he was really pissed, he got all glowy eyed. It was like some special effect in a monster movie.
Aunt Tess made a face. “You kids have fun. Me? I’m not getting anywhere close to those carnivores.”
“We might need your talents,” Zoey protested.
My aunt shot back, “You’ve got Kaylee. Besides I wanted to spend time with Thor.”
“You’re the expert critter wrangler, not me, and Talree is taking Thor flying,” Kaylee countered.
“You will accompany us,” Detja commanded in her drillmaster’s voice and handed Aunt Tess her battle suit.
“Yes, ma’am.” The minute Detja turned her back, Aunt Tess gave her the finger.
And I thought I was suicidal.
“We come. We come,” KeeKee cried as she and Musa flew over to me. Salsa covered their faces.
“Remember? We’ve had this talk. You don’t have a battle suit. No battle suit, you die,” I told them.
KeeKee gave me her best sad puppy-dog eyes. “Me member.”
“And no shooting web balls at the ducks.”
“You no fun.”
That’s me. The party pooper.