Alec rubbed her thumb against the crystals hanging from the bracelet wrapped around her wrist, the cool metal clicking softly, while she stood on the balcony of the fortress that was now her home.

It reminded her of a castle from the stories the adults had told them when she and the others were little.

It was still under a bit of construction. You wouldn’t know the structure was actually a few thousand years old, the stones still so strong and settled.

Vines grew up the outer face of the fortress, softening the drab stone, and what had once been magnificent gardens were overgrown with weeds. Clary said it had once been the seat of the ruling clan.

It was settled on a large hill, surrounded by trees with red leaves and golden trunks, large enough to house Alec’s people and likely three times that number with ease.

The first world of Saraz, one of fifteen planets, was gorgeous. Its main attraction was the complete and total lack of Scylla.

It was going to take Alec some time before she got up enough courage to swim in the crystalline green lake situated in the hills beyond the fortress, but the water was so beautiful, so peaceful, she was determined to do it eventually.

If Alec shaded her eyes, she would have been able to look over the treetops and see the shadow of the mountains where Clary and the crew of the Aria had taken up residence.

The mountain fortress had left them all in awe when they’d first entered it, but after a week spent nestled deep inside the stone, Alec and the others had begun to feel like they were being buried alive.

Alec had asked Clary and her big ass husband, big ass mate, if they could relocate to the forest, willing to build more treehouses up in the canopy. Having lived in the trees for so long anywhere else just seemed too close.

Clary hadn’t even missed a beat. She looked up at her mate and told him to get his warriors to start rehabbing ‘the old fortress.’

Tarek had objected at first, rather loudly. Not wanting to leave them vulnerable to attack, but Alec snorted, albeit a little disrespectfully, and reminded him her people were used to being on guard against attack, having faced down things much more terrifying than a Sarazen in full shift and lived to tell the tale.

The warriors on board the Fifth warship had been so reluctant to show Alec and her people just what exactly it was they could turn into.

Alec had persisted over the weeks they’d spent traveling back to Saraz and finally, probably because she’d annoyed the hell out of everyone, Kalix had given his approval for it. Alec had expected Kalix to change, but it wound up being A’tarey who had done it, right there in the barracks.

The kids had been all over him with curiosity.

A’tarey’s coat was a shaggy brown, orange stripes interspersed throughout his fur, looking more like a demon in truth in that form. Frankly, Alec had been jealous as hell of the sheer size and power the creatures had.

A’tarey had identified one of her people as his mate during the trip. He and Irina were now joined at the hip and never went anywhere without the other, which was slightly sickening to watch, since they couldn’t keep their hands off one another.

The week before they’d arrived on the planet now their home, Kalix had finally asked Alec to come and speak to Clary and Tarek in the holo-room before her people were transported down to the surface.

Thinking nothing of it, Alec had gone with A’tarey, kind of disappointed with herself how eager she was to see Kalix.

Like some little girl with her first crush on a guy.

Alec reasoned now—in favor of feeling the grief and loss of her sister— her mind had latched onto the opportunity to feel romance.

Some defense mechanism to push the pain back so Alec could cling to Kalix and use him to make her forget.

As soon as they’d hit the command deck, Alec had heard roaring and snarling coming from the holo-room.

Alec glanced at A’tarey when he had stopped and cleared his throat uncomfortably. His lips jumped in a quick smile while he told her it would be a moment before Kalix and the Asho were ready for her.

He must not have known that the last time Alec had talked to Clary, she had complained about that annoying habit the warriors had of talking over her head in the Sarazen language.

Clary had laughed and sent an order to Reykar to give Alec a language converter. An alien microchip that allowed Alec to speak any language known in this galaxy, which equaled about two million dialects.

Since no one but Clary, Tarek, and Reykar knew Alec had been given the injection, she pretended she couldn’t understand what was being said, loudly, on the other side of those doors.

Pretended she couldn’t understand what Kalix had roared at the top of his lungs to the other person in the room with him.

“The scent of Alec’s grief sickens me! I cannot stand to be around her more than a few moments before my beast is threatening to claw its way out of my chest!

“She will go to the surface with the other humans, and I will hear no more of this. Do I make myself clear?”

Alec had pursed her lips to keep them from wobbling, letting herself feel grief and anger as the fragile hope of romance was crushed beneath the commander’s bootheel.

Letting the scent of it billow around her when she’d lifted her chin, ignoring A’tarey’s attempt to stop her when she walked right into the middle of the roaring argument going on.

“Is this a bad time? Or are you finished?” Alec had bluffed her way through the rest of that particular meeting, eager to get the hell off the warship and away from the confusing looks Kalix had shot her way the entire time.

As soon as her feet had touched the surface of Saraz, she was enveloped in Clary’s arms and thankfully had other things to focus on aside from Kalix’s distaste for her presence.

Or how much it had hurt to know the truth about how he felt.

Alec hadn’t seen hide nor hair of him since that final day in the holo-room where he had made his aversion toward her so clear.

It had been just over fourteen months since they had been rescued from Moika. Well over half Alec’s people were now mated to a Sarazen, pretty much all of them having wanted to start over, start a new family.

Tarek had told Alec she was welcome to attend the Breeding Festival, but she’d declined. What use did she have for a mate?

She had Zhenya to look after, the other orphaned kids, renovations to their castle fortress to see to. Long exhausting runs to take through the forests to try and escape the memories she was haunted with.

Alec had been worried eventually Clary would ask about how her parents had died, but the day before Alec had moved her people out to the old fortress, Clary had taken her aside and instead asked her how they had lived.

Alec hadn’t expected to like Clary, having been jealous most of her life for the way Sage and Sully had constantly talked about their daughter. How proud they were of her. How much they missed her. How much they feared after so long without contact, she was dead.

So Alec’s jealousy quickly turned to shame, and then to saddened curiosity, wondering how Clary had managed by herself all those years without her family.

Functioning day to day without Meg was excruciating. At least a hundred times a day, Alec turned to ask Meg what she thought about the castle renovations.

What Meg thought about Irina and A’tarey constantly going at it in any darkened corner they thought they had some privacy. If they were doing it in beast form.

What Meg thought about their people so readily accepting the Sarazen way of life.

Then, a hundred times a day, Alec remembered Meg wasn’t there. The lack of her humor, her ridiculously sunny smile, was more noticeable every day. 

Alec had just gotten off her weekly check in with Clary, the two of them arguing about how the warriors around Alec thought it was impressive she and the other women had survived for so long in the wild of Moika, without big strong men to protect them.

Impressive in an amusing, ‘that’s so cute,’ sort of way.

It had lit Alec’s ass on fire with indignation. Clary had tried to explain, but it had turned into a purposeful argument of Alec’s making. Alec knew it was wrong, but she could barely stand to look at the babies.

They hadn’t done anything wrong, they were babies for fucks sake, but it was still excruciating to be anywhere near them. Even in holograms.

She secretly found it kind of adorable the way the twins snarled and growled like that, but she wasn’t able to look at them too hard, for fear she’d burst into tears.

Clary huffed with exasperation, shooting Alec a narrow glare with her pupils’ gone vertical. 

“I’m saying potential mates, making families is like.... sacred.”

“So what, a woman’s worth on this planet is based on her uterus and its ability to pop out babies?” Alec was being rude on purpose, wanting to end this call, and this conversation.

Because the babies were there.

Because the topic made her think of Kalix.

Because it was just pissing her off, more.

“You crazy Russian... bitch!” Clary’s hotly started insult ended on a laugh. She put her daughter down, and the baby immediately pounced on her brother, tackling him to the floor to take his toy and crawl off with it at baby warp speed.

“You’re bored, aren’t you?”

Alec snorted, scoffed, and hotly denied it. “Bored? Like I enjoyed running from the Scylla all the time? Enjoyed having to kill my people to survive? I am not bored! And I certainly don’t need a man in my life.”

Clary hummed a gentle sound. “I didn’t say you need a man. You’re so used to having to shoulder the entirety of the burden that you don’t know what to do now that it’s gone.”

“Now who’s the bitch?”

Clary sighed, her expression softening with understanding, making Alec have to look away and force her feet to carry her back and forth. Mostly because Clary looked exactly like Sage right then, and because she wasn’t wrong.

Alec didn’t know what to do with herself.

Zee was fine, for the most part. He was more serious and solemn than he’d been before, but he’d basically taken charge of keeping the handful of orphans looked after.

Taking them into the forest immediately around the castle to build treehouses, rope bridges between the trunks. He kept them busy and out from under everyone’s feet while the renovations happened.

One of the men from the Aria had been, or was, some kind of psychologist. He and his Sarazen mate had moved into the fortress with them, to help them acclimate better, Clary said.

The problem was that Jonas was annoying as hell, always asking Alec how she was feeling, if she wanted to talk.

She didn’t.

Even if Alec had felt like talking about her feelings, D’nora probably would have clawed her eyes out. The Sarazen female went positively berserk at the idea that a single woman would be in the proximity of her mate without her present.

It was kind of fun to see she and Jonas fight, then hurry off to ‘make up.’

Meg would have laughed at her and told her to accept the passing of the baton. To accept Alec didn’t need to fight anymore.

Alec could live her life, without worrying about the next time she was going to have to stand over the bodies of another one of their people.

Meg would have loved it here. She’d have gone crazy with all the male attention and leapt at the chance to live life without the constant fear of certain death hovering.

If she’d lived.

*****

Kalix finished his report, not having found a single trace of the last two human ships. They had located the Niangniang—what remained of it anyway—several weeks after they had returned Alec and her human crew back to Saraz.

The Niangniang had crash landed on a still forming planet made up of active volcanoes, leaving only enough melted metal to identify the ship itself, but little else.

The entire human crew had perished once the toxic gasses of the planet had found their way inside the ship. Better, Kalix thought, than burning to death.

When he had named the ship and where it had been found, Clary had made a sadly rueful sound, rocking one of her cubs in her arms while Tarek held the other against his chest.

The last two ships, the Starsong and the Guanyin, were yet unaccounted for. Kalix waited to receive further orders, but Tarek was busy frowning at his mate, who had long since fallen silent.

“Your uncertainty grows, my One. What consumes your thoughts?”

The Asho had to say his mate’s name twice more to get her attention and repeat the question.

Clary forced a smile and shook her head, claiming it to be nothing important. Tarek remained unconvinced.

Likely she was displeased with Kalix and his lack of results, which he felt he justly deserved, though Clary shot him a sincere smile and reassured him it was not the case.

“It’s not you, Commander Kalix. I promise. I’m just thinking of Alec.”

His beast stopped the constant pacing, ears perking as it spun around inside him for any news. Kalix hadn’t asked after Alec, knowing how quickly the damn creature would rush forward, even toward the sound of her name.

The beast still filled his voice when Kalix bit out, “Why? Has something happened?”

Tarek lifted his brow slowly, pinning him with a narrow, dangerous glare. Kalix clenched his jaw in order to say no more, demand no more from the Asho’na. Clary thankfully was distracted by her cub to notice his fury.

“No, nothing happened. The Russians have mostly become Sarazens, well over half of them, which is great.

“They’ve taken up residence in the old fortress and the renovations are going really well. For the most part, anyway.”

Clary’s smile turned a little exasperated as she described the handful of cub’s activities, getting in the way of rebuilding the fortress.

“It’s getting a little ridiculous. Every time the warriors go into the forest to cut down trees to build something, the kids who’ve made a really cool treehouse go insane, insisting that the warriors can’t cut down this tree. Or that tree.

“Alec had to restrict them to building their own rope highway up there to a certain area. I think she actually enjoyed the conflict.

“But her little shadow swooped in and took care of the problem so fast she barely had to get past shouting at them in Russian.

“She’s just... having a hard time acclimating. At a loss for what to do now that she’s alone.”

Kalix swallowed thickly, imagining Alec wandering around aimlessly, with no purpose, no mission, struggling to find her place. It made his beast give a mournful little rumble, right before it resumed its mad pacing.

“I can’t imagine what she’s going through. How excruciatingly hard it is to not have her sister there to talk to anymore.” Clary sniffled softly, lifting up a tiny hand from inside the blanket she held, rubbing her lips over the cub’s knuckles tenderly.

“I can only compare it to having lost a limb, and how hard it has to be, trying to learn how to walk around without it.

“I tried to get her to go to the last festival with the others, but she said no. It’s been a while, I’m going to ask her again.”

Kalix shoved up from his seat so fast his chair shot back to slam against the wall. Dax leaned back in his seat, rocking slightly while he studiously looked at the table top, not trying very hard to conceal his sneer.

They had come to a truce, of sorts. Dax said he understood why Kalix had not made formal announcement that Alec was his mate, but with narrow glances and disrespectful little digs, Dax never did quite let him forget his choice to leave her behind.

Clary was frowning at him in confusion, looking at her mate for direction, but Tarek was busy trying not to smirk knowingly.

“Is there a problem, Commander Kalix?” the Asho rumbled casually. Watching him struggle to contain the roars of ungodly rage, his vision blurring red as blood lust threatened.

“No,” Kalix bit out, twitching slightly as he imagined Alec amidst the chaos of the festival being claimed by another male. One worthy of her. One who was not him.

His beast went wild with jealous rage inside him and it was all he could do to keep from letting it show.

“Really? Because it seems as though you object to the human female attending the upcoming breeding festival.”

Kalix made a strangled sound, able to see Dax from the corner of his eye, smirking like the smug bastard he was.

He knew it had been a foolish decision to leave his mate, cowardly even, but he didn’t need reminding of it from Dax.

Kalix was aware with every breath that he had made an egregious error.

“Why would he object to Alec...oh. OH!” Clary’s confusion turned to immediate outrage.

Her cheeks turned bright pink as she jumped to her feet and peeled her lips back to show him her fangs, drilling her finger at him through the hologram, just like Alec might have done, and hissed.

“You get your ass back here, now. And if you open your mouth to argue with me, so help me, I will personally escort Alec to the Breeding Festival and pray to god some other warrior with a modicum of intelligence scoops her up and makes a horde of babies with her.”

With a growl, Clary whirled and stomped off screen. Kalix could hear the door bang shut from their end of the hologram, and as soon as it did, the cub Tarek held started screaming.

Not even a second later, Clary stomped back into view and took the cub from her mate, cuddling both to her chest.

The screaming one immediately settled with a little growl, a tiny hand peeking from the blankets to reach toward its sibling.

The meaning behind the Asho’na’s glare was not lost on Kalix. Clary hadn’t even gotten across the room with one cub before its twin felt the absence.

The distance between life and death was too far to be crossed for Alec to be soothed. She was alone.

Once the door slammed behind the Asho’na, Tarek cleared his throat, leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest.

“I must tell you, she is quite serious. Unless you have good reason for not claiming your mate, Kalix, I will be hard pressed to stop mine from making good on her threat.”

Kalix paced back and forth, not realizing that he’d lifted his hand to rub over the deep purple markings on his skull. His clan lineage there for all to see.

“I failed her by arriving too late. If I had not insisted we search that first planet, we would have reached the humans sooner.”

Tarek must have looked at Dax for further explanation, because his second grunted. 

“When we found the human ship, there was a recording with coordinates identifying Moika’s location. I attempted to input those coordinates, match their star maps to ours but—”

“The human star maps are grossly inadequate,” Tarek finished, waving his hand dismissively.

Dax made sound of agreement. “They are. We were forced to rely on the physical description made by the human commander, narrowing down the potential solar systems to five. We approached them in order.”

Kalix grunted, slicing his hand through the air to stop Dax’s inadequate recounting of events.

“What Dax fails to say is he suggested we skip the first planet, due to the low statistics the humans would have settled there as it was within Adiveeze territory. I insisted we sweep the planet anyway.”

Tarek’s frown deepened, eyes jumping back and forth between he and Dax. “As I would have ordered you to do. Why does this denote failure?” 

Kalix sighed heavily, his shoulders slumping forward when he reached back to grip his neck, stretching the knotted muscles as much as he was able,

“A few days earlier, and my mate would not now be grieving for the loss of her twin.”

Tarek was silent long enough for Kalix to retrieve his chair and throw himself back down into it.

Pinching at the bridge of his nose, rubbing his eyes as though that would stop the intermittent streams of heat from flashing across his vision.

He was losing control. His beast was so ill at ease, constantly fighting him for control Kalix was half afraid to sleep anymore. He even locked himself into his quarters at night, just in case he shifted and did something foolish.

“Brennaugh has spoken often of you.” Tarek’s words drew Kalix out of his thoughts.

“He recounted to me the day he came across you sparring with a handful of eight warriors, bent on seeing you lose control, thereby proving someone of your clan was unfit to be counted among the elite warriors.”

Kalix’s lip curled at the reminder of that day, wondering where Tarek was going with this walk down the path of his past.

“He told me of your skill as a primary warrior, further proving those fools incorrect by the way you rose so quickly within the ranks, despite what any other might have thought.

“In truth, my first choice was to name Dax as Commander of the Fifth, but Brennaugh argued that while his loyalty and skill were beyond question, he would make the logical choice, and not necessarily the right choice.

“I say this in front of you both, not to say one is better than the other, but because Brennaugh has proven wiser than I give him credit for.

“Dax was correct, the chances were low the humans had taken refuge on that first planet. I gather you mentioned the likelihood of our spies within the galaxy slave markets would have reported a species unique as the humans?”

Dax inclined his head, answering when Tarek asked what his response had been.

“Commander Kalix reminded me you had given orders, that not even so low a chance was reason to overlook the planet. Every opportunity was to be pursued.”

Tarek made noise of conformation. “That was my order. So Kalix, as your Asho, as former Commander of the Armada, I say to you my decision would have been the same. Proving Brennaugh to have been correct.

“Dax would be logical, but you would leave no stone unturned. Brennaugh never made mention you were a martyr. Unless your One, to your face, lay blame at your feet for her sister-kin’s death.”

Kalix shook his head and hoarsely repeated to Tarek exactly what Alec had said to him. Getting back up to pace because his beast would not let him be still.

“I am unworthy of her.” The admission, the truth, fell from his lips before Kalix had thought to stop himself.

Tarek’s brows slammed down, glancing at Dax as though he had the answer, but the other male shrugged.

“Because you were not yet ready to give up the command you just gained? Or because even after all this time, you still believe others judge you for your bloodline?”

Kalix’s expression must have been answer enough, because Tarek growled shortly, snorted and shook his head at him with disbelief.

“You are near the same age as I am. No more than a cub even at the height of that rebellion, unable to take sides.

“I have never had cause to doubt your loyalty. I could ask Brennaugh, and he would say the same.”

The Asho, with that succinct declaration, absolved Kalix of the weight he had carried with him most of his life.

Kalix considered slapping Dax upside the back of his head when he snickered under his breath.

As though Dax found the burden of Kalix having been born to a clan of what society deemed traitors, funny.

“I will explain to my mate, tell her to stand down from her little crusade. But she very rarely obeys my commands.” Tarek grinned like that was a good thing,

“Thus I suggest, Commander, you give serious thought to claiming your mate through official channels, and returning before the festival begins.

“It is unlikely my One will keep it a secret for long that you are Alec’s mate, and as I have seen this female instructing her young ones to fight, I pity you if she decides you have wronged her.”

Kalix frowned to hear that Alec was still training the cubs to fight. She had no reason to do so any longer, no threats or harm would come to the cubs so long as there were warriors near.

When he stated the obviousness of this, Tarek shocked him and Dax both by bursting out into roaring gales of laughter.

The sound echoed in the holo-room long after Tarek had terminated the connection.

“So, do I set course for home?”

Kalix curled his lip at his second, clicking his tongue in reprimand for the obvious amusement in Dax’s tone.

“Yes.”

*****

The repetitive pain of Alec’s gloved hands meeting the face of her punching bag, the heat of her exertion rolling down her body in sweaty drops, felt good. Almost as good as soaking in a hot bath without fear.

Gripping the bag to hoist herself up so she could repeatedly drive her knee into the dummy’s groin that felt even better.

The large, Sarazen-shaped torso was the best thing Alec had ever had the opportunity to beat on. None of the warriors would actually spar with her out of concern for her hands breaking on impact.

Pretty much everyone had a mate now and had jumped on the whole mutant hybrid conversion so they could turn into a giant cat.

The girls were half the size of the guys in beast mode, but still, it was impressive.

Alec was getting sick of being the physically weakest member of the crew, lumped in with the kids.

Clary had called the other day in a weird mood and forcefully insisted Alec should go to the next breeding festival.

Alec hung up on her.

Now Alec was starting to consider the pros and cons. The con side of that list involved having a man in her life.

The big pro was the amazing ability to shift into an animal so large, and so powerful, there would be no question of whether or not Alec was strong enough to protect the children. Or herself.

Zee and his little horde of hooligans were almost done with their own build, the treehouses growing more and more elaborate by the day. Rope bridges spanned almost the entire ring of trees around the fortress proper.

Every morning, Zee took his crew on a run through the woods to climb their trees, run the rope bridges, climb back down and run back up to the castle. He was getting to be quite the drill instructor.

Alec couldn’t complain too much. It kept the boys out of trouble and kept the handful of girls from flirting with the Sarazen boys their own age.

Meg would have laughed her ass off to see Zee getting after the girls for flirting when they ought to have been running.

Alec wondered why the girls didn’t tell him to shove his orders up his scrawny ass. But Zee was doing well.

He’d made friends with some of the local boys, and ran around with them like they’d been buddies forever.

So at least Alec wasn’t failing in that department.

Zee came and ate every meal with her, watching her expectantly, like he was doing his part to make sure she kept her strength up, and wasn’t wasting away with the grief that didn’t seem to dissipate.

Alec thought about asking Liliya how she had gotten past the grief after losing her mother. But because Alec had been the one to kill Friga, Alec wasn’t too keen on asking and reminding Liliya of that fact.

Jonas kept trying to tell Alec she had an extreme version of survivor’s guilt, rolled into the mix of post-traumatic stress disorder she had going on.

He told her all kinds of shit, but when Alec had asked him what his qualifications were for his diagnosis, asked him how he could be certain when he’d never personally had to take a life, or fight for his survival for days, years on end?

His ears had gone hot and he’d tried to brush Alec off, telling her they were talking about her issues, not his.

D’nora now hated her guts and hissed at her every time they passed one another in the hallways, which was SO nice.

Everyone had a place here that they fit, even if it was popping out babies and keeping their mates happy. They had integrated and found a place to belong.

Executioners didn’t exactly belong in the kind of polite society they seemed to be creating. It left Alec to spend more and more time alone.

Running, climbing, training for a fight that might not come. For a fight the chauvinists around here probably wouldn’t let her fight anyway.

And since Alec didn’t have a beast to back up her mouth, they just sort of looked at her like she was adorable.

Alec felt like a whiny bitch, feeling sorry for herself, but there was literally nowhere in this Sarazen society she fit.

She wasn’t someone’s mate, she was a human woman and therefore couldn’t train as a warrior. Alec didn’t have any particular skills that were of use to take up a trade.

Unless you counted rabid sarcasm as a life skill.

Alec sighed, dropping her fists to stare at the punching bag. She needed to get out of the fortress.

She went for a run and somehow wound up at the lake. She sat on the big flat rock she’d claimed as her own, breathing deep of the solitude and the quiet of the forest.

Listening to the hissing of the lake water moving back and forth on the tiny pebble beach, she pondered what the hell she was going to do now.

“Guess I could sharpen my sword. Can’t ever have a blade that’s too sharp. Right?” Shockingly, no one answered her.

“And now... I’m talking to myself. That’s great.”

Was that the wind or someone growling? Ugh, if Irina and her mate had come up to fuck around in the water, Alec was going to puke.