Kraxx.
No one ever said anything about the Kraxx.
After Droka ends his communication with the High King (I still can’t believe that he’s the Captain of the Imperial Guard and best friend to the actual King) he explains everything.
I thought he was just part of a roving band of Zalaryns who decided to raid my little planet. That I just had the bad luck to be there—and the stupidity to leave my hiding space in the closet.
Then again, maybe it wasn’t so stupid to leave my hiding space. If a different warrior had searched my dwelling, perhaps he would have found me cowering in the closet. Maybe he wouldn’t have been so kind. Maybe he’d be the sort that would have taken me roughly and shared me with the rest of the regiment.
Maybe it wasn’t stupidity but fate that landed me into Droka’s arms. Some pull of the universe compelling me to leave my hiding place in the closet. Because Droka’s not just some raider, storming through the galaxy, leaving a wake of destruction and ash. He’s the Captain of the Imperial Guard, friend to the king—trying to stop a rebellion.
He told me why his chest turned purple. That’s what happens to males of his race when they start to bond with a female mate. It’s called rutting, and it causes a powerful urge to ‘exchange genetic material,’ as he calls it. He doesn’t say so, but I assume it took great willpower to resist taking my virginity. His body is flooded with bonding chemicals and hormones, all overwhelming his senses and compelling him to mate with me.
As we near his home planet, Droka explains the High King’s plan for apprehending the fiends at the protein farm.
Zalaryns synthesize protein in large-scale farms. That was the dense, oily bar I was eating back on Yrdat. He says that they can’t grow many crops on their planet, and I can fully sympathize with that.
Droka puts his hands on me, looks me right in the eyes. The intensity of his gaze is almost frightening. I’d be scared if I thought he would hurt me, but I know that he’d never do that.
As I stare at him, I start to throb between the legs. I can’t believe we acted so lustfully, so brazenly after our escape from the Screaming Talon. I think of what his cock looked like—hard and thick outside his breeches—and my cheeks flush.
Why is my body reacting like this? I’m like a cat in heat.
One touch, and my body betrays me. Hell, he doesn’t even have to touch me. I just have to think about it. It’s probably those bonding chemicals he was talking about.
“You must do your part in this plot exactly as I explain it,” he tells me. “It is of the utmost importance. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I say. I still want to obey him. I never would have imagined I’d be eager to help any Zalaryn do anything, except get on the next ship off-planet.
But I can tell that he’s a different sort than Captain Ingzan and Admiral Zuro. I would do whatever Droka said to make sure bastards like that don’t get control of their planet. Who knows what evil things they’d plan for the Marked females of Earth.
“When we land,” Droka says. He is speaking slowly, with earnest. “I need you to do one thing.”
“What?” I demand. I’m eager to learn my part in the plan. Eager to please him. Am I going to disable their radar? Will he have me act as a decoy, luring the invaders away from the protein farm and into a waiting trap?
“You need to stay in the pod. No matter what. Stay. In. The. Pod.”
“No way,” I say. “I want to get those bastards just as bad as you do.”
He shakes his head, and I feel anger welling up.
“You probably want to get them more,” he admits. “But you must stay in the pod. Ayvinx and I will be able to do it. This is a stealth operation. We need to blend in—go unnoticed. What’s more likely to catch the eyes of a squad of rowdy warriors than a human female?”
I take his point.
I don’t like it, but I take his point.
“Fine,” I say. “But then what? We’ll go to the capitol, and you’re going to let me get auctioned off to the highest bidder, just like a cow?”
“What is a cow?” he asks. He smiles—trying to dodge my question with a joke, and that only makes me more upset.
“I’m serious,” I say. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“It’s custom for human females to be auctioned to the males with the most compatible DNA,” he says, but the smile is gone and he won’t meet my eyes. “Most females live comfortable lives. We respect the females who carry our offspring. Don’t let Ingzan’s crew stand for the rest of us.”
Most females. It doesn’t pass by unnoticed that he says most.
My heart starts to beat so fast in my chest. I’m afraid he can see the wild pulsing of the big vein in my neck, or sense something with those bumps on his tongue and his head.
I want to ask him something, but… it will cost me so much just to ask.
And will cost me even more if he gives me the answer I don’t want to hear.
“Would you have compatible DNA?” I ask, each word like lifting a huge sack of grain. A huge sack of grain that will crush me.
“I am the Captain of the Imperial Guard,” he says. It sounds to me like he’s having difficulty speaking his own words. “I have sworn an oath to take no mate, to produce no offspring.”
This is not the answer I feared, but it is somehow worse.
“An oath?” I ask, lamely, but I have no way to respond. “What about the whole thing you told me about turning purple? Bonding or whatever?”
“That’s merely a physiological response,” he says, and somehow his voice sounds colder. “It’s a bodily reaction. A warrior is expected to have control over their baser instincts.”
“Baser instincts?” I say. I’m livid. I thought he restrained himself because I was Marked, and he couldn’t take my virginity... yet. I thought there was a chance he could purchase me, especially since he’s well-positioned as Captain of the Imperial Guard.
But an oath to take no mate? I can’t believe this.
“Please, do not yell,” he says.
“I’m not yelling,” I yell. I don’t know why I’m so angry. “Maybe it’s just a base instinct that I should have control over.”
“You take me wrong,” he says. He reaches for my hand, but I snatch it away. “I’ve sworn an oath. There is nothing more sacred in our society than a male’s word. Law and order are built on our words. Our actions. Doing what we say and saying what we do. I have lived my entire life in service of law and order. Despite what I might feel for you,” he pauses and exhales loudly. Maybe it’s a trick of the pod’s lights, but I swear that his chest flushes an even deeper purple, almost as dark and filled with nothingness as the vast void in front of us. “Despite anything else, my first most sacred duty is to my vow—the Zalaryn clan, to law and order. By law, you are a fugitive. By law, I am unable to take a mate. It doesn’t matter what I feel. It doesn’t matter what I want.”
“Oh,” I say. I feel so stupid. I shouldn’t have asked about the DNA. I must have sounded like a needy little orphan, ready to latch on to the first person to come my way. But it’s not like that. Not at all. If it was, I would have gone away with Soryahn, the traveling merchant, the first time he propositioned me.
I thought I felt something with Droka—as improbable as that might be. Not just the excitement of being touched for the first time. Not the relief of escaping Captain Ingzan’s ship unharmed. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was just being in the middle of the pure nothingness of the void.
I don’t know what to think. And now when I have the opportunity to do something besides worry myself to death, Droka tells me to stay in the pod.
Time passes, but it’s hard to say how much. Nothing except blackness through the window glass. Then, I think I’m hallucinating, but I swear that I see something. A pinprick. Like there is a thick black drape across the sky and a tiny moth ate a tiny hole in the weave.
“Is that…?” I ask Droka. He nods without even looking.
“That’s our galaxy,” he says. “I’ll put the window coverings down. We’re going to approach it fast.”
“It looks so small,” I say.
“Everything looks small when you’re far away,” he says. “Our galaxy is relatively small, only about a billion stars.”
“A billion?” I interrupt. “That tiny speck is a billion stars?”
“Yes,” he says. “And mostly our stars are much bigger than the one that Yrdat orbits, the red one you would call your sun.”
“How much bigger?” I ask.
“Zalaryx orbits two small binary stars,” he says. “They’re much smaller and hotter than Yrdat’s sun.”
“Two suns sounds a little weird, but I’ve been cold for the last twelve years so I’ll take it,” I say, trying to lighten the mood after my stupid outburst. It was so stupid to ask him about the DNA.
“But many of the other stars in our galaxy are super-giants. Anywhere from one to three billion times the size of Earth’s sun.”
“You have stars a billion times bigger than Earth’s sun?” I say. I try to picture a billion suns fitting inside something, but I can’t. Even though I’ve seen the void and know how vast space truly is, I still can’t wrap my little pea-brain around it.
“Sure,” he says. “Earth’s sun isn’t particularly big. What’s the star-shape you call The Hunter?”
“Star shape?” I ask.
“I was never a good astronomy student,” he says.
“You know a lot more than I do,” I say, already quite impressed by his vast knowledge of the universe.
“Earth cultures see pictures in the stars, do they not?”
“Oh,” I say, understanding, “Constellations. The Hunter? Orion has a bow and arrow. That’s probably the hunter.”
“What’s a bow and arrow?” Droka asks and it’s my turn to laugh.
“You probably don’t want to know. It’s a weapon. Basically a flying, sharp stick.”
“Ah,” he says. “The Founders wrote of such primitive weaponry. Anyhow, your hunter, Orion, one of his stars—I think it’s his armpit—is a red super-giant star. It’s about one or two billion times the size of your sun.”
“A tiny star like that is a billion times bigger than the sun?” I say. “How do you know all this?”
“I don’t know half of what I should. That big star is close to Earth. Six or seven hundred light years.”
“That’s close?” I ask.
“Yes,” he says. “We’re at least two hundred and fifty thousand light years away from that.” He points at the pinprick of light. His home galaxy. The mass of billions of stars that are a billion times bigger than the Earth sun.
“This is making my head hurt,” I say truthfully.
“Mine too,” he says. “This is why I was never a good student.”