Chapter One
Katharine Leigh Parker’s entire body tingled, but for the first time since arriving on the remote planet of Rune-Yon almost two weeks ago, she couldn’t attribute the ripple across her exposed arms to the planet’s slightly lower gravity. The uncertain twist in her guts wasn’t from the bizarre—if not untasty—food they fed her here. The warmth conquering more and more of her by the second wasn’t from the two bright suns hanging in the eternally purple sky. It was because, for the first time since their ship landed on the planet she longed to save and explore, Katharine would be seeing Breccon Tallel again.
For two weeks now, she’d been stuck in a kind of quarantine chamber, a prison where her only company was the silent sentry guard stationed outside and the peeks of sun and sky she spied from the room’s single skylight. She understood the logic and the reasoning behind their suspicions. None of them had even seen a human before. Who knew what sort of diseases or dangers she carried, even unintentionally, with her? They gave her two weeks to prove herself as a non-threat, and now, as Katharine paced the room, tucking and untucking strands of dirty hair behind her ear in an attempt to look her best whenever he arrived, she could only think of two things: Breccon, and the enormous task that lay before her.
Between Breccon’s departure and their arrival, things on Rune-Yon had taken a turn. The blight—which had, according to Breccon, only attacked the warriors and their tribes—now took root in the planet itself. During her brief transport from the ship to her prison, Katharine saw the same infection marring her guards in everything. The tree bark gnarled with the hallmark red burns of the infection. The grass crumbling under the weight of the infection. It fed on every living thing.
As desperate as she was to see him, she found her lonely, bored mind torn between two polarities: the beauty of a life with him, and the determination to do the duty she’d come here to do. If she couldn’t accomplish the latter, the former would be impossible. She paced the packed floor beneath her feet, the sturdy boots given to her plodding out a rhythm to think and fret and yearn by.
“Ahem,” a feminine voice cleared her throat.
Katharine spun on her heel, disturbing the ground and kicking up a cloud of red dust in her hurry. Her heart leapt, ready to jump straight into Breccon’s waiting arms, but fell just as quickly when she saw that her guest wasn’t Breccon at all. In his place stood a tall, stately woman in the traditional garb of a Rune-Yonian warrior. Her striking cloud-white hair twisted into intricate braids hinted that she might be a somewhat Earthy grandmother, but her black eyes dispelled that illusion. Katharine recognized her instantly, though the holographic images on Breccon’s ship portrayed a much less fearsome woman. During their travels, when not devoted to carnal activities, Katharine spent much of her time researching the planet and the people she was to join. This woman was their queen. Breccon once insisted that Katharine must be a queen. Looking at this woman, Katharine couldn’t imagine how he could ever picture her as one. This woman was a queen.
Though, perhaps more important, she also recognized this woman as Breccon’s mother.
“I am Mayyalka,” she delivered the words to Katharine as though she were commanding an army, “of House Tallel. You are Katharine Leigh Parker, the Unclaimed. Is that correct?”
Though a small part of her wanted to snark about Breccon having claimed her, Katharine got the distinct impression such jokes would not be met with laughter. On the contrary, the glistening swords hanging on either side of Mayyalka’s hips and sticking out of her boots cemented Katharine’s impression. She merely nodded, trying to match the woman’s regal severity with a quiet strength of her own, a feat that proved almost impossible as the warrior began circling Katharine with the sharpened gaze of a buzzard. With every blink, she seemed to catalogue another one of Katharine’s weaknesses or flaws. During their voyage from Earth to Rune-Yon, Katharine had been unclothed more often than not. Weeks of space travel flew by in a haze of orgasm and exploration as she and Breccon passed the time discovering each other. On the ship, putting her clothes back on made no sense when she knew she’d be bare and writhing beneath Breccon’s attentive hands in a matter of minutes, just as he knew it made no sense to cover himself when she’d only crave his cock as soon as he put his baltea back on. Days would pass without her ever ducking into modesty, but she felt even more naked now, fully clothed in front of Mayyalka, than she ever did on her knees in front of Breccon.
“As the High Maiden of Rune-Yon, Leader of my House, it is up to me whether you stay or go. My son wishes to see you before the decision is made, but he may not do so without my permission. Do you wish to see him?”
“Yes,” Katharine almost laughed the word. The implication that she wouldn’t want to see him was so ridiculous to her. “Of course.”
“Why have you come here?”
As she walked, the circles around Katharine got smaller and smaller. A whisper from her heart urged her to speak the most obvious truth—Because I love your son—but the woman’s firm grip on the hilts of her swords told her she wasn’t the sort of woman who suffered flights of emotion. Sure, Breccon told her his parents’ love had been one for the ages, but Katharine couldn’t be certain. She resolved to remain practical.
“Breccon. I’m here for Breccon. He told me about your...” The words died in her mouth. Mayyalka was close enough now that Katharine could smell the Rune-Yon scent clinging to her clothes, but it was the woman’s constant scratching on a fiery red patch of infection that actually caught Katharine’s attention. “Ma’am, are you alright?”
“My name is Mayyalka, you stupid girl—”
“No, ma’am is a—”
“No?” Mayyalka’s black eyes widened and her voice rose in outrage, but Katharine saw through the objection as the woman’s hand stopped scratching. Her anger was manufactured, a way to avoid talking about the sickness. Breccon had warned Katharine that his people would be difficult to convince, hardheaded in their refusal to acknowledge their own weakness. Knowing didn’t make this any easier. Knowing that only made her task all the more difficult. This woman held her fate in her strong, war-calloused hands. “You do not tell the High Maiden of Rune-Yon no.”
“What I meant is—”
But the High Maiden, whatever that meant, was not interested in hearing Katharine’s explanations of human culture.
“Why have you come here?”
Because Breccon Tallel has awakened my soul and I would cross every galaxy to be with him. Katharine dismissed the thought, no matter how true it was or how deeply she felt it. Mayyalka was a warrior. An appeal to her sense of preservation would pierce deeper than any appeal to silly, human emotion. More than ever, Katharine wanted Breccon at her side. He’d know what to say. He’d know best how to explain their connection to his mother. And he’d hold her hand and give her the courage she needed. What she wouldn’t have given just to hold his hand in that moment.
“To save your people. I’m worried about them.” What came next from Katharine was the wrong thing to say. A personal insult to the well-being of an unquestioned Queen who held her fate in her battle-wearied hands. And yet, Katharine’s nursing instincts took over as she looked at the mother of the man she loved. If she couldn’t save this woman, she’d lose Breccon forever. “And I’m worried about you, Mayyalka. This sickness—”
Black eyes lit on fire, and Mayyalka turned her back on her. She flew into a rage so passionate, so raw, and so deeply wounded that Katharine finally understood why human men were so afraid of sending women into battle. An army of women half as fearsome as Mayyalka could have set the world ablaze with righteous fire.
“You will not join our tribe,” she declared.
“But—”
“The High Maiden has spoken.”
With every step Mayyalka took towards the door, Katharine’s reality sunk in. If she walked out of that door now, she would be taking everything with her, each hope, dream, and desire Katharine had. She’d lose Breccon. Forever.
She tried one last misguided appeal.
“But I just want to help!”
A tense silence followed Katharine’s exclamation. Mayyalka hesitated at the door and for a moment, Katharine thought perhaps she would relent. Instead, she inclined her head back towards Katharine only slightly, and growled imperiously:
“That is why you have failed.”
A black haze descended over Katharine. Failure. A word with which she was more than familiar burned down to her core. She’d spent her life fighting against failure, pushing her way past ignorant men to win her own victories and forge her own path. Now, when victory mattered most, when being a failure meant losing the love of her life, she saw no way to fight back. She’d failed. And she’d lose everything.
Before her knees gave out, she had only enough time to hear Mayyalka’s final parting words: “My son will be allowed his goodbyes, and you will be gone by sunsdown.”
* * *
Breccon Tallel struggled to look his mother in the eye as they stood outside of Katharine’s chamber. Words eluded him. No, that wasn’t quite true. Many, many words came to him, but they were all words that would have gotten him killed. No one spoke to the High Maiden the way he wanted to speak to her now and came out of it alive, not even her son.
“You want me to do what?” he asked, his voice quiet and strained.
“You will say your goodbyes.” She placed a hand on the Sword of Tallel, a subtle power move Breccon would have respected if it weren’t a reminder that she controlled his fate—including who he could love. “We will send her on the fastest ship back to wherever it is she came from.”
Breccon tried to understand why she would be so quick to send her away. His mother wasn’t in Katharine’s cell for more than a few minutes before she left and announced she and Breccon would be separated forever.
“Is she sick? Has she gotten someone else sick?”
“No.”
“What has she done, then?”
On their journey, he made it very clear to Katharine that his mother was a powerful woman, one not to be trifled with. She hadn’t become leader of the planet’s most powerful tribe by letting her guard down, and she wouldn’t make an exception for an alien, even one who could cure their illness. Surely, Katharine wouldn’t have crossed his mother, not after so many warnings and certainly not when the stakes were so high.
“It’s not what she has done. It’s what she has failed to do.”
“What did she fail to do?”
His mother didn’t answer straight away, but instead stared up at the open sky. Only two weeks ago, Breccon and Katharine appeared from that very same sky, descending to the beach with all the hope of victorious, returning armies. His mother wanted him to just send her back, toss her aside just like the humans had?
“How long did you know her before you escaped with her in tow?” she asked.
Breccon tried not to think about his time in captivity. The humans were a cruel, unforgiving people who delighted in tormenting him. Katharine was his only salvation.
“I don’t know. A few days.” He may not have remembered how long it was, but even he could see where his mother was going with this. “But that doesn’t mean anything.”
“She is a passionate lifesaver. I will grant you that.” His mother placed a companionable hand on his shoulder, the touch of two comrades after a long battle. If there was one thing he understood about his people now that he’d been gone for so long, it was this: they could only see things in terms of war. Life was war. War was life. Even something as simple as two people in love could only be understood as a battle. “But that is all she is.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Because you don’t want to. I ask her why she came here, and you know what she says to me? She says, To save your people. She did not mention you, my son. Or being in love with you. Or being your Ress.”
He didn’t want that to sting nearly as much as it did. She hadn’t even mentioned him?
“She is here because she pities you, and you will not survive a life of pity when you could have had a life of love. And even if you could, I will not allow it.” His mother withdrew her hand from his shoulder. She fully expected to have the last word. She believed he would be too dumbstruck to say anything else, at least that’s how Breccon saw it. But she couldn’t understand the way he felt about her, how deeply he wanted everything Katharine said to be true. “Say your goodbyes, make them short, and I will see you in the Chamber once it is done.”
“She loves me,” Breccon said, even as the choking hand of uncertainty threatened to close off his windpipe, “and she can save us.”
“Return to Earth, my son. Find another human. If they are going to endanger us with their presence here, they shouldn’t be allowed to endanger your heart, too.”
Without another word or modicum of sympathy, his mother disappeared into their tribe’s deep forest, the greens and browns of her leather uniform providing her camouflage as the trees devoured her. A war raged in Breccon’s chest. He could not disobey the will of the High Maiden, but obeying it meant betraying his heart.
Or did it? What if his mother was right? What if Katharine only came with him out of a sense of pity? What if she only appeased his lust to make him more malleable or to make the journey easier on them both? Could she have faked every smile, every shiver, every cry of ecstasy and shake of orgasm?
He didn’t want it to be true, but when he passed the guards and entered Katharine’s cell, he gave his body over to the conflict, drowning it in the thing he’d been dreaming of since Katharine was taken from him two weeks earlier. His pounding heart charged forward and his clenched hands opened to receive her.
“Breccon—”
He didn’t give her the chance to finish the thought. He didn’t even give himself a chance to think. As easy as returning a sword to its sheath, Breccon closed off his own mind, choosing instead to engage the animal inside of him. His lips crashed into hers as he dragged her to him, his heart smashing against his chest with a million unanswered questions.
He would have her, he decided as he laced his fingers into her thick, silken locks of hair, right here and right now. If he was going to fight his mother to keep her, he’d have to know how she really felt.
If Katharine wanted to protest his physical focus, she didn’t do so. Instead, she came alive at his insistence, answering his firm grasp with her own powerful one.
Never removing his lips from hers—or halting his tongue’s invasion of Katharine’s bittersweet mouth—Breccon set a course for Katharine’s pussy, his hand pausing only momentarily to appreciate the frantic rise and fall of her breast.
“Oh,” Katharine moaned into him when his fingers made contact with her hot, wet center. Her shiver reverberated from the tops of her shoulders back down to the place Breccon was stroking. A surge of power rippled through him. Maybe Katharine didn’t really love him, but there was no faking the control he had over her in moments like this. She was weak for him.
Her knees weakened. She grabbed on to him for support. He toyed with her, memorizing the symphony of pleasure he conducted with her body. He allowed her to get close, only to pull away at the last minute. He stroked her, coaxing her nerves to conform to his will, to please her as he wanted her to be pleased. And when she was breathless and aching and his own lips throbbed from how hard she kissed him, he removed his hand altogether, reveling in her cry of protest.
She was going to come with his cock inside of her. He needed to feel her around him, wrapping him in her warmth. He needed to look into her eyes as he commanded her orgasm.
In one swift motion, deaf to her unsatisfied cries and unwilling to finish what he’d started, Breccon tossed Katharine onto the bed. Her eyes widened slightly in shock; he’d never been this rough with her. But beyond the emotional turmoil that forced him to, there was something about no longer being a prisoner, about seeing their roles reversed, that sent him over the edge. Now, she was the prisoner and he the captor. She’d taken her pleasure when he was in chains. Now, he would dominate her.
He joined her on the bed. His instincts took over, controlling his strong muscles. She slid easily into his lap, and even more easily onto his cock. This was not the gentle, tender lovemaking of reunion that he’d imagined during all of the lonely nights he’d waited without her. This was raw and questioning, his hands and lips asking questions she avoided by answering with moans and thrusts.
“Touch yourself,” he managed between kisses.
“But—”
“I will see you pleasure yourself.”
How could she refuse? As he continued his thoughtless, primal thrusting, Katharine’s hand reached down, her eyes slipping closed as her pussy tightened from the sensations she gave herself.
“Do not close your eyes. Look at me.”
Her eyelashes fluttered, but Katharine obeyed. Her eyes were wider than he’d ever seen them, filled with heat and need. Breccon scanned them for something deeper, for that love he wanted her to feel for him, but all he saw was sex. His own cock twitched and swelled. She was too sweet, to intoxicating. As she got closer to her own peak, her hips rising to meet his, so too did Breccon yearn to release.
“Breccon, I’m going to—”
But she didn’t get a chance to finish. Not the sentence or herself. Breccon flipped her onto her back, ripping himself from inside her and hovering at her entrance. She screamed at the sudden withdrawal and her entire body shuddered with the loss of his heat and her imminent orgasm.
“Do you love me?” he asked, the sensitive tip of his cock just barely brushing against her clit.
“What?” she asked, trying to meet his featherlight touch and bring herself over the edge. Breccon still did not give her the satisfaction, but he did apply a little more pressure. Just enough to drive her wild. Still, in her eyes, he saw only sex.
“Do you love me?” he asked again, spreading out each word so it could be clearly and perfectly understood. She was not going to get what she wanted until she answered.
“Yes, yes,” she howled, scratching at his back, “I love you!”
It was enough. Breccon returned his cock to her, thrusting hard and deep as he dared. The pressure inside of her and the constant assault on her clit was too much. She rose and rose, higher and higher, tempting Breccon to fall before she did. But as soon as he kissed her, Katharine broke, crying into his kiss.
Her eyes were closed. Breccon could learn nothing from them. Instead, he willed the last of her orgasm out of her before allowing himself to follow her over the edge. He roared, holding her close as he rocked with finality. She would feel his love. She had to.
For a moment, they lay there without saying a word. For Katharine’s part, it seemed content. She sighed and touched her forehead to his. She relaxed beneath him. Breccon couldn’t join her softening. He now lay atop the woman he loved with more questions than answers, a troubling place to be.
“You’re afraid.” Katharine reached up to play with the ends of Breccon’s hair, so gently he shuddered as if he’d been tickled. “But you shouldn’t be.”
Breccon wanted to know how she could be so calm. They’d traveled all this way, they loved each other—at least, he thought they did—and though all of that could be lost with a single wave of his mother’s hand, she looked at him now as if they were back on his ship, careening carelessly through the recesses of space.
“I’m going to invoke the Rite of Kaal-Nokt.”
She whispered that, but she might as well have screamed it in his ear. Breccon froze. No one had claimed Kaal-Nokt in six hundred years. He’d only told her about it on the ship because it was something of a fairy tale for his people, an interesting anecdote about a long-forgotten hope of peace between this planet’s tribes. Kaal-Nokt was a princess of the Yicardi who wanted to marry a warrior of Tallel. In order to prove her loyalty to the tribe, she was given a cursed amulet, an amulet that directed her to complete five tasks that would prove her love for the Tallel warrior.
“You can’t—” Breccon protested.
“I have to,” Katharine yawned, pulling Breccon to lie down at her side so she could cuddle into his chest, “I can save your people, Breccon. And I swear, I will.”
Her eyes sunk closed and the concerned wrinkle in her forehead smoothed as sleep came closer and closer to taking her captive, leaving Breccon alone with his thoughts. But now, his mother whispered cold shards of doubt into him. He had no doubt that Katharine could and would save his people. He only doubted she’d still love him—if she ever loved him at all—when the salvation was finished.