She glanced up.
“If he’s your
tahren
, he would’ve known you were alive.”
She tapped the pendant around her neck. “No.”
“I don’t understand,” Bente replied.
“It’s not just a neck-charge. It’s also a portable disjunctor.”
His eyes narrowed before widening with realization. “Holy shit. For real?”
She nodded and left it at that.
From outside the plane, Apolo gave several more commands before climbing on board and strapping himself into the seat across from Nalea, with several bags of gear between them.
She frowned, still trying to figure out why Apolo wasn’t trying to kill the second most hated Draeken of the Noble War. Apolo had pursued Roden relentlessly over the years and vice versa. They were stout enemies, each a major player in the Noble War. Yet, they’d come against Otas, working side by side.
“How do you know Roden?” she called out over the jolting roar of the engines as they lifted from the ground.
Apolo looked up. His eyes narrowed only the slightest. “I don’t know Roden. But I know Kreed. And that man is my scout.”
Fyet.
Roden awoke to find liquid fire running through his brain and lead clogging his veins. He forced his eyes open and a drab human medical facility came into view. A woman with gold skin and ruffled dark hair sat in a chair next to him, her head resting on his bed. Her hair had grown. Rather than short and unruly, it was now slightly longer and just as unruly. He reached out and ran a hand through the silky mess to make sure she wasn’t an illusion.
Nalea jerked awake with a startled glance and hastily leaned back in her chair, safely out of his reach. She slipped on a pair of dark glasses, hiding her gaze from his view.
“Come closer,” he demanded, his voice rough. He fought the surge of emotion that threatened to make him act like a groveling fool.
She made no movement toward him, if anything, she pulled back even further.
He’d let her think she didn’t need her
tahren’s
touch, despite the disjunctor she wore. He wouldn’t comment that while she slept, she’d no qualms about being near him. And he definitely wouldn’t comment that he craved her touch.
He rolled his stiff neck from side to side, wincing at his tight, sore muscles. Brought his hand up to the bandage covering his shoulder. Damn, human weapons could do their share of damage, especially coupled with the nasty effects of
tiscalin
. It would take him days before he’d be back to full strength. “How long have I been out?”
She shrugged. “A few hours.”
She wore a thick, high-necked vest that didn’t move when she shrugged. He frowned. “They let you run free around this place with a bomb still around your neck?”
She bristled. “No. I’m only allowed here or in my quarters. Evidently, they don’t see your death as a significant risk.”
He brushed off her comment with a wave. “We need to get that thing off you.” A grim numbness tortured his thoughts. He thought he’d lost Nalea once.
Never again.
Nalea continued to fidget. “Wync brought a couple of your people to Apolo to see if they could get it off without detonating. It seems that no one has experience with these things.”
He hated that she was in constant risk. Apolo should’ve been spending every free minute working at getting Roden’s
tahren
free from that blasted disjunctor. “We’ll get it off,” he said, his whisper a promise, a grunt when he moved, then louder, “If Otas was going to detonate it, he would’ve done it already. He needs you alive to keep Hillas’s title.”
She looked up, and though he couldn’t see her eyes, he knew the pain those dark glasses hid. He would do anything to take away her pain. Unfortunately, it seemed like anything he did only made her hurt more. If only she’d give the bond a chance, but the woman he knew would never do that.
To make matters worse, he’d expected the mission to take down Hillas’s imposter as well as to show the humans that the Draeken were a fair and just race. Instead, it seemed he’d made no progress whatsoever in establishing an Earthside home for his people. Without human support, they were nothing more than nomads.
He frowned when he realized Nalea was still watching him.
“Who are you?” she asked under her breath.
“You know me.” The reply was quiet, confident.
Her head shook slightly from side to side. “That’s the thing. I have no idea who you are.”
That goes for both of us.
He sighed, long and hard. “What do you wish to know?”
“For starters, you can tell me about Kreed.”
He shot her a hard look and saw the truth in her eyes. All that planning, wasted. Everything he’d done to maintain a dichotomy, gone. If she knew, that meant Apolo had figured things out, which could only mean his life-long secret was now public knowledge. His people would never trust Kreed, and the Sephians and humans would never trust Roden. What he’d worked at keeping separate had come together in an implosion. He rubbed his temples, a headache overpowering the pain racking his body. “Apolo’s been speaking too liberally.”
“I don’t get it. Why two identities?”
“As Roden, I could lead my people to lasting peace right in the open. As Kreed, I could guide my people from the shadows. Besides, many of the heroes in human legends had alter egos.”
She belted out a laugh. “You’re no hero.” She shook her head. “How can you say you worked toward peace when you led your people in war?”
His lips tightened. “Because, sometimes, to get to peace, people have to suffer enough that there’s no other choice.”
She flinched. It was the slightest movement, but Roden noticed. Then she sobered. “So are you Kreed who used Roden’s identity to betray your people, or are you Roden who used Kreed’s identity to mislead my people?”
His eyes closed. “Neither.” He paused. “Both.” He coughed. Damn his throat was dry. “I was born Kreed Zylk, but I’ve been Roden Zyll longer. Regardless of the name I go by, peace has always been my end game.” He paused. “Until I found you.”
Her chair slid on the hard floor, and he looked up to see Nalea standing over him. “I get it. Sort of. But, like it or not, we’re
tahren,
and we’re stuck together until this thing comes off or goes off,” she said pointing at where the disjunctor lay beneath the vest.
“I’d like to be stuck together much longer,” he murmured before a coughing fit overtook him.
A gentle hand pushed his fist down, and he found a straw held to his mouth. The water was cool, at first burning his raw throat, then turning to pure bliss. She pulled away the glass far too soon.
“Would you?” She plopped down in the chair. “I seriously have no idea when you’re telling the truth or when you’re feeding me a line of shit.”
He wiped his chin with the back of his hand before nodding toward the disjunctor. “When we get that thing off you, you won’t need to ask.”
She set the glass down. “Or, maybe … ” She ran a finger down his arm. “You could just tell me the truth from here on out.”
He laid his hand over hers and squeezed. “Always.”
Her expression was sad, but he could have sworn he glimpsed hope in her features. “You make it easy to believe. But your past proves otherwise.” She stared at his hand for a bit. “You know, things could’ve gone smoother if I’d known that you were on our side.”
With a frown, he yanked his hand back. “Still you don’t understand? There is no
side
. I do what’s best for our people. Our survivals are tied together.”
She didn’t look up, only shook her head. “It’s not that easy.”
“It’s not that difficult. With the humans, we’ll broker peace. What then?”
“I don’t know.” The words were quiet, barely a whisper.
“What happens once Hillas is eliminated, this time for good? Will you keep the disjunctor on? I wonder if it’s your coping mechanism so that you don’t have to deal with
us
.”
“No.” She jutted out her chin. “It’s a survival mechanism. Good thing, too, since you left me for dead. If I hadn’t been with Hillas at that moment, I would’ve been left behind to rot.”
“I believed you were dead. I couldn’t sense you, courtesy of your
survival mechanism.
”
“And before?”
“Before what?”
Her hands went to her hips. “Before you left me with Hillas, Apolo said that you — Kreed, I mean — said I was already dead. Planning ahead?”
He shrugged. “I wanted you for myself. And I wanted us to finish Hillas without distractions.”
She blew out a breath. “I’m a living being, Roden, not some possession to add to your collection. Don’t you realize these games you play destroy lives?”
He refused to look at her, refused to let her see any truth in his eyes. Would she believe him if he told her that she haunted his dreams as well as every waking moment, that his desire for this one woman was consuming him?
Would she understand why he wanted her to go with him to end Hillas? Sure, he could have gotten close enough to Hillas to make the killing blow himself. But, he’d
wanted
the killing blow to belong to Nalea. She’d earned the right. More so, he’d craved — no,
needed
— this woman to find him redeemable. Though he often suspected that there was nothing left to redeem. He’d crossed that line too long ago. “Sometimes, games are necessary, and yes, I realize lives are in the balance. Tell me, how many lives were lost during last night’s attack?”
“What?” she asked, then shook a fist at him. “Gods, you’re infuriating. Can you not answer a single question directly?”
When he didn’t answer, she pursed her lips. “Eight total. One Sephian, two humans, and five Draeken.”
“Five?” Roden shot her a dark frown. “Why so many?”
“It seems that several Sephians and humans switched their blasters to ‘kill’.”
Bloodthirsty imbeciles.
He shook his head slightly. He knew there’d be a loss of life when he’d taken down Hillas, but when would it end? “Where is Otas now?”
She began to pace. He tried to focus on her words and not her pert ass as she spoke. “We believe he’s locked down in his com center. The force barrier has been pulled back to cover just that area of the base. We suspect that he doesn’t have enough power cells to maintain a larger barrier.”
“The good news is that he and his men can’t escape,” Roden said.
“How can you be so sure?”
Roden shook his head. “The force barrier imprisons him within his com center as much as it holds us out.”
“We have him surrounded,” Nalea said. “So we wait until his power runs out.”
Roden sighed. “The upgraded power cells needed to run a force barrier won’t run out, not as long as this planet has its moon. He’ll run out of food first, and the core ships could be at full power by then.” He’d thoroughly examined the power cell he’d snatched from Hillas’s office. The technology was impressively simple. Just a few algorithms adapted the technology to read the smaller discrete lunar waves off this planet rather than the continuous lunar waves off Sephia. He tried to sit up, the sheet draping around his waist.
Her step faltered as her eyes dropped from his face to a distance lower. She held up a hand. “You’re naked.”
He glanced down. While he wanted her naked at this moment, he suspected his body wasn’t up to it quite yet. It didn’t mean they couldn’t play. He looked back up at her and grinned.
“You need to rest,” she blurted out.
“I need to end this before Otas has the power of a core ship behind him.” The only reason why the core ships weren’t in orbit already was that Hillas hadn’t converted all the power cells yet, giving Roden a very short window to prevent a world war on this planet.
Nalea gave him a choked look. “You’re in no condition to stand, let alone go back to the base. Face it, your coup is on hold.”
Holding the sheet around his waist, he managed to pull himself to his feet, flaring his wings for added balance. His legs were wobbly, forcing him to hold onto the bed for support. He glared. “Damn it, Nalea. It was never about power. We have hours, days at most, before the first core ship has finished upgrading their power cells.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Exactly how many core ships are there?”
His reply was curt. “More than one. Which makes taking down Otas quickly all the more critical. If Otas is at the helm when that happens, he’ll enslave this world and destroy both my and your people in the process.”
“Don’t,” she scolded. “Don’t act like you’re doing all this out of some altruistic urge. You don’t care about my people.”
He pushed off from the bed. “I owe as much to your people as I do mine.” He miraculously found the strength to walk. With each step, the burning tension eased in his muscles. He stopped at the table across the room, where his clothes sat neatly folded. He grabbed the wrist-com from the top of the pile and snapped it around his forearm. A female’s voice came through the small speaker.
“Gix,” he said. “Tell me you’ve finished with what I asked.”
“I did, my lord. We’re all set,” Gix replied.
“Good. See you in an hour.” His body ached all over.
His people moved fast, but if only they’d been able to move faster, they would’ve ensured Otas was eliminated the first time. He’d hated going into that base half-cocked. But time was of the essence. He knew that Hillas’s people were working just as fast. It was a gamble that Roden lost. But he’d won a more valuable prize.
Nalea
.
“What makes you think the humans will let you out of here?” Nalea asked from behind.
He grabbed his kilt, dropped the sheet and turned. She jerked her gaze away, a golden blush filling her cheeks.
“I don’t need permission, my dear. All my ships are equipped with the new power cells and on their way here as we speak.”
Nalea followed Roden past the guards posted at the doorway, out of the room and into the hallway. It didn’t take long to catch up. After several swaying steps, he leaned against the wall. With his eyes closed, he rested his head back and took a deep breath. His wings hung limply.
Despite still being angry him for writing her off for dead, she took a step closer. Cautiously, she slid her dark glasses down her nose to look him in the eye, reached out a hand, and cupped his cheek. “And what happens when you take down this Hillas redux? What then, Roden?”