Craving: A SciFi Alien Mail Order Bride Romance (TerraMates Book 8) (37 page)

* * *

J
IDDEN

Soldiers filled my ship, but they were not men. They were women, an army of Roman goddesses dependent on me to set them free. I did not know if I was their hero or their fool.

I didn't care, not as long as Terra was among them.

I waited for Terra at the loading door of my ship, holding Lucina in my arms. I had made a promise to Terra that I wouldn't let her friend go and that I would see her safely from the station. As my ship continued to fill, I was tempted to drop the little blonde and search for my mate, but I couldn't.

I wanted to earn Terra's trust.

I wanted to earn all of their trust, including the fiery priestess who was going to pilot the ship out of the hatch and away from the station. I had warned Bellona that piloting a Surtu vessel was not like piloting the lowly cargo ships gathering dust in the corner of the docking bay, but Bellona had insisted she knew what she was doing.

I hoped so, for all of our sakes.

Convincing the soldiers to leave the docking bay, including my fellow Lead Officers, had not been as difficult as I had anticipated. That was the beauty of the Surtu hierarchy. Captain Fore had put me in charge of the Fortuna until he arrived to transform it into the new Surtu command center.

At the moment, he was busy starting a war. Since I was in charge, the men had followed my orders. They had no choice. The punishment for disobeying the orders of a superior during wartime was death.

Death was what I faced if the men found their way through the divide that I'd raised. They gathered behind it now, watching the exodus of women boarding my ship. I had stolen their claimed ones. All of the women they had hoped to light bond with were now under my protection.

You can lower the divide, a part of me told myself. Tell your men you knew of the plan, that this was a trap to break the spirits of the women warriors for good so they knew who was in charge.

The double betrayal tempted me. If it were me on the other side of the divide, I would want me dead. But I had to be true to my integrity, to my father, and to Terra. I was not turning my back on my people. I was going to look for another way. I was an honorable Surtu man.

I would make sure that when historians wrote about this time and when whispers of we saved the Surtu from extinction was passed around, the children of our children would speak with pride.

Terra finally came into view, rounding the last of the women into the ship like a dark shepherdess. In the distance behind her, the doorway to the tunnel was sealed.

"How did you manage to keep the divide up?" she asked when she found me.

"I seared the wiring," I answered. "It was a simple solution, but they'll be looking for something much more complex."

"Good," she said and made a call over the communicator I'd given her. She instructed Bellona to close the loading door to the ship and open the hatch of the space station.

"I can't!" Bellona shouted through the communicator. "We're on a Surtu ship, remember? They don't have the remotes on board to close the hatch!"

"It's okay," Terra told her. "We'll figure it out." Quickly, she glanced at me, and then added, "Whatever happens, you leave. Understand?"

"Yes, Queen Sister," Bellona confirmed. "Make sure you're on the ship when I do."

Terra turned to me, her mind working. "Can you activate the hatch with your mind?"

"I can, but it'll take time. I'm unfamiliar with your technology. Melting a wire is easy. I did that with my hands. Using my mind to shift through the electronics of the hatch will be much more complicated."

"We don't have time," she proclaimed. "I'll have to do it by hand."

I did not see any problems with her plan. The command desk within the docking bay was not far from us, so I let her go.

It was a mistake.

As Terra ran down the loading door of my ship with her black dress and auburn hair flowing behind her, a brilliant light appeared, blinding us.

I instantly knew whose light it was. The soldiers under my command did not possess the training to travel as light through the unbreakable material of the divide. Though we were beings of light, we were much denser than the light of the stars around us because we had to bring our physical forms within us.

The material of Surtu ships was easy to pass through by design, but it took a special kind of training to go through the toughest of Earth's elements. The type of training a Fleet Captain had.

Captain Fore appeared within the docking bay. Terra saw him, but she didn't turn around. She couldn't when the lives of her women depended on the hatch being opened. I set Lucina down so that I could help, but before I could move, the loading door closed, and I felt my ship start to hover.

The door was no barrier. I began to transform into light, but a hand grabbed my ankle. "Don't leave," Lucina pleaded. "We need you."

What the little blonde said was true. The women could make it out of the station without me, but what lay beyond – that was another story.

"I can't leave her," I whispered, agony building within me. "I love her."

"Then honor her," Lucina said. "Let her be the Commander. Terra would not want you to abandon us."

She was right. If I left, it would mean sealing the fate of the women as slaves to the Depraved. If I allowed it to happen, Terra would resent me all the days of her life. I had to see her women to safety, and then I would come back for her. My soldiers could take her captive a thousand times, and I would always come back for her.

I knew heartbreak. I'd felt it when my parents died. And now I felt it again. A tear rolled down my cheek, the first in many years. Lucina stood, swaying slightly, and she wiped it away with the sleeve of her Surtu uniform.

* * *

T
ERRA

I ran to the command desk of the docking bay, playing the codes I needed to enter in my head so that my fingers would not stall. I didn't have much time. If Captain Fore lowered the divide before the ship left, we would all be ruined.

Luckily, Captain Fore had as much trouble with the seared wiring as the other soldiers. I reached the command desk, and I opened the hatch. Moments later, the ground shook as Jidden's ship lifted out of the space station and disappeared into the relentless night.

My heart broke watching them leave. I would never see them again. Not Jidden. Not Lucina. They were lost to me forever. But I was glad they had left.

Jidden had remained true to his word. He had not sacrificed us for his gain, even if that gain was me.

I loved him more for it.

I did not have time to grieve my losses. Captain Fore grabbed my arm and pushed me against the divide. Without turning to face the soldiers I had insulted, I could feel their anger.

"Women are sacred to the Surtu," the Captain raged. "But for some women, there is only death."

* * *

T
ERRA

Four months had passed since the women of the Fortuna had escaped the leering clutches of the Surtu soldiers. They had been led away by Jidden, my alien mate with whom I was eternally light bonded. I missed my sister warriors, especially Lucina Whitmore, my best friend since childhood. And I missed Jidden.

It had been hard to believe that I would never see him again, but I had finally accepted it for my sanity, especially now that I was a slave onboard the place I once called home.

The Fortuna looked nothing like it had before. The Surtu had taken over completely, making it their command center as they fought a war against Earth. The gardens were overgrown, and the temple abandoned. The inner station had been gutted out, distorting the sleeping quarters into dormitory-style housing for the Surtu soldiers. Masked as a spiritual sanctuary, the Fortuna had been built spacious and harmonious, but now it was crowded and loud, the marble floors marked with the heavy traffic moving in and out.

There were many soldiers on the Fortuna. Although the Surtu were larger, stronger, and they had an ability to heal themselves, they weren't invincible. Plenty had died at the hand of my sister warriors. The key was to strike a fatal blow before they had a chance to recover. It was a lesson Earth had likely learned the hard way.

I should be dead, as the soldiers my sisters killed were. I had led the escape of the women from the space station. That was three hundred fewer women the Surtu men could use for baby factories. With the Surtu facing extinction and their females dying off from an unknown disease, my crime was punishable by death.

I had been sentenced to die, but Jidden had saved me. I wonder if he knew that his love had saved my life.

We were light bonded. We had shared the act of altering our state of being into light, becoming one beacon and one soul. It had been brief, but it had united us forever. It was because of the light bond that I knew Jidden lived. At times, I could sense him, feeling his anguish and hopelessness, usually when I was close to sleep.

After being imprisoned on his ship and sentenced to die, Captain Fore had come to visit me. He put his hand along the back of my neck. The neck was the only part left exposed by the Surtu uniform I had been forced to wear. I thought he was going to take away my integrity and force himself on me, but that was not his intention.

"So the rumors are true," he had said. "You are light bonded to the traitor."

The traitor was Jidden. "Yes," I'd admitted, feeling no shame, but I was confused. The only person I had told was Bellona. She'd had no contact with the soldiers – except to assassinate them before they knew she was even there.

"When the murderer Kalij petitioned for his light bonding ceremony, he was outraged that another man had been allowed to light bond with the human Commander before his ceremony took place. He wanted to be the first. I told him no such service had been approved, and a woman tricked him."

"I did lie to him," I said, refusing to allow the scum Kalij any merit. "I wanted access to the docking bay. The light bond Jidden and I share – that came later."

"I see," the Captain said. "You are light bonded to a traitor, but that does not change the fact that you are one of us. Our light shines in you. It is against the law to kill a human woman unless she has committed an unforgivable act of treason. You have done that, by the way, but you are no longer merely human. You are part Surtu. No Surtu woman is put to death, no matter what her crimes were. Your light bond saves you from death, but you will likely beg for it soon enough. I plan to make your life a living hell."

I had imagined the worst. In my fears, the soldiers made me their concubine, but another Surtu law was that no man could touch a woman who was light bonded. It wasn't because of morals, but to ensure the health of her children. When it came to human-bred Surtu children, those birthed from bonded parents were healthier and survived longer.

To the Surtu, survival was everything. It overshadowed every decision.

Captain Fore couldn't kill me, and he couldn't make me a plaything for his soldiers. All he could do was condemn me to servitude, making me wait on him and his fellow elite officers whenever they beckoned. When I refused, which was as often as my strength allowed, I was beaten or starved.

The Fortuna had been my home.

It was now my prison.

But I lived. For now, it was enough. As long as I lived, there was still a chance for escape. Jidden and my sisters couldn't save me, but maybe I could save myself.