Star Kissed (6 page)

“You no longer believe this to be a dream.”

Mandy turned at the familiar voice, heart quickening. Akkadi stood near her, his chiseled features emotionless. Dark blue eyes were on her. He wore a plainer gray uniform without the sashes this time, though the orange medallion still glowed from his chest. The less flashy clothing only seemed to emphasize his quiet strength. She’d remembered him being lean and tall, but he seemed more so without the different color sashes distracting her.

Twenty feet tall. Fangs as long as her arm.
Why on earth had Pinal thought this about Akkadi?

“It’s a nightmare,” she replied.

She felt it again, the sense of being anchored in this world. With Akkadi, she didn’t have to question what was real. It all seemed real. Far too real.

“I won’t tell you how much it cost me to save you this time,” he said. He moved without hesitation into her personal space this time but didn’t touch her, instead studying her. His scent – of warm spices – reached her. Its effect was the same as the first time: it made her want to close the distance between them and feel his skin.

His words registered, and she frowned.

“Where I’m from, we don’t sell people.”

“We do here. Anything
I
want is instantly of more value to those around me. I paid too much for you.”

“What did I cost?” she asked and arched an eyebrow.

“You see the craft running to the planet?” he asked, looking away from her out the window.

She turned to see the spaceship without understanding if it would be expensive to a man who Urik claimed was a god.

“Five of those,” he said. “I warned Urik not to let you out of his sight and I warned you to stay with him.”

“It wasn’t his fault,” she replied. “He took care of me the best he could.”

“If that were the case, you wouldn’t be here, and I wouldn’t be in this position.”

“Send me home,” she said, irritated with him. “I’ll be out of your hair for good.”

“I can’t.”

Mandy faced him again and resisted the urge to move away. Something more than his striking features was compelling enough to make her feel jittery. His nearness distracted her thoughts, made her notice the shape of his full lips and the smooth skin of his jaw.

“There’s the star gate. Urik was taking me there,” she said.

“If you survived such a foolish journey, the star gate would be useless without me to activate it.”

The words almost took her breath away, and hope bubbled within her. Mandy stepped closer to him.

“Will you activate it?” she asked.

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I can win a war or I can activate the star gate. I can’t do both.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The energy I need to open the star gate is too great.”

“More than five spaceships worth?” she asked, struggling to understand.

“Much more.”

“How do I get home?”

He said nothing. He touched her hair, fascinated by the blonde curls. She pushed his hand away, not about to be distracted.

“Can someone else open the star gate?” she pushed. “Anyone?”

“There are three of us who can. Myself, my father and sister, both of whom are away from the station right now.”

Mandy stared at him, registering his words. He alone had the power but wouldn’t use it.

“You’re saying I can’t go home? Ever?” she whispered, panic and tears replacing her hope.

“Not in the immediate future.”

“My family, all my friends. They’ll notice I’m not there.”

“They’ve been dead for ten thousand years.”

The words made her head spin and tunnel vision form. Mandy sank against the window, no longer able to quell the sensations.

“How did I get here?” she managed. “Whatever brought me here, it can take me home.”

“It was most likely a natural phenomenon, a temporary wormhole. We can’t control those except through the star gate.” Akkadi crouched beside her, bringing his warmth and spices with him. “Calm, human.” His tone softened, and he touched one hand to her cheek. Warmth spiraled through her.

He was systematically shooting down her options with methodical patience that made her want to slam her fists into the window and scream. He was unaffected by the loss of her world and everything she knew.

“You should’ve let them throw me into space,” she said.

“You would prefer death? I’ve gone to great expense to ensure you survived.” The first emotion she’d heard from him entered his voice: anger. “The medallion I gave you hid what you really are from those around you, except Urik. You would be dead without it. You would be dead if I hadn’t rescued you from the slave trade.”

“You kept me alive for what? To become a slave? To just accept I can’t ever go home to family?” she replied.

“You should be grateful.”

“Grateful,” she repeated. Anger gave her renewed strength and cleared her mind. “If you were flung into the future ten thousand years and turned into a slave, would you feel
grateful
?”

“I would accept my circumstances and adapt.”

She gave him a long look. His nearness, heat and strength were too distracting. Mandy rose, furious he had the nerve to be angry with her when she was the one forced into a new reality. She couldn’t imagine someone at his rank going to the other extreme, yet the confidence in his voice told her he at least thought he could.

“Why did you save me?” she asked suddenly. She put distance between them, unsettled by her body’s response to him. “Why did you trade five ships for me? You’ve made it clear you didn’t want to.”

Akkadi said nothing.

“Akkadi, what do you want from me?” she demanded.

“I want you to be under Urik’s protection, not mine yet, and never to be forced to rescue you again.” The anger in his voice was unmistakable this time.

The words stung. He’d saved her yet still rejected her. Mandy pulled off the medallion he’d given her and threw it at him. He caught it.

“I’ll take my chances on my own,” she said. “No one here wants anything to do with me, and no one will help me get home.” She strode past him, towards the door. “I didn’t ask to be brought here!”

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“Into the hallway. Someone on this ship will want something to do with me. If not, I’ll walk into space.”

The door was solid when she reached it, and she tried to walk through it twice before planting her hands against it. When she turned, Akkadi stood where she’d left him, watching her closely.

“What my people will do to you is unconscionable,” he started, walking towards her with measured steps. “Even if you hate me for what I’ve done, I will not allow you to throw your life away. The races in our galaxy are suffering from a disease that only the blood of a purebred human can heal. When the Ishta tire of using you for your womb to breed new hybrids, they will keep you alive for hundreds of years, immobilized, draining every drop of your blood through a process I will call beyond painful. The type of excruciating pain you will be in will never end, so long as they can use our technology to keep your brain and your heart alive.” He entered her personal space and paused. “You will feel everything they do to you.”

Her breath caught. She stepped back until the wall blocked her escape. Akkadi fell silent. Despite his size and nearness, she felt no threat from him. As in their first meeting, she noticed only how striking he was, how his warmth seemed to make the terrifying world more real while also making her feel safe in it.

“Take this.” He lifted the medallion into the space between them. “I will do as I promised and protect you. This is how you remain hidden from others.”

“I don’t want your protection. I want to go home!”

“You can’t, if you don’t survive.” Amusement crossed his features. “Nakis rely on logic rather than emotion. You understand logic, don’t you?”

She glared at him and snatched the medallion.

“If my people were ever to know I protected you instead of turning you over to heal them …” He trailed off. “You have cost me a great deal already.”

“Why haven’t you?” she asked. “Don’t you suffer from the same disease?”

“My family has no genetic flaws. We never have. It is why my father is the ruler of our people and his children lead the empire. My eldest sister will inherit the empire upon his death. My family has no need to do to you what they will on the planet.”

A chill went through her. She was lucky to have been found by the one alien that didn’t need to torture her. A small voice whispered that it had to be more than luck. Gonor, Urik and now Akkadi. All three had reason to facilitate her capture and a great deal to lose if word got out they helped her escape.

“Don’t leave my quarters,” he directed. “I have to alert my family that you’re here.”

He seemed to be waiting for something. She realized she was blocking his path and raised her eyebrows, irritated he wanted her to move instead of going around her. Mandy stepped out of his way. He disappeared through the door. She reached out to it to find it solid again.

“Damn aliens!” she muttered.

She slapped it then felt another dizzy spell sweep over her. Without Akkadi to anchor her, she was close to being sick again after all she’d been through so far this day.

Chapter Four

Akkadi strode through the halls to the uppermost deck of the space station, where his mother was in residence. He couldn’t help feeling surprised – and furious – at the human in his quarters. Other dwellers of the ship moved out of his path quickly and bowed as he passed. It was the same respect the human should have but didn’t.

He reached his mother’s quarters and entered the antechamber, where two guards ten feet tall stood.

They bowed their heads, and he waited for their transmission to reach his mother and return. One stepped aside, granting him access to her quarters. Akkadi entered. The quarters were much like his, with windows facing space and wide-open spaces filled with white furniture. The only exception was the colorful display of glassware in pink, green, blue, and amber that lined one wall of her quarters. The display of such wealth was extravagant. One plate would replace five times what he’d paid to buy the human back from the slave traders. His mother had hundreds on display. She’d told him once they were part of her dowry, a reminder of the world she left behind to marry his father.

“Hello, son,” his mother said, emerging from her private chamber. Standing a full head and shoulders shorter than he was, her features were ageless, her deep blue eyes lined with smile lines and her ebony hair streaked with silver that matched her clothing.

He bowed, as was customary to someone higher ranking, even knowing she disliked it when he did.

“It’s not customary to see one’s son so often, I don’t think,” she teased. “What brings you to me this day?”

“I am deeply sorry for disturbing you, my queen,” he said with formality.

“You know I always love to see you. I would like to see you more often.”

“My duties and our custom –”

“I know, Akkadi. I can tease my son can’t I?” she asked with some impatience. “I’ll have to assume you’re not here for a social visit.”

“I am not,” he confirmed.

She gazed at him, waiting. He returned her look, always a little wary of the woman born to a time and place so far from his own. After his discussions with the human, he felt less comfortable around his mother than usual. His mother came from a similar time as Mandy, brought to the future when Akkadi’s father opened the star gate. It was tradition for each son and daughter of a Naki ruler to open the wormhole upon his or her twenty-fifth birthday. The fifth in his family to do so, Akkadi was the only to be rewarded with a craft of purebred humans from the past.

Though right now, he didn’t think of dealing with the human in his quarters was particularly rewarding.

“A craft came through the star gate,” he started. “I opened it, per your request, despite my objections to wasting so much energy.”

“Tell me something new, son,” his mother said with interest. “You’re the youngest. Our last hope at finding what we need to preserve our bloodline. Did the craft survive intact?”

“It did. It carried several hundred, but I was not able to save many.”

“All your power couldn’t save more?”

“No, mother,” he said with some amusement. “The power you think I possess doesn’t exist.”

“Akkadi,” she chided.

“It is my turn to tease, is it not?”

“I want to know what happened!”

Akkadi smiled. He had always been curious about his mother’s emotional outbursts. Trained to use his left brain rather than his right, he long since learned to control his human side and buried it under a sense of duty and discipline that left him regarded as one of the strongest Naki princes ever born. Yet he took pleasure out of teasing his mother every once in awhile.

“The creatures on the planet learned the secret to needing a purebred human. They wiped out most of them in their attempts to mimic our results,” he said.

“Unfortunate,” his mother said, her voice tight. She sighed. “What your people to do mine is nothing short of ghastly.” She sat down and clasped her hands in her lap.

While he liked her fire, he didn’t like to see her sad. Akkadi sat across from his mother. Her gaze grew distant, and he guessed she was recalling the world she left behind thirty-five years ago, when she was brought here by the wormhole his father opened.

“How many did you save?” she asked.

“Five. Two females and three males.”

“Only five,” she murmured. “A plane carries so many more. Oh, Akkadi!”

“It took me too long to find them,” he said quietly. “I notified Urik, but he, too was too late.”

She took his hand and squeezed it. Akkadi glanced down, reminded of Mandy on the planet. He had squeezed her hand like this after touching the soft, warm skin of her face. Her large eyes conveyed so much emotion, and he had been ensnared by her turmoil, her full lips and the shape of her body. He squeezed her hands instinctively, wanting to comfort her as he did his mother.

“What of the females?” His mother’s voice pulled him from his thoughts. “Are they healthy?”