Ultimate Passage: New Beginnings: Box Set ( Books 1-4) (26 page)

Marissa started to seethe, and knew she’d better get away from this subject. It was pissing her off. This was how she’d become embroiled in the whole situation to begin with. “How did you get them here? How do the Asazi get to Earth? Are you instrumental in that?”

“Instrumental? More than that. I create the portals.”

“Wait. What do you mean?”

“I control their entry to Earth.”

“And they don’t know that? They aren’t stupid. How is it they don’t know?”

“They believe their scientists.”

“Let me guess, you’re their scientist? Or you have something to do with their scientists? So if what you want is to return to Earth, why don’t you simply go through one of your portals?”

“I have tried. It always collapses. But then I realized, I would be leaving my own kind, my love’s descendants, behind.”

“How is it you can talk in my head? Do you read minds? How do you keep my legs from working?”

“You have many questions. No mindreading. Merely projecting my voice, listening when you address me, and controlling your muscles, to a degree. The degree you have already witnessed.”

“Saraz, as far as my being here—”

He lowered his head and took her nipple in his mouth. She raised her hands, but he pushed them back with his mind. She could feel that; she was beginning to recognize the feeling when he took over parts of her body.

“Stop. Saraz.” Her body betrayed her, aroused, throbbing, a wetness growing between her legs.

He raised his head from sucking on her breast. “You will begin producing milk soon.” He kept her bound with his will, his fingers exploring, her body betraying her as tears slid down the side of her face.

“If you don’t stop touching me, I will do something to cause me to lose the baby.” She hoped the bluff would work. Hoped he didn’t know that she would never do anything to hurt her child.

His hands froze. He studied her, then released his hold on her muscles. She scrambled to her feet.

“You do not mean that. You would not harm your baby. But I will not force myself on you.”

“I don’t see why you’d need to. You have women here. How many women are there?”

“Around forty.”

“Wow. That many? How do you get them here?” What she really wondered was more along the lines of, why did they stay? And did they all share him? And did they have his babies?

“All will be revealed in time.” He snapped his fingers. When two concubines came in—two older and different ones—he laid out his instructions. “Prepare a room and a meal for Carrier. We will all dine together tonight. We will welcome Carrier to our family.”

The women had shocked looks on their faces. Marissa wondered if this wasn’t commonly done, or if it was because of her appearance.

Naked, a vision of male sexiness, he left the room. Marissa turned her head away. She didn’t want to be looking at him, thinking of him, or feel attracted to him, especially when she couldn’t tell how much of it had been created by his being in her head or by her own libido.

F
inn looked
at the man he’d mourned. The man he’d called father for most of his life. The man who he’d thought was dead for more than a decade. His father was holding Raiza’s child, hoisted, comforting him. Finn let go of Raiza, his arms and hands useless, numb from shock.

The two Kormic who’d originally brought him here came into sight. They surveyed the scene, then turned to Finn’s father. “Balif, is all good?”

“You’re Balif?” Finn said. “I have been here for days. You never came to see me?”

His father put the boy-child down. Approaching Finn, he put his arms out. “I had no idea it was you. I was worried it was someone else. Someone who could hurt me.” He indicated Raiza, the child, and the other two Kormic. “Even hurt them.” Then he wrapped his arms around Finn.

Finn kept his arms at his sides. He did not know how to feel. He wanted to feel elation that his father was alive, but instead he felt anger at the knowledge that his father had been alive all this time and had never reached out to let Finn know, and that anger reigned supreme. He turned away. “You—you don’t care. You started a new life, had a new son. All of us are nothing to you.”

“Finn. You don’t understand. The ones who struck me and hoped to leave me for dead—I had to make sure that you were safe from them. Pretending I’d died was the only option I had. If they’d known I was alive...” His father wiped his brow, the lines deep, the worry evident.

“I have mourned you for many years.”

“As I have mourned you, son.”

“How can you say that? With a new family.” Finn stormed off, fighting the taste of disgust in his mouth.

Footsteps ran behind him, and a gentle hand alit on his shoulder, then touched his arm. He turned. Raiza had followed him. “Your father cannot go home. He is wanted for being a traitor.”

“Justifiably so,” Finn responded, then thought of himself and his own circumstances. But his situation was different. Wasn’t it?

“So without knowing, you have decided against your father? You are no better than the Asazi soldiers who attacked him and left him to die.” Nostrils flared, brows tipped in a well-defined V, she turned away.

“Wait.” Finn reached to stop her, but the original two Kormic who had captured him leaped out of the bushes, spears at the ready.

“I meant her no harm,” Finn explained.

“My brothers.” Raiza let a small smile diminish the anger on her face. “They also chose to go with Balif, your father.”

“I’m confused.”

“I found your father dying in the forest after being attacked by his own kind.”

Attacked by his own kind? It was common knowledge he had been attacked by Kormic. And that he was supposed to be dead. So who was spreading the untruths?

“Why was he attacked?” Finn interrupted.

“That is his story to tell. Ask him if you want to give him a chance.”

He did want to.

She continued, “I found him dying. I helped him. Helping him divided our settlement. He was expelled by the Elders, but I could not leave him or let him leave me. My heart was tied to his. My brothers and a few others were tired of the hate, so they went with us. We could not stay in the Farlands. We were not welcome, and we could not stay in the Heartland because the Asazi hate us.”

“This is not safe either, is it? Both sides would kill you.”

“At least it is less populated here.”

“But you are in danger from both sides.”

She inclined her head in agreement.

“And you did this for my father.”

Again she nodded.

Maybe Par deserved a word.
“I think I do need to talk to him.”

A smile transformed her features. She performed a half-bow, hands clasped together in front of her chest.

Finn found his father standing by the fire. “You have not changed.”

“You have. You are a man.”

He thought of the child Marissa was carrying, wanting to share that news with his father, unsure if he should. “You have found a good mate in Raiza. She was kind to me while I was a prisoner.”

“She saved my life. If not for her, I would have died.”

Finn nodded. “She would not give me specifics.”

“I was wounded from behind by one of ours.”

“How can you be sure? Were you shot?”

“No. Stabbed. Finn, you know Raiza. She’s my woman. Has been since sometime after she saved my life. I am sorry you were held. They weren’t sure if you were an enemy of mine. We have to be very cautious. If I’d had a thought that it was you wandering around in Midland...” Finn’s father reached out for the young boy-child. “This is Feroz. My son.” He paused. “My other son. He speaks Asazi and Kormic.”

Finn nodded. He understood that his father had to protect himself. Then he turned to study the child. He was a blend of both races, but showed far fewer human traits than either race from his home world. He had Asazi wings and skin, coupled with the bumpy, spiky knobs the Kormic had on their heads and the top halves of their faces.

“Hi,” little Feroz said in Asazi, a serious look on his young face.

Raiza picked him up. “I will give you time to catch up. Let’s go practice your bow skills, Feroz.”

Finn’s father led him away from Raiza, the boy, and the two Kormic. “Son, why are you wandering around in Midland alone?” Par sat on a boulder.

Finn joined him, then scrubbed at his face. It had been so long since he’d said the word Par. He was nervous about trying it out, after all this time. “It’s a long story. Probably not as long as yours. Why are you here?”

“Mine reason is simple.” His father toed the dirt, making senseless patterns, one after another. “I was betrayed. Probably because of my political leanings, because I wasn’t happy with the status quo. Maybe because someone else wanted the position I was being considered for.”

“What position? Who?”

“Governor-Select. The
who
part doesn’t matter now. I have a new life. I don’t dwell on the past, and I won’t go back to it, unless I’m forced to deal with the one who put me in this position. The one who almost killed me. Let’s go back to you. Were you banished?”

“I should have been, but no. I’m here looking for someone who was banished. A human. My woman.”

“How is it that you have a woman who is human?”

“I met her during the Third Wave. Par, she’s pregnant.”

His father sucked in a breath. “And she is here? How far along?”

“Not far, I don’t think. She isn’t showing yet.”

“I will be a grandfather.” He shook his head as though it was too much to take in. “But wait. What about Alithera and your Binding to her?”

“Called off.”

His father cocked his head, opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, then nodded. “She was a good kid, that one. Spirited.”

More than you know
. Finn nodded back. What else could he do? Alithera’s wings, her escape, all of that was a side story now, considering that Marissa was missing. “These Kormic, they are different—” He didn’t know how to finish his sentence. His father was with a Kormic now, had a child with her.
Curses
. That child was Finn’s own half-brother.

“Yes, they are nothing like we grew up to believe. Nothing like the beings we have spent generations killing.”

“And one saved your life.”

“More than one, Finneas. Raiza helped me, but when her tribe threatened to kick her out because she loved me, she left, and her brothers and quite a few cousins and friends left, as well. We are all together in a small settlement on the outskirts of Midland. Not all Kormic are filled with hate. A misplaced hate. Our present generations are not the ones that put them in the Farlands.”

“No, that is true, but our present generations wage war on them, kill them, persecute them. And vice versa.”

“A war based on ignorance, perpetuated by ignorance and a false belief in a false god.”

“You too?”

His father looked at him, a quizzical expression on his face.

“You don’t believe in a god?” Finn rose and began to pace. “I lost my faith some time ago.”

“My faith is in goodness and integrity. Not so much in the Asazi and the Kormic and the actions they take.”

Finn did like the sound of that. He looked across the clearing at Raiza and Feroz, and at the two Kormic who brought him here. His father had a life here. He had no reason to return to the Asazi, no reason to do anything but what he had been doing for the last decade. “I have to go.”

“To find the woman.” Par crossed his arms over his chest. He still reminded Finn of the soldier he’d been when Finn was growing up.

“Marissa. Yes, to find her.”

“Let me help.”

T
he blonde
and the redhead led Marissa to a room. She was still clad in a towel-like cloth from the bath. She lay on a mattress, waiting for the next step, and closed her eyes.

Marissa was asleep when the two women returned and shook her gently, rousing her from the deepest sleep and the most rest she’d had since she left Texas—no, make that Earth. Both were attired in diaphanous sheer veils, head-to-toe, one in pinkish hues, the other in blue. Both had shimmering hair and glossed lips. They helped her up and dressed her in an outfit not much different from their own in a light green.

Marissa looked in the mirror and twirled around. There was no way she could wear this. It was sheer. Her nipples poked through as if announcing her arrival, and the strip she’d left between her legs a few days ago played peek-a-boo as she spun around. Shoot, she could even see the outline of her ass. She looked at the blonde. “I’m not wearing this. What’s your name?” Odd that she should ask the name of the woman who’d had two fingers in her a couple of hours ago. She blushed at the memory.

“Cinia.” The blonde plucked at the fabric, pulling it out, making the sheerness even more obvious as Marissa’s nudity beneath the garment was more pronounced. “You have to wear it.”

“No, I don’t. Where are my clothes?”

“They were filthy. Insect-infested. Saraz ordered them destroyed. Burned. Even the smoke stank.” She tittered at her own joke, then ran her fingers over Marissa’s hair and down, touching her nipple, tracing the contour of her breast.

Marissa pulled back. Saraz wasn’t here to order her to behave this way, so why was she?

The redhead brushed Marissa’s hair, her touch gentle, almost a caress. “My name is Taya.”

“Saraz isn’t here, so why...”

“Why are we enjoying you?”

Marissa nodded.

“We are here with no other interaction, neither male nor female. And as far as male goes, there is only Saraz. So...” She gave a one-shoulder shrug, as if to say,
What other options do we have?

Marissa didn’t understand it, but thankfully she wasn’t in the position to judge, and if she could get out of here, she’d never be in their position, would never have to do the same.

Finn popped to her mind, and just as quickly, tears sprang from her eyes. What was with her?
The crying came so easily. God, she missed him. Would she ever see him again?

“What you were saying, about helping me. Does that still stand?”

Taya and Cinia locked eyes, then turned her way. “Yes, but we must go through with this dinner that Saraz has planned. After that, then we will put a plan into action.” Taya smoothed the fabric of her own dress.

“Why are you helping me? Really?”

“You may bring about a change we do not want. And we do not want to have to share Saraz. Not with you, and not with a prophecy.”

Taya tied Marissa’s top over her cleavage, arranging the folds so that they didn’t conceal anything.

Marissa pulled away.

“Do not do anything to arouse suspicion. You must be a willing participant, at least as far as Saraz can see.”

Taya pinned a gold clip into Marissa’s hair, then stepped back and studied her handiwork. She swiveled Marissa so that she could look in the mirror. “Beautiful, wouldn’t you say?”

Marissa had to agree. She’d coiffed her hair artfully, piled high, ringlets and curls slipping out of the arrangement, framing her face. Marissa’s skin glowed a golden color from the bath and the lotions the other women had applied.

Cinia reached toward a plant in a corner of the room, stripped a leaf off, then peeled and picked at it until she had a dainty stick with a slightly thicker end. Then she took a tiny pot off the table by the mirror, opened it, and swirled the leaf’s stem in its contents. Pulling it out, she turned to Marissa. “Close your eyes.”

Marissa closed them.

“Be still.”

Marissa held her breath. The brushy stick traced the outlines of her upper eyelids, near her lashes.

Cinia blew on her eyes. “Now open them.”

Marissa opened her eyes and looked in the mirror. Cinia had outlined them, and combined with the golden hue of her skin, it gave her an exotic look. Marissa barely recognized her normal tomboyish self. “Wow. What did you do to my skin?” She waved her arm, and the gold color shifted and shimmered with her movement.

Cinia simply smiled, then turned to Taya. “I think we are ready.”

“Wait. If you want me gone so badly, and you don’t want Saraz to be into me, why are you doing this?”

“If we did not do what we are supposed to do, Saraz would be angry. Then if something should happen, like your disappearance, he’d know.”

Business as usual. Got it.

As a final touch, Taya handed Marissa a pair of shoes that were very close to ballet slippers in a green and gold color. It reminded Marissa of the rich colors she’d seen at the dress store on prom dresses. She slipped them on.

The three of them made their way out of the room. Marissa was curious. She hadn’t explored Saraz’s place much. She definitely had never seen a room here that would hold forty people. That was how many women he’d said he had here, and that they were all going to dinner. She would love to explore this dark, dank, majestic, presumably medieval castle. It was last thing she’d ever expect to find on another planet, that was for sure.

Cinia and Taya led her down a long hallway with stone walls and stone flooring. The walls were dotted with candles placed in mirrored bowls, casting an eerie sort of disco light. The hallway ended at a double door made of dark wood. From the other side of the large door came the sound of merriment and music. Women’s laughter merged with what sounded like flutes.

Taya turned around, hand on the door handle. “Ready?”

No.
“Yes.” She might as well get it over with. Put on a pretense of being a part of a family or a harem or something. Then she could get the show on the road.

Taya opened the door, pushing it with both hands. The heavy wooden door opened slowly, revealing a great room much like the ones Marissa had seen in King Arthur movies. The spacious area was dominated by a long table made of a dark wood that matched the door. There were at least twenty-five or thirty chairs on each side of the rectangular table. At the end, farthest from Marissa, was a chair worthy of being called a throne. It was tall-backed and intricately carved with the heads of beasts with open mouths perching on its arms. A plush fabric in crimson covered the back, and from what she could tell, went all the way down to the seat. It was empty, but Marissa knew it belonged to Saraz. No one had to tell her that.

The room was filled with Asazi women, a hive that whirred with business and merriment. All of the Asazi women were dressed seductively, in similar see-through veil tops and skirts. They ranged in age from early twenties to what would pass for middle-aged, at least with humans. Marissa wondered what middle age was for Asazi. They were a buzzing mass of womanhood, glittery, shimmery, chatting, and giggling.

Speaking of Saraz—she glanced around the room, seeking her host. She thought he’d stand out, even in a room filled with posturing, vamping Asazi women.

Ah, there he was, in the middle of a circle of admiring fans. Saraz raised his head from a petite brunette, spied Marissa, smiled, and beckoned her over.

Marissa fought to plaster a smile on her face. It was no easy feat because he repulsed her, what with his overt advances and leg-muscle-disabling ways.

“Marissa.” His voice boomed over the din created by forty or so giggling, clamoring, chatting Asazi women.

The room fell silent.

“My lovelies, I present an honored guest, Marissa. She is carrying Bearer, and you all know how much I have anticipated the fruition of the prophecy.”

The room filled with the ooohs and aaahs of womanly voices as they all turned to face Marissa, their backs to Saraz. Thus he was unaware of the dirty looks cast Marissa’s way, though she saw them in full force.

The women clapped, their applause predictable and deafening, reverberating off the walls. It was as phony and contrived as the smiles attached to the tiny-scale-laced skin of the Asazi faces of his concubines.
Aren’t you a concubine too, now?
The voice of Marissa’s doubt crowded out the sound of applause.

Saraz sat Marissa on his right. She spent the meal trying to figure out which of the women she had displaced, looking to see which was giving her the dirtiest of looks, but they were all equally dirty, equally vile. Why were they so against her? Against his fulfilling his prophecy? Not that she believed in all that crap.

Taya sat next to Marissa, a smile too bright to be real on her own lips.

Marissa leaned in, inhaling Taya’s flowery-musky scent. “Why do they hate me so much?”

“You will bring a change, and none of us are sure about this change. All we know is that it does not bode well for any of us.”

“That’s why you and Cinia are willing to help me escape?” Not out of the goodness of their hearts, it would seem. “I guess if I don’t survive Midland, it won’t devastate any of you.”

Taya glanced down, guilt evident on her features. “It is not personal.”

The hell it isn’t.
“Let’s just get through this meal so we can do what we have to do.” Marissa turned away from Taya and smiled at Saraz.

He watched her with narrowed eyes. She hoped his hearing wasn’t supernaturally good and cursed herself for her recklessness.

The dinner lasted longer than Marissa wanted. Then again, two minutes would have been two minutes too long. Every so often, groups of women would rise, leave the room, sashaying veils billowing, and would return with food-laden platters.

Marissa turned to Taya for an explanation.

“We do not have servants. We share responsibilities when we have special events.” Taya waved her hand in a grandiose manner. “Events like this.”

“What about you and Cinia?” She’d noticed they hadn’t participated in serving.

“We are exempt. For now.”

Marissa raised a brow in question.

“Current favorites. Hierarchy,” Taya added.

And the ones with the most to lose,
ran through Marissa’s mind. That explained their eagerness to assist in her escape.

Many courses later, stuffed with foreign food she couldn’t taste because of the stress and anxiety, Marissa pushed back from the table, assuming the whole affair was over, ready for it to be.

Saraz clapped twice, hands raised high. “Let the entertainment begin.”

Marissa snapped her head his way, frozen mid-push.
What? More?
“What entertainment?”

Four women danced in, doing backflips, forward flips and other types of gymnastics Marissa hadn’t bothered to learn in her misspent youth. Another four women played musical instruments.

“Seriously?” She looked at Saraz, who was beaming with pride and expectation. As if her opinion on this entertainment thing mattered. She forced a smile to her face and did a fake clap.

One woman played a flute, two had drums of a sort, and the fourth a set of maracas. Halfway out of her chair, Marissa sat back down. “Shit,” she muttered under her breath. And so she suffered through the acrobatics, gymnastics, belly dancing, and music playing. Throughout the rest of the evening Saraz kept glancing her way, as if he was still seeking her approval.

Moments like that almost made it easy to forget he was a dangerous, shape-shifting creature on a mission to take her baby. He almost made it easy with his attractive looks, eagerness to please, and blatantly over-the-top sexiness.
He’s a nut who believes in a whacked-out fabricated prophecy,
she reminded herself, over and over again.

A couple more hours of entertainment drained Marissa. When Saraz finally closed the night’s festivities, she almost burst into tears of joy and relief.

Saraz held a hand out to Taya and Cinia. “Shall we retire?”

Marissa’s almost-tears of joy threatened to become tears of dismay and to spill over. No, he couldn’t take her allies away.

“Marissa?” Saraz raised a brow. “Join us?”

Fuck, no,
she wanted to scream. Before her filter could give out and throw her into a heap of trouble, two other Asazi women approached, both very young.

Taking Saraz’s hands, they smiled beguiling smiles at him. “We have a request,” they sang out in unison.

He looked at Cinia and Taya as if checking in with them.

“Go. It is fine.” Cinia stepped closer to Saraz on tiptoe and kissed the corner of his mouth.

“Yes,” Taya agreed, kissing the other corner.

He put his arms around the two newcomers and turned her way again. “Marissa?”

She feigned a yawn, even a stretch, for effect. “I think I’ll call it an early night.” Marissa turned toward the heavy, dark double doors, then turned back. “Where am I staying?” She didn’t want to say,
Where is my room
, because that had a ring of permanence she wasn’t willing to fake.

“We’ll take you.” Taya grabbed her hand and Cinia’s, tugging both of them toward the door.

The hallway was darker than when they’d first entered, as if some of the candles had gone out. It was more difficult to see the stone walls, and the dimness hid the occasional unevenness in the floor.

When all three were well out of earshot of the great room, Marissa said to the two women, “That was lucky, wasn’t it?”

“Luck?” Taya said, while Cinia laughed. “No luck. We had a backup plan. And those two are looking to curry favor and rise in the ranks.”

Marissa kept from wrinkling her nose and showing her complete disgust at several dozen women vying for the attention of a solitary male. Curiosity prompted another question. “You aren’t worried about losing your status?”

With each step the hallway became dimmer, the walls more rough, and the flooring more uneven, as if the rocks were merely placed there, not smoothed or contoured.

Taya giggled at Marissa’s question. Cinia responded, though. “No. We have an alliance. It works for us.”

“Alliance? And if you didn’t? Then what? You get voted out of the house? Off of the island?”

Cinia looked confused. “I do not understand.”