Zar: Science Fiction Alien Abduction Romance (Alien Raiders' Brides Book 1) Page 9

  "The Reaper also happens to be the asshole who controls the Black Hall. You'll see it, if you're very lucky. It's the stronghold that houses most people during the long night. You know what that is, female? Did Zar tell you?"

  Ashley nodded weakly.

  "Good," Roagh said. "That spares me some time. Now, do you imagine a proud man like Zar will back off when The Reaper asks him why he's suddenly letting a female run his ship? Of course he won't. He'll tell The Reaper to fuck himself. In a polite way, if he can control himself. And then The Reaper, who is just as proud, will leave his domain on Luminos behind the gates when the long night comes.

  "Do you understand me? Your little trick will cost a countless amount of lives yet if your mate doesn't develop a sense of humility in the next three minutes."

  Ashley's head was spinning. She felt sick to her stomach. Some of it must have shown on her face, because a tinge of pity flashed by Roagh's eyes.

  "I didn't know," she said in a broken voice. "I just wanted to save my friends."

  "I believe you," Roagh said, reaching out his hand as if he wanted to touch her before he pulled it back, remembering who she belonged to. "There is nothing to be done about it now. I'll see what Zar says after the meeting and if need be, I will go and talk to The Reaper myself.

  "As for you, keep that in mind. What's done is done. Don't make it any worse now."

  They resumed their walking. Ashley felt like a balloon with all the air let out of her. As much as she hated the captain for being so coarse and lecturing her on what needed to be done, the levity she'd felt was gone. Roagh was right. She'd been so happy, so proud to save the women that she hadn't considered for a second what it did to Zar's position.

  Nayanors weren't Terrans, but she'd made all her judgments on Terran customs.

  The truth was even worse. Ashley opened her mouth to tell Roagh, to ask him for help or advice but she didn't dare. It was quite clear that the captain was only talking to her because he was trying to protect the harbinger. Otherwise, the "female" probably wouldn't have been worth conversing with.

  Truthfully, Ashley knew things could get much worse. If Felicia and the other two made it back to the Union, which she had to believe they would, given that Zar had let them go – not knowing the secrets they carried – there would be hell to pay. If anyone in the Union finally found Luminos, what was there in store for her? And Zar? And everyone else on the planet?

  She had never been that conflicted in her life. Of course she wanted the raids to end, for the Union to discover Luminos and free the women imprisoned there. On the other hand, she hadn't considered her actions from the Nayanors' point of view.

  If someone found out Zar's mate had revealed their secret, Ashley didn't doubt he'd be killed. She herself would probably suffer the same fate. As for all the women on Luminos, their children, would they be spared the wrath of Nayanors?

  She didn't know. She didn't have any answers when only that morning, the world had seemed pretty clear and straightforward to her.

  Courage. Have courage, damn it.

  "Roagh," she said, looking around carefully to make sure no one was nearby.

  The captain turned to her with flashing eyes that told her he probably didn't appreciate being called by his first name.

  "Captain Roagh," she corrected. "Is anyone overhearing us right now? Could they?"

  He looked at her suspiciously, before shaking his head.

  "Nayanors don't spy on their own," he said. "What is it? I promised the harbinger I'd get you back to him."

  Yes, I remember. I can imagine he could live for an hour without fucking me as you seem to think.

  "There's more," she admitted.

  Roagh's face dropped, but Ashley had no way back. She had to tell someone before she got a lot of people killed. Nayanors or not, she wasn't them. Mindless disregard for the lives of others wasn't something she wanted to be remembered for when all she'd been trying to do was help.

  "Speak," Roagh ordered harshly.

  "Promise me you'll help," she asked him. "I swear I never wanted to get anyone hurt, only to save the women you stole."

  "Speak, female, now."

  "Before they left, I told the women what Zar had told me about your world," Ashley said quickly. "I knew nothing about the long night then, or about The Reaper or anything like that."

  "What do they know?" Roagh thundered at her, alerting some warriors walking by them.

  "Is that the harbinger's mate, Captain?" one of them dared to ask.

  Roagh gave him a look so vicious it made the warrior take a step back.

  "Walk away while you still have legs to walk on!" Roagh roared to him.

  When the warrior hurried away, Roagh grabbed Ashley by the arm and pulled her into a small alcove. The grip hurt and it seemed that the "no touching" rule didn't apply when she'd managed to seriously piss someone off.

  "If you lie to me now, female, you'll regret it," Roagh said furiously. "What do they know!?"

  "The name of the planet," Ashley said. "And that you travel through wormholes."

  Roagh growled, fury plain in his deep eyes as he raised his hand, ready to strike her. Ashley waited. It had been the reaction she'd prepared for, but it didn't come.

  Somehow, Zar's name stayed between them, shielding her from all harm. Roagh seemed to be shaking from rage, but he didn't hit her.

  "If you lie to me now ..." he warned her.

  "I'm not!" Ashley said. "I want you to help me, I wouldn't lie to you with so much at stake!"

  "I wish I had your confidence," Roagh said darkly. "If your friends reach the Union, I wonder if there is any helping anyone."

  "Will you try?" Ashley asked.

  Roagh finally seemed to be calming down. She didn't know the reason why and couldn't push him any further than she already had, but there was definitely something.

  "I will do what I can to protect my people," Roagh answered.

  Ashley resisted telling him a few good words on the topic of selfishness, but stopped herself. Arguing with Nayanors, she'd found, was as fruitful as bouncing a ball off the wall, hoping the wall would crack.

  "In the meanwhile, say nothing to Zar," Roagh warned her. "He is not as calm about these matters as I am."

  Calm is not the word I would use.

  "Come now," the captain called her. "We're expected and if we don't show up soon enough, Zar will have my head."

  Ashley followed in silence this time, keenly aware of the captain brooding next to her. She couldn't entirely blame the man, considering she'd just given him terrible news about his home world and people. Despite feeling guilty about the suffering she might have caused, Ashley didn't know if with her newfound knowledge, she would have done anything differently the previous day.

  Nayanor raids caused suffering all the time, all across the galaxy. It was high time they paid for it too.

  Seeing a lot of guards, Ashley guessed they'd reached the women. Behind the huge doors, she could hear terrified muttering and crying.

  Gods, did you really just stick them in one room like cattle?

  Her resolve strengthened again. As far as she was concerned, Nayanors could take their self-righteous attitude and go all the way to hell.

  "Considering what we just discussed," Roagh told her sharply. "I dare you to say anything stupid in there."

  Ashley didn't dignify that with a response.

  She didn't have any intention of doing anything that stupid anyhow. It was clear she and everyone else behind those doors were going to arrive on Luminos. No stopping it now. Since she was in a key position to possibly make their lives a bit more tolerable, Ashley didn't want to gamble her freedoms for a plan she hadn't thought through.

  The doors opened. There was some screeching inside as if the women thought someone was coming to hurt them. Ashley felt her blood boil.

  She stepped forward, walking into the hall, ignoring the captain by her side. Women cleared way for them.

  "Hi," Ashley said,
in her best impression of someone cool and collected in a bad situation. "My name is Ashley Donovan. Some of you may know me from the Arctic station. I was kidnapped just like you were but I was lucky enough to happen to be the mate of the harbinger."

  She ignored the vicious look Roagh gave her when she spoke of her "luck".

  "I know you're scared," she went on. "I'm scared too. I have come to explain a few things to you in the hope you can take that knowledge and steel your courage for what's coming.

  "That rocking you felt last night was the ship traveling through a wormhole..."

  15

  Zar

  The Reaper.

  The Lord of the Black Hall truly was the last person Zar wanted to speak to.

  Nayanors weren't a kindly species, not to others and not to their own. The members of the warrior race bore no special love toward each other. They weren't loyal to the home world and their people like Brions were, nor were they territorial like Corgans who protected their holy worlds no matter what.

  Despite that, most Nayanors felt some kind of bond between them. It was a sort of kinship that made them fight for each other's continued existence even if they preferred the others did the existing as far from them as possible. In short, Nayanors weren't very social, which made the long night even more unbearable, being cooped up together in large halls that barely housed them all.

  Amongst a species like that, Zar still reserved a special loathing for The Reaper.

  The harbinger walked on the bridge in a grim mood. Killing his own officers was never a good thing, as good as it was to get rid of bad blood.

  "Harbinger," Gados saluted him. "The Reaper is waiting. I can put him up on the command throne's screen."

  "Do it," Zar ordered roughly, making the officer of the watch practically run away from his clearly sullied mood.

  Better to get this over with so I can return to Ashley.

  He sat in the command throne that he rarely used. The place of a Nayanor wasn't hiding in the ship, but on the battlefield. Generally Zar left the running of the ship to his officers, bothering to show up to check on the bridge and learn a few new names every few months.

  The image of The Reaper came up on the screen.

  Zar hid his disdain as well as he could. Not only was The Reaper his least favorite person to talk to, the Lord of the Black Hall was also damnably ugly to look at.

  The silvery hair of his species didn't suit The Reaper's uncharacteristically pale skin, making him look old and sickly despite being in his prime. Tied behind his head, the tail The Reaper insisted on sporting pulled the lines of his face into a harsh, unseemly grimace that Zar avoided seeing whenever possible.

  He had to deal with the man nonetheless. The Reaper was the heir to the Black Hall, a massive dark fortress passed down for generations of his forefathers. It was so old no one knew who had built it or if they had been Nayanors at all. The gargantuan scale of the building told Zar that it had originally been intended for a species larger than Nayanors, practically giants by their standards.

  His warrior soul had always ached to see those ancient beings, considering that at an average height of seven feet, Nayanors weren't small either.

  Zar liked the Black Hall. It oozed history, even if he didn't know it. In his more peaceful days, usually after a raid, to take his mind off lesser men celebrating finding their mates, Zar liked wandering the endless walkways of the Hall.

  When he'd been a small boy, his parents had taken him to seek refuge there during the long night. Like all the other boys, Zar had immensely enjoyed climbed on top of statues whose heads he couldn't see from the floor. He liked sitting on thrones large enough to have houses built on them.

  After The Reaper took ownership of the Hall, Zar had visited it less, much to his dismay.

  The Hall was, in great part, the reason why Nayanors were even still alive. No other fortress housed a fraction of what the Hall could bear.

  "Zar Kohora," The Reaper said, sounding like he pressed every word through his teeth like always. "Is the Foront coming home?"

  "It is," Zar replied, thinking of his people back on Luminos. "We have a good haul and we should dock in a day, no more."

  "Good," The Reaper murmured, searching his face as if he had some authority over him. "How many females?"

  "Around two thousand," Zar replied noncommittally.

  The Reaper regarded him with his cruel light blue eyes that only added to him looking like a corpse walking.

  "Are the rumors true, Zar?" The Reaper asked then, clearly unable to avoid the topic further.

  "What rumors?"

  "Don't play dumb with me, harbinger!" The Reaper snapped. "I received some troubling reports."

  "That is indeed troubling," Zar cut in. "If you receive reports from my ship, I have to find that someone and make him a head shorter."

  The Reaper's thin lips curled into a sneering smile.

  "Always the joker," he said with obvious disdain. "I used to like that about you, Zar. Our people aren't known for their sense of humor and it gets so impossibly dull sometimes. I thought I warned you a long time ago not to take it too far."

  Zar said nothing. He was thinking. The image of Ashley appeared before his eyes, gorgeous and smiling, so proud in her firm belief that she was doing the right thing.

  He admired her for that spirit, which was why he was so determined to answer with the same. If a Terran female could afford herself the luxury of pride after having lost everything, so could he. Zar was a Nayanor harbinger. He feared no one.

  The Reaper was now frowning.

  "So they are true, I see," he said. "Confirm it for me then, Zar. Did you let three females escape your ship? Even though you had the chance to enact righteous revenge upon them?"

  "Yes."

  The look of surprise on The Reaper's face was a sight well worth seeing.

  "You admit it freely!" the Lord of the Black Hall roared at him. "Have you lost your damn mind, Zar? What's even worse, I hear you were about to do what was right, but your new female intervened? Is your mate calling the shots now? This is a sad day for our people."

  Zar's blood was boiling, but he managed to cool his nerves for just one more time.

  "My mate has a fierce spirit," he admitted. "She managed to trick a warrior of mine. You don't have to worry about that, I already dealt with the idiot stupid enough to not check his orders with me. As a result, she freed three of her friends.

  "She is a remarkable female. She'll bear me strong sons."

  The Reaper had a cruel smile on his lips.

  "Will she? I'm beginning to doubt your suitability as a harbinger, Zar, if you let your mate influence your better judgment like this."

  "How lucky for me then that you don't get a say in what I am or am not," Zar replied calmly.

  "You insolent upstart!" The Reaper howled. "Don't forget who I am!"

  "I wish I could," Zar said. "Believe me."

  The Reaper growled, but before he could say another word, Zar cut in.

  "No more jokes then," he said, his deep voice dropping to a furious growl. "You and I both know the truth. To say we liked each other would be a lie and an incredible improvement on the hatred I imagine we both feel. Even so, we've managed to coexist so far.

  "You need my ship and I need the Hall. Three females managed to escape my ship. Don't bother pretending they're the first to manage to get away before the ships enter the wormhole. Are you going to start a war between us now over them? Because I can take the Foront somewhere else, if need be. To Lord Rozara, maybe."

  The Reaper bristled. Zar waited, weighing the fate of the people in his domain and on his ship against the other warlord's damn unpredictable temper.

  He'd spoken the truth, however. Recently, the raid ships had been getting into trouble with the Union. Worlds like Terra whose females Nayanors favored were kept under close scrutiny. There had been several clashes with the Union ships, so far to the favor of Nayanors, but both Zar and The Reaper knew the
luck wouldn't last.

  The Foront had never been caught and the hauls Zar delivered were always as good as his word. The Reaper knew that better than anyone, refusing to leave Luminos and preferring to sit in his dark fortress while other warriors did the work for him.

  He could name the price, of course. When the long night came, there was no match for the Black Hall, as much as Zar would have appreciated to have that leverage over The Reaper.

  "Three, you say," The Reaper murmured. "Three isn't much. You just better hope that my fated mate wasn't among them."

  "I'm sure fate wouldn't be that cruel," Zar said, hoping he managed to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. "Am I good to land?"

  The Reaper sighed dramatically as if he was doing him a great favor by letting Zar run his own ship the way he liked it.

  "Yes, yes," The Reaper said. "The Black Hall awaits you, Zar, as always. Tell me just one thing. I believe several of your warriors might have had the same justified questions as I did. Have you dealt with them? I have no use for you if you lose your head in a mutiny on your next raid trip."

  Zar grinned.

  "I keep the order on my ship, thank you for being concerned," he replied venomously. "One more thing, Reaper."

  "Anything for my favorite harbinger," the other warlord replied, the tone of his voice making it very clear how much he would have liked to see Zar dead before his feet.

  "My fated mate is coming with me to the Hall, of course," Zar said. "If you take it upon yourself to take revenge on her, I will make sure you never get to see whether your own mate was among the lost females or not."

  Before The Reaper could reply, Zar shut off the call. He'd had enough of the Lord of the Black Hall for one day.

  He headed back to his quarters, thinking what he could possibly say to Ashley to make sure she behaved as well.

  16

  Ashley

  Ashley arrived back in Zar's quarters in a conflicted mood.

  Captain Roagh dropped her off like some bothersome charge, which she supposed she was. Before Zar opened the door for her, Roagh whispered to her under his breath: