“Now’s your chance.”
She continued to watch him. Emotion swirled in those silver eyes, but she couldn’t read him. Finally, as though tired of being near her, he turned away. His wings, covered with dark-colored tribal tattoos, showed her exactly how powerful his lineage was. Blue and green markings lined his wings, detailing his royal heritage. Bold symbols proclaimed the godless logic he followed. Images of bloody battles spoke of victories he’d led. This feudal lord was no minor Draeken to be trifled with. He would be a strong leader, perhaps stronger than Hillas, and that could only make her people’s pursuit of the Draeken all the harder.
Her next words were soft. “Even with your power, if your people suspect you were behind his death, you’ll be executed.”
“Leave that to me.” He paused, and then turned back to her. “Do exactly as I command, and you will be set free. I give you my word.”
Nalea stood there as his words sunk in. If she could believe his word — and she couldn’t — Roden was giving her a chance at taking down the one Draeken she hated even more than him. Her father. Just thinking of the family connection made bile rise.
With one kill, she could free herself of her secret and drive the Noble War to a critical turning point. Only two people knew the truth about Nalea’s heritage. Apolo, she trusted. Roden, never. If she didn’t want the secret to get out, another man would have to die. And that would mean she’d have to destroy any chance at experiencing the
tahren
bond, even once.
While she still couldn’t read Roden when he spoke truth or lies, she knew he’d lied to her about one thing. If she survived, she was the only remaining legal heir to the Draeken throne. The Draeken, with their traditions, would accept a bastard child of the Puftan bloodline over a lord from a different bloodline. Roden could never claim the throne as long as she lived. Either way, she had a death sentence.
Her choice was simple.
Not help Roden, die now. Help Roden, kill Hillas, hopefully kill Roden, and then die.
She held out a hand. “I accept.”
He looked down at her hand and broke out into a wide grin. “I prefer to seal our agreement with something more apropos with what I have planned.”
Before she could move, he roughly grabbed her shoulders, yanked her to him, and pressed his lips to hers. His hard kiss shut down her argument before the words formed. His strong embrace flooded her with heat, and every memory of his taste, scent, and touch came alive. She responded by shoving at him, which sent her stumbling backward.
He stepped back, and she wiped her lips with the back of her hand. “I hate you.”
“I know,” he replied softly. “But it doesn’t change the fact that you need me.” He tapped his wrist-com again, and she knew the camera lights would be blinking back on any moment. Roden was done with her. For now.
“I own you, Nalea Zyll,” he said in a low voice, his back to her.
She didn’t miss the fact that he’d added his name onto hers. An intentional slight as her people refused to use last names. Only their masters used such names.
He paused just before walking away. “Never forget it.”
With his feet propped on the desk, Roden leaned back in his chair, his wings spread out behind him, draping across the floor. He rolled his neck, trying to ease the tension in his shoulders. Between planning a mutiny, leading the search for a Draeken traitor, and keeping his people safely hidden from the humans, there was little time left to sleep.
After rubbing his temples, he leaned forward and punched several keys on his desk, and the key to his plans filled the screen. The heir to the Draeken throne was still safely locked away in her cell, her heritage unknown to everyone. The tension in his body eased, and he smiled.
There you are, my dear.
His eyes narrowed on the screen. Fyet
, that woman can make push-ups look sexy.
Her light breaths were the only audible sound picked up by the microphone. With the way her golden skin glistened with sweat, she’d been exercising for some time. His shaft grew hard as he imagined her moving up and down on him.
As Nalea rolled onto her back, she eyed the camera with disdain, her glare saying,
fuck you.
Roden smiled. While she couldn’t know she was being watched, he enjoyed that he, too, haunted her thoughts.
What else goes on in that pretty head of yours?
He’d always known his Sephian prisoner possessed secrets. After he first met her and suspected that he was to be her
tahren
, he’d researched her, seeing how he could leverage her weakness in the war. He’d scoured her files, finding nothing. And so he’d dug deeper.
It hadn’t taken long to uncover the forged birth records. The Nalea he knew bore no legal birth record. The one in her files belonged to a still-born Sephian baby with the same name. And, since no father was recorded, it became clear her mother had been hiding something.
Her mother, Nexa, had been a beautiful, petite Sephian, with strong yet feminine features. Nexa had belonged to the Homs house, a Draeken lord Roden had met once in his youth and knew to be a good man. A man known for neither politics nor secrets. But one neighboring house had a far different reputation. That was the Puftan house and childhood home to none other than Hillas Puftan himself. Roden had heard rumors about the Grand Lord’s … appetites, and Nexa fit his tastes perfectly. The poor woman never stood a chance.
Once Roden rationalized the hard truth, he hated his leader all the more for it. The bastard deserved to die for his crimes. How fitting to have the result of one of his crimes be his undoing.
While Roden was confident of his theory, he needed proof. The night Nalea came to his room presented the perfect opportunity to confirm his suspicions without her being the wiser. After tranqing her, he scanned her blood for signs of a Draeken heritage. Not only was it proof positive, but her DNA matched the Puftan bloodline. From there, it didn’t take long to find the faintest hairline scars that betrayed her secrets. Nalea’s father was the most powerful of all Draeken.
Still, there was no way Nexa could’ve forged birth certificates without Draeken help. Homs had put his own life in danger by hiding Nalea. Roden wondered if Nalea knew that the man she killed had risked so much to protect her.
Nalea had been right about one thing. If Hillas had known about her, she would’ve been killed at birth. Hillas was ruthless at protecting his reign. And the Grand Lord clearly suspected something when it came to Nalea. Roden gambled that it was the inordinate amount of time he’d spent with her that garnered Hillas’s attention. Fortunately, that, too, played into Roden’s plans.
Allowing Nalea to kill the Grand Lord was the greatest gift he could give her so that she would accept her role in his plans. Nalea was the key to his end game, but he’d have to move quickly. Even though he deleted all of Nalea’s files, including the archives, he’d no doubt Hillas was capable of doing his own deductive reasoning, especially since Nalea bore far too many of her mother’s facial features.
Roden chuckled when his attention returned to the screen. With every sit-up, Nalea glowered at the camera. It brought comfort to him knowing that he threw her off as much as she did him. He reached for the bottle of spiced rum he’d procured from Club Mayhem before the humans shut it down. The flavor reminded him of
bolgk,
his favorite drink, bringing back memories of home. He unscrewed the cap and paused, then frowned. He sniffed the liquid, but smelled nothing but the sweet smell of sugar alcohol.
He watched the bottle for a moment. Set it down on the desk and examined it. Dark glass with amber liquid. A pretty package all too easily tainted. “What are you hiding in there?” No matter how tired he was, he was careful in his routines. And leaving the cap only loosely tightened certainly wasn’t one of them. His boots landed on the floor with a solid
thud
as he came to his feet. “I’ll be back for you later, my dear,” he murmured to the woman still doing sit-ups, and then clicked off the screen.
Grabbing the bottle, he punched the unlock code, stepped into the hallway, waited for the door to close and lock, before heading down the corridor.
It was late. The base was quiet. His people had quickly grown accustomed to Earth’s orbital schedule, and most would be sleeping at this late hour. He paused at Nalea’s cell. As soon as she saw him, she rolled over to face the wall. He had the sudden urge to enter her cell, to force her to face him, but now wasn’t the time. Pursing his lips, he continued through corridors riddled with sharp turns until he reached a second set of cells on the other side of the base. These cells Nalea knew nothing about.
He came to the first cell. The human male was still awake, oblivious to Roden as he tapped on a keyboard. Every night he kept busy, typing out his memoirs on the tablet Roden had approved to keep the detainee content. Christopher Jones was a journalist who’d happened across the back rooms of Club Mayhem not long after it opened. While it wasn’t the Draeken way to kill innocents, they also couldn’t have their plans announced to their new world without being fully prepared.
The human had been here for over a year now as Roden waited for Hillas’s approval to approach the humans with terms of peace. During the days, Christopher was allowed free access of the base — except for Roden’s corridor, of course — but at nights the human was relegated to his cell due to fewer Draeken guardsmen on duty during the sleeping hours. Roden had been careful in this human’s care. He would never be accused of being cruel to humans.
He wondered what Nalea would have done if she knew of this cell block. Would she have freed these people rather than coming to his room the night of her escape? If so, she may have been miles from the base by the time Roden discovered her empty cell.
He chuckled dryly to himself. Of course, the woman he knew would have come to his room that night no matter what. Her hate — and passion — for him was too great to be ignored.
He cleared his throat, and the human startled, then smiled. “Oh, hello, Commander. What brings you by this late hour?”
“Out for a stroll, Christopher.” He held up the bottle before punching in the code to unlock the cell door. “We came across several crates of this beverage. A few tried it and found it too sweet. You want it?”
The human looked pensive, then inquisitive as he came to his feet and reached out for the bottle. A quick look at the label brought a smile. “It’s been ages since I’ve had a good spiced rum.”
Roden smiled as the human took a long draw. He only just swallowed before he stumbled backward. The bottle crashed to the floor, sending glass splinters everywhere. The man’s eyes rolled upward and he crashed to the floor. His body convulsed as it succumbed to the incredibly swift poison.
“
Fyet
,” Roden cursed before the human’s body stilled. He grimaced. He didn’t want the human to die. He hadn’t disliked Christopher. Rather, he found the man respectful and likely a good ally for when Hillas would finally condone their plan to reveal themselves and their intentions to humans. Having Christopher test the rum was the purely logical choice. Compared to the limited number of Draeken remaining, humans were simply more expendable.
He turned to leave, pausing to glance at the human’s tablet computer. Whatever the man had written on the tablet, it no longer mattered. On a whim, he picked the computer up and left the cell to return to his room, intentionally avoiding Nalea’s cell. His mood had soured. While he didn’t kill Christopher — the blame for that fell squarely on the assassin — he disliked the needless loss of life.
After changing his locks and adding an old-fashioned chain lock to his door, a dark laugh erupted from deep within Roden’s chest. Someone had the gall to try to kill him. Him! He looked forward to tracking down the traitor and brushing up on his interrogation skills. After all, this assassin was merely a tool for the real killer. Someone with enough clearance to have access to his lock codes. And there was only one Draeken with more clearance than Roden.
“I have the coordinates for Hillas’s Earthside base,” Apolo said, scrutinizing the figures on the other screen for their reactions. Several sat at a long table facing the monitor. Three human officers sat on one half, with the other half taken by Sienna — who he hadn’t thought of as a human for some time — her
tahren
Legian and Jax Jerrick, the other member of her trinity. Apolo hadn’t yet had the heart to tell Sienna that the third member of her trinity died at the hands of Roden Zyll. It would only make her vicious vendetta against the Draeken worse.
In a similar line-up across the ocean, Apolo sat with his trinity and the senior British officers he worked with daily. He’d filled them in only hours before the scheduled forum. Relations were fragile enough without the British playing hero and going after Hillas on their own.
“I thought your scout was dead,” Sienna said, suspicion dripping from her voice.
“I was wrong.”
“But he was compromised,” she said. “The ambush — ”
“Was a devastating loss,” he interjected. “But I trust him. And we need his intel.”
“Where is the base?” Lieutenant Sommers asked from the American side.
“Canada.” Apolo looked over all the attendees before continuing. “General Bryant and I believe that once we have the surrounding area secured, a public recon mission is the wisest course of action. Let them see us coming. That way, we can’t be accused of being the aggressors. Leaving it up to Hillas to take the next step.”
“Are there any humans in the vicinity?” Sommers asked.
“No,” Apolo responded. “They are quite isolated.”
“Then we should consider bombing the base,” Sienna said. “Wipe out the lot of them in one fell swoop. They didn’t come here for peace.”
Apolo frowned. Sienna had hardened during the last year. Ever since she’d been forced to execute her mother a year ago, her views morphed into frigid and merciless judgments. Her soul was now as scarred as her skin. While Bryant suggested she was suffering from a human condition called PTSD, if she continued this way of thinking, he would be forced to remove her from Sephian leadership. He hoped to all twelve hells he wouldn’t have to. She was a natural leader with a strong spirit. His people as well as hers respected her.