The Iriduan’s Mate by Susan Trombley
Thirty
The stranger holding Molly with such a punishing grip wasn’t nearly as strong or imposing as Shulgi, but he proved much stronger than her. Though his slender body trembled against her back, the device pushing against her jugular made her more than certain that he was far more dangerous to her in this moment than anything else. In fact, his obvious fear only made him more unpredictable.
When Shulgi lifted his hand to tap on his wrist, the Iriduan holding her relaxed infinitesimally. Within seconds, she heard a beep from his wrist.
Namerian chuckled. “Nice try, Shulgi, but I won’t be distracted enough to check that message. Send it to one of the others and they’ll update me once they’ve run the code and verified it.”
Shulgi’s brows hung low over his eyes as he glared at Namerian, tapping again at his wrist. Molly’s heart ached to see him forced to do this thing he clearly didn’t want to do.
Forced to do it to save her life. He must feel something for her if he would go to this trouble. He’d told her he loved her. But that had been in past tense. Did he still have feelings for her now, or was he only acquiescing to the demands of this Namerian because he didn’t want any woman to die for his sake?
She suspected Shulgi wouldn’t let a woman die if he could stop it, but she also wanted to believe that she meant too much to him for him to let her go like this. Maybe, just maybe, he was choosing her over anything else. It felt selfish to want him to do so, because from what the two Iriduans had been saying to each other, this passcode was important. Far more important than the life of a single prostitute in a criminal city on a backwater planet.
Yet it didn’t take long for Namerian’s associates to verify that Shulgi had given him the correct code, and Namerian’s body tensed again, to Molly’s surprise, even as the injector shifted away from her neck.
Shulgi watched that injector like a hawk, his eyes narrowed.
“I won’t kill the woman,” Namerian said as his guards all raised their weapons, aiming them towards Shulgi.
Shulgi barely glanced at them, his hard gaze returning to Molly and Namerian as Molly’s thudding heart suddenly froze, her breath whooshing out of her.
“No,” she managed after sucking in a gasp. “No!” she screamed as the guards opened fire.
Shulgi’s body jerked as multiple rounds tore through his flesh, blood darkening the fitted suit he wore instead of armor. For a long, horrific moment that seemed forever burned in her memory, his eyes met hers and a slight smile kicked up the corners of his mouth. Then he toppled backwards, collapsing onto the unforgiving tile floor.
She screamed until her throat ached, then screamed some more, struggling against strong arms that kept her from running to Shulgi. She noticed nothing about her surroundings but his fallen body bleeding out on the tile.
How could this day have gone so terribly wrong? She’d had so much hope, so much love for him, and now, something had happened to him that was far worse than seeing him walk away from her.
“No!” she shouted, scratching uselessly at the impenetrable armor of the guard that yanked her off her feet and threw her over his shoulder.
She beat on his back, then tried to tear at his wings, but he battered her face with them, proving they were far stronger than their delicate appearance seemed to suggest. She realized the futility of fighting him.
As he carried her out of the room, she watched in despair as Namerian ordered his guards to dispose of Shulgi’s body.
The Iriduans lined Molly, Jenice, and Briana up just outside their headquarters, all of them seated on the dirty ground near steaming vents. Jem and several of the other leading minions lay in a jumbled heap against the wall of the dockmaster’s office. To her relief, they appeared to still be alive, since she saw some of them visibly breathing, and all of them wore restraints, which would have been pointless for corpses.
There were plenty of those scattered around the docks, and many of them were Iriduans that Zaska’s minions had successfully taken down before being overwhelmed by sheer numbers and superior technology. The battlefield of her docks was blood-soaked and gory, but no sight would ever disturb her as much as watching Shulgi die right in front of her.
She couldn’t find it in her to care about anything else at this point but the grief eating her up from the inside. Devastation filled her at the terrible memory of his blood spattering as his body jerked backwards, his wings spreading behind him as if he could take off into the air to escape, his hair whipping around his body as the force of the rounds struck him.
The one called Namerian finally left their headquarters and joined the squad of mercenaries surrounding Molly and the others. He paused in front of her, ignoring Jenice and Briana’s curses and insults leveled at him. Molly didn’t bother to say what was on her mind about him. He’d just become her worst enemy, but at the moment, there wasn’t anything she could do about that.
If he were wise, he would simply put a bullet in her brain right now, because she wouldn’t rest until he was dead. Killing him, shooting him down like an animal in the street, had become her all-consuming purpose. For the moment, all she could do was glare at him with her hate in her eyes.
“I made a promise to my kin that I wouldn’t kill you,” he said in a cold voice that echoed from the speaker on his mask. “However, I can’t have any of you running around, getting in our way now that we rule these docks.” He gestured towards the crowd that had formed beyond the circle of Iriduan mercenaries a short distance away. “I don’t want anyone’s loyalty tested at this critical point in our operations, and it would be wasteful to destroy all of these useful laborers.”
Most of them were dockhands, but many of Zaska’s minions had surrendered after Briana’s announcement to them that Sha Zaska was dead. They would take the offer of a job from the Iriduans, because in the long run, they didn’t really care who paid their bills, as long as they still had food on the table.
Her eyes met those of Thudar, his antlered head towering above the crowd. His hard amber gaze held no emotion for her or the others. As far as he was concerned, they were only extensions of Zaska’s will. He wouldn’t risk his life to rescue mere slaves.
She thanked Jenice silently for sending Mogorl and Grundon to column 210. They would have tried to rescue her and the others, and they would have died for it, as so many of Sha Zaska’s most loyal guards had. She didn’t think she could handle losing them in addition to Shulgi.
She already couldn’t handle losing Shulgi. It felt like a part of her had died, so when the Iriduan mercenaries raised their weapons to point them at her and Jenice and Briana, she sighed in relief. She would never get her vengeance on Namerian, but at least her suffering would end. She wouldn’t have to see Shulgi’s horrible death replayed over and over again every time she closed her eyes.
“You shouldn’t have sent that footage to me,” Namerian said with an obvious snarl in his tone, “because it didn’t take long to identify you, woman.”
Jenice stiffened at Molly’s side, her hand sliding across the dock decking to grip Molly’s, her palm clammy. “I’m so sorry, Molly,” she whispered weakly.
Though the Iriduans had stopped the bleeding in Jenice’s leg and splinted the shattered bone, they clearly hadn’t given her any painkillers.
“There’s a bounty on your head,” Namerian continued, ignoring Jenice’s words as he spoke to Molly. He bent down into a crouch to meet Molly’s eyes. “Yours, not Sha Zaska’s. I found that interesting. I contacted the hunters and discovered that a certain brothel owner with powerful connections wants her property returned.”
Briana and Jenice gasped in horror, but Molly felt nothing. No fear, no outrage. Nothing. Watching Shulgi die seemed to have stripped every emotion from her but the desire to avenge him.
“I believe she’ll be very grateful for the return of not only you, but perhaps a dozen more of Sha Zaska’s minions to serve as her slaves.” He regarded the other two women, then shifted his gaze to the pile of barely alive minions who apparently hadn’t willingly surrendered but had been taken alive.
Molly was grateful most of the other women who served Sha Zaska in some way did not fight and seemed to have blended into the crowd of dockhands or taken refuge in a bolt hole. Uthagol wasn’t kind to her slaves, and Molly, Briana, and Jenice would pay dearly for their actions against their former master. Some of the males would also be slaved out in Uthagol’s brothels, though most would likely be resold.
Their lives would return to being a living hell, but Molly was already there after watching Shulgi die. She said nothing to Namerian, only staring up at him with her hatred on full display, her lips tight, her eyes narrowed until all she could see was him.
“Note the bright part of the pond,” he said as he straightened from his crouch, still staring down at Molly as if he didn’t notice how much she wanted to kill him, “I am keeping my word to Shulgi. You won’t die by my hand.”
