Freed By the Alien Prince by Tori Kellett
Chapter Four
N’ameth woke sometime later and gazed at Sascha, immediately remembering what she had admitted. He’d always assumed she didn’t recall being on his cruiser and wondered for a moment what that meant. Could it be she was embarrassed and stayed away from him because of that? Was there a chance for them? His heart ached, and he gently brushed a blonde hair from her closed eyes. She looked exhausted. Not that she wasn’t still gorgeous, but she’d fallen asleep in the chair at the side of his bed with her head resting on his mattress. Dark circles marred her creamy soft skin, and a black bruise colored her cheek. The thought that she had been injured and he hadn’t been able to stop it tugged at his insides.
He glanced at Azlaan, who fiddled with the fluid bag still attached to him. “I don’t need that.” He kept his voice low so as not to wake her, but Azlaan nodded his silent agreement and disconnected everything. “How long?”
“About four hours since the Veerlash attacked you.”
N’ameth raised angry eyes to Azlaan and nodded to Sascha. Azlaan sighed. “She wouldn’t consent to a bed.”
“What did you say to her?” Because he knew there’d been something. She had been cowed, if that was the right word, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it one bit. It was like someone had taken all the daylight out of her.
“She really fired the kill shot?” Azlaan asked as if he couldn’t quite believe it.
He nodded. “The Veerlash had knocked the weapon out of my hand. I told her to run, but instead, she picked the blaster up and put two shots in it. One right here.” He jabbed at the space between his eyes. He gazed at her and added softly, “It took an awful lot of courage.” It had been some damn good shooting.
Azlaan nodded and hung his head. “We blamed her for your injuries. Zak was furious.”
N’ameth closed his eyes in horror. She really wouldn’t want anything to do with him now.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t had time to talk to Zak. But Voren is with him.”
He looked up as a door opened and saw Callie. She tiptoed over and laid a hand on his arm. “I only just found out. You can be sure Zak is in the doghouse.”
N’ameth must be tired. He knew what a dog was. Why it would have its own house, and why that was bad, he was unsure. “She needs care.”
Callie nodded and gently woke Sascha. Her big brown eyes fixed immediately on him. “Thank you, Sascha, but I don’t need you to sit there. You need to take care of yourself.” Sascha jerked back like he had hit her, and Callie gaped at him, but before he could work out what he had done wrong, she stumbled to her feet and turned, limping out with Callie supporting her.
“What did I say?”
It had been a rhetorical question, but Azlaan winced. “My brother, I fear this is my fault.”
“What is?” N’ameth said, utterly perplexed.
“Because either I obviously failed in my duties as your older brother, or Razorr dropped you on your head as a young. Or both,” he added after a moment.
N’ameth blinked. “Huh?”
“She has stayed by your bed for four hours, despite her own injury and the fact that many of us blamed her for you being here. And now you dismiss her because you don’t need her?”
N’ameth squirmed. He hadn’t meant it like that. It just distressed him to see her so pale.
“Even warriors need someone,” Azlaan said quietly, which pricked N’ameth’s ears up.
“Why weren’t you at the Assembly?” It just occurred to him Azlaan hadn’t been there.
“I am in no rush. I have plenty to keep me busy here.”
“Uh-huh,” N’ameth placated.
Azlaan sighed and rubbed his head. “You need to have the time to devote to a mate, young.”
N’ameth nodded and reached out his arm, which Azlaan clasped in the traditional greeting, then pulled him closer. For a moment, N’ameth soaked in the comfort offered by his older brother, then leaned back.
“I questioned Xar’ta.” He gestured to his nearly healed cheek. “It wasn’t the Veerlash that gave me that.”
“And?” Azlaan’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve all been at that for almost a full lunar cycle and gotten nowhere.”
“Either he is fooling us into thinking he knows something, or…” But that made no sense. The longer his imprisonment carried on, the more confident he got, not less.
“You think he expects rescue?”
N’ameth rubbed his chest experimentally. “I doubt he knows which of the Alliance helped our sire, but he may know something about the possible new vein, and I can’t go rooting around up there to look. Even though the N’olaans seem to be helping us, we don’t know if given the chance they might not try and take over. I wish we had delayed their arrival, but we cannot afford to do so and still make the Alliance quotas.”
“Pretending to cooperate but really stabbing us in the back?”
N’ameth sighed. “Lam’saak has been assisting in settling them, but he wouldn’t be party to any higher machinations anyway, and he has been helping me with Xar’ta.”
“Because he is a convenient ambassador for us but would never be accepted into their hierarchy.”
N’ameth agreed. After a rebellion in their elder sire’s time many families had been banished, and their children still so.
“He was never allowed to mate a N’olaan.”
“And yet there are no females here for him either,” Azlaan pointed out.
“I think he just wants the chance to be home. It is wearing not to be accepted anywhere simply because of the color of your skin.” But N’ameth knew that was often the same the universe over. He didn’t mention to Azlaan he had been at the Assembly. Lam’saak had as much right to be there as anyone. “Voren is trying something else with Xar’ta, but that may not work either.”
Azlaan sent him a sympathetic look, but they all had their own difficulties, and Azlaan couldn’t help him with this. “What are you going to do about the female Sascha?”
“I have no idea,” he hedged. But he did. It just seemed every time he spoke, he made things worse. He would let her rest and then seek her out. He could inquire about her ankle.
A few hours later, N’ameth got a call from Voren. He had just finished eating a stew Neela had prepared. He didn’t know exactly what was in it, and he really didn’t like to think of where the Veerlash would eventually end up. It was better than the protein bars though, and Neela seemed excited to have also gotten a delivery from the N’olaans.
“My prince, the prisoner Xar’ta has begged to see you. Tee’a is still with him but awaiting your instructions.”
“Tee’a is the one you suggested?” N’ameth suddenly regretted eating. If Xar’ta had given in to Tee’a after a matter of hours when N’ameth had been trying for a lunar cycle, he didn’t want to think about what state he was in. “I’m on my way.”
He thanked Neela and smiled at Madison, who was in the kitchen. He had some vague idea she was a cook, or interested in it, and it was nice to see she had relaxed enough around the palace to be there. He walked into the cells and nodded to the four guards at various entrances as he went in. He knew Zak was talking to Lam’saak about other native Ishtaans who may wish to return. Hopefully warriors. All the brothers knew if they were attacked, they would be vulnerable, and it was only the threat of retaliation from the Karthians that stopped such an attack. That and the ridiculously low price the Alliance paid to get their hands on the Azteen crystals made it pointless to bother attacking them anyway.
But if it were true and there was a second vein, a larger supply, he knew there were many worlds that would be tempted to risk the Karthians’ displeasure. After all, the greatest problem the Ishtaans faced—the virus and what it had done to their people—was completely self-inflicted.
He fixed his expression as the guard opened Xar’ta’s cell and noticed another man. He was too old to have had the genome editing. His skin was similar in color, but his build was more similar to the proportions of a human. Not at all threatening. Tee’a stood calmly in the corner, idly cleaning some knives with a cloth, even though N’ameth couldn’t see any blood. He glanced at Xar’ta and at first couldn’t see a mark on him. He blinked at the hollow-eyed expression on Xar’ta’s face but still couldn’t see any injury. Xar’ta cowered, shook. He had lost control of his bodily functions, but N’ameth didn’t give any indication he noticed.
“My p-prince,” Xar’ta begged. “I can take you to recover the bodies.”
N’ameth seriously considered dragging him to a shuttle there and then, but it would be brutal up there, and they couldn’t walk around for long in that heat. They really needed to go before daylight, but if he waited a night, there was a good chance Xar’ta would change his mind.
“I will stay tonight, my prince,” Tee’a said mildly as if he had said all that aloud. “He will not change his mind.”
“I’ll show you,” Xar’ta cried. “Please, I will take you there.”
“Very well,” N’ameth agreed. “We will go before dawn.” He kept his gaze on the prisoner. “Just remember what will happen if you decide to change your mind.” He nodded his thanks to Tee’a and walked out of the cell.
“Clean him up and treat his injuries,” he instructed one of the guards.
“He doesn’t have any injuries,” Voren said, appearing beside him. “I was watching in the observation gallery. Tee’a never put a hand on him.”
N’ameth frowned in confusion. “But the knives?”
Voren shrugged. “He just cleaned them. Remained a foot away from him at all times and whispered something in a language not even my translator understands.”
“My prince?” one of the guards, L’estarr, said hesitantly. N’ameth glanced at him. “There are rumors his elder matriche was a priestess of Seft.”
N’ameth and Voren shared a look, but he thanked L’estarr, and they walked out of the cells. “Which would explain Xar’ta’s reaction,” Voren said.
The priestesses of Seft were an ancient order said to have ruled Ishtaan even before the first king, but they ruled by terror with mind control. His grand-elder sire had made it his mission to capture and kill every last one. It had apparently been accomplished, and the priestesses were now simply a legend, a threat matriches might use when their young wouldn’t sleep. That if they wouldn’t behave, the Seft would be summoned.
“I thought it could only be passed down the female line?”
“I have no idea. He has no young,” Voren confirmed. “So if Tee’a has powers, he wouldn’t pass them on. He barely comes to the palace. Struggles to grow enough crops to feed himself and in recent cycles has had most of his crop seized by the elder king’s guards.” For a second, N’ameth thought Voren meant his elder sire but then realized he meant Az’kye, because Zak was king now.
“So, you’re saying if he had meant to retaliate, he would have already demonstrated it?”
“And he was risking a lot by revealing an ability all Ishtaan fear. If your sire had known, he would have been put to death.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” N’ameth said grimly. “He would have found some way of using him as a weapon.”
“So, we leave for the mining camp before daybreak?” Voren sounded eager, and he’d stressed “we.”
N’ameth chuckled. Zak had replaced Voren with D’estaan as his personal guard now that Voren had been acknowledged as their half brother and a prince in his own right. He also used to lead Callie’s protection detail. But they all thought it unseemly for a prince to be doing either. He knew Voren was struggling to carve out a role for himself as much as N’ameth was.
“I would appreciate your help, and we can discuss who of our sire’s old guards to release. We are short on warriors, and I think most were just following orders.”
N’ameth agreed to meet an hour before daylight and, grumbling silently to himself, took himself to bed. Maybe he would be actually able to sleep and dream of Sascha.
When the single note chimed on the entrance to N’ameth’s rooms, his eyes flew open. Not that he’d even been properly asleep. He lay there for a puzzled moment, wondering who would press the panel to summon him to the door of his suite rather than call him on the communicator. He heaved himself up out of bed and padded to the door, briefly peering through the tiny one-way glass partition, even as he had his hand ready to allow admittance.
Every cell in his body froze and hardened simultaneously. For another long, drawn-out moment, he stared in disbelief at the female standing there, but as he watched her shoulders sag, he yanked the door open before she could turn away.
“Sascha?” He didn’t know why it came out sounding like a question because obviously it was her down to her tiny painted toenails, except the one neatly covered in a bandage. He scowled. “You shouldn’t be standing.” He knew some of the Earth females painted their toenails with the surna berries after they were crushed and crystallized, then added to the same paste some of the Ishtaan females used to decorate their bodies for the old festivals back when Ishtaan had marked the passing of each season with celebrations. He had no doubt Tamara was responsible for the color, and he’d seen a few of the other Ishtaan females start adopting what Callie and Sascha were doing.
Her eyebrows rose, and she glanced down at him. “Neither should you.” In that moment, N’ameth realized he’d opened the door naked and he nearly dived into his cleansing room for a drying cloth to wrap around his waist. Shamed because he had left her at the door, he felt his ears burn like they did when he was a young.
“My apologies. Please come through.”
“I know it’s late. I’m sorry,” Sascha said politely. She wasn’t limping anyway. “I wanted to ask you something, but I also wanted to make sure you were healed.” Her eyes dropped to his chest, and her breath hitched.
“Fully, but more importantly, I’m alive thanks to you.”
She smiled a little, then chewed her lip as if something was worrying her. “One of my pet peeves is misunderstandings that could be cleared up with a simple conversation.” N’ameth worked his way through that but focused on misunderstandings. That he understood.
“We have a misunderstanding?” His heart beat loudly in his chest. She was going to make it clear she wasn’t interested. As if he could ward off the words, N’ameth reached out and covered her hand in his. The immediate ache in his chest had nothing to do with his newly-healed injury. Sascha looked down at his hand as if it was unexpected, but she didn’t pull away.
“You know I remember our conversation on the shuttle.”
He nodded, having trouble forcing a nervous swallow down his dry throat.
“I got the impression from what everyone else said afterward that you only sat with me so I wouldn’t panic and hurt myself or cause problems.”
She was saying every word slowly and carefully as if enunciating them in her head before they even reached her lips.
“It started that way,” N’ameth admitted. Dare he be honest?
“But then when we landed, you avoided me, so I believed what everyone told me that you were interested in Lexie and that I’m too old for you.”
N’ameth stared at her incredulously. “I—I thought my brother would choose you for his queen.”
She huffed out a laugh. “You have to be kidding me.”
N’ameth shook his head. “It made perfect sense to me, and I would have had no choice but to concede to his wishes.” He hesitated as something else occurred to him. “But you wouldn’t look at me. It seemed then as if you were trying to be any place I wasn’t.”
“Because I thought you regretted the kiss. Which was why I left the palace grounds.”
N’ameth would never regret that kiss—in, fact he wanted nothing more than to repeat it. Then understanding hit. “You heard me talking to the guards.”
“And I was still trying to avoid you because all Lexie talks about is you.”
“Then why were you so angry when I told you Lexie was not my mulaa?” He didn’t understand.
She blew out a breath and sighed. “Because I was overwhelmed. Frustrated. I feel like I’m being forced into a corner. To suddenly find I have zero control over my own life when it was something I fought so hard for is incredibly frustrating.”
“Because you were kidnapped,” he acknowledged sorrowfully. “Wrenched away from your home, your world. You already have had great sadness in your life, and I made it worse. I thought…think you hate me for it.” N’ameth dampened down the tiny flare of hope that had tried to light inside him because she had sought him out.
“I’m a practical person. I was comfortable, but I don’t miss my parents.” She swallowed. “That makes me sound dreadful, but as far as my father was concerned, I was always a disappointment because I wasn’t a boy to help him on the farm, so I worked twice as hard to prove that I was just as good. They’re very religious but incredibly narrow-minded, and their version of punishment was something…” She shrugged as if to dismiss a memory. “College would have been out of the question, and then I overheard them talking about Jeremiah Granger from the neighboring farm. The idea was that we would marry the summer I turned sixteen, so I ran away. I was three weeks away from my sixteenth birthday.”
N’ameth’s heart stopped. He could practically hear the echo of its last beat. “You don’t want to marry.” He leaned back and let go of her hand. He should have known better.
“I didn’t want to marry at sixteen to someone who was the double of my father and would have wanted more of the same. My best friend was the preacher’s son, Edward. We used to meet in secret by the creek. He also wanted to escape, and he had a little money saved. I had nothing.”
N’ameth tried to puzzle everything out. “You mated Edward so you wouldn’t be forced to mate Jeremiah?”
“We didn’t marry until Edward got sick. He insisted on financial protection for me.” She hesitated. “I can shoot really well. Maybe not draw quickly, but I’m accurate. I spent hours practicing because it was something my dad did.” She huffed. “I thought if I showed him I was good, he would finally take me seriously.” Love me. “But he was horrified. Said girls had no business taking up weapons and that my place was in the house. He also said once I was married and had a baby, I would forget all this nonsense.”
“And I represent more of the same,” N’ameth said in understanding.
She smiled for the first time. “I wanted a different life and to go to school.” N’ameth understood school. Callie had mentioned it. His heart cautiously came back to life.
“But more than that, I wanted to make my own decisions.”
And I took them away from her.
“It was hard work, and we had nothing for quite a few years, but Edward got a decent job. I did too once I had finished school. We had maybe seven years together, and just as we were going to think about starting a family, Edward got sick, so all our plans had to be put on hold again. He died two years ago.”
She was silent for a few seconds, but then she met his eyes. “I’m not against marrying—mating. I know why we’re here. And while it makes me angry that we weren’t given a choice, that doesn’t mean in different circumstances it isn’t something I wouldn’t have considered had I been asked.” She threw up her hands. “I always wanted adventure, and you couldn’t get much more adventurous than traveling to an alien planet.”
N’ameth gazed at her in wonder. Hope he hardly dared identify unfurled inside him.
“I’m more than capable of hard work, but I have no intention of sitting around being the good wife.” N’ameth frowned, trying to keep up. “I have skills. And just because I haven’t worked out a role yet doesn’t mean I don’t want one.”
She took a breath. “And this is the hard part. Zak said we could choose who to mate, and that’s why I’m here. We have something on our planet called dating, and it’s a way of getting to know—”
But N’ameth reacted when he processed the word “mate” and the reason why she was here. “Sas’ka,” he murmured and bent, scooping her up and claiming her mouth. There. Right there where they stood.
Nerves sang and zinged back and forth as their lips met. Heat that even the Dry couldn’t produce enflamed his body. She barely got a sound out that N’ameth didn’t swallow down. He registered her shock, but then she wrapped her arms around him and clung on.
As far as N’ameth was concerned, she never needed to let go. Not now. Not ever.
