Protected

  “Why do you care if I never see you again?” he demanded. “You heard what the Widow made me admit to. And it had the fuckin’ effect she wanted too—I saw your eyes when I said what I’d done. You didn’t want anything else to do with me and I don’t blame you!”

  “Stop it!” I shouted. “Just stop.”

  Okay, this was getting us nowhere. Time to take it down a notch. I took a deep breath and raked a hand through my hair.

  “Of course I was shocked when you…said what you said,” I told him, trying to keep my voice even and calm. “And I don’t feel like you can blame me for that—anyone would feel at least some concern after hearing that. But—” I held up a hand to keep him from talking before I was done. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want anything to do with you. Talk to me, Grav.” I let my voice drop to the soft, coaxing tone I used with my students back home. “Tell me what happened—make me understand. Please.”

  “You want to understand? Fine.”

  He got up from his chair abruptly and started pacing. There wasn’t much room for it in the control area—especially not for someone as big as him. He made me think of a tiger I’d seen once in a circus, pacing in a too-small cage.

  “I was young and stupid—hot-headed,” he said, looking at the floor as he paced. “Well, most Braxian males are. I was living on Vorn Five with my parents—my father was Vornish and my mother was Braxian but I looked a hell of a lot more like her than him, which my father didn’t like very fuckin’ much. He married her for love while he was out traveling the galaxy but they never were able to form a proper bond—it’s difficult, sometimes, between two different races of the Twelve Peoples.”

  “And a bond is really that important?” I asked quietly.

  Grav nodded. “Hell yeah, it is. With a bond you feel connected to your mate—you can sense their emotions. Some couples even catch each other’s thoughts or feel each other’s physical sensations. Or so I’m told.” He sighed. “Not that I’ll ever get to experience it. But anyway…without a bond, you feel nothing. Disconnected. You don’t know what’s going on with your mate and they don’t know what’s going on with you. It’s not good.”

  I thought of my marriage with Gerald. Disconnected was a mild word for the way our relationship had twisted itself into such a tangled knot of misery. Would we have gotten along better—would he have stopped before he hit me—if we had been able to form the all-important “bond” Grav kept talking about?

  Somehow I doubted it.

  Gerald was a bad person—I could see that now that I had some distance from him. He was selfish and controlling and jealous. All the things Grav wasn’t. And yet Grav was a murderer—why?

  “Tell me more,” I said softly, hoping to get an answer to my question. “What happened?”

  He sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

  “He beat her,” he said bluntly. “My father beat my mother and my mother, well…” He sighed again. “She was everything to me. Everything.”

  “I think all boys idolize their mothers to a certain extent,” I said quietly.

  “She was the only other Braxian there—the only one who looked like me. I had friends—other half-breeds mainly. But my mother was the only one who was always there for me.”

  “Did your father always hit her?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I never thought so but you realize things as an adult you don’t see as a child. The way she was always “running into doors” and getting black eyes or bruises on her cheeks. The way she wore long sleeves even when it was hot.” He made a face. “And let me tell you, Vornish summers are Hell. The time she “fell down the stairs” and broke her leg. And usually after she turned up with a bruise or a break, my father would come in the next day with flowers or some kind of treat. He would beg her forgiveness—although I never knew for what until I got older.”

  “So how old were you when…when it happened?” I asked softly.

  His face went hard. “You mean when I killed him? About sixteen cycles old, I guess. Old enough to be judged as an adult by the Council of Justice, anyway.”

  “So…you finally found out what…what he was doing?” I asked. “You saw it?”

  “I saw it, all right,” Grav growled. “I saw him in the middle of beating her—the way your mate was beating you.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how I kept from tearing that bastard apart—the way I did my father.”

  “So you really did…tear him apart, I mean?” My voice sounded faint and breathless but somehow I couldn’t seem to make it more normal.

  “I did,” Grav said somberly. “We had a summer residence—one that was meant to let in the light but withstand the vicious storms they have on Vorn Five sometimes. It was mostly made of chiva-glass, supposedly strong as iron but clear enough to see through.”

  “So…you lived in a glass house?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Vorns like a lot of sunlight, and we let down the shades at night for privacy. The shades were already down that evening when I came home from a friend’s house—I remember the blue and purple shadows on the vr’nfi shrubs and the way the air smelled like ussl blossoms.”

  His white-on-black eyes had gone far away and I realized he wasn’t just telling me about the night in question—he was actually reliving it. I wondered if I should stop him—it had to be traumatic after all. But I had a feeling he needed to tell me this. And to be perfectly honest, I needed to hear—needed to understand.

  “And then?” My voice was barely a whisper—afraid of interrupting the trance of memory he had fallen into.

  “I walked up and saw shapes moving behind the glass,” he murmured. “They were jerking around—I remember wondering what in the galaxy was going on. I went a little closer and looked through the glass and then I saw him—saw what he was doing to her.”

  He paused for a long time and I waited…just waited quietly until he continued.

  “I saw him hitting her—not just hitting, fucking pulverizing her,” he said at last, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I don’t know what set him off or why he wouldn’t stop. All I knew was what I saw—my mother, the female I cared for most in the world—crouched in a corner sobbing and trying to protect her face while my father rained down blows on her, doing his best to kill her as far as I could see. He…” Grav took a deep breath. “He’d already broken her nose and one of her arms was dangling by her side—I could tell that was broken too. She was crying—begging for him to stop. But he wouldn’t.” His face grew grim. “So I fucking made him.”

  I spoke one word. “How?”

  Grav’s face was like stone.

  “I reached down, found a good sized rock on the ground. Then I broke through the glass and dragged him off her.”

  “You broke through the glass?” I asked. “Why not just go in through the door?”

  “You don’t understand.” He looked at me briefly, the spell suspended. “My Braxian side has always been dominant and Braxian males have berserker tendencies.”

  “You’re right—I don’t understand.” I shook my head. “What does that mean?”

  “Means we have a point of no return. In violence and in love—there’s a certain point we reach where we can’t stop, no matter what the consequences,” he growled. “I’ve learned to control it a Hell of a lot better now—or that fuckin’ mate of yours would be dead. But back then I was just a kid. Not that it’s any excuse for what I did.”

  “What did you do?” I said, feeling like he needed to get it all out.

  “I ripped him apart,” Grav said bluntly. “Fists, teeth, horns—I used everything I had to make sure he never got up again.” His face grew grim. “Fucker never knew what hit him.”

  “But Grav…” I put a hand on his arm. “That’s completely understandable. What you went through—what you saw—anyone might react that way.”

  “That’s not how the Council saw it—or how anyone on Vorn Five would see it,” he said. “They saw it as
murder, pure and simple. And that’s what they tried and convicted me of.”

  “But you were just trying to save your mother!” I protested indignantly. “They shouldn’t have been able to put you away for that! Couldn’t she testify on your behalf?”

  He shrugged with grim stoicism. “I’m sure she would have—if she’d survived his attack. See, she threw a blood clot from one of her broken bones. It turned into an embolism. She died before I could ever talk to her again.”

  “Oh, Grav…” I squeezed his arm but he shrugged me off. “It doesn’t matter,” he said roughly. “The point is, I had no one to bear witness to my side of the story so the prosecution painted it the way they wanted—savage Braxian male goes berserker, murders both parents in a bloody killing spree.”

  “But that’s not fair!” I said.

  He laughed harshly. “And whoever told you life was fair, sweetheart?”

  “You did what you did for a good reason,” I insisted.

  “Having a good reason to do something bad doesn’t make you good,” he countered. “My father might have been the first male I killed but he wasn’t the last. Don’t kid yourself, Leah—I’m a murderer many times over.”

  “But—”

  “Look,” he interrupted harshly. “I’ve enjoyed this little walk down memory lane a whole fuckin’ lot but it’s time you made your choice—where am I taking you? Earth? Thonolax to drop off Teeny? Or Eloim to see your friend, the Lady Zoe?”

  “Eloim,” I said at once. I wasn’t ready to go home yet—to go back to the stifling confines of my sad little life. And I missed Zoe terribly—maybe my best friend could shed some light on this whole situation and give me some advice. After all, if what Grav had said was right, she’d been married to a huge alien male for some time now so she had to have some insight into the way they thought.

  Right?

  I certainly hoped so because I didn’t like the wall that had grown up between me and Grav—a wall so high and wide and long I didn’t know how to climb it, though I desperately wanted to.

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Leah

  “Okay, so here’s the deal with Braxians…Well, come on—sit down and I’ll tell you.” Zoe settled down in the big, comfy silver bean-bag chair, which hovered about three feet off the ground, and patted a spot beside her.

  The trip to Eloim had been uneventful and extremely quiet. Grav seemed sunk in his own private misery and Teeny was surprisingly silent for a girl of her age. She mostly kept to her room. So I’d had only my own company on the journey to see my best friend in her new digs and I was more than happy to be spending some “quality girl time,” as Zoe called it, with her now.

  When she’d seen me she had squealed with joy and hugged me until I could barely breathe. Her enthusiasm was infectious and I found myself squealing right along with her. We hugged and jumped and generally acted like idiots—it was great. It was typical Zoe—she has such a bubbly personality it brightens your whole day just to be with her.

  It was a quality I had sadly missed. After Zoe had left and Charlotte went to med school, the joy in my life had been greatly diminished. It was good to have Zoe back. And of course, she was eager to give me the grand tour of her new home.

  She had taken me all over the huge, sprawling palace on Eloim, excited to show me everything there was to see. Everywhere we went the guards bowed to her and there was genuine affection in the eyes of the people.

  Now we were in her private lounge where everything was ultra luxurious from the floating beanbag chair to the incredibly soft fur carpet which Zoe explained wasn’t fur at all, but rather a type of super-fine grass that just felt like fur. There was expensive and tasteful art work scattered around and a very advanced looking alien entertainment system which took up one wall of the room.

  According to Zoe, she’d managed to get some of her favorite chick flick movies from Earth by way of the Commercians and she promised we would have a movie marathon night the next time I was “in town” as she put it. We couldn’t do it now because Grav had said we were spending only one night. It wasn’t much time to catch up after being separated for months, but apparently Teeny’s grandfather was anxious to see her alive and well. I guessed I couldn’t blame him and so one night it was.

  The luxury around us didn’t surprise me—Zoe has always liked the finer things in life, even though she’s often had to make do with much less. But it seemed my friend was done making do.

  That was because she wasn’t just a paralegal anymore—apparently she was now a queen. Or a “Ria” as the people of Eloim called her. She even wore a crown on her curly red locks—a slender circlet with a gorgeous pinkish-purple jewel which should have clashed with her auburn locks but somehow didn’t. It was called the Star of Compassion and apparently it had picked Zoe to be the queen of Eloim.

  Wow.

  Queen of an entire planet—can you believe it? I could scarcely wrap my head around it but then, I could scarcely wrap my head around seeing Zoe again at all.

  “We thought you were dead,” I said for what felt like the hundredth time as I settled in the floating silver bean-bag chair beside her. “Charlotte and I even hired a private investigator.”

  Zoe looked remorseful. “I’m so sorry about that, hon! You know I never wanted to worry you two! And I would have come back to tell you what happened to me in person, only I can’t leave Eloim while the Star bonds with me.” She touched the circlet sitting on her head gently, as though she was petting a sleeping cat.

  “You did try to get in touch with us,” I said, letting her off the hook—a little, anyway. “Those crystal cube thingies were neat.”

  “They are, aren’t they?” She grinned at me. They’re pretty amazing. I wonder if Charlotte ever got hers.”

  “I doubt it,” I said grimly. “Since it got left in my house along with Gerald—that asshole.”

  Zoe looked surprised at first but then a smile spread over her face.

  “Good for you,” she said, nodding. “I never liked him—he’s a controlling jerk.”

  “A controlling, abusive jerk,” I said.

  “He hit you?” Zoe exclaimed indignantly. “When did that start?”

  “After you left and I finally let him talk me into getting married,” I admitted. “He was crazy-jealous. He seemed to think I was after every man I saw—which is ridiculous.”

  “Of course it is!” Zoe made a tsking sound and shook her head. “Sounds like you need to keep away from him. Maybe find somebody else—like Grav?” She looked at me hopefully.

  “I’d love to,” I said quietly. “Only he doesn’t want me.”

  “What? Why not?” she demanded, her temper flaring.

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” I said pointedly. “You were just about to tell me all about Braxians when you suggested we should sit down and get comfy.”

  “Oh right—the deal with Braxians.” She frowned. “Well, according to Sarden, they’re extremely honorable people although all the rest of the Twelve Peoples are scared of them. Because of their “berserker tendencies”—whatever that means.”

  “I think it means they tend to go crazy in a, uh, combat situation,” I said, thinking of Grav’s description of his father’s death. “Grav told me it means they have a ‘point of no return’ in battle—and in love too.”

  “Hmm…interesting.” She nodded. “So they’re apt to go crazy and not stop until it’s too late.”

  “Exactly. So the other Twelve Peoples are afraid of them,” I said. “Which makes sense.”

  “Yes—especially if they’re all built like Grav.” Zoe shifted restlessly in the beanbag and clapped her hands. “Al? Al, are you there?”

  A bright golden creature that looked like a metallic dragonfly came whirring into the room and landed on Zoe’s silk-covered shoulder.

  “Good day, Lady Zoe,” it said in an oh-so-proper voice that sounded like a character straight out of Downton Abbey. “What may
I do for you?”

  “I’d like an assortment of local delicacies and some pink bubble wine sent in,” Zoe told it, as though it was no big deal to order hors d’Oeuvres from a dragonfly.

  “Of course, my Lady—at once!” the dragonfly exclaimed.

  “What are you doing?” I asked blankly as it buzzed away.

  “We need snacks. This is the first Girls’ Night we’ve had in ages—I can’t gossip properly without something to nibble on! Besides, you have to try the hudu cake—it’s amazing.”

  In short order a maid came bearing a tray of sweet and savory snacks and a blue glass bottle of wine with two long-stemmed glasses. I wasn’t sure about the food but after days and days of Braxian cuisine—which really didn’t improve with long acquaintance—I was ready to try anything.

  There were pink crackers with some kind of gray paste on them that tasted surprisingly like the spray cheese you get from a can with just a hint of shrimp thrown in. I know that sounds weird but it tasted really good. There were also little brittle, sugary balls filled with a sweet, slightly alcoholic tasting syrup that melted on your tongue, flooding your mouth with their delicate flavor. And Zoe’s favorite—the hudu cake—was made up of what looked like fifty different wafer-thin layers in every shade of the rainbow, and covered with a blue frosting which tasted inexplicably like kiwi, mango, and strawberries all jumbled together and dipped in dark chocolate.

  “Isn’t it yummy?” Zoe asked as I reached for a second piece and sipped some of the bubble wine—which really did form a bubble in your mouth and then burst refreshingly before you swallowed it.

  “It’s amazing,” I said. “Much better than live hermit crabs you have to crack with a hammer and eat while they’re still wiggling.”

  “Ugh!” She made a face. “Where did you eat that?”