Bane: A SciFi Alien Romance (The Ladyships Book 2) Page 6

  Therion sharing glowing tales about his nephew soothed her. It painted him in a good light, that he recognized the worth and talent of others. Also, it meant that they shared something in common. Maude was going to be an auntie to Nicole’s baby.

  “Prykimis,” she asked. “What is that?”

  “She’s a battleship.”

  Her skin tingled as her hope rose. “A spaceship battleship?”

  “Aye, she is.”

  Oh, thank god. A spaceship meant there was a way home.

  Therion pulled her from her thoughts. “Seph’s there now with a whole damn entourage.” When she shook her head in confusion, he continued, “A unit of fleetmen. She’s protected.”

  “Oh.” She was glad to hear that someone looked after this other woman. “The Gwyretti have also given me guards.”

  He chuffed, a deep rumble that sounded like a scoff. Fine. She hadn’t expected to change his mind so quickly, especially when Chieftain Lider left him locked in chains.

  “They also knew I wasn’t a sexbot from the very beginning,” she added, not to be critical, but to further his understanding. “When I first woke, things were… well, things were bad.”

  She glanced up to see him looking at her intently again.

  “I bet they were,” he said softly.

  Recalling how badly she’d behaved had her blushing with embarrassment.

  “I’ve never seen anyone who wasn’t human before. I woke up with this thing on me.” She swept her hand down, indicating her own body. “The spider was rattling, making so much noise that my head ached. And I kept having to tell myself that I was awake. That it wasn’t a dream.”

  Therion muttered something.

  “What was that?” she asked, her skin tingled. Surely he didn’t say—

  “I wake.” Therion spoke the Terish words clearly. “‘I wake.’ You heard that over and over again, didn’t you?”

  Maude stumbled through her reply, “I did. I—how do you know that?”

  He reached up with his bound hands and canted his head, trying to scratch his neck. A nervous tell, perhaps?

  “Seph said something similar.”

  “When she woke from the cryo-bin?”

  The Gwyretti had told her all about that. How she had been inside a container, in some sort of suspended animation. She didn’t like to think of being safely encased in a tube, yet entirely helpless.

  “After that.” He jutted his chin toward her. “She doesn’t have that—that spider thing—all over her.”

  Maude glanced down, seeing only the cloak, but she was very aware of the metal twined all over her skin. “She doesn’t?”

  That both surprised and dismayed her. Truly, it was wonderful that Seph didn’t have to deal with this thing. That an alien growth hadn’t threatened to constrict her like a metal boa. Maude was trudging toward a slow, painful ordeal—that would kill the baby and possibly her as well—if she couldn’t get this thing off her body.

  Good lord. She wouldn’t wish this on anyone.

  “[I wake.]”

  She flinched, and horrified, flicked her eyes to Therion. Had he seen her react?

  Therion shifted on the floor, the sand grinding under the weight of him as he started to rise. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

  Hell. He saw.

  She curled her hands into fists and was ashamed that a well of tears stung her eyes and sinuses. She blinked them back, refusing to let them fall. “I just thought that Seph and I would have more in common. That’s all.”

  He hovered there, as if about to push up to his towering height, and studied her. Like he knew her answer was a half-truth. Well, he could stare all he wanted. She wasn’t going to talk about the voice inside her head.

  He continued to stare at her, assessing her. “You both have the protection of House Borac.”

  Her skin tingled at his seriousness. “I don’t know what that means.”

  “Means I’ll take care of you. You want that thing off, then we’ll find a way to get it off.”

  She gasped as gratitude swelled inside her. “Thank you—”

  “Just not here.” Therion settled back onto the floor and cast his eyes away. “Someplace safe.”

  Maude’s shoulders slumped as she blew out a breath. Back to this again, were they?

  Therion sat on the sandy floor and studied Maude.

  Apparently, he and Maude had mastered the art of talking in circles while tying knots. Therion was all for some mild bondage, but this had the potential of turning into a catastrophe.

  As she sat on the cot with the cloak wrapped about her, lost in her own thoughts, her posture sagged. He suspected she dwelled on circumstances—being lost in space and all. But when she’d offered him her bed, her spine had straightened and her shoulders had squared, confident that it was the right thing to do. It hadn’t mattered to her that he was a gritty bastard. These two views of Maude—sagging versus upright—eclipsed one another. She’d soft edges, sure, but determination as well.

  Unholde was tugging his anthers, in a bad way.

  How the hell did he handle someone like Maude? Seph, she had pluck, her core as hard as sard. Maude, though, Vedma would shred Maude in her gummy mouth. If ever he met a caroa in the flesh, Maude shone as the pinnacle.

  Watching her struggle with the shit that the universe shoved at her angered him. Abducted. Held prisoner. Confused. Alone. He wanted to give her more reassurances, but somewhere in this cell was a monitoring device. It probably wasn’t Athelasan tech, either, but something rudimentary that would transmit anything Therion said to Maude directly to Lider.

  Lider, that seeping asshole, had managed to tie Therion’s tongue along with his hands.

  But his inability to be completely forthright with her was a good thing. Maude wasn’t ready to hear everything. Her reaction to the spider was his proof. He could easily explain that the voice she heard was her technopathy connecting to the moya of the spider, but what would that gain him here and now? Starting that conversation would open a floodgate of information. The knowledge would overwhelm her, drown her in the grim reality of what it meant to be a female technopath—an Athela—who was not safely sheltered within the core Teras Dominion worlds. Out here in the Tendex, surrounded by the Gwyretti and marauders, she was a commodity. Sold and used.

  How would Maude react if he told her that Lider had already started a bidding war for her on the UnderNet? That supposedly honorable Teras houses were discreetly responding? Or that if she wanted the spider off her body, she needed to open herself up. Accept the connection as one being to another, instead of ignoring the spider’s attempt to communicate with her.

  Where the fuck should he begin with all of that?

  He bit back a disgruntled snarl. All his reasons were shit excuses, and Unholde would make certain that each one kicked him in the ass later on.

  Well, fuck it, then.

  Creaking and groaning like his ol’ gappa, Therion got his feet under him and stood. Until Unholde’s reckoning cometh, he had shit to do.

  Maude looked up at him. It almost toppled him to see the open inquisitiveness on her face.

  Therion used both hands to gesture toward the open cell door. “You usually walk about the compound at night?”

  “Yeah.” She nodded, but he knew that Human word for ‘aye.’ “When it’s cool.”

  Therion canted his head toward the cell door. “A’right. Let’s go.”

  Her brow furrowed as she swept her eyes over him. “But aren’t you tired? You look tired.”

  He was fucking beat, but he also knew he wasn’t going to sleep tonight. Not with his hands shackled, guards stationed down the hall, and Maude sitting there wide awake.

  “Ech.” He shrugged. “I got some people to see.”

  She stood but didn’t move toward the door. “And they’re awake at this hour?”

  Her tone wasn’t suspicious, as Seph’s would have been, but curious. It threw him. Everyone was either suspicious or dis
missive of his actions.

  “They will be.” Therion waved her on ahead of him. “Come on. Out we go.”

  Maude spared him one more look over her shoulder, her green eyes flashing with something he’d rarely seen. Concern. Seph and Rannik gave him looks like that from time to time. They were the only ones.

  “All right.” She frowned at him, but thankfully headed out the door.

  Two guards sat on stools with their backs slumped against the mud-brick walls of the corridor. The Gwyretti were not nocturnal. Therion bet that having the overnight shift, when Maude liked to roam, must be brutal on the shit stains. Good.

  As they neared the guards, the spider started to rattle. The two Gwyretti slowly straightened, sitting upright, and eyed Maude warily. Their frills pulsed, never fully opening or closing. Therion was familiar with this posturing.

  “Just going for my walk, Tapuc.” Maude cheerily greeted the guard, speaking right over the aggravated clanking of the spider.

  “I see,” Tapuc, the older of the two night guards, said.

  Therion noted that although Tapuc wore a WristCune, he didn’t use it. No quick finger swipes to log Maude’s movement or hasty whispers to notify centralized security. If a grunt at House Borac neglected these protocols, his brother would personally dress down that fleetman. Imagining such a scenario had Therion shuddering. Zver could be a right vicious bastard at times. Never degrading, but humbling nevertheless.

  Tapuc rose to his feet in slow, measured stages of movement. “Same route?”

  “I, well…” She turned her bright eyes to Therion. “Where would you like to go?”

  How fucking sweet of her.

  “Wherever’s fine.” Then, he knocked her on the shoulder, rather appalled that she stumbled right into the wall. He reached out to steady her. “Shit, you’re a tiny thing.”

  She laughed. He’d yet to hear her laugh, and her amusement tinkled like miniature bells. Fucking adorable was what it was. He wanted to pull her close and wrap her up in his arms.

  “It’s all right.” She smiled up at him. “Not used to being touched.”

  Well, that was a right shame. He knew why, though. The Gwyretti had constructed a buffer around her—using her cell and nighttime schedule—to reduce her contact with the inhabitants of the compound.

  Therion gave Maude another knock on the shoulder, much gentler this time.

  “Come on.” He turned her about, giving her a light directional push toward the stairs.

  She dragged her feet. “Slowly, Therion! Tapuc and Eremit—”

  Therion scoffed. “If Kora was going to shoot those arses, she’d’ve shot them by now. She doesn’t hesitate.”

  Tapuc frowned, but nodded his head. “True.”

  “Kora?” Maude cast him a baffled look over her shoulder.

  Gods, he liked that. How she actually listened to him and sought clarification. Engagement rather than forbearance lit her eyes. That look of hers was downright sexy as hell. It tingled his anthers to see her turn to him, seeking answers.

  “Mokora,” Therion dipped his chin to the rattle coming from under her cloak. “The spider.”

  She started up the stairs. “You’ve named it?”

  He shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Kora’s as ornery as my grandmother, and although I’ve campaigned hard to call my grandmother ‘it’ as well, I get overruled at every family supper. So, they call her ‘gamma.’ I’ve come to accept that even spiky-ass-pains deserve a name, Maude.”

  As Maude rounded the second landing, she pulled back and shrieked.

  Therion cringed and cursed the gods that, with his hands bound, he couldn’t cover his ears. Then again, he’d sacrifice his sensitive hearing to keep Maude from tumbling down the stairs. She’d startled so badly that she staggered back into him.

  Her body pressed along the front of his, and despite the shapeless cloak that she wore, he felt every last inch of her. His sternum to his knees lit up with the contact, and he sucked in a ragged breath.

  “Good lord!” Maude pressed her hand to her chest and gawked at the figure lurking on the landing. Maude heaved another breath as she held her arms before her, a confused look on her face as she stared at the motionless vines of the spider. “I didn’t see you there. Usually the spider—”

  “Ech.” Therion waved his hand, clanging his chains. “It’s only Gummy.”

  “Hello, Gummy,” Maude said, and he could hear the apology in her voice. “Sorry to have scared you.”

  Gummy stood there holding covered buckets. No hands slapped over ringing ears. No startled jump. That mean ol’ git knew they were coming and scared them for no reason. Well, no reason that Therion would consider to be a good one.

  Maude stepped forward and gently took the shit buckets from Gummy. “Are you going up or down, Gummy?”

  “Goin’ up.”

  “All right. We’ll follow you.” Maude stepped aside so that Gummy now led their little parade out of the dungeon.

  Therion groaned in aggravation as Gummy passed him on the stairs. “Aw hell, you old turd. Even without the buckets—” He gagged. “That smell’s all you, isn’t it?”

  “Therion!” Maude snapped at him, but it wasn’t really a snap, because her voice was just so damn sweet about it.

  Gummy grumped. “You try haulin’ around shit buckets wearin’ shit shoes up and down shitty stairs.”

  “Don’t worry none. I’m still gonna take over the compound.” He eyed Gummy. “You got this place ready to blow, right?”

  Gummy cackled. “Sure. I'm workin’ on it.”

  Therion gave Maude a wink as he plucked one of the buckets from her hand and waved her on up the stairs. “Won’t be an arse on his feet once Gummy lights this place up.”

  Gummy nodded. “Wastin’ my talents, though. We oughtta skip this small shit and take on Fleet.”

  “Ah, that’s my Gummy,” Therion chuckled as he nudged Maude with his shoulder. “One part bloodthirsty to one billion parts insanity.”

  Maude batted her gaze between them. “Are you talking about the escape and rescue again?”

  “Sure am.” Therion then called out, “Which reminds me, Gummy. Don’t light the fuse just yet. Need a day or two.”

  “Perfect. Just what I wanted,” Gummy grumped. “More time haulin’ shit around.”

  “Don’t be a bellyacher. Maude needs more time. She has some things to figure out.”

  “I don’t need more time,” Maude said as they round the last landing, her free arm winged out to assist Gummy up the stairs. “Don’t do anything to jeopardize your job here, Gummy.”

  Gummy cackled again. “Job. Good one, girly.”

  “Therion thinks I need to be rescued, but I really don’t. I’m fine here. The Gwyretti are being incredibly wonderful and helpful.”

  Gummy snorted. “Course they are. You ain’t a slave.”

  Therion saw Maude’s steps falter as she glanced down at Gummy. “Ah, no. I’m not. Why would you think I was? I’m only in the basement because it’s cooler there.”

  Therion groaned at her choice of words. Basement. Lider had stashed her in a fucking dungeon for gods’ sake.

  Gummy jabbed a thumb toward the neck restraint. “Well, I ain’t wearin’ this here collar ‘cause I think it’s kinky.”

  Maude stopped, bringing their entire gaggle to a halt. “Wait. What?”

  “You heard me, girly. Give it here.” Gummy snatched back the bucket that Maude carried and started to shuffle off.

  Maude blinked. “I thought it was decorative.”

  Well, hell. Of course she thought it was nothing but an adornment. Good people always saw pretty things as benign, but he had another issue to address before leveling Maude with a harsh life lesson.

  “Hoy!” Therion called out. “You forgot your other bucket, you antherless idiot!”

  “Ech.” Gummy flipped a hand and continued shuffling away.

  Maude turned back to Therion, a stricken look on her face. She gazed past him, h
er eyes landing on her two Gwyretti guards. It stung a bit, that she actually turned to those bastards for an explanation.

  “Is it true?” Her voice quaked. “Is that man a slave?”

  Maude knew that life could be complicated. She lived a complicated life herself at the moment. She was pregnant with a child that wasn’t hers, yet it was a child that she devoted herself to completely. A child conceived out of love that she would lovingly give up. See? Complicated.

  She wasn’t overly smart, yet she knew some things were incredibly simple. For instance, in the matter if one was a slave, the answer was yes or no. Not the wavering, distressed hiss that Eremit had thought to be a suitable answer. Or the blatant dismissal of her question that Tapuc had chosen to employ.

  Only Therion had answered her plainly by glancing pointedly down at the shackles on his wrists.

  “I thought you were just being detained,” she’d told him, her heart sinking at her own foolishness.

  “Not this time.” He’d shrugged and canted his head, as if pointing at something way off in the distance. “That other time, sure, but they could never prove a thing.”

  Good lord, she’d assumed that Therion’s problems were as benign as detention. Like sitting in the mall’s security office while they waited for her parents to show up. Nothing but a slap on the wrist.

  For Maude, the revelation had slapped her in the face.

  The Gwyretti had let her amble around their compound with this veil over her eyes for weeks. They must think her a fool. She hated it when people assumed—that because they could describe her as being nice and caring and thoughtful—that she must be a gullible idiot. A few of her friends had accused Nicole of strong-arming her into becoming a surrogate mother. They hadn’t believed that Maude had offered to carry Nicole’s baby because she’d do anything for her sister.

  Therion transferred the bucket handle to one hand, and with the other he tugged at her cloak by her hip. “Come on, Maude.”

  She almost sobbed to see that he barely had six inches of separation between his wrists. That as she ran her gaze up his arms, she saw his bound hands had rolled his shoulders forward, bunching and restricting them. And he’d been like this for hours.