Warden Egara crossed her arms over her chest and shifted away from the screen until her body met the back of her chair. I, however, leaned forward, every bit of weight on my arms as I tried to keep my head and shoulders from dropping onto the table. My spine seemed to have broken in half.
He wouldn’t even talk to me? That’s what this was?
Not accepting outside communication?
“Let me get this straight.” My knuckles, still wrapped around the water glass, turned white. “You actually spoke to him, told him he had a call from Earth, from me, Stefani Davis, and he just said no? He said he doesn’t want to talk to me? He said those words to you?”
“Actually, my lady, I indicated the comm was from both Warden Egara and yourself. The response was delayed, but I read it to you, word for word.” He looked contrite, as if even he could not believe the warlord would issue such a cold reply. Or maybe that was just my imagination and he didn’t really care one way or the other. Like Velik didn’t care, apparently. Couldn’t be bothered to accept my phone call. Comm call. Whatever.
Asshole. I was trying to do the right thing here, let him know he was going to be a father—despite the fact that he’d promised me the world, fucked me in public, and then acted like he didn’t know me at all.
Ass. Hole. I shouldn’t have expected any different. My own father had actually paid off our mother, made her sign a legal document stating she would never try to contact him, nor put his name on the birth certificate.
We still didn’t know who he was. Not even a name. Our mother had told us he was unimportant, and now I understood. My own father had signed away his parental rights before my twin sister and I were even born. That had been at his lawyer’s insistence as well. Mom had been sixteen, poor, scared and probably feeling like I did right now. So raw and hurt she couldn’t even scream.
“Thank you, sir.” I stood up, nodded at the helpless alien on the other side of the screen and reached around Warden Egara to push the little lighted button I knew would end this farce of a call.
When the screen was dark once more, I placed a hand on Warden Egara’s shoulder. “Thank you, Warden Egara. I would ask that you not speak of this to anyone. Not even my sister. I told both her and my mother that the father was a human so that Kovo and Maxus would not feel the need to get involved.”
“That was probably wise. I give you my word.” She looked away from me and closed her eyes, as if her own emotions were too volatile to control. “And Stefani, I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” With every ounce of willpower I possessed, I took my glass over to the S-Gen’s recycling container and deliberately, slowly, placed the empty glass inside. “I will go now, so you can get back to work. I’m sure the halls are lined with women impatient to be brides.”
I walked out of the room, down the corridors and out of the building before the first tear fell.
When I was far enough away from the processing center to avoid anyone seeing me, I pulled my SUV over to the side of the road and sat there, sobbing. Wracking, heaving sobs that I could neither stop nor control. I put the vehicle in park and reached for a new vomit bag from the stash I kept in the passenger seat for special occasions. Like this one.
There was nothing in my stomach, but that didn’t stop my body from trying to empty me of everything. Hurt. Hate. Sadness. Shame. Fear—god, how was I going to raise two half Atlan children?
First my father had walked away with no interest in ever meeting his daughters. Then there was my mom’s brother, Uncle Fabian. One military tour after another, he left us for months at a time even though he knew he was the only man around to help my mother—his twin sister—and keep us safe. Then one day he joined the coalition and never came back. No calls. No check-ins. Nothing.
My mother tried her best, but that meant she had been gone a lot. Working two, sometimes three jobs to keep a roof over our heads, milk in the refrigerator, macaroni and cheese and peanut butter in the pantry.
My grandmother didn’t even try. She had given birth to my mother and Uncle Fabian when she was only fifteen. Later in life she had lung cancer and smoked every damn day until the end. She was a bitter, cold woman full of hate for the world. Sometimes I think maybe subconsciously she wanted…well, she wanted the pain to end.
Now I understood.
No one was coming to save me. Still unwanted. Always a burden. Well..I knew Adrian would drop everything to help me take care of the babies, but she had her own life to live. A mate, a warlord, who actually adored her. Loved her.
Wanted her.
I cried for two days, the pain a physical thing that twisted and wrenched my guts from the inside out.
On the third day I took every memory of Velik I had, my hopes and desires and desolation, my feelings of being abandoned by my father, my uncle, my bitter grandmother, my mother moving to another planet, my twin so consumed by her mate that she regularly forgot to return my calls, and put them inside the iron coffin I built in my mind when I was a little girl. Everything that hurt me went in there, locked away and buried, like radioactive nuclear waste, buried in a deep, dark pit.
Radiation killed things. Slowly. Painfully.
Thinking about Velik, or my past, or about how uncaring most people I had encountered actually were, would rot me from the inside out. So, I didn’t do it. I couldn’t afford that. I had to live, really live. For my unborn children, I had to not only survive, but thrive. Create a new life and a new history. For them, if not for myself.
On the fourth day I called my friend Carmen…and started packing.
8
Warlord Velik, Sector XXX, Battleship Zeus, Fifteen months into mission
* * *
Weighed down with weapons and gear, I walked down the ramp of the shuttle and watched the young warlords stomp over to their favorite wall of the ship. They’d posted a board, like school children, and were counting their kills.
