His hair had grown long and wild, and his mother had taken great pleasure in fashioning it into intricate braids.
And when the hunt had been over, he would retreat to his cozy nook inside the network of caves that ran deep underneath the black mountain, nestling in the furs of a giantszkazajikhe’d slain. His mother would sing him songs in the Old Tongue, ancient reminders of a time when the Great Starhad shone upon their land, the skies had been colored blue, and the ice they walked upon now had been water.
Mother. He remembered her name, but it was too painful for him to even think it. Her name was sacred.
He’d lost her that day, when Imperial Forces had raidedSennara, the Black Mountain, and stolen Rykal and his age-mates.
They’d been shipped off to the planet Xar, and out of the thousands who had been sent there, only ten had survived.
The First Division.
The Empire had created ten perfect soldiers, but it had cost the blood of thousands.
They had stolen their memories. At first, their loyalty had been to the Empire, and they had been the perfect tools, finely honed and vicious in every way.
But slowly, their personalities had emerged, fragments of memory had returned, and they had all decided their true loyalties lay with the general, especially once Emperor Ilhan descended into madness.
The Empire had forged ten perfect weapons, but the weapons were strongest when they worked together, and the Empire didn’t exactly wield them anymore.
Rykal decided there and then that he would no longer serve the Empire. He would not be a tool of the mad empress and her corruption. He was loyal only to his general, his brothers, and now, his mate.
To her above all others.
“Rykal,” Arin whispered, stroking his hair as he leaned into her, wrapping his arms around her slender waist, pressing his cheek against her belly, “it’s okay.”
“Yeah.” He placed his hand over hers, closing his eyes. Something must have happened to his brain as the nanites inside his body furiously tried to protect and repair it after the blast. His memories had come back all at once, undoing all the Empire’s work.
It would take him a long time to dissect and fully understand those stolen memories, and even longer to piece them together correctly, but it didn’t matter.
He had her now, a mate to fill the void within him. He didn’t care that they were from different worlds. He didn’t care that the Empire was the enemy of her people.
She made him complete again, and his loyalty was with her now, above all else.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Rykal was fully recovered now, and Arin was fully dressed. They’d found her clothes in an empty waste bag, and she’d wasted no time dressing herself and picking select weapons off the dead guards until she was armed with a decent arsenal of bolt-guns of varying sizes.
Rykal’s nanites had recharged enough for him to be able to ‘form’ his armor again, but he’d needed to do something to get to that point.
What exactly that thing was, she wasn’t sure, because he’d asked her to step out of the room for a moment. His voice had been subdued, and his eyes had been downcast, as if he were suddenly self-conscious.
When he’d emerged, his muscular form had been encased in his customary suit of exo-armor again, and Arin had given him a short, sharp shrug, as if to say:don’t worry about it.
She suspected that whatever he’d done to ‘regenerate’ so quickly had something to do with the bodies on the floor, but he hadn’t wanted to share, and she hadn’t wanted to know, so she’d let it drop.
Together, they stalked down the dim corridors of the nameless surveillance ship, searching for a way out. Rykal hadno weapons. Arin had offered him a bolt gun, but he’d sniffed disdainfully at the weapon, muttering something aboutinferior human technology.
And for some reason, that had made her laugh, granting them a moment of levity in such grim circumstances.
The lower decks of the ship were strangely deserted. The subdued agents who had been monitoring all kinds of surveillance equipment had disappeared, and there was no trace of either E1 or E2.
Arin wasn’t sure how many Rykal had killed, but it had to be close to half the guards onboard the ship.
So where were the others?
“They think they can ambush us,” Rykal whispered as they entered the bridge. Even the navigators had disappeared, leaving the ship to be manned by its AI. “Don’t worry. I will kill all of them.”
“Don’t,” Arin said, giving him a stern look. “Do what you need to do, but don’t kill people who are defenseless. Not everyone on board this ship is a soldier. They might be doing weird, fucked up shit up here, but they think they’re doing it for the good of their race. Formyrace. They think they’re doing the right thing. I’m sure you, of all people, can understand that.”
