“Are you staying? Scarlett asks Driok sweetly. “Is he staying?” She redirects her question to Maggie.
“I think not,” Driok replies, backing away to the door, followed, albeit with less good grace, by Dalox. “We have what we came for.”
Gillian goes to Dalox and whispers something in his ear. He still has a face like the coming storm, but he dips his head and leaves.
“What did you say to him?” I ask as she rejoins us.
“I told him if he wants to share my bed tonight, he’d better stop bullying you.” Gillian grins at me. “It’s not a good look.”
“I wasn’t being bullied.” I sigh. “I can’t tell them what I don’t know.”
“So you really don’t know where Deus is?” Kerra asks.
I look at Maggie, who is doing quite a good impression of an angry hen.
“That twat has abandoned her…” She starts.
“Look,” I say, loudly. “I am the first to admit I wasn’t sure what Deus saw in me. I still don’t know if he really is in rut for me, or if…” I dash away those damned tears again. “But I want to believe, with my whole heart, he isn’t attempting to betray the Sarkarnii or me.”
The events of last night come closing back in on me. Deus’s weird behavior, the new information he was attempting to recruit warriors—it all points to one thing. He wanted a new life, and he didn’t know how to start it. Revenge has been at the very heart of all he is for a long, long time.
What happens when revenge isn’t what you want anymore? You try to make sense of your new reality.
“Why?” Scarlett challenges me.
I look around at my friends, their concerned faces turned to me.
“Because I think I was wrong about him last night. I don’t think he was talking about her at all…his mate, Dylia I mean. I think he meant me…I think he thought I was her and he was finally saying goodbye.”
DEUS
It would appear the Ulep are attempting to bore me to death. I’m not sure a Sarkarnii warlord has ever met such a fate, but if I have to stare at the unchanging view they have somehow taken from my quarters for much longer, I suspect I may smash my own head in, rather than have it blown off by the control collar.
Other than occasionally increasing the pain in my neck, the thing has been remarkably quiet, despite my careful exploration of its surface. I can tell there are a number of entry points, and if it is true the Ulep want to continue taking my mating mix, I have suspicions that any charge which might result in separating my head from my body is a mere threat rather than a reality.
However, I know it is capable of rendering me unconscious with some form of gas. It can cause me pain, and it also, somehow, suppresses my shift, such as it is, meaning I am unable to escape from it by changing to my Sarkarnii form.
Other than a delivery of meat once a day, there is absolutely nothing else to do but contemplate my existence.
But if the Ulep think I’m going to sit here and let them use me as some sort of sentient dispensary, they are wrong.
I suspect my captors may have underestimated my desire to get free. Also my intelligence, although I doubt that’s a stretch given how I have behaved.
Further, they clearly do not have my Lydia under their control, or they would have shown her to me, rather than a holographic creation of her. Provided they know about the mix, they would know her actual presence would make me produce more, therefore in her absence I know she is still safe, back on Vorostor, in the heart of all the Sarkarnii warlords.
Whilst it makes my mating gland pulse at the thought of her being surrounded by warriors, at least she is in that position, and while my body rejects it, my mind knows she is the safest she can possibly be without me by her side.
My fellow warlords will protect her, like they protected the other female humans. I doubt very much they will accept my disappearance as anything other than suspicious, because I would, but it makes me even more determined to get back and prove Dalox wrong.
I know now, despite my earlier desires, revenge is pointless. The Ulep do not care what happens to me, or to my mate, or to the other Sarkarnii, provided they get what they want. I should take their own instruction instead. Care less, destroy more.
The end of the Ulep would be satisfying, but it won’t bring Dylia back, nor will it take me to my beautiful Lydia.
I can still see Dylia’s hand on mine. I can still hear her voice.
“If this virus takes me to the ancestors, don’t ever be alone, Deus. You don’t do well alone.”
I should have listened to that voice, to her, the female who swore to protect me, not the other one, the one from deep inside me, the one which became overwhelmingly loud after Dylia went to the ancestors. The voice which promised destruction and pain to rain down on those who took her from me.
