Alpha Warriors of The Cause - Tamara Rose Blodgett Page 0,55
you during the day. In that, you have a distinct advantage.”
Slade annoyingly mirrors Jeb's gait. “True. But there are half-breed nightlopers who can run interference and scheme. That is how our females were taken,” he says with quiet ferocity.
Jeb and Slade walk a kilometer in silence.
Finally, Jeb disrupts the quiet. “How?”
Slade doesn't ask to what Jeb is referring.
“After the death of my sire, I was too young in Bloodling culture to succeed the crown. So Gunnar was appointed the reigning monarch for that period before I could take the position.”
They come to the edge of the forest, and Jeb feels the heat emanating from the desert. Pools of steam rise like toxic vapor above dune after dune of sand colored like pale-brown sugar.
He steps from the cool border of the woods into the scalding desert. Jeb and Slade wear white T-shirts styled like turbans, soaked in water from a nearby river that feeds the lake they'd used to jump to this sector.
Jeb feels an uncharacteristic pang of homesickness for his world.
Thoughts of Beth shove their way inside his brain.
He shoves back, determined to persevere.
“The night Gunnar was to be ordained, the nightloper's attacked.”
“Beth's mother?” Jeb cocks his head, vaguely horrified because he knows Rachett's version of the story.
Slade nods. “She was caught between the two factions, and they made a show of killing her slowly, in the most inhumane and vicious way a male can hurt a female.”
They're silent for a time, their feet sinking and rising as they climb one repetitious dune at a time.
A harsh exhale escapes Slade. “A great battle was waged. When one of the half-breeds spilled the knowledge of Lucinda…” Slade shakes his head, stopping for a moment. He shades his eyes against the twin suns that burn down on them, overlapping each other like bloody discs. “Gunnar lost his mind, tearing away from his command position to search for her.”
“I know what happened when he found her.”
Slade gives him a sharp look. “You know that Rachett discovered her first.”
Jeb nods.
“In any event, Gunnar jumped with her body, and he was not heard from for over a year. When he finally showed himself, his mind was gone and Dimitri had captured all our females of breeding age in his absence. Our greatest strategist had been brought too low to perform his duties. Dimitri informed us if we imprisoned Gunnar, he would free half our females in twenty cycles.”
Jeb gives a low whistle. Jeb instantly put Dimitri's real objective together: an entire generation without Bloodling births had effectively damned the species to near-extinction.
Slade nods. “It was a clever plan,” he explains with reluctant admiration. “Then Dimitri became consumed with his own greed and struck a deal with Ryan while he was here for a month, receiving punishment for a crime on Ten.”
Slade’s eyebrows slowly rise in question, and Jeb explains. “He hurt Beth. Rachett saw to the punishment.”
“Ah.” Slade tips his head back, the gesture speaking to the punishment's insufficiency. “Then he did not suffer enough,” Slade says in a low voice of anger.
“Agreed.”
“Once Dimitri found a way to upset the balance of the Reflective sector, he was running with a new plan. Releasing Gunnar made sense.”
“Please tell me Gunnar won't hurt Beth.”
Slade slackens his brisk pace, turning to glare at Jeb. “What do you think we are? We are not brutes—like some.”
The unspoken comparison of Reflective to Bloodling is obvious. Unfortunately, because of Ryan's behavior, Jeb can't defend his fellow Reflectives. Many were confused but still good of heart.
But a few had hearts of evil. And that was all it had taken to ruin his world. Jeb vowed to find each and every one responsible. They will suffer then die.
Slade resumes his pace. “What will happen if Beth's timepiece stops ticking, and someone other than you beckons to her?”
Jeb turns to study the other male, hating his intensity and the gall to inquire of things he knows nothing about.
He answers anyway, “I don't know.”
“I know, Merrick,” Slade says as the huge structure where the Reflectives were held for five years rises in the distance, like an ugly mirage of weathered stone.
“She'll choose, Reflective.”
Jeb snorts.
“She'll choose me.”
Jeb uses a clever turn of phrase he learned from Jacky. “Or she'll tell you to go fuck yourself, Slade.”
Jeb brushes past him, a smile on his face. He is not normally optimistic, but he finds himself wanting to whistle a tune, especially when the Bloodling follows him in sullen silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Beth
“They are not the primitive species we have been