would be a cost.
The mechanism that allows me to connect to another humanoid’s brain was forged with the higher-dimensional piece of me that is usually meant to bond. I can’t bond as equals with another being, I can only connect to them like some kind of parasite, taking them over by force.
I’d hoped that my father had lied to me, or that I could have overcome it. Now that I’ve been with Annabelle, I know that my father was telling the truth.
I am flawed. Broken.
I won’t be able to get her pregnant then?
Why would they put me in the Breeding Games if I had no hope of winning?
The Ulkar who came to me and gave me the warning and head start. Was that really breaking ranks and betraying his brethren to help me? Or was it all part of the plan? Give the competitor who will struggle the most to impregnate the fertile prize the greatest chance of securing her, and then see if he can do it?
They want to come away with the strongest hybrid, and maybe that’s the test. If I can overcome my built-in weaknesses, I’ll have proven my seed as worthy of continuing on. If I’m unable to impregnate even the fertile prize, then one of the others is meant to carry on.
But no. I don’t care who has the stronger genes or seed. Annabelle is mine. I may not have even bonded to her, but she is now my Muru. Even if I can never give her a child, she will be mine forever, and no one will so much as lay a finger on her for as long as I live.
I awake to a pounding on the door.
Somehow I know it’s Kula, but there’s an urgency in his pounding. He’s not knocking as a chef, or as my half-brother who is trying to “cock block” me, he’s pounding on the door as an Aparan warrior.
I leap out of bed, not wasting time to get dressed. I do spare a second to put the sheet fully over my sleeping Muru so that my brother will not see her naked body, which belongs to me and me alone.
I open the door and see Kula shirtless in a black kilt. The scar across his face is pulsing, and he’s looking at me with a grave expression.
“What is it?” I ask.
He steps into the room and shuts the door behind him. When he sees Annabelle sleeping—somehow his knocking did not wake her—he looks at me with questioning eyes.
“I...did not bond to her.”
It shames me to admit this. It makes me feel like less than a man. Still, if anyone can understand not being bonded to his Muru, it’s Kula. I also don’t have time for my own pride. Kula is back as a warrior, and I need to know why.
“What happened, Kula?”
He points toward Annabelle.
“Just speak quietly.”
“I was in the kitchen, and suddenly I sensed something. It was six-dimensional, but it wasn’t Ulkar. It felt like...us, but different.”
My heart freezes in my chest. They’re here. It’s the only explanation.
As I’d started developing hobbies and making friends on Lakria, I’d let at least a small part of my mind begin to hope that maybe the others could never find us. The galaxy is vast, and maybe they’d have been completely unable to track me.
I let my guard down too much. I needed to be more prepared than this. I let optimism make me weak, and now I’m paying for it.
“They’re here, Kula. Did you see them?”
“As soon as I sensed it, I went to go see for myself. When I reached the dining room—which is where I thought I sensed them from—they were gone. One of my waitstaff told me that two humanoids she had never seen before had started to order, but suddenly left without eating. I looked outside, but could not see or sense them on the higher dimensions.”
“Did she describe them?”
He scratches his chin. “She said one had golden skin. The other was tall, but very small for his size.”
“Golden skin. It must be him. Philos.”
“Didn’t you say one of the contestants was some group of little beasts joined on the higher dimensions?”
“Maybe they merged together to form the tall one? Either way, golden skin and six-dimensional presence is certainly the one I fought on Earth. The one who killed the third competitor.”
“We need to get her somewhere safer,” Kula says.
I nod. “I’ll wake her and tell her what is happening.”
Kula frowns. He knows from his