Her Commanders - M.K. Eidem Page 0,90

been hiding.

"California Rose, tell me."

The gentleness of her mom's voice worked as nothing else could. Lifting her head, she met her mom's eyes.

"You know how sometimes you get melancholy?" Cali saw her mom jerk as if struck before she straightened and responded.

"Yes."

"Well, during one of those times, when I was around seventy-five," Cali gave her a guilty look. "I… memory-walked with you."

"You what?" Dakota just stared at her daughter in disbelief.

"It's when…"

"I know what it is, California!" her mother cut her off sharply. "What I don't understand is how you could have done it without me realizing it."

"I don't know." Cali did know, but she wasn't going to tell her mom that. There were only so many of her secrets she was willing to reveal right now. "I'd only just discovered I could do it and was coming to tell you when I saw you sitting there, looking so sad. I wanted to know why, and I just sort of slipped in."

"I see," Dakota still wasn't sure how that was possible, but if she'd learned anything since melding with Caradoc, it was that about anything was possible. "What was I remembering?"

"The day the Discovery was hit by space debris." Cali didn't have to imagine how terrifying that had been; she'd experienced it firsthand, through her mother. Earth's interstellar travel had been in its infancy. They hadn't realized they needed energy shields to protect their hauls from the small impacts that could cripple a ship as it had her parents’.

"You saw what happened that day?" Dakota whispered; she'd raised trembling fingers to her lips.

"And felt it. All of it. Just as you did."

"Oh, Gods, Cali."

"How could you stay with a male like that, Mom?" Cali finally asked the question that had haunted her for nearly two hundred fifty years. "Especially after what he did to you and Dad?"

"That's why you've shut your father out of your life?" Dakota looked at Cali in utter disbelief. "Cali, you're taking what happened out of context."

"I'm taking it in the exact context you thought and felt when it happened," Cali argued back.

"Fom nearly a thousand years ago! Cali, thoughts, feelings, and people change."

"He hasn't. He is still the same cold, ruthless, self-centered male he was when he forced you to bond with him to save Dad."

"That's all true," Dakota instantly agreed. "For other beings, because he has to be. Your father is the Paramount, for Gods’ sake. But he's not that way with me, Cali. Or with your dad."

"I find that hard to believe. Father keeps you confined on Diter while he's free to travel wherever he wants."

"I stay on Diter because it's what I want," Dakota immediately corrected her. "I hate being on Zagreus Prime, where the only reason beings approach me is to get closer to your father. It distracts him, which puts him at risk, and I won't allow that. He is mine!"

Her mother's possessive growl shocked Cali. Yes, she'd seen her mother and father interact before, but it had always seemed so… cool. Her mom’s reaction now was anything but.

"How can you feel that way after what he did?"

"Cali," her mother's voice softened, "I'm not going to deny the emotions I had at the time. I was terrified. I didn't understand what was happening or why. My concept of the universe was so small back then, so narrow."

"You're saying you'd have been okay with what he did if you'd just understood more?"

"Yes. And no. Your father has been the Paramount for an extremely long time, Cali. He's maintained that position because he is the strongest, most gifted, and yes, sometimes the most ruthless of all the Zagreus. He had to be, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a heart, that he doesn't care, didn't get lonely. For millenniums he watched as others found their bond mate and melded with them. But never him, not until he found the Discovery."

"And you."

"Yes, so he did what he'd always done. He took without asking, but the meld didn't occur the way it should have."

"What do you mean?" Cali had never heard this before.

"I mean, a meld is supposed to be a joining of the mind, body, heart, and soul. In that order."

"That's not how it happened between you."

"No, I was too close to death, so Caradoc melded with my body first."

"He forced his power into you, healing you, without your permission." Cali began to get a sick feeling in her stomach.

"Yes, but you have to have realized it went deeper than that. Caradoc