Page 60 of Bonded By Savages

23

Athena

The moonlight streams into the room, reflecting off the marble skin of the two beautiful warriors who told me they loved me. They do, in their own way, but they are alien to me. And now that love is gone. There’s no place for emotion in war.

They stand in front of me, but there’s nothing left of them. Not even white-hot rage that means they’re alive. They’re just these cold, glacial presences, like standing on a lake of ice in the darkness, stretching out so far that it seems endless, the wind whipping against your body so you know you’ll never get out.

I stare out the window. The Coliseum dwarfs the city, and the huge tower of Obsidian rises up, proud and strong, the moonlight gleaming off it.

I thought I was alone before. When I felt their presence in my mind in my vision then it disappeared, I felt so alone, detaching myself as I toiled, just trying to get by another day.

“Athena. When you are with our son, you will be more than holy. You will be a savior of our species. If you accept it, then the seed will take root. We are worthy of you. We will prove it in battle. I will conquer planets. We will be kings of an entire sector, and you will be our queen. You will rule, and our sons will be princes.” His voice swells up with pride, the only emotion other than coldness he’s felt.

“I don’t want to rule. Gods, don’t you two understand? I don’t even want to boss around Laura and Matil. I…please. I felt the good in you. We can start a life. A real life. We can leave this planet. They won’t come after us, right? You…you found a way to protect those five women…you can find a way to protect us…” It’s my last plea, my last, heartbroken begging, before I’ll learn from them and become ice cold to push down the pain.

I look at them, and I know it’s not the Priests I need protection from. It’s the cold need for revenge that will take them from me.

They’re standing feet away from me, but their faces are blank. I feel their auras in my mind. Frozen, icy auras, and I’m more alone now than I ever was before.

“Let’s sleep. We have a big day tomorrow,” I say, and pull myself into bed. The two men come, silent, and I let them hold me.

“We do not have to go through with this.” Damian’s voice is flat.

“We do. I can’t help what my body feels. But I beg of you, when you’re taking me, reconsider. Think about all you have to lose. I don’t want you to go to war and come back victorious. I don’t want you to leave.”

Silence answers me. It tells me everything I need to know.

Their bodies are warm, but even as they press their muscled bodies against me, they’re distant.

I let myself cry. I let myself sob with grief for what could have been, and Tarak holds me tight against his chest, until I have no more energy, and I fall into darkness.

When I wake up, it’s already mid-day. Tarak and Damian are next to me. They’ve been awake for some time, I can tell, but they didn’t move, lying like statues so as not to disturb my slumber.

I pull myself out of their arms in silence, and go to the bathroom, washing my face, brushing my teeth and my hair, preparing.

Tonight I will be given to them in front of the crowd. If I knew they were staying with me, it would be erotically charged, the stands packed with huge alien soldiers aching to have a mate of their own, watching me rutted in front of them.

Instead, it will be a moment of desperation. We have a week. I willnotlive my thousands of years of life alone. I will bear a son, and that will give me purpose, something greater than myself.

Otherwise I can barely stomach the thought of another year, let alone decades or centuries.

I walk back into the bedroom, ignoring the two men. They say nothing to me as I pull on a green pleasure dress and leave them, walking into the garden. I can smell delicious hot coffee and fresh pastries from the kitchen, but I couldn’t eat. I sit on the bench, staring at the growing things, and feel so empty and distant.

Why?

Why couldn’t I be enough?

Aurelians search the universe for their Fated Mate. Now they have me, and I’m not enough for them.

They’re not human. They were born on Colossus. The first one hundred years of their lives, spent training in the Academy, learning war tactics, forged them into killing machines. The second century, spent in the Aurelian Empire’s army, fighting and killing. And these two went back for more.

War is all they knew. They tasted something else, and they think they can just put me on the shelf, to pick me up when they come back. Maybe they don’t understand now, but they will.

When they leave, they are gone from my heart forever. If they come back, and I have their son, I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure the empty iciness of their beings doesn’t poison him.

“Oh Gods,” I whisper to myself, because I love them. I love the men they used to be, before the void took the best parts of them away.

They’re broken. I thought I could be the glue that could bind them together again, but what I pieced together became cold, icy soldiers.

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