Page 54 of Bonded Queen: to the Alien Warlord Triad

“Yes, my Lord.”

“It is easy to destroy a planet. It is easy to bombard from space. It is easy to raze cities and destroy. That is what the Scorp do. This is why Aurelians fight with Orb-Blades. You go in seven days. You have mercy in you, Ra’al. This is good. All those who surrender may join our ranks.”

“Where do I strike, my Lord?”

“The target will be revealed on the day. You will be reinforced soon. I cannot send many troops through the rift. I have not the power,” he says, angry at his own weakness. “But warships are coming to replenish your ranks and protect Trebulous. Prepare to strike the Aurelian Empire itself.”

I swallow hard.

I left the Empire with my triad with no second thought. I ran from them, knowing they would hunt me down, that Aurelians who would have considered themselves to be my kin would draw their blades to end my life.

I always knew it would come to this.

I never thought I’d be leaving my Mate behind to do it.

“We will be ready.”

“Appoint a ruler in your absence. You will strike quickly and return.”

“Yes, my lord.”

He cuts off the video feed, and we’re back to looking at the storage room.

“Did you see the way the Priests looked at him? They waited their entire lives for the War-God. Now they have him, and he is not what they expected.” Kriz muses aloud, his strategic mind always looking for details.

“He is just as us. He wants only his Mate.” Those details do not matter now. All that matters is that we do his will and get back alive.

The only way to safety for our Mate is not a hundred feet of stone and steel armor covering her.

It is eradicating the universe of all who would harm her.

20

Rachel

“Ra’al,” I whisper, blinking awake, reaching out to the touch him. I jolt to my senses when my hand touches Raneeda’s foot. She somehow manage to turn completely upside down while she was asleep, her feet sticking up on the pillows, her body sprawled out towards the foot of the bed.

I’m in bed with others, for sure, but they aren’t Aurelians. I recall the moments of last night, of stumbling into bed together, and the last view of the Aurelians at the door, staring in. I pull myself out of bed, shivering as I remember how they stared.

Despite waking up with two humans, they don’t leave me alone. They’re still in mind. They lack the ruthless intensity of yesterday, which reassures me. Whatever happened with the anti-air guns, they dealt with it. I rub my temples, trying not to focus on the three men in my head. I’ve got enough of my own thoughts to worry about without their emotions.

I’ve got no hangover. It didn’t take much wine to get me silly drunk on an empty stomach. So I rub my eyes, go to the bathroom, and to my surprise, though the counters are way too high and the toilet scares me with its high-tech display in Aurelian that looks like it wants to read my DNA if I take a pee, the alien bathroom is basically like a human’s, and they stocked it full of everything we needed. I come out of the bathroom refreshed.

On top of a set of drawers are two stacks of robes. One is plain, cotton servant robes, crisply pressed.

The other is a stack of sheer pleasure dresses in the hues of the rainbow. I run my hands over the first pleasure dress, enjoying the ticklish sensation of the strands coming alive under my fingertips, but instead pick up one of the plain cotton dress. I’m sure they were laid out for Nash and Raneeda, but if I’m going to be spending my morning in the bunker, I don’t want to be in a constant state of frustrated lust.

Nash and Raneeda are still in a deep sleep, so I walk out barefoot down the hallway to the mess hall. To my surprise, the long stone benches are not bare. There’s breakfast set out.

I sit down in front of one of three simple chicken and cheese sandwiches. There’s two sealed clear cylinders at each place, one with water, the other with a black liquid I hope is coffee. I grab the water greedily, cracking it open and drinking half the bottle. I was parched, and the water in the bathroom tasted too much of minerals. My stomach growls, but before I dig in, I balance the other two meals and bring them back to the room. When Raneeda and Nash wake up, they’re going to be just as starving as I am. Just because they’re my servants doesn’t mean they’re not thirsty. I set the food and drink down carefully by the stack of dresses.

With that done, I can relax in the mess hall. It’s good to be alone for a bit, though I can feel the triad of auras in my mind, the constant pinpricks of their being imprinted on me forever. I chomp down the sandwich and open up the coffee cylinder. It’s piping hot, and so much better than the stuff we got as servants of Paulus’s estate.

I look around the room. A week ago, I never could have imagined this. I went up to the heights of the spire, above the clouds, and now I’m just as far below the earth, protected by miles of stone and metal. Aurelians were a far-off dream, of luxurious estates on their home planet, harem women living in mansions made of white marble serving noble protectors—or a far-off nightmare, of Fanatics who worship a dark God and would sacrifice you as easily as they would enslave you.

The truth was something in the middle. The triad is nothing like how I thought Aurelians would be. They’re even more alien than I could have imagined. Perhaps it’s not the difference in species, but the time. They’d be near forty in human years, and so they’ve spent centuries at war, growing harder, their useless emotions evaporating.

I saw flashes of them. In their touches, growing gentle. In the looks in their eyes. Flashes of something other than just warlords. I want to reach out to their auras and feel them, but I’m scared, like trying to reach out and touch an ember that could spark up at any moment.

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