Page 3 of Warrior's Reign
Reign tasted blood in her mouth and allowed herself a grim smile as it attacked, ignoring her swelling eye to counter his flurry of blows. It was just her, enhancements disabled, and the bot. Good old-fashioned fisticuffs, but if done right, it could still kill ya.
Pa’s sparring droids were the best, despite having no artistry. There was just nothing like an opponent out for your blood. Ma would be pissed she’d reprogrammed them to death match level, though. The droid wouldn’t stop until its program registered Reign as having suffered a life-threatening injury, or until Reign called out the safe word. Ma knew shenevercalled out the safe word. Death was better than defeat. Zoriah, being a mother, saw things differently.
Reign deserved the beating. The pain and muscle burn of the fight ate through her guilt and rage.
A door slid open, noise from the family inside spilling out. “Maaaa!Reign’s doing a death match again.”
Tattle tale. That sounded like Meri, her youngest half-sister by twenty years, who was at the stage where she sought parental approval by being a shameless snitch. Reign couldn’t recall inflicting that unpleasant phase on her family, even when her older brother Khalid almost got them all taken by child protective on Earth for skipping school.
Benyon had intervened after it was clear her mother Zoriah was his bondmate, and now here they were on planet Yedahn living free the last twenty years on a homestead heowned.Not Low Tier factory drudges, her and her sister forced to marry and breed.
They’d been luckier than most. Reign worked her entire life to be worthy.
The door whooshed closed, then open, a minute later. “What—? Benyon!” Zoriah shouted, and the door slid shut again.
Moments later, the droid turned on its heels and marched back to its housing unit, powering down. Her stepfather must have deactivated the kill switch.
As soon as the urgency to defend her life retreated, the thoughts she’d been keeping at bay howled.
She’d failed. A person had died for her failure. It was time to face that her ambition to train, to becomeAdekhan, was foolish. She was a Low Tier human female from Earth. She would never be as good as a born Yadeshi, no matter how hard she trained, how many bones she broke in the cohort’s circle.
She’d failed herself, failed. . .him.
It would be better if she settled somewhere and raised chickens. One ambled by, paused and cocked its head at her, then presented its back and wandered off. She sneered at its bobbing backside and silently promised to have it for dinner.
Deprived of the droid, she switched seamlessly to training patterns, one Form blending into another until she pushed herself to the limits of what unenhanced human muscles could do, a blur of speed and the softest of sounds as her feet thudded against the ground.
Inside the house dinnerware tinked, children either chattering or whining—probably over vegetables. She heard the door open onceagain—all the opening and closing must be driving Ma insane.
Easing to a stop, Reign faced her stepfather.
“Why are you still here?” Benyon Obe’shan asked. He didn’t mean in the backyard training circle.
She waited until her breathing evened, loosened her dark curls from their tight braid to give her head some relief. “Kicking me out, Pa?”
“This place will always have a piece of your heart.” His voice was quiet under the moonlight. “But your soul always yearned towards the city. What happened, Reign?”
It had been three weeks since she’d come home. He hadn’t asked in all that time, waiting. He was a soldier, or he had been. Once a warrior, always a warrior, especially once one madeAdekhan.Adekhanswere the best, the craziest. The berserkers who somehow survived impossible odds honor intact and the battleground littered with the bodies of their enemies.
So he understood the kind of secrets that haunted sleep. She wasn’t anAdekhan,but she’d taken her training and done the next best thing a human woman on Yedahn could do.
“I lost my body. I snapped.”
He nodded. “You went hunting. How many people died?”
“I don’t know. Six, maybe more.” She shrugged moodily. “The family betrayed us. It was a blur after a while.”
The grief, the awful rage, was still fresh. It was piss poor professionalism to become emotionally attached to a client, but if you were going to take a blaster or an en-sword strike for someone else, it helped if they were more than a job. She’d liked her client. Every guard, even at her elite level, lost someone eventually. But this shouldn’t have happened. She—they’d—trusted the wrong people. Reign would never make that mistake again.
“Go back to the city, Reign,” Benyon said. “Face your demons.”
She grimaced. “You sound likeAdekhyunNumar.”
“Good. He trained me.” His eyes narrowed. “And you have the face of a warrior who has accepted failure.”
Reign spun in a tight, frustrated circle, discipline broken. Just like that. Proof of everything Numar had ever warned against. She had no control, too much temper, her center was not quiet, still. Silence, Silence, Silence.
She was theoppositeof Silent. She would never be anAdekhanbecause of that, it just wasn’t in her nature no matter how she strived to discipline her instincts to Haeemah’s Precepts. “My principle died. I failed.”
