Page 10 of Ren: Warlord Brides
“And we’re getting tacos and a pitcher of beer tonight.”
“Deal.” Gemma swept her into a hug. She smelled like sugar and butter and home. “I knew it’d work out.”
“We are such a pair of disaster twins.” She didn’t know where this too-good-to-be-true job was located, or even the alien’s name.
Opening the door, she found the alien waiting with a smug expression on his face.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Caldar.”
“Fine. Let’s talk details over tacos. You’re buying.”
Chapter 3
Ren
Present
Ren worked quickly. He had minutes to deploy the devices and ensure they connected to the building’s internal network.
He surveyed the well-appointed office and selected his targets: the painting, the plant, the communication hub.
The Sangrin Council spared no expense for their comfort. Not that he had a basis for comparison. His home planet had no Council, for a variety of reasons that mostly came down to tradition and stubbornness.
Ren unrolled his toolkit and set to work.
Fathers were strange. Specifically—because Ren loved specificities—the relationship between a Mahdfel warrior and his son always struck him as strange. What legacy could a father bestow beyond that of an endless battle against the Suhlik? As his father did before him, as his father did and as his father did, stretching all the way back in a complicated tangle to the original warriors who liberated themselves from Suhlik rule.
Carrying such a legacy was exhausting, but what else did a warrior have to offer? Their typically long lifespans were often cut short due to the brutal nature of their legacy. Cultural traditions came with their mothers, as did physical characteristics.
A mated male could expect to be matched to a female from another planet. Their sons would have a different physical appearance. What did a male have to give his son beyond the knowledge of how to be a good and honorable warrior?
Ren had pondered that question for years.
The last device scuttled along the ventilation shaft.
Task complete, Ren waited in the sun-filled room. He ignored the luxurious furnishings and focused on the view from the window. Vehicles zipped between tall towers in the sky, guided by precise AI navigation to avoid collision. Sangrin was a welcoming, soft planet made for easy, soft living. Even the cities were lush and green.
Spoiled, he thought. Spoiled like the smug, arrogant fool who called this planet home, always ready with a quip or a joke and never serious.
His contact with Lorran had been limited to a handful of missions, but it was enough to dislike the male, though he only voiced that opinion to Havik. His friend said that was because Lorran reminded Ren too much of himself.
Ridiculous.
They were nothing alike, even if Ren noted the strange parallels that ran between Lorran’s relationship with his father and the one Ren shared with his father. Lorran claimed his father to have been distant and cool, but he had brothers and the unwavering love and support of his mother.
Ren’s father had been very present in his formative years, almost suffocatingly so. For all of his father’s involvement, Ren never felt support. Only criticism and disappointment. Every aspect of Ren’s person and conduct was critiqued because Ren was a reflection of his father, who was the second-in-command to the warlord, and thus a reflection on the warlord.
The warlord had no tolerance for weakness. Rolusdreus was a harsh world. A warrior could not be soft or weak, much less defective.
Ren shifted in the chair, his fingers digging into the polished wood of the arms. Being small was not a defect. He had proven that time and again, yet he could never quite shake the shame of being defective. He had flaws—several, to accompany his regret—but they stemmed from past actions, not genetics and physical characteristics.
Lorran had grown up being told he wasgoodandvalued. So what if his father hardly spoke to him? In Ren’s experience, fathers rarely had anything to contribute beyond criticism.
That was the crux of Ren’s dislike of the male. Lorran had all the luxuries Ren lacked as a youth. The males were not similar at all. And now, because the male was soft, Ren had to clean up this mess.
A conflict of interests.
