Jai: Defiantly Bonded (Rogue Bonds #4)

CHAPTER ONE

AIDEN

“I can’t believe this. Eight of them. What the hell are we supposed to do with eight dimari?

” I muttered, manoeuvring the car through the traffic as fast as I could get away with.

Despite the fact that the mother of all shitshows was waiting for me back at the Hon military base, I was unfortunately not authorised to break any traffic laws to get back there quicker.

It was going to take the better part of an hour to get all the way across the city, and I prayed that nothing was going to go wrong before we got there.

That was exactly what had happened this time around, and it was the reason we were hightailing it back to the base.

Except instead of one new dimari who would need to be adopted, housed and have their master trained in how to look after them, we’d just received notice that we had eight of them.

The crate containing the slaves had been pulled from the wreckage of a Eumadian cargo ship that our defence forces had gunned down when it had made an unauthorised jump through our wormhole.

Now, the crate was being taken to the main Hon military base, and was due to arrive well before Kade and I got back.

I felt a renewed lurch in my gut at the thought of someone doing something monumentally stupid before we got there. Like, say, opening the crate.

“You’re nervous,” Kade observed, glancing sideways at me.

Nervous was a massive understatement. But I refrained from saying so.

Dimari received extensive training in the art of pleasing their masters, so offering even casual commentary that might be misconstrued as criticism or an objection was regarded by their trainers as grievous misbehaviour.

So the fact that Kade was noting my apprehension at all was an indication that he was disturbed by it.

“If someone opens the crate and the dimari have actually been activated, we could end up with eight dimari bonded to one person,” I fretted, as I swerved around another car. “I don’t know anyone in the whole Alliance who could deal with that level of responsibility.”

Kade cocked his head, the mildest of frowns crossing his face. “You said Colonel Henderson told you that the dimari had not been activated.”

“That’s what he said, yes,” I replied, as I changed lanes, passing a car that was going slightly below the speed limit.

“Then… I don’t understand what the problem is.” It was said diffidently, and if I didn’t know Kade as well as I did, I might have been fooled into thinking he genuinely wanted me to explain it.

But Kade had been bonded to me for nearly two years, and we’d gotten to know each other very well in that time. So I knew that what he was really saying with that mild statement was that he thought I was seriously overreacting.

The thing was, when the dimari had finished their training, they needed to be ‘activated’, which was a process that triggered some deeply ingrained neuro-engineered chemical reaction, which meant the dimari would bond irreversibly to the first person they laid eyes on after the activation was complete.

Most dimari were sent out already activated, but it wasn’t unknown for small groups of them to be sent before being activated, perhaps if they were all being delivered to the same city on the same planet, for example.

And Colonel Henderson – the head of the Hon base – had indeed told me that this shipment of dimari had not yet been activated.

Rather than feeling irritated at his lack of concern, Kade’s nonchalance instead made me take a step back and think about what I was really doing.

“I suppose I’m worried that someone misread the security warning on the crate,” I admitted.

“And yes, I know what you’re going to say next.

Henderson’s fully aware of the risks and he wouldn’t take any chances with making mistakes.

So I suppose at the same time, I just don’t trust the Eumadians.

Just because they say the dimari are inactive doesn’t mean that’s true. ”

The Eumadians were the species who bought the Vangravians as babies and brainwashed them as they grew up to be willing and obedient slaves.

They used some powerful neuro-engineering technology to achieve their goals, and previous interactions with them had proven them to be entirely untrustworthy.

“And even if they’re not activated, we’re still left with eight new dimari that we’re going to have to find suitable masters for.

It’s hard enough trying to find a good home for one, never mind eight.

” Was I stressed? Yeah, I was. Just a little.

“Finding eight new masters is a daunting prospect,” Kade conceded. “But I think it would be fairly out of character for the Eumadians to sabotage one of their own shipments, whether that happened deliberately or accidentally.”

His observation was entirely accurate. The Eumadians were driven almost exclusively by the desire for money, and so they would have a vested interest in providing a good quality product to the intended recipients – who had no doubt paid large sums of money for their dimari.

Having them bond to the incorrect masters through sheer negligence wouldn’t do the Eumadians any good.

“But whether or not the Eumadians correctly labelled the shipment, I’ve seen plenty of evidence that Colonel Henderson has a very good understanding of the importance of treading carefully around new arrivals.”

To paraphrase Kade’s carefully worded reassurance, Henderson knew what he was doing, and I needed to calm down.

We came to a stop at a red light and I forced myself to take a deep breath.

“You’re right,” I said, not objecting to the mild reprimand.

“Henderson’s dealt with this before. And we’ll have plenty of time to assess the situation carefully once we get back.

” I put my hand on Kade’s knee and gave it a light squeeze. “Thanks.”

“You care about them,” Kade murmured, gazing out the far window. “That’s a very good thing.”

I sighed and let my gaze linger on my dimari’s face for a moment.

How deeply I cared about the dimari hit me viscerally every single day.

Because every day, I was struck by some new realisation of how much had been taken from Kade by the neuro-engineering process.

The ability to make his own decisions, to choose his own path in life, to freely express his desires and needs.

He was entirely dependant on me, for all that he was a full grown adult, and I couldn’t help the stab of sorrow that came with the idea of who he might have been, if his entire species weren’t cruel and narcissistic assholes who sold all of their male children into slavery the moment they were born.

The best I could do for the dimari who had arrived was to find them stable and loving homes where they could live out their days in peace.

The light turned green, and I headed off again, at a more civilised pace this time. It was fine, I told myself, trying to channel some of Kade’s calming vibes. Everything was going to be fine.

? ? ?

Good intentions aside, I found myself racing through the military compound at a near sprint as soon as I’d got through security and parked the car.

Henderson had sent me a message saying the crate had been docked at transporter bay five, which in typical fashion, was on the opposite side of the base to the parking garage.

My dash through the base was littered with multiple repetitions of “Fuck, sorry… ‘Scuse me… Whoa, shit, sorry…” as I skidded around corners and dodged to avoid running into people. Kade, keeping pace behind me, was silent – which was partially because I had already cleared the path for him, and partially because he was a hell of a lot more graceful than me. He’d been trained as a combat specialist – one of the most skilled specialties the dimari could be trained in – and he had cat-like reflexes, both his balance and his reaction time significantly better than a human’s.

Once we got through the door into the transporter bay, I immediately saw the cluster of people standing in front of the crate.

The crate itself was huge, two metres tall and four metres long.

And Colonel Henderson was prominently visible at one end of it, his eight-foot-tall frame hard to miss.

He saw me coming and turned to face me, and though it could sometimes be hard to make out Denzogal facial expressions, owing to the thick coat of fur they all had, in this case, Henderson’s worry was obvious.

“Where are we up to?” I asked, without even saying hello.

The crowd parted to let me through, since everyone knew what my role here was.

Dimari Protection Officer, as declared by the Alliance Parliament, and I had the full backing of that political juggernaut to make whatever decisions I believed were best for the dimari on Rendol 4.

“We’ve read the information on the security panel and the shipping manifest,” Henderson said, gesturing to the dimly glowing screen on the front of the crate.

“But beyond that, I haven’t let anyone touch it.

And according to both documents, we’ve got eight unactivated dimari inside.

They were en route to Fotessia. I’ve got the stats on each of them from the shipping manifest, if you want to see that, but figuring out how to get them out of the crate might be more urgent. ”

“Any damage to the crate?” I asked, casting a long, slow look over the container. “We shot down the ship carrying it, correct?”

“Wormhole defence shot it down,” Henderson confirmed.

“Then they sent out a couple of sweepers to collect the cargo. So my first concern is that the dimari inside might have been injured. There’s no obvious damage to the crate, and I know they tend to have fairly good harnesses and safety systems, but nothing’s foolproof.

And then, as I mentioned, the security screen says they haven’t been activated. But…”

“Would it be all right if I took a look at the screen?” Kade asked from behind me. “I can read the original script, to avoid any possibility of the message being mis-translated.”

I felt an instant sense of relief at his suggestion.

“Yeah, please go ahead,” I said to him. The information on the screen would be written in the Eumadian script, and while Alliance technology was perfectly capable of translating the symbols, getting confirmation from a native reader of the language would hopefully settle my nerves.

The added bonus was that, being a dimari himself, Kade was thoroughly familiar with the systems the Eumadians used to ship their cargo, so he would pick up on anything that Henderson or the other staff might have missed.

He stepped forward, activating the screen and scrolling slowly through the lists of information. The rest of us waited, no one making a sound.

Once Kade was finished perusing the information, he nodded and deactivated the screen again.

“There’s nothing out of the ordinary,” he reported.

“The dimari inside – according to the report, at least – have not been activated, and all environmental controls and pressure seals are intact. So we’re as sure as we can be that it’s safe to unload them. ”

‘As sure as we can be’? Why didn’t I find that statement reassuring?