Keeping Sarah (Planet Orhon #3)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER 1

Sarah

“ W hat the fuck are you thinking?” Rex seethed inside my mind, as his ship took off and we left Halla, along with Jac and Deacon, behind.

I ignored him. Considering Rex Terian was now a part of me , he knew exactly what I was thinking. I could read his thoughts, and he could read mine. To stop the fight and protect my family, I had possessed him. I had forced his ghost into my body.

The first time I had let him possess me when my life had been in danger, it had felt like a warm summer rain that washed through me. But when I had forced his ghost into my body this time, my muscles thought I was being boiled from the inside out. I didn’t know if it was normal to feel that way when forcing a ghost inside of oneself, but it didn’t matter.

Normal had been a foreign concept since I had been abducted by aliens.

“Quiet down,” I chided him.

I needed to think without his enraged rambling as a distraction in my mind. I was on his ship with his mercenaries, and we were flying back to Faithless, the city Rex ruled with an iron fist.

“Out of the frying pan and into the fire, as it were?” he asked with sarcasm coating his voice.

I no longer needed the bone knife at my throat to keep his men at bay. The crew knew I was serious once they had seen Rex’s ghost head sticking up from my body near my shoulder. I had him inside of me, and I wasn’t letting him go.

Not yet.

One of his soldiers came to me, edgy wariness in his violet eyes. He could have been handsome, were it not for all the tattoos covering his face and body. “So, I’m curious about something, Queen.”

Queen of the conduits was now my title, and I embraced the moniker. “Yes?”

“You have Rex trapped inside you, yeah?”

“Yes,” I confirmed.

He assessed me through narrowed eyes as he folded his arms across his thick chest. “And we’re on our way to Faithless, so you can…do what, exactly?”

“Negotiate.”

He chuckled softly, a trace of derision in his tone. “You really think he’ll let you live, after he escapes you?”

“I have things he wants. He has things I want.” I shrugged, refusing to let this brute bait me. “That’s how negotiation works.”

“Sure, but—"

“I don’t need to explain myself to you.” I lifted my chin imperiously. More than that, I didn’t like him poking holes in my plan.

Rex, now having intimate knowledge of my thoughts, laughed in my head. Asshole .

“No, you don’t,” he agreed, stepping closer to me. “But if I’m the guy who saves Rex from you, don’t you think he’d show his appreciation?”

“How do you propose to do that?” I scoffed. “You hurt me, you hurt him.”

He stopped about two feet away, still maintaining his threatening stance. “True, but it’s an interesting thought, right? What would the richest man on Halla give to the man who saves him from your filthy conduit clutches?”

I glared into his eyes, and our two foot-height difference seemed to diminish as I stood up to him without an ounce of fear. As a human conduit, we both knew I was the one with all the power here, not him. “You will never have the chance to find out, boy .”

He tried not to look away. He didn’t want to look berated in front of the other men. Even the smallest among Rex’s crew watched on with amused expressions.

So, instead, he laughed and opted for vulgarity. “I can show you what a man I am, little human. In fact,” he unzipped his uniform, “let me show you right now—"

“Oh fuck off, Rundown,” Rex snapped, taking control of my mouth without my consent. “You can’t show her that thing. She’d need a damned microscope to find it. Now get back to your station, before I use her tiny body to kick your flabby ass!"

“Uh, nice to see you, boss,” he stammered, then left for his station.

Inside my head, Rex told me, “You’ve got to keep them in line, Sarah. I brought some of my worst mercenaries to take your people out. They won’t hold back their baser instincts around a woman for long. And since we’re sharing your body for the time being, I don’t really savor becoming their toy for the rest of the trip. Most of my men enjoy torture in ways that I do not.”

He relinquished control back to me after his spiel and I was surprised he bothered when he could have usurped me. “If you can take control of my body like you just did, Rex, then why give it back?”

He sighed. “There are few things more horrific than having your autonomy taken from you. I don’t fucking appreciate what you did to me, but I’m not going to do it back to you.”

Shock rippled through me. He actually has a sense of fairness?

“Yes, I have a sense of fairness,” he said irritably. “Did you forget I can hear your thoughts, Sarah?”

I sat down in a nearby chair. Whatever his reasoning, Rundown had a good point—what the hell was my plan once I got to Faithless? I didn’t have much of one when I had reverse possessed Rex. In that moment, all I knew was that I had to stop the fight going on around me. Stop the killing and the slaughter of people and conduits. Then Rex had run to attack Deacon while he was down and unable to defend himself. I snapped, acting on instinct. I ran after Rex, grabbed his tail, and held on until I had absorbed him into me.

I’d had no choice but to remove Rex from the fight to stop it from becoming a massacre. I was right about that.

“But what now?” he asked with a certain amount of glee. “You can’t kill me without killing yourself to do it."

“We will negotiate a peace between our parties.”

He laughed too jovially. “There will never be a peace between us, and you are delusional if you think that could ever happen. Just my luck. I get taken by an extra crazy conduit with wild ideas of a truce.”

“Why couldn’t there be a peace between us, Rex?” I asked him. “What are you so afraid of that you wouldn’t try to come to some kind of cease fire?”

“I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t let insults stand. If you want to keep calling yourself Queen, then you shouldn’t either.”

I almost smiled. “Oh? What should I do?”

“Prepare to lose everything you care about.” His voice was sinister.

“Not while you’re stuck inside of me,” I happily reminded him.

He grunted in annoyance.

I asked the nearest mercenary, “How much longer to Faithless?”

“Aw, are you sick of our company already, human?” He snickered.

“How much longer?” I asked, ignoring his snide remark.

“About an hour, give or take.”

I didn’t want to sit around for that long, so I decided to go for a walk. Rex’s ship— Trace , his memory told me—was far bigger than Deacon’s and Jac’s ships. The exterior was a dark blue that looked almost gray, and those colors carried on throughout the inside. The scant windows gave me a view of the forest below as night had begun to fall. Out there, drecks and other animals began to stir, while others bedded down. Everyone preparing for the night ahead.

I smiled at my own reflection in the glass and thought back to when, had I been on Earth and still living my old life, I would have been finishing supper, or maybe washing my face at this time of the evening. Things had been so much simpler then.

I hadn’t known there were aliens. Nor had I known that my biological father was one of them. My mom—God rest her soul—had never told me or my sisters anything about our dad. She always said it was too painful. Now without Deacon or Jac by my side, I had a taste of that pain, and the bitterness made me understand why she couldn’t speak about our father. Being so far from my companions was like ashes in my mouth.

“Your father is a Ladrian?” Rex asked slowly.

Shit. I did everything I could not to think of his name and started to panic. Marshmallows, puppies, carpets, candles, baskets, notebooks, fuck.

“Maybe if you behave, we can sort out an arrangement for that last one, Sarah,” he said in a lewd tone.

I rolled my eyes, because there was no way I’d ever fuck Rex, and went back to staring out the window.

“You were being sentimental. Made me uncomfortable,” he said in my mind. “So, I thought I’d return the favor.”

I chuckled at him. “Thinking about my family makes you uncomfortable?"

"You seemed bonded to them. It was odd.”

I remembered some of the brutal childhood memories I had found in his head when he’d possessed me the first time. “You never felt close to anyone in your family?”

“Not the way you mean.”

I almost pitied him.

“Save your pity for yourself, Sarah. You’ll need it, when my men start in on you.”

A chill shot up my spine. “I thought you said they would back off while you’re trapped in me.”

“Yes, but after I escape you, I’m going to let them have their fun.”

“What would you let them do to someone you called Queen?” As I spoke, I busied my hand to tug on the invisible thread in my soul.

Unaware of what I was doing, Rex laughed without humor. A dirty laugh. The kind of laugh that girls in dark alleys fear hearing. “Queen is just another word. Like honor or loyalty. Words are slips of air that we imagine have power over us. But do you know what real power is?”

I felt a tug inside of my mind and did everything to block him from noticing. “What do you think real power is, Rex?”

“Control. When you have control, you can do anything. That’s why I was able to yell at that beast of a man and make him back off of you. Even trapped inside your body, your,” he gasped for effect, “ delicious body, I still have control over them. And if I wanted it, I could have control over you.”

I continued to try and distract him. “What would you do with that control?” The tug in my mind grew stronger as I pulled those threads closer.

His lascivious thoughts percolated through my brain, each one nastier than the other. “See, the thing about you, Queen, is that you are not the kind of woman to take. You are the kind of woman who needs to give.”

“I don’t understand what you mean—"

“Oh yes you do. If a man forced you to do something, there would be no prize in that. It’s repugnant. No,” he flashed more of his salacious imagination my way, “you need to crave it. To want to give yourself over. To let a man be your tipping point, the one you can give yourself fully to. That is the only way someone like you is ever truly satisfied.”

His description made me breathless, but I instinctively shook my head, “I don’t—I’m not—"

He cut in. “The time you, Deacon, and Jac were in my manor, when Deacon wrapped that belt into your mouth and around your head and had his way with you.” He began to laugh deviously. “Just hearing me say it, I can feel your body reacting, Queen. You can’t lie to me.”

I swallowed hard. “I thought you said you were just teasing me about watching us that night.”

“I lied. It’s what I do,” he snarled. “I saw every scorching moment between the three of you. Can’t say I wasn’t jealous, though now I have that delightful memory to keep me warm at night.”

My face felt hot from embarrassment. “Leave me be,” I snapped.

“I would, but—"

“Boss,” Rundown called from behind me. “You in there?”

“He’s still here,” I said as I turned to face him. He was backed by the other mercenaries, all of them looking at me with either lust or disdain. “Why do you ask?”

He rubbed his grubby fingers along his jaw. “Me and the guys were talking, and I don’t know if we believe you have him. Not really. See, we heard conduits have all kinds of tricks, and since you’re their queen, we figure you have the most. Rex could be dead, for all we know. His image, whatever that was, might just be another trick.”

“Conduits don’t use tricks, Rundown,” I said, pursing my lips and glaring at him. “That’s magicians—"

“Whatever. Point is,” he reached out for my cheek, but I jerked away from him before he could touch me, “you’re real pretty, for a human.”

My stomach churned. I tugged the connection in my mind. “What of it?”

He turned to the other mercenaries. “See? She doesn’t even say thank you for a compliment. I think we should teach the queen some manners. What do you guys say?”

Raucous cheers went up as the men closed in.

Before I could stop him, Rundown grabbed me beneath my arms and held me against the wall off of my feet. His hot breath fell on my face. “Where’s my boss now, Queen ?”

For once, I wished Rex would take over. But he remained silent, the asshole. I kicked at Rundown’s belly with all my might, and he dropped me. He coughed, trying to catch his breath. “Bitch!” he said, and came for me again.

Then, the ship shook violently. Sirens blared. In a panic, the mercenaries ran to their stations, including Rundown.

I looked out the window and gasped when I saw them. The jem’hora.

They were eyeless birds with silver feathers who stood higher than my waist. Each of their individual talons was longer than my hand, and Ladrians feared them. But for some reason, they had liked me from the moment I met them. Maybe it was because I was the contra who was said to have an affinity with nature, but whatever the reason, they came when I called them using that thread in my mind.

A few had torn at the wings and engines of the ship, while others had grabbed on underneath, tearing at the wiring. I hoped they were careful but just as I had that thought, I screamed when one flew into an engine.

“ No! ” I shouted.

All their eyeless faces stared at me through the window, as the ship lost altitude. Good work, fly away, I told them through our connection. I didn’t want any more of them hurt. They took to the sky, as we spiraled toward the trees.

“Clever,” Rex raged just before the ship hit the first of the trees and tumbled through them.

My feet swept out from beneath me, my head hit the wall, and then, nothing.