Chapter 23
Linsea
The powerful emotion that blasted through my bond with Kayog nearly made me lose my footing.
I cast a confused look at him, wondering what could have prompted such a strong reaction from him.
It went beyond mere shock. He had perceived something devastating.
To my dismay, moments after he whispered his disbelief, my mate slammed down his psychic walls, shutting me out.
That further stunned me. I couldn’t remember the last time he had done that.
Kayog normally only ever closed himself off to me out of his need to protect me.
But what could I possibly need to be protected against?
If not for the two incredibly stuck up Obosian guards escorting us to Malaya’s cell, I would have questioned him.
But now wasn’t the time. Although still visibly shaken, my mate grabbed my hand and gave it a gentle reassuring squeeze.
As disturbed as I still felt, this soothed me.
At the appropriate time, he would tell me everything.
I could feel the fear emanating from a nearby room. My protective instincts immediately flared with the need to appease them. There was something about that aura that felt familiar. I couldn’t quite explain it as I knew for a fact that I had never met the young woman.
The obnoxious guard opened the door to a narrow, rectangular space that had to be no more than three meters wide by five meters long.
Malaya was sitting on the flat surface with a thin cushion that they dared to label as a bed.
A toilet and tiny sink completed the dreary space the poor woman had been locked in for the past few days while awaiting transfer.
Malaya emitted a choked sound upon seeing us. The hope and joy that immediately stirred within her upon recognizing us struck me with incredible violence. It left me confused and dizzy. Once more, the burning sense that I knew her gnawed at me.
I stole a glance at my husband. His face completely hid whatever emotions swirled within him.
To anyone else, he would appear to be his usual relaxed, warm, and friendly self.
But the way he held his wings betrayed an insane amount of tension.
If not for being married to him for the past thirty-seven years, I might have been fooled.
“You have visitors,” the guard told Malaya in a clipped tone that had me itching to peck his eyes out.
I wasn’t the violent type, but seeing an innocent person being mistreated pissed me off to no end.
The second guard placed a couple of stools across from the bed where Malaya was sitting.
Kayog thanked him politely then, with his usual infinite tenderness, my mate gestured for me to sit first before taking the second stool.
Both Obosians walked out of the room and closed the door behind them. The light on the lock turned red.
“Oh, my God!” Malaya exclaimed with a shaky voice. “I could hug you both right now. I thought you’d forgotten about me.”
“No, my dear. We had not forgotten you,” I said while removing a small sphere from the pouch hanging on the discreet belt around my waist.
Once I activated it, the sphere hovered a meter over our heads, and a beam of light surrounded us, forming a cone of silence.
“A scrambler?” Malaya asked, stunned.
“To make sure no one is eavesdropping,” I said, my voice hardening. “You’ve made a powerful enemy who is highly displeased to see us getting involved.”
“But you are getting involved,” Malaya repeated, her voice thick with hope. “Your presence here means good news, right? You found a workaround?”
I hesitated before answering. “Not exactly. As Torgal informed you, there’s no way around you going to Molvi. Our only hope is to pair you with someone on that planet.”
She recoiled and stared in turn at me then at Kayog in horror.
“Paired with a prisoner?! How the hell is that going to help me?”
“Not a prisoner,” Kayog corrected in a gentle, almost paternal tone that took me aback. “The goal is to match you with an Obosian or one of the employees on Molvi. But ideally, it would be with an Obosian.”
As expected, Malaya rebelled at that prospect. After all, they were trying to send her to a certain death, even knowing that she was innocent. But once we explained how a union with a Hell Lord could give her the necessary means to prove her innocence, she reluctantly warmed up to the idea.
“Okay. I see your point. Does that mean you already have someone in mind?” Malaya asked, feeling both hopeful and dejected.
I glanced at Kayog, who shook his head.
“I have spoken with a few potential candidates to assess their willingness to consider such an unusual pairing,” Kayog said carefully.
“I have not found your soulmate, although I’m getting a bit of a hunch.
My presence here was merely to assess your personality to have a better sense of who could make a successful pairing for you. ”
Malaya waved a dismissive hand. “He doesn’t have to be a soulmate match. After six months, we can just divorce, and I’ll be free.”
As one, Kayog and I shook our heads.
“You got a life sentence,” I reminded her in a gentle but firm tone. “The only thing that can overturn your sentence and give you back your freedom is Wuras’s demise.”
“This also means that it is imperative that you find a way to please whoever you are paired with,” Kayog cautioned her.
“What does that mean?” she asked, worry seeping back into her voice.
Once again, the powerful need to protect and comfort her surged within me with a violence that left me reeling. Why was she stirring such strong responses from me? Malaya wasn’t the first person in desperate need of help that I had assisted. None had ever affected me so deeply.
“It means that your mate is the only one who can terminate your union after the six-month trial, if he is displeased with you,” Kayog explained.
“Should that happen, you will be sent to one of the prison Sectors below to serve the rest of your sentence. Therefore, my priority is to find your soulmate. But failing that, I want someone who you can have a good life with for the long term.”
She stared at us in shock. Obviously, this wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear from us. But Malaya needed to understand the reality of her precarious situation and be ready for the tough battle ahead.
“You think I will fail in my efforts to find proof,” Malaya whispered, crestfallen.
Kayog shook his head with far more confidence than I felt.
“We think taking down Wuras will be hard and will take a long time. Chances are, it will take longer than those six months. For this reason, I’d rather you spend this long time with someone who makes you happy and who won’t divorce you as soon as the trial period has ended. ”
“We just need you to continue to have faith,” I added in a reassuring tone. “We’re fighting for you. On the day of your transfer, we promise it will be for you to meet your chosen mate.”
As we rose to leave the room, I barely stopped myself from drawing her into a comforting embrace.
Beyond the fact that it was an odd behavior from me, it would also have the Obosian guards coming down on us in a fury.
There were strict guidelines where our interactions with prisoners were concerned.
And absolutely no touching featured high on that list. They were already showing us an extremely high level of courtesy by leaving us alone in the room with Malaya.
My chest constricted, I watched as Kayog knocked on the door for the guards to let us out.
The speed with which they opened hinted that they felt we’d overstayed our welcome.
As we made our way out of the detention center connected to the Obosian courthouse, I kept stealing glances at my husband.
He was still blocking me out. Despite that, I had felt the tension bubbling inside him during the entire interview, although he did a fantastic job of hiding it.
He walked at a brisk pace back to our shuttle.
To my shock, as soon as we boarded and the doors closed behind us, Kayog abruptly dropped his mask of stoicism.
He leaned against the wall as if he feared collapsing without that support.
His wings sagged, and his face took on an expression that I couldn’t define.
Shock, distress, sorrow, but oddly also joy battled for dominance on his features.
“Kayog! Are you okay? What’s going on?” I exclaimed, rushing to his side and caressing his back in a soothing motion.
By the way he looked at me, his silver eyes welling with tears, I nearly went into a full panic. But then his words broke my brain.
“It’s her,” Kayog said in a shaky voice. “It’s her. Our baby… It’s Thea.”
“What?!” I exclaimed, yanking my hand away from him as if his contact burned me, and I took a step back. “That’s impossible.”
“IT’S HER!” he exclaimed forcefully, before running a shaky hand over the down feathers on top of his head. “I could never forget that song. Malaya is our baby reborn. Fate is giving us a second chance to save our little girl the way we couldn’t the first time.”
My mind reeled. I opened my mouth to argue that this made no sense, but Kayog dropping his walls had my knees buckling. His emotions crashed over me like a tsunami. With lightning speed, he caught me by my upper arms and drew me to him. If not for that, I would have collapsed.
Although my brain kept telling me this was impossible, the emotions emanating out of Kayog shouted loudly that he believed his claims beyond any doubt.
In our thirty-eight years together, my mate had never been wrong when it came to recognizing a soul.
Why would he start now? Had he made such an outrageous statement within days, weeks, or months following our baby’s passing, I would have attributed this to a trauma response or coping mechanism.
But Thea left us thirty-seven years ago.