Chapter 4 #2
“And he is—?”
“Generation Six. Talinn may know him, although he didn’t recognize him from the trideo but they’re the same Generation.
Jamirr is intensely grateful to Samyra for saving him from the mines and giving him the job of tending her zoo.
You know it was made clear to me by a…friend, shall we say, before we left orbit to come here that kidnapping Talinn from the desert planet of barbarians and arranging to buy and free you and Jaine the way I did was all fine on those worlds but I was categorically not to try the same on Porter Three.
It’s too close an ally with the Five Systems and there’d be no way to cover up my stealing a gladiator from here, brother or not. ”
“And she won’t sell,” Benet said flatly.
“No, she rejected our proxy offer three times, even at increasingly astronomical amounts of credits. Which of course is why we’re here in person.”
“He may be more than merely grateful to her,” Rennyr said. “The tension between the two of them is so loaded with sex pheromones it clouded the air and confused the senses when they were in the same space.”
“Agreed.” Benet weighed in. “I felt it too.”
“But is it more than that? A deeper connection?” Kyden asked. “She’s certainly not a claimed mate.”
“How could he claim her when she owns him?” Rennyr sounded disgusted. “I admit she wasn’t all that I’d expected to find in a woman who runs a gladiator stable which is a note in her favor, but the situation is complicated. You’re right, Kyden.”
“Nothing for it but to invite her to become our first female gladiator and join us for the offseason exhibition games,” Kyden said. “We can make her look good even if our audiences don’t take to her style of fighting. And I’ll make sure she brings Jamirr.”
“If you have to demand another of her men as well to make it seem legit,” Benet advised, “Take Harton. He had the best overall skills of her lot, in terms of what the Five Systems demands.”
“Once we have them on our own turf, the situation will become much easier to unravel,” was Rennyr’s assessment. “Jamirr will be training with us and we can help him remember who he is.”
“We have to proceed carefully and invoke the help of the Great Mother,” Kyden cautioned.
“From what I observed when speaking to him, his mind is quite clouded and the layer of confusion and amnesia is protecting him from breaking. He’s the most damaged of any of us at this stage in his life.
He doesn’t remember being a Badari and that’s what we must bring to the fore again. ”
Later the same evening…
Jamirr crouched in the corner of his room as he’d done in various cages for the past few years, when the world became too much for him and he needed to shut it out.
He pressed his fingers to his temples and tried to quell the raging headache.
Who were those men to him? The biggest one—the Alpha, although how he knew the term or what it meant eluded him—had talked to him.
Or tried to. In his mind. The words were garbled, as if they were being said in a language Jamirr had once known and forgotten.
He recognized one word—brother—and it had created such a deep longing in him that he tried to block any further remarks from the man.
But then the Alpha had snapped a question at him telepathically and he’d responded without hesitation.
What Generation am I? What in the seven hells does it mean or matter?
But he’d had an answer, hadn’t he? And gave it promptly, in the strange language.
That left him shaken to the core. He’d been content for the past few months, secure in the safety of Samyra’s household, satisfied with his duties, happy to be in her proximity, if not her bed aside from the one incredible encounter at the arena.
But now, his world was quaking from fear of what might lie in his blocked memories.
What losses had he suffered that were so awful he couldn’t bear to remember them?
And then when he’d been ordered to fight and the visiting gladiator had changed it to hand-to-hand combat, his body had responded to move and countermove as if he and this man had sparred before. Or trained together. Or been trained the same way. How was that possible?
And why did they walk free if he was a slave? What the seven hells had happened to him?
The sound of the lock opening and the door moving brought him out of his funk and he raised his head to see Samyra step into the room.
“They’re gone,” she said before she took in his condition.
Then she rushed to him, kneeling in front of him and putting her hands on his cheeks. “What’s the matter? Are you ill?”
“I don’t know what I am,” he said truthfully. “Or who. Not tonight, not after seeing those men.”
“You’re obviously from the same planet originally,” she said in a soothing voice, pulling him to her and holding him tight. “But beyond that there’s probably no connection. It was just a shock to meet people from your home world.”
It was much more, but he wasn’t even going to try to explain his issues to Samyra.
He had a feeling a human woman wouldn’t understand.
He wanted to know more, and to be allowed to sit and talk to their recent visitors and demand to know what they knew of his past but if they were truly gone as she’d said, his opportunity had passed and he’d have to accept that.
The scent of Samyra’s perfume was intoxicating in his nostrils and he shifted position to take her into his arms, lifting her from the floor and taking her to the bed. She lay calmly on the blanket, watching him.
“I need you,” he said in a broken voice. “I need you to put my world back together. Please, you’re the only one who can help me tonight.”