Chapter 21
TWENTY-ONE
Another ship had arrived. Evie gasped to see Taron’s shuttle skid to a halt. Its hull smoked from the heat of breaching the magnetic barrier while in lockdown. But it was still a welcome sight.
Taron burst from the shuttle at a run, a blaster rifle braced against his shoulder. He moved as fast as his brother. His lean frame covered the distance between the shuttle and the nearest docking pylon in seconds, and his appearance disrupted the Sifters’ coordinated attack.
He dropped behind it, sighted, and fired three times into the Sifter flank. Three shots, three hits. He didn’t look at Jarran. Didn’t acknowledge him. Just fought.
Then the bay shook and a massive ship slid into view outside the barrier.
Evie gasped at the sight of it, as it was enormous and military-level, bristling with weapons arrays and running lights.
It dwarfed the way station. Shuttles began launching from its belly, sleek and fast, streaming toward the station’s docking ports.
More ships appeared behind it. A second warship, smaller but just as armed. Troop transports. Fast interceptors peeling off in formation.
The Virilian fleet. All of them. Well, most of them.
Virilian soldiers poured into the docking bay through multiple entry points. Big males, armed, who made the Sifter strike team look like amateurs. They swept through the bay, driving the remaining Sifters back toward their shuttle.
Evie pressed against the crate and watched names become faces.
Files aside, the Virilians were pretty famous on Earth, as the Virilian match program had been both controversial and a spectacle.
Gossip about the gorgeous aliens who were taking human women as mates had all but engulfed news and entertainment broadcasts.
She’d watched the streams as much as anyone, and gaped at the males she now saw leaping from the small vessels and attacking the Sifters.
In addition to Taron, she spotted Trak, the swaggering warrior prince who’d married a human woman named Anna and reportedly wrote poetry.
Drex, his older brother and king of Exir City, who’d made socialite Madison his queen.
She sucked in a breath to see Virak, the other Virilian king.
He ruled neighboring Tagja City, which was Jarran’s birthplace, and Niir, the one Pella Rin had shot in the chest, who’d survived and married one of the first-generation hybrid females.
They were here. All of them. Five Virilian males whose faces had been plastered all over Earth streams. And they’d brought plenty of backup.
Then she saw the Baylan. Taller than the Virilians, with cool, angular features and no tail, Saar-king Harc walked beside his Virilian allies with an air of command.
A few years ago, this guy had been in Earth news a lot.
It was the only way she recognized who he was.
The Baylan leader gazed around the docking bay like he owned it.
He was the only one unarmed, and possibly the most lethal person in there.
A Sifter soldier raised his blaster at Harc from behind a cargo pod.
The blaster ripped itself out of the soldier’s hands and flew across the bay, smashing against the far wall. The soldier stared at his empty hands. Then the cargo pod he’d been crouching behind slid sideways across the floor, exposing him completely.
“Didn’t bring plastoid weapons like you did to Korath-7, did you?
” Harc sneered. He flicked his fingers and a support beam groaned and bent inward, pinning two soldiers against a wall.
Weapons tore free from holsters and clattered to the ground in a spreading circle around him.
A section of hull plating peeled back like tinfoil and wrapped around a Sifter’s arms, pinning them to his body.
“Show off,” said Trak, who dodged return fire from a Sifter.
Harc raised one brow. “Efficient,” he replied.
Evie watched a bulkhead panel twist itself into a barricade and thought, very clearly, holy shit.
She was a neurologist, but she had only basic knowledge of neural electromagnetic field manipulation, especially the kind that involved the telekinetic abilities in the Baylan species.
She’d read papers, but none of it had prepared her for watching a tall, metallic-haired Baylan Saar-king fold metal like origami with his mind.
The Sifter resistance collapsed. The soldiers who weren’t pinned, disarmed, or wrapped in their own hull plating dropped their weapons and surrendered. The docking bay went from chaos to controlled in under two minutes.
Jarran was still standing. Barely. He was bleeding, gasping for breath, with the blaster hanging at his side. His face was gray and slick with sweat. Taron was twenty feet away, his blaster rifle lowered, staring at his brother with an expression Evie couldn’t read.
For a moment, the bay was almost quiet. Just the hiss of cooling blaster barrels and the groaning of whatever metal Harc had rearranged.
Then, as if materializing from the shadows, Durik appeared behind her and pressed a blaster to her temple. “Be still,” he murmured. “I need you alive for a little while yet.”
Evie went rigid as he dragged her backward, out from behind the crates, into the open center of the bay where everyone could see them.
“Nobody moves.” Durik’s voice was raw. He sounded like he’d been screaming for days. “Nobody moves or I put a hole in her skull. And don’t bother using your mind powers, Baylan. This is a plastoid blaster.” That appeared to have been for Harc, who glowered at the Sifter leader.
Every soldier, every Virilian, every weapon in the bay went still.
She could see them all. Taron with his rifle half-raised, frozen.
Virak, rigid, his face carved from stone.
Harc, his fingers splayed, watching. And Jarran, bleeding, swaying on his feet, staring at her with an expression that emptied her lungs.
She’d seen Jarran angry. She’d seen just about every emotion from him, but she’d never seen this. His whole body was locked, every muscle drawn tight, his gaze fixed on Durik with a focused hatred so complete it should have killed the Sifter leader on the spot.
“Pella Rin.” Durik pressed the blaster harder against her temple. Evie’s vision narrowed. “I came to bring you home.”
Jarran didn’t move. His eyes stayed on Evie. “My home is not with you.”
“Fool,” Durik spat. “You should have joined me instead of fighting me. You built an extraordinary empire.” Durik’s breath was hot and sour against her ear.
“You were a god, and you give it up for what? A female? Some misguided sense of justice?” He removed the blaster just long enough to waggle it at Jarran.
“But we can rebuild. You and me. The way it was.” His voice cracked on the last word.
“I just need you to become who you were.”
He raised the other hand. A small, dark object. Oh, no. No, no, no. Evie knew immediately that this was the neural interface device. Compact, handheld, with a small transmitter array pointed at Jarran. It was the remote trigger for the implant.
Durik pressed a button.
The bellow of pain that came out of Jarran made her let out a cry.
He clamped his hands to either side of his head. “NEVER!”
It ripped out of him, raw and primal. The word echoed off the metal walls. His whole body seized and his knees buckled. He dropped to his knees on the bay floor.
“You cannot believe that you’ll get out of here alive, Durik,” Trak called out, his weapon trained on Durik, but also on Evie, since she was his shield. “Your forces are defeated.”
“There are more Sifters than you know, Prince,” Durik sneered. “I can give you the human female, if you let me leave with Pella Rin.”
“No fucking way you’re taking him,” Taron roared. “Not again.”
“You’re not taking either of them,” Trak added. “They’re not yours, mate.”
Evie sent a worried look toward Jarran, not liking how his body jerked and trembled. She had a bad feeling about what was happening inside his head, and she couldn’t do a single thing about it.
Durik held her tighter, the blaster still pressed to her temple, as Jarran writhed on the floor. “There he is.” His voice brimmed with satisfaction. “Come back to us, Pella.”
Evie could see the fight from the outside, and it was the worst thing she’d ever witnessed.
He was on his knees, hands pressed to his skull, his whole body shaking.
Tremors ran through him in waves, and sounds came from his throat that weren’t words.
His jaw was clenched so hard she was afraid his teeth would shatter.
But he was resisting. Pella Rin was designed to override, to erase, to take control, and he was holding the door shut through sheer force of will. She could see it in the veins in his neck and the white of his knuckles and bow of his head. He refused to let go.
Then something else began to happen.
The veins on his forearms started to glow red.
Faint at first, then darker. His body actually appeared to be getting bigger, and two long, curved horns of yellow fire ignited from his head.
The flames licked and undulated. The clothes on his body ignited at the hems and burned off, leaving him a huge, pulsing red, naked inferno.
She felt his heat from ten feet away, even through Durik’s grip.
His primal form. She’d heard about it. She’d seen images and read reports, but she’d never seen it happen. The red veins crawled up his arms, over his shoulders, spreading along his neck. The air shimmered harder. The floor under his knees began to discolor from the heat.
He turned to look at her, and she saw the deep green had been replaced with turbulent red.
The two forces were fighting for the same body—Jarran and Pella Rin—and they’d come clashing together.
But Evie knew from her research that the primal form took over a Virilian when they were protecting something vital to them.
Love was usually the catalyst, like protecting one’s mate and offspring.
It came from the deepest part of the Virilian male’s ancient biology, and it was the last line of defense.
Pella Rin didn’t know love. He couldn’t.
But Jarran did. He loved her and he loved his brother.
And even though he knew they would likely be locking him up, if he was lucky, he loved his people.
But when his gaze met hers, Evie knew she was the main reason for the primal rage, and she knew then that Jarran was going to win this fight with Pella Rin.
She glanced at the Virilians in the bay.
They knew what primal form was and they had gone still, almost reverent.
Taron’s blaster rifle lowered. His green eyes, brighter than Jarran’s, filled with something raw and vulnerable.
For the first time in tericycles, he saw his brother. He saw the real Jarran.
Durik’s hold on Evie slipped, just a little bit. She surged forward, trying to break away, but Durik snarled in her ear and cranked the device to maximum.
The effect was immediate. Jarran’s body arched backward, a soundless scream on his face, and then he collapsed. He was on hands and knees, a flaming giant, as Durik’s control over him pushed him to the limit.
Evie couldn’t breathe. Durik’s arm was too tight and the bay was too quiet and Jarran was motionless as he held himself off the ground. She stared at him and willed him to move. Get up. Please get up. You stubborn, impossible, beautiful man. Get up.
He got up.
Slowly. His palms pressed flat against the floor. He pushed himself to his feet. One leg, then the other. When he was upright, he rolled his shoulders back. Settled his weight. Adjusted his stance. Everything about the way he moved was wrong.
His posture was different. The wounded leg bothered him and he shifted off it, but the adjustment had none of the stubborn, grinding determination she’d watched him fight through.
His body was loose and relaxed, and his hands were still.
That wasn’t right. Jarran’s hands were always doing something.
Reaching for her. Touching soil. Fidgeting with whatever was nearby. These hands were motionless.
He turned around again. His eyes were still red flames, but there was nothing behind them.
His gaze moved over her in an emotionless sweep.
His lip curled, giving his face a cold, contemptuous expression.
It was the most chilling thing she had ever seen.
The male she loved was gone. Pella Rin looked at her through Jarran’s eyes, and she meant nothing to him.