Oath Forger (Book 3) Read online

  “Sleep,” I emphasize. “Just sleep. I’m not ready for...” With all five men in the room, I can’t even say the word sex.

  “Sleep,” I repeat and hate myself for sounding so inane.

  The electric crackles don’t lessen.

  Because nobody seems inclined to leave, I march to the door and pass by Koah and Dason on my way out. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the library, I guess.

  The air is definitely a lot more breathable in the corridor, with the library door closed behind me. I want to stay right there for a second and lean back against the carved wood while I catch my breath, but even more, I want to be gone by the time they come out.

  I walk to the right, toward the garden. Of course, even though I left them behind, I still can’t think about anything else but the kreks. More specifically, the kreks and tonight.

  Co-sleeping.

  It’s not that big of an allowance on my part. It’s more of a political maneuver. Roax was never going to let me kick him out of our bed. In a clash of wills between the two of us, I’m unlikely to win. When his dark gaze hits me, I want to drop my own gaze to the floor and submit. When he tells me something in that deep voice of his, all I want to say is: Yes, krek.

  Of course, if Roax sleeps in the bed, no way Tiam and Koah will leave him there alone with me. And I don’t have the heart to send Dason away on a good day. And Uthan... Asking him to continue to sleep alone isn’t fair, not if I allow everyone else.

  What happened between Uthan and me in the library, in his golden ocean, forged the beginnings of a connection between us. He’s no longer just a handsome stranger.

  No matter what, tonight’s sleeping arrangements were always going to be a power struggle between Roax and me. And Roax was going to win. By preempting him, I simply spared myself that defeat and denied him the pleasure of publicly imposing his will on me.

  Ha! I outmaneuvered the mighty Roax.

  I feel pretty good about myself by the time I walk past the guards and out into the garden, stepping onto the soft grass. The lush vitality of greenery surrounds me, and I breathe in the soft, sweet scent of a myriad of flowers. I never feel as alive anywhere else as I do out here. If I ever do manage to return to Earth, I’m going to miss the garden the most.

  And the kreks.

  Not the kreks! I silently yell back at the little voice in my head.

  Oh God, I’m going crazy here.

  I find the waterfall and drink. It’s a spiritual experience, as if the crystal clear water is filling up more than my stomach. When I’m out in the garden like this, I feel my soul expand. There’s definitely an element of the sacred here.

  The sensation of being watched makes me look up. “Oh. Hi.”

  A woman is standing on the other side of the waterfall, two dozen or so feet from me. She’s observing me with curiosity sparkling in her eyes.

  Her long hair is an indeterminate color—white but not quite, close to translucent. The irises of her eyes are made up of a rainbow of colors. Their uniqueness makes it difficult to look away from them.

  She’s wearing a white dress that’s little more than a length of some silky material wrapped around her, like drawings I’ve seen of togas worn in Ancient Rome. On her, the garment seems strangely appropriate.

  She is a couple of inches shorter than me and rounder, her hips and breasts perfect curves that give the impression of cloudy softness even from across the pool. She is feminine in an irresistible, primal way. I’ve never been attracted to a woman before, but I want to cross the water and bend my head to rest my cheek against her chest.

  I blink away the strange compulsion. “Do you work at the palace?”

  She smiles. The smile holds a promise of spring, a feast, and a seat at her table. I swear I can smell food. More than that, I smell abundance. That doesn’t even make sense. I blink again.

  “I’m Tib,” she says.

  “I’m Ava. From Earth,” I tell her, then wait.

  I want to hear her voice again. Her voice is laughter, clear joy that has the power to fill up my heart. Because I’m not sure if she knows where Earth is, I add, “I’m from far away.”

  After a thoughtful moment, she says, “I’m from everywhere.”

  Working on a spaceship, I translate. Then it hits me: Whose ship? Captain Garet suddenly slams into my mind—Tiam’s ex-lover. Is Tib here for one of the other men?

  My euphoric feelings crash. If she is... I take in her sheer perfection. There’s no way I can compete with Tib.

  I don’t even know why that thought makes me depressed. I shouldn’t want all five men. It’s not right.

  Tib tilts her head, and her smile grows. “You are a bright spirit.”

  I don’t know about that.

  Next, she says, her gaze growing compassionate, “You are a lost spirit.”

  Yes. Definitely that.

  “You are a powerful little spirit,” she says then, and her eyes spark, as if surprised.

  She’s wrong about this one, but I gamely ask, “What’s my power?”

  She watches me, unblinking. “The power to save.”

  Before I can fully settle into the thought and decide I like it, she adds, “And the power to destroy.”

  I groan.

  Her peals of laughter dance across the water and fill my chest.

  She steps into the pool the waterfall rushes into, and she walks to the middle. Then she stops and waits.

  Because I somehow know that she’s waiting for me, I shrug out of my robe and walk to her. The water is loud, plunging down next to us, covering us with a fine mist. I don’t have to worry that I won’t hear what she says next, because she doesn’t talk.

  She reaches down, scoops up a handful of water, and offers it to me.

  Refusing would probably be impolite, but that’s not why I bend my head to her palms. I want to accept. The water tastes like more than water. And Tib feels like more than a woman, although, I can’t figure out why I think that.

  When I finish drinking, I straighten.

  She scoops up another handful of water.

  I bend again, but this time, instead of lifting the water to my mouth, she raises her hands and pours the crystal clear liquid over my head.

  Somehow, the cold water trickling down my hair and face seems right.

  When she smiles at me, I smile back.

  I have no idea why I step closer. I have no idea why I bend again. When I do, she presses her lips against mine.

  I draw a deep breath through my nose. The kiss feels like nourishment, greeting, recognition, comfort, anointment. I’m so confused right now, I’m not even sure of my own name. And at the same time, I’m ridiculously happy. Like I’ve come home.

  When she pulls back, I immediately miss her, and I want to protest, but she puts her hands on my shoulders and pushes me straight down.

  It doesn’t even occur to me to resist.

  My head goes under the surface before my knees hit the rock bottom. I hold my breath. I stay there, under the water, in complete wonder. When I realize that her hands are no longer on me, I scramble to stand in the slight current.

  I’m alone in the pool. Tib has disappeared.

  “Where are you?” My heart clamors, demanding her return.

  I search the garden, heedless of my wet nightgown, but other than me, there’s nobody here. As I collapse onto the grass, next to my discarded robe, I feel bereft. I feel homesick for Tib’s company.

  I know I’ve never met Tib before, yet I feel as if I’ve known her longer than Lily, my own sister. I feel as if I’ve known Tib forever.

  “God, I really am going crazy here.”

  I look up at the sky and fill my lungs with the garden’s fresh air. Then I groan. “Okay, no, I can’t afford to go crazy.”

  I need to be sane to make sure that the current tenuous peace in the Federation doesn’t fall apart, so that the Federation will permanently rid Earth of pirates. Also, I need to have my wits about me, so the Zebet doesn’
t figure out that I’m not the Oath Forger and kick me out, or worse. Maybe pretending to be the Oath Forger is a criminal offense. I could end up in an alien jail. Which is right on top of my list of things to be avoided. So I’m going to cope. I’m going to pull up my big-girl pants.

  Ever since the space pirates’ tractor beam sucked me up from Earth, I just keep responding to things that happen to me. I need to take charge of my own life once again. I need to get proactive here. I need to get back to my inner, tough-chick scavenger.

  So I get up, put on my robe, steel my spine, and stride out of the garden.

  In my room, I shower and change into a nice dry uniform, fashioned out of the blue-green fabric my personal assistant, Taly designed. I leave my wet nightgown on the bathroom floor, tapping my comm unit.

  “Could you please send someone to pick up my laundry?”

  Ordering laundry service does not come naturally, by the way. My first instinct is to call and ask where I can wash my clothes. But I’m sure it’s against some protocol for the Oath Forger to do household chores. And right now, I don’t have time to waste on arguing about the trivial.

  When I finally step out of the bathroom, I freeze.

  The wall that separates my bedroom from the garden is glass. So is the ceiling. But all the other walls are covered with a single word repeated over and over, large letters in blood red. It’s like wallpaper—if wallpaper could flash.

  LEAVE.

  I haven’t realized until now that the entire surface is a display screen. I slowly spin around.

  LEAVE. LEAVE. LEAVE.

  The overall effect is coldly menacing. I feel the animosity behind that single word. Someone had found a way to reach me, here in the Oath Forger’s guarded palace, here in my bedroom. It’s too close. I feel the cold breath of hatred against my skin.

  I shiver and back up to the bathroom door, taking up a fighting stance. I scan every inch of the space. Nobody here.

  The short knock across the room makes me jump.

  Then Taly pops in. “Madam—”

  She pales as she sees the marching army of words. Even as she taps her comm unit for security, she hurries to me and puts herself in front of me, as if to defend me.

  She’s shorter than me and younger, and I’m pretty sure weaker—she’d never been a scavenger on Earth. I’m pretty sure I’d be the tougher one in a fight. Yet she looks ready to take a bullet for me.

  I love her for the protective gesture. “It’s okay, Taly. Nobody’s here. The display was probably programmed remotely. Just a stupid note from some stupid coward who doesn’t even have the balls to come and tell me face-to-face that he wants me to leave.”

  “You are very safe here, Madam,” Taly assures me, and doesn’t move an inch.

  Before I can convince her that I truly don’t need protection, the kreks burst through the door right along with half a dozen security guards.

  I wait until they’re all done scowling and cursing. Then the security guards are sent to stand outside the door, Taly takes away my wet nightgown with a half-worried, half-reassuring smile at me, and I’m left alone with The Five.

  Tiam moves to a control panel on the wall, drags his finger around on the glass and the words disappear, my bedroom walls returning to normal.

  “You’ve had her here for a week!” Roax thunders at the others from the middle of the room like some dark angel of judgement. The violent kind. Apocalyptic. “How in hell have you not made sure that she’s safe?”

  “She’s safe.” Koah sounds stronger than he looks at the moment. He’s leaning against the doorframe.

  I still wish that he’d go back to the med unit.

  He needs to sit. But if he sits on my bed, so will the others, just to make sure they don’t look like they’re ceding territory.

  Oh for stars’ sake.

  I spin on my heel and walk through the door to my living room area, and, good, they follow me. When I drop down to sit on the plush carpet—so they won’t fight about who sits next to me on the couch—the men follow my example. This way, we can sit in a circle.

  “I guess not everybody is happy that I’m here,” I break the silence.

  “Everybody is happy,” Dason protests.

  “I’m going to figure out who did this, and I’m going to put an end to it,” Tiam promises.

  Uthan watches me with that soul-reading gaze of his. Then slowly, quietly, he says, “Something happened.”

  “Of course something happened,” Roax snaps at him. “The Oath Forger was threatened.”

  I want to protest that, technically, I wasn’t threatened. The message said LEAVE. It didn’t say: LEAVE OR ELSE SOMETHING TERRIBLE WILL FOLLOW. But I don’t say anything, because Uthan is still holding my gaze, and his intense focus distracts me.

  “Other than the writing on the wall, there’s something else off. What else happened here?” he asks, ignoring Roax.

  I fidget with the side-seam of my uniform.

  I didn’t plan on telling them about meeting Tib. Our encounter felt deeply personal. I don’t owe these men an accounting of every minute of my day.

  They’re all looking at me. I sigh. Fine. It’s not like they’re going to let it go.

  “I met a woman in the garden,” I blurt.

  I describe her, but nobody finds the description familiar.

  “Hundreds of people work in the palace,” Tiam says, thoughtfully scratching his chin.

  “Do you think she left the message on your wall?” Koah demands.

  I shake my head. “She was...welcoming.”

  “What do you mean by welcoming?” Roax wants to know.

  I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. I really don’t want to say it. But when Roax asks something, it’s nearly impossible not to respond.

  I clear my throat. “We kissed.”

  Chapter Three

  I DON’T THINK anybody in the living room is breathing as we sit in a circle on the carpet. There’s enough room in the middle so even if we stretched our legs our feet wouldn’t touch, and I’m grateful for the space. My back is braced by the weird bean-bag-style sofa that’s shaped like a giant letter C.

  “Could you repeat that?” Roax’s tone now has that silky dangerous edge.

  I clear my throat. “We kissed.”

  A variety of emotions fill the room and the men’s faces: need, jealousy, and stunned surprise.

  “Has everyone here kissed the Oath Forger?” Roax asks the others. “I know you haven’t taken her, since she’s still a virgin. But am I the only one who hasn’t had her lips yet?”

  “Not me, or Dason either,” Uthan says, and his voice is full of regret.

  Roax pins Koah and Tiam with hard, assessing looks. He couldn’t be more serious if he was about to challenge them to a duel.

  Uthan defuses some of the tension by turning to me and asking, “Tell us everything, from the beginning.”

  I huff. “I don’t want to.”

  “I know, Ava.” His golden eyes are full of understanding. “But if you have enemies here...”

  I drop my forehead to my knees and leave it there for a few seconds before looking up again. “I went to the garden to think. I went to the waterfall where Tiam took me before.”

  Tiam smiles. The others stiffen.

  I go on. “And she was there. We went into the water.”

  “Naked?” Dason asks next to me, his voice full of longing.

  Tiam, sitting on Dason’s other side, punches him in the shoulder.

  Koah punches Tiam. “We all want to know. Don’t pretend you don’t.”

  I glare at them. “Not naked.”

  Men.

  I tell them how I drank from Tib’s hands, how she poured water on my head. You could hear a pin drop in the room as I describe the kiss.

  The men shift on the carpet. Heat blazes in five pairs of eyes. They all lean closer.

  “Did she put her hands on you?” Roax asks. His deceptively mild tone doesn’t match the intensity of
his gaze.

  “Yes?”

  “Where?” Koah demands.

  “On my shoulders.”

  Dason whispers in a rough tone, as if his throat is parched. “And then?”

  “She pushed me under the water. By the time I came up, she disappeared.”

  They all draw even closer, every set of shoulders stiff. They’re ready to go to battle.

  Koah’s gaze boils with murderous outrage. “She tried to drown you?”

  “No!” It’s difficult to explain. “More like a baptism.”

  Blank looks from all around. I explain the ancient Earth ritual, but even when I’m done, I’m not sure they’re getting it. So I simply say, “She wasn’t threatening in any way. I felt peaceful. I was sad when she left.”

  Uthan is once again watching me as if he can see all the way to my soul. “Did she reveal her name?”

  I don’t want to tell him. I liked Tib. I want to see her again. The kiss wasn’t in any way sexual like the men seem to think. It was a moment of connection. I don’t want to share every second of my life, every emotion, every breath with the kreks. Why can’t I keep some part of Tib, her name at least, private?

  “Please,” Uthan implores me. “This is important, Ava.”

  The others cast curious gazes at him. He knows something he’s not saying.

  He draws in a deep breath. “Would you mind if I spent some time alone with Ava right now?” he asks the others.

  There’s immediate resistance. But as Uthan looks from one krek to the next and the next, the tension in the air slowly dissipates.

  Tiam stands first. “I’m going to check the computer system and track the source of the message. It had to come from inside the palace. Our security is ironclad. I don’t see how anyone could hack in from the outside.”

  Koah follows him out. I hope he’s going back to the med center.

  I turn to Dason. Please.

  His shoulders slump, but he follows the other two.

  Roax stands, too. His gaze drops to my lips. I’m pretty sure he’s either thinking about my confession about the woman in the garden, or about the fact that Koah and Tiam have kissed me, and he hasn’t.