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We pushed hard for most of the day, moving as quickly as possible. Kaela did well, better than I had expected in fact. She should tire faster, since she was human, but every time I looked back at her, she was moving just as quickly as we were. Now, we were quite far from the area where the trackers had detected Kaela’s existence and that pleased me immensely. Along the way, she was quiet, but calm. I noticed that she didn’t look like a trapped bird in a cage anymore. She didn’t scan from side to side, looking for an out or the next nearest escape. It seemed as though she had accepted our protection, at least for now. Good.
Tavik met my eyes and gave a curt nod of approval. He’d noticed the change in her too.
Tavik had always been a strong leader
. When we’d been in the Vakarran army long ago, we’d have followed his orders through anything, even if it had meant certain death. He was strong, calm in the face of danger, and he never made a decision without thinking it through from every possible angle. Since we’d been exiled, Valdus, Caleb, and I still deferred to his guidance even though he was no longer technically in command, at least according to traditional Vakarran roles. After we left, we’d established our own rules and one of those was that he continued to lead us, wherever we happened to go. We’d procured our own ship after Tavik had haggled with a group of wealthy allies and we’d started our own shipping business, moving products across the galaxy for both reputable and disreputable customers. Tavik had led us to have comfortable lives and enough money to where we could buy whatever we wished. We’d done so well in such a short span of time that we had begun cutting down on the shipping trips we accepted. Instead, we had begun traveling the galaxy at our leisure. It had been a fulfilling life, but I think we’d all come to the conclusion that we were ready for something new.
When he’d first come to us, looking to get revenge on Nix, none of us had batted an eye. In fact, we’d jumped at the chance. We all hated the bastard for what he’d done to us, Tavik most of all. He’d lost the most out of all of us.
Nix hadn’t only banished us, but he’d taken Tavik’s mother too.
In typical Vakarran culture, most sons were taken from their mothers and had little sense of a family life. I never even met my mother, and neither had Caleb and Valdus. We’d all been brought up by our fathers and shown the way of the military from a young age. The Vakarrans were conquerors and that’s just how it was, for most of us anyway.
Tavik hadn’t been raised that way. His father, despite abducting his mother from another planet, had allowed her to raise him. Not long after Tavik came of age and began his mandatory term in the Vakarran military at the age of eighteen, his father died, leaving his mother a widow. Tavik loved her and he’d used his position in the military to care for her, but when we’d refused to execute the Andromedan women, Nix decided to punish her too.
He’d captured her. Sold her off into slavery on some planet somewhere. He’d never told Tavik where. Tavik couldn’t wait to get his hands on Nix, and the three of us wanted to help him do it.
Nix was going to rue the day he wronged us.
“I think we’ve gone far enough out of our way to figure out whether or not any of the trackers followed us. Since there haven’t been any signs, we can turn back toward Atlanta safely now, boys,” Tavik said, using our telepathic bond to relay orders and breaking me out from my dark thoughts of revenge on the man who wronged us.
“I haven’t seen anything on the radar to suggest otherwise,” Valdus offered.
“Nor have I,” Caleb added.
“Let’s not be too rash. I think we should give it one more day before making our way straight back. These woods make me hesitant to rush into anything,” I said. Tavik looked back to me, his brows furrowed.
“Plus, it’ll give us more time to get to know our woman,” I added lightheartedly and Tavik chuckled.
“Haven’t you had enough of that delicious cunt today, Zane?” he smirked.
“Never,” I replied, grinning like a madman. They all chuckled along with me.
“We’ll camp for tonight. Tomorrow then, we make straight for Atlanta,” Tavik ordered.
“Agreed,” we all replied.
Kaela wasn’t aware of anything we said. The Vakarrans guarded the fact that we could communicate without words pretty closely, so it wasn’t a surprise that she wouldn’t know about it either. She was perceptive enough though and she lifted her head, looking around at the four of us, almost like she could sense that she had missed something. Her fingers twitched, before brushing a stray hair behind her ear.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We think we’ve lost the trackers for good. We make for Atlanta tomorrow,” Tavik said out loud and a spark of fire ignited in her eyes. His green eyes studied hers and he smiled softly, his expression warming considerably.
“How far is it then?” she asked.
“Two, maybe three days’ walk. We’ve gone off track quite a way, ensuring that we didn’t lead the trackers and any resulting patrols straight to the Resistance,” Tavik responded.
“Good. I want to see my sisters. After all, I want to see if you are telling the truth or not,” she said, while continuing on in front of Tavik. She brushed by him, her shoulder bumping into him and he stiffened, but let her go.
Feisty little thing she was, that Kaela.
Vakarran culture told us that we were supposed to break our women of such behavior. That any hint of defiance deserved to be beaten out of them and subdued, but I knew that wasn’t going to work with Kaela. She was different. Stronger, intelligent, a true challenge. One who deserved the attentions of all four of us.
She didn’t need weak men. She needed men who rose to the challenge to both keep her in line and allow her the freedom to be the incredible individual I knew her to be.
We were those men and we were going to enjoy every last second of it. I had no doubt that she would too.
