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“Oh no she doesn’t,” Kail rumbles. “I’m not done with my mate.”
“I don’t?”
He looks down at me with golden eyes full of determination. “No,” he says. “You do not.”
Siryn waves a woman over. I recognize her from the last time I was here. Her name is Gabrielle, and she is a humble and faithful servant.
“Do you mind if Gabrielle takes the baby?” Siryn asks. “I think it is time we handled Tarni. Sometimes the needs of mothers get so overlooked, and that would be a true pity.”
Her eyes are narrowed with punitive intensity. I realize that all I did by leaping out the window was turn a semi-public punishment into a completely public one.
I give permission, and Gabrielle takes Nemo back to Siryn’s home. I am left on the dock, nervously squirming before Kail and Siryn. She’s right. He’s right. I can’t keep running from this. It’s going to happen, and not for them, but for me.
Kail takes the lead.
“I am going to spank you, because that’s what you deserve. You’re going to be spanked, because you need it. Simple as that.”
“Is it? Simple? Is anything simple?”
“Yes,” he says, soft and fond. “That’s my gift. Making things simple for you.”
I start to cry, feeling so guilty, so broken, so used. Not by him, but by the Colony. I want so badly to be trustworthy, but I don’t trust myself, and I don’t think spanking is going to make any fucking difference.
Kail gathers me in his arms and holds me close in the warmest and tenderest of hugs that one hundred percent, definitely is going to end in punishment.
“I know what you are, Tarni, and I love you. I am going to make an honest woman of you.”
He sits down on a docking point and pulls me over his thighs. My pants pull tight over my ass, but only for a moment before he peels them down, baring me completely. I close my eyes tight, as if to avoid embarrassment, but I know how I look. I look like someone finally getting some of her comeuppance.
He spanks me, and I cry almost immediately from the relatively gentle impact of his palm. He’s not trying to hurt me. He’s trying to show me that I will always have a place with him, and that he can handle me, not just physically, but in every possible way.
I am sobbing over his knee before I know it, releasing tension with every firm pat of his big, strong palm. This is a creature who intended on killing me once, who wanted to make an example of me, who chased me when I was wounded and broken and afraid. Now he holds me like I am the most precious thing in the world. Our love is a love that has survived mutual betrayal, vast distances, and the care of an orphan.
He is everything to me, and I hope I am everything to him. As my tears fall, they are tears of joy and hope. He’s not hurting me, and he won’t, not while Siryn commands it. He’s making a different kind of demonstration, one far deeper and more transformative than simple discipline.
“She’s had enough pain,” Kail declares. “Her life has been pain, a life hidden in shadows, never being known and only rarely being seen. I know you want revenge for her treachery, Siryn, but this is not the way. I have walked the path of bloody vengeance more than once. There is nothing wrong with that, but it has to be tempered with mercy, or it is nothing but becoming the thing you hate.”
He picks me up, sits me on his lap, and holds me close. Depending on what Siryn says next, we will either have a home or be nomads once more.
“I never saw her cry an honest tear before. And I never saw her so easily handled,” Siryn says. If I am not mistaken, there is a slight catch in her voice. Perhaps she is not as unaffected by this display as she would like to be. “Kail, as long as the human remains under your command, you are all welcome here.”
EPILOGUE
Kail
Under Captain Siryn’s flag, I raid and destroy Colony ships along the border, taking revenge. I will never tire of this work. I have my own crew, a new family, and a mate and son waiting for me at home when I return from our raiding parties. I will never stop mourning the family I lost. Their names remain known to me and me alone, quiet and safe in my breast. I think of their faces, their voices, their wishes, their dreams, their joys daily.
“Kawkaw!”
The name bestowed on me by my son of destiny is shouted across space. I can’t hear him through the window physically, but his voice rings in my heart as clear as day.
Nemo waits for me on the dock. He can walk and he can talk in short sentences. His fins are beginning to grow, and his scales are starting to become shinier and more iridescent. He is a fine boy, and he will be an even finer man. He is waving eagerly, both with a finned hand, and with a wooden cutlass made by his aunt Siryn.
Tarni
I pause from my task of washing the port’s laundry. Yes, all of it. Siryn has me attending to menial tasks while Nemo is being watched by others. I would say she is working me to the bone, but the truth is she is only expecting of me the same thing she would expect of anyone else: hard graft.
Kail has been away raiding for several weeks, but the word is that his fleet of pirates will be returning today. After his first handful of missions, Siryn gave him his first command, and then another, and then another. The higher Kail rises in the ranks, the lower I seem to go.
