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Ididn'tlikesittingon a horse, and I liked the strong arms around me keeping me on it even less. When I agreed to go to the Terran Confederation to convince them that humans and Thyres coexisted peacefully, I hadn't expected one of the unsettling warlords to accompany me.
Truth be told, I liked Kendryx's company more than the Vandall leader, King Uthar’s, but I would have preferred to go alone. Kendryx complicated things in ways I wasn't willing to admit to myself.
He wasn't bad looking—oh, who was I kidding? He was drop dead gorgeous. He was more ripped than any man I had ever seen, taller, handsomer, more commanding, more everything. Under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have said no to him.
But these weren't normal circumstances. I was a prisoner, and he was my watchdog. That alone put us at odds. That he was overbearing and seemed to want to protect me only added to the irritation I felt toward him.
I was also willing to bet that when he decided to accompany me, he hadn't considered that we wouldn't be able to talk to each other without Alahna or Damaris around to translate.
Alahna and Damaris, I mused. Those two human ladies had surprised me and not many people managed to do that. They didn't behave like I would have expected wives of warlords to behave at all. Not that I had given much thought to the behavior of the Thyres or the warlords' ladies when I left Earth.
When I left Earth, it had been for a righteous cause which was my only focus. To save the humans on Thyre from Thyre enslavement and dominance.
The warlords were dominant, there was no doubt about it, but from what I had seen, they didn't lord it over anybody, Thyre or human.
I clenched my jaw for the thousandth time since I had been captured by the Vandalls. A tic that was becoming a habit, only the reason for it had changed. Where before I had been incensed about the Vandalls killing my squad and me having become the leader's prisoner, my jaw now clenched at the very thought of the Terran Confederation betraying me. Hell, they betrayed all of us.
Kendryx led the horse down a steep path, and I turned my gaze to the horizon instead of the steep drop ahead of us. I wasn't afraid of dying, but I was worried about falling off this stupid horse and breaking my bones, incapacitating me.
I didn't even want to contemplate how the Thyres would set a bone since they didn't have any advanced healing capsules—at least not that I knew of. Everything about them was primitive. From their swords, which they loved to wield, to them riding horses into battles, to their archaic treatment of their women. Even though, from what I had seen, Alahna and Damaris were holding their own on that front.
Ahead of us was the Dark Sea, and anchored close to the shore were hundreds of Vandall ships. I had no problem picking out the one I had been held captive on for weeks and shuddered at the memory of the cage King Uthar had put me in.
I didn't think Kendryx would force me into a cage, but the thought that I was his prisoner didn't sit right with me. As much as I had explained through Alahna that I didn't need him with me, he had insisted on tagging along. We would find out soon how that would play out. Without Alahna, I worried we would be in the same situation I had been in with the Vandall king: unable to talk to one another since he didn't speak English, and I didn't speak Thyre.
Surefooted—or would that be surehooved?—the horse made its way down the steep incline, jostling me now and then in Kendryx's arms.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been thrilled being this close to a horse—if it hadn't involved sitting on it—or any animal, for that matter. I had never seen a real live animal before coming here. Only in pictures and movies.
Earth was dying, slowly but surely. Overpopulation caused the loss of eighty percent of all flora and fauna and extinction of some, causing Terran citizens to die by the thousands. Hunger, famine, disasters, you name it. Every possible catastrophe had visited us, and the sad part was that we only had our ancestors to blame for it.
All that led to a natural culling that had now dwindled the human gene pool down to virtually nothing, because interestingly, the genes of the people who had survived could be traced back to a handful of the same family trees.
Again, I wondered if Brogan had been right in his assumption that the Terran Confederation had not come to Thyre to save the humans from oppression, but to widen the gene pool by bringing more humans back into the fold.
Which was part of the reason why I embarked on this journey. I had to find out.
If we truly came to rescue the humans on Thyre, the Terran Confederation's mission leaders would want to talk to me, would want to talk to the Thyre warlords. If they didn't… Brogan would be right, and my mission in this would change drastically.
Under no circumstances would I stand by and watch or participate in a war against the Thyres that was going to wipe them out like we had nearly done to the Vandalls. That was not what I signed up for. And neither did my fellow soldiers. I knew that much.
Some might call me a traitor, but the real traitors were the ones who had lured us here under false pretenses.
We finally reached the beach and the horse's gait became softer again. From here, it wasn't far to the shoreline. A boat was already bobbing close by where the waves lapped against the soft sand.
Compared to the boat I arrived on, this one looked small, but adequate for just the big warlord and me.
Kendryx agilely slipped off the horse before he lifted me effortlessly out of the saddle and sat me down on the ground gently. For a second, I swayed, trying to find my footing again. Kendryx reached out a steadying hand, but annoyed, I slapped it off. I didn't need his help.
He laughed and said something in his barbaric tongue, and I rolled my eyes, mentally preparing myself for a long journey on icy cold, wavy waters where we wouldn't be able to exchange a coherent sentence between us.
You could exchange other things, my mind whispered suggestively, and I perused the Thyre surreptitiously once again. Primitive, primal, alpha male were all words that described him adequately, but there was a lot more to it than that. Bulging muscles were barely contained under tight leather clothing, and yes, I couldn't deny the attraction to his overt masculinity. Here was a man, a real man for once, who would take me hard and mercilessly. I sensed that fucking him would be like letting go; he would be the one in charge for once in my life and for some reason that thought appealed to me.
His thick, black braid, which I had learned called him out as a warlord, was swept over his right shoulder, the color matching the subtle growth of his beard. I knew the stubble would feel scratchy and sexy on my skin and another shudder moved through me.
Briefly, I wondered when I had last been truly attracted to a man. So attracted, in fact, that a small throb had been steadily growing between my legs ever since he lifted me onto the damn horse.
Sexual attraction should have been the least of my concerns right now, but that was all I could think about, and my psychological training easily explained why. Too much had happened. Everything I had believed in, had been taught, fought for, was on the brink of turning upside down, so my primal self was trying to occupy me with something else, anything else, to make me stop thinking about my dead squad members, the Terran Confederation, and all the lies I suspected I had been fed my entire life.
