Page 34 of The Dreamer and the Deep Space Warrior (Xaal Alien Romance #1)

Ved

The Blood Vultures’ ship was on the other side of Cinder. Ved had wasted an entire setting in their cell.

With the heavy thermocylinders in hand, he was forced to run the distance back to his ship. He was so close to being on his way, to avenging Kravis and protecting his territory. He could practically smell his home, feel the solidness of it beneath his feet.

Would it be the same when he arrived? Could it be, without Kravis? Had his enemies already taken advantage of his absence?

He was working through several scenarios in his mind, coming up with strategies for each, when something stopped him cold in his tracks.

It was an unmistakable scent. A familiar one.

Battleheat rushed through his veins. He sprinted, his senses leading him to the lavender fields.

A ship had touched down there, destroying the ends of several rows.

The purple-flowered plants that Isobel adored so much were wilted or shredded.

As scattered and trampled as they were, they looked like scars and bruises of the earth.

Isobel was gone .

They had scared her. Stolen her. Hurt her.

Ved knew it even before he scanned her dwelling to ensure it.

He stared unseeing for a long moment. Something raw and aching split him asunder, and his vision went black. The roar of his blood in his ears drowned out his surroundings. His hands went numb, and the thermocylinders fell from his grasp.

A chasm opened in his chest

He was suddenly lying in that icy field, the deep cold piercing through his bones. Overhead, the black buzzards were omens in the sky, anticipating a meal.

The laughter of his three attackers echoed in the night. All around him.

He could pick out each of the taunts and jeers.

Each of his brothers’ voices.

Ved had looked up to his birth brothers, revered them, even loved them. He’d taken their criticism and beatings as fuel to make him stronger, pushed himself harder in training to make them proud.

He’d even hoped that Ezig, the brother closest to him in age, would one day be his bruvya. That Ved would earn the right of such an honor. Ezig was the only one of the three who gave him part of his rations, and sometimes even showed him advanced fighting techniques.

But it was also Ezig who loomed over him now and said, “Gut him like a murog.”

Raig held him down, his knee digging into his shoulder, while Gav, the eldest, waved his crudely made plasma dirk in front of his face.

“The qon should have taken you to the Red Cliffs and tossed you over the moment you entered the world,” Gav sneered. “You bring dishonor to our clan, and we can no longer allow that.”

Ved flicked his gaze between his brothers. All shared similar expressions of disgust, but it was the pure hatred in Gav’s eyes that was most memorable. It didn’t burn like fire; instead, it was as cold as the winter that consumed him.

They’d already broken bones, and Ved had lost too much energy trying to escape their hold. They could do whatever they wanted to him and he wouldn’t be able to stop them.

He was puny and weak.

The blade finally dug into him, ripped him open, exposed him for what he truly was. A coward.

A Xaal should see their kill through, but they’d left him while he was still choking on his own blood. He wasn’t even worth the effort.

He used the last of his strength to rage at the stars. To bargain with the death gods. He’d never be weak again, if only he lived that night. He’d become strong, the mightiest Xaal Runus had ever known. The vow mixed with his blood as he spit it out into the night.

But a weak Xaal deserved death and dishonor.

And he was. Pathetic. Powerless. Unable to shape his own destiny. Unable to save his bruvya or protect Isobel. Unable to stand against his enemies.

Weak. Weak. Weak.

“ Qon .”

The ruined lavender fields rose up in his vision again.

“ My data suggests that they launched two hours, twenty-eight minutes, and nine seconds ago. The thermocylinders can be installed and functional within an hour. The adversaries will still read on my detection system. They want you to follow. The probability of the human female ” — Ved growled at this—“ of Isobel being alive is high. They are using her to get to you .”

Ved’s hearts felt like they were going to pound out of his chest. Exxo was saying words he understood and still he couldn’t move.

Weak .

“ They seek to weaken you. But you are Ved Qon Cleave ,” Exxo asserted fiercely in his ear. “ He who cleaved two great clans and made them one. The indomitable. Isobel needs your strength now. And you do not yield .”

Ved snapped his jaws closed and attempted to shake the icy, clammy hold of that memory.

Even now, he felt frozen in place, felt the buzzards closing in.

But it wasn’t real. He wasn’t there. He’d survived that night, grown strong and unrivaled, and killed each of his brothers in turn.

On the night he avenged himself, there’d been a fire that caught and spread.

He let the flames of that memory burn in his veins.

With Isobel in the hands of the Raxans, there was no place for weakness. She needed him.

He forced his body to obey, just like he had when he pulled himself out of that snow-drenched field long ago. Picking up the thermocylinders and setting off, he made the trek back to his ship in record time.

Even before he pulled himself through the hatch, there was evidence they had been there, too. Their scent still clung in the air, but Isobel’s had been strongest at the lavender field.

Once inside, Exxo ran security scans, the results coming up in flashes inside his helmet. Determining that they hadn’t destroyed or tampered with anything, Ved wasted no time going to the engine room. It took him only minutes to install the thermocylinders and power the ship fully.

It wasn’t until he’d stormed toward the front of his ship and sat in the pilot’s seat that he understood why his enemy had been there.

Lying on his screen was a strand of Isobel’s brown, curly hair. A possessive, primal noise wrenched itself from his throat.

For it wasn’t only her lock of hair—it was connected to the smallest piece of bloody scalp. And it was tied around the hilt of a blade he knew well.

He’d made it himself, after all. Had meticulously honed the bone into the sharpest of points and crafted its handle out of the finest metals, with a flat scarlet jewel set into its center.

This blade had been a gift for Kravis. For his bruvya.