Alien General's Bride: SciFi Alien Romance (Brion Brides) (37 page)

The horror on Eren’s face was now clear for Diego to see as he and Faren kept advancing, cutting down anyone who stood in their way. The part of him that carried the Brion rage was so disgusted Diego could barely stop himself from giving the killing blow when they finally reached him. That crouching man, covered in mud and dirt and wet from the rain should have had some pride at least. He was still a Brion. Seeing the look on Faren’s face, Diego knew he wasn’t alone in feeling ashamed to belong to the same species as the traitor.

Soon enough, they would not.

At least Eren had the good sense not to beg. He was practically on his knees when they finally stood before him, in the midst of warriors dead and dying. But at least he didn’t shame himself by trying to plead with them.

The other traitor general chose that moment to attack from cover, but neither Diego nor Faren had forgotten about him. He was almost as big as Crane, and vicious like him – it seemed Eren preferred his generals big and stupid – but with none of the natural talent for killing. He was just pure rage and Diego knew how to handle that.

He dodged the first blow, letting Faren drive the traitor back with a mighty strike of his axe and then stepped past his brother to jam the spear quickly into the traitor’s lungs. Breathless, gasping, the general stumbled and that was the end of it. Faren was on top of him before he could even land and finished him quickly.

Judging from the look on Eren’s face, he had hoped to at least take down one of them, but Diego was still
grothan
. He called to his warriors to haul the senator up and take everyone still alive with them. It was a pity that they’d had to kill the other generals here in the mountains, but it could be expected they wouldn’t let themselves be taken alive. It was fine. Eren alone would do.

---

They waited until the morning. Somehow, it was symbolic to end lives at the break of day.  No matter the race, some things in the universe remained constant.

Diego would have preferred for Isolde not to see the execution, but she was as much a part of this now as any of them and had to be present. His
gesha
had spoken to the council about justice, so it was fitting she was there to see it done. The traitor had to be punished, and then they would leave Rhea for a time, while the Galactic Union properly researched the planet. He wondered how Isolde felt about never getting to do what she’d left Terra for.

They were all there, in Rhea’s greatest and pretty much only city. Diego doubted the locals understood much of what was going on. They weren’t completely primitive, but the technology the GU species had was far beyond them. So far, they stood away, seeming to wait for all of it to be over already. He knew only a handful of them had ever even known about the Brions’ presence – those who found them despite them avoiding the settlements were killed quickly. Diego didn’t doubt the GU would have plenty of work here.

The Galactic Union’s representatives were present, although they kept a wary distance from the Brions. Diego suspected it had much to do with the reputation they had, and the blood still trickling from his and Faren’s armors probably didn’t help cultivate the image of peace.

It didn’t matter. Putting everything into place was a task for Eleya and the other senators. Diego was a general and it was his duty to punish the traitors.

All the survivors of the assault in the mountains had been gathered in a large square, guarded by Faren’s warriors. Diego’s stood by each traitor’s side, a ceremonial sword at the ready. Brion customs were bloody, it was their way. He wondered if the council would think them barbaric or honorable. All of the traitors had been given a choice between simply being shot and accepting a warrior’s death. Unanimously, they’d chosen the warrior’s way. It was clear they were dead, now all they could do was face it.

Eren had chosen that as well. He knelt in the front of all the traitors, staring into the crowd. Diego didn’t have to look to see who he was watching. All that time, he had longed to make Eren’s death painful and drawn out, but he was denied that. The GU wanted justice and so did the Elders. Eren’s death was enough for them. But in silence, Diego could still make him go through this torment – seeing his
gesha
sentencing him to die.

Eleya was speaking to all that had gathered to witness the execution. Perhaps the GU’s representatives couldn’t catch it, but her voice shook to Diego’s hearing. She was saying how the Brions who were loyal to the Elders – now all the Brions – had hunted down the last of their traitors and would show the Galactic Union what the Brions did to those who betrayed their ways.

She proclaimed that the Brions would leave Rhea for a while, but that it was still a part of their world too. She said they were a part of the Galactic Union and they would remain so. Diego hoped it was true. He hoped they’d done enough to convince the council that the Elders didn’t want a war with them.

Eleya said that the Elders had sentenced all of the traitors to death, and that the execution would be carried out by Diego and his warriors. Now her voice really shook. She had spoken the whole time with her back to them, but then she had to turn and look. Beside her, Diego saw Isolde give Eleya a sympathetic look, but she didn’t reach out to support her, which made him very grateful.

Eleya was now their image to the GU’s council and she couldn’t be seen as in need of comforting. Only Diego understood how terrible the moment must have been for her. Urenya had already warned her just in case.

“I do not think she will try to stop you,” the healer had said. “But you have to be prepared. He is her
gerion
, after all. With all he is or is not, until he dies, they are fated. I believe she will keep her composure, but watch her.”

Diego did. Eleya’s eyes were wild as his warriors began the execution. Eren was deemed the last to die. It was a custom, to provoke guilt in the one whose fault it all was, but Diego didn’t believe for a second that the senator felt sorry. The sounds of the dying rose in pitch, but were silenced quickly. The execution wasn’t meant to torture anyone, simply to rid the world of them.

Eren didn’t turn his eyes from Eleya for a moment. Neither did she. For a moment, it seemed to Diego as if she might still do something insane, but the next moment she stood tall and proud again, the picture of dignity.

His eyes drifted to Isolde, to see her watching Eleya sadly. The whole affair made Diego grateful to all the gods or fate or whatever guided their lives that they had brought him Isolde – sweet, caring, soft and beautiful and warm Isolde instead of someone he might have hated. He couldn’t imagine feeling what Eleya felt for Eren – hating your fated so utterly you refused the binding. As the sounds died off and the order came to the senator at last, Diego had one last task he didn’t relish.

“The Brion Elders have sentenced you to die,” he told Eren bluntly. “You have chosen the warrior’s way. Do you have any last words?”

For a long moment of silence, Diego thought Eren might not say anything after all.

Then the senator lifted his head to look Eleya straight in the eyes. “You will say nothing,” he said very quietly, in a voice that was hardly his. “You say nothing, Eleya.”

It wasn’t an accusation, it was merely the statement of a dying man. The look on Eleya’s face was indescribable and Diego realized that at that moment, he was tormenting her. He lifted the sword, heard a muffled cry escape Eleya’s lips in the end, and struck.

Relief washed over him, the sense of his task being complete. He was still
grothan
. Looking at Isolde, he saw her breathe out too, free of fear at last.

---

He took Isolde away from all the blood and gore and death afterwards, to Rhea’s vast, empty forests. He had replaced his bloody war armor with the jacket he had worn when they met and like a spell it brought a smile to her sad lips. Trees as tall as towers made a roof above their heads as they walked and let the rest of the galaxy deal with its problems for a while, like Isolde had told him a few days ago, making him laugh. Her hand traced the lines of the jacket, her beautiful green eyes dreamy.

“I missed this,” she said, “I like your armor too, but I saw you first in this.”

“Then I will wear it for you until another war calls,” Diego said, kissing her hair.

Daylight was shining through the trees, casting them in green and yellow light. No one else seemed to be around, and while a part of him wanted to hold Isolde even closer, it also felt good to simply be with her, walking with her under his arm, her head rested against his shoulder. It felt natural, even for a fierce Brion warlord, to want a haven in the midst of the storm that was the Brion way.

With the jacket, all troubles came. Just as the world seemed to be completely still around them in its green idyll, the damned collar started beeping.

Isolde’s laughter echoed back from the forest. “I swear, Diego, I love you in this jacket, but that collar has to go…” she said. Diego kissed her in response, glad she hadn’t lost her smile to all the death she had witnessed.

“Report,” he sighed to the collar. “This better be worth the interruption.”

“It is the Galactic Union,” the comm sounded. “They have decided to keep us in the Union. We are preparing to leave Rhea. Briolina calls us home to celebrate and Senator Eleya has a lot of duties ahead of her.”

Diego and Isolde were quiet for a long minute.

“Did I not say we would set it all right,” Diego said then, kissing her.

“Didn’t I say the world must have ended,” Isolde shot back, smiling and perfect in his arms, as she was supposed to be.
 

EPILOGUE

Isolde

Go to space
, Isolde thought.
It will be fun
.

A weight she hadn’t even noticed on her shoulders suddenly seemed lifted. With the Brions and the GU and galactic war a very real option, she hadn’t even noticed when it had become her natural state to constantly be scared. With the announcement, the world seemed colorful again, a place where she saw a future.

With Diego.

That was pretty much the beginning and the end of it all. So some things hadn’t been much fun in space, like people trying to kill her and all that, but some things had been oh-so-very-nice on the other hand. Her life on Terra seemed to have been someone else’s, now that Isolde thought back on it. She was walking with her
gerion
in an amazing alien forest while the
Triumphant
made preparations to return home to Briolina. Soon they’d have to board, but for a short while, the ship could do without its commander.

She had done all she could. So she didn’t get to be a researcher on Rhea, since her presence was also not advised due to her, ahem, connection to the Brions. Someone else would do the work of mapping out the planet, inventorying its resources and starting to put them to use. Someone else would see to the locals and that no injustice was done to them. She wouldn’t be a part of that team now. Her team was dead and so was her future on Rhea. She had a better one now.

At least Isolde got to see the beautiful world, and Diego had promised her that they’d come back as soon as they were able. Isolde would have liked that – she truly did want to come back, once Rhea was no longer the center of all the problems in the galaxy, but rather a means of fixing them. But at least she had avenged her research team. Those who’d given the orders were dead, at least most of them. He who had done the deed was certainly dead, confirmed to have been one of the generals who had fled to Rhea with Eren. Faren had killed him.

So what if he hadn’t done it for justice for her team. They’d all kept their reasons, and Isolde felt like she had no one else to hate for what had happened. Maybe it was all the death she’d seen. For a while, she’d had enough.

Isolde knew she’d have to send agent Perkins – or whoever the Palian truly was – a thank you note or something, because even if he hadn’t brought the decision for peace around single-handedly, he’d surely helped. Slowly and surely, she was beginning to believe in fate, after all. So many things had happened on
Luna Secunda
that proved significant to her future.

For her to have asked just agent Perkins for help, for the Palian to summon a Brion ship to help her against all reason, for that ship to belong to Diego… Isolde shuddered to think what would have happened if she’d done even one thing slightly differently.

In Diego’s arms, she no longer wanted to even think about the possibility of never having met him. She was with her
gerion
now, where she belonged. On Terra, people believed in love at first sight and got butterflies in their stomach when they fell for someone, but Isolde had scored the ultimate dream – her love at first sight was real, unbreakable and her butterflies wouldn’t go away.

She composed a last imaginary letter.

Dear professor Nagasuke,

Never mind all my previous letters.  I am happy, that is all. Thank you for sending me to Rhea.

Isolde