Under By Treaty (SciFi Romance) (18 page)

Chapter Fifteen

Jaden did not take his eyes off Sonil for a second. Her claw-like hands pressed down on the arms of her throne, her expression contorted with hate. Ignore it – he’d forced her hand. Had to. It was the only way his lunatic plan would ever work. He nearly missed her move. Not so much as a tendon in her body flexed as the Qui launched into the air from her throne. He backed up, too slow.

Just focus on surviving.

She struck hard, but Jaden dodged and her slashing claws missed him by a hair. She growled as she spun, wings slicing high. He dropped low and her wings cut through the air where he’d been standing.

Twisting around, Jaden swept her feet, knocking
her off balance. As he expected she used her wings to stabilize, and lost the offensive advantage. Jaden chopped with all his strength at the muscle and tendon joining her right wing to her shoulders and she screeched in pain.

“Put ‘em away or lose ‘em!” Jaden taunted her as she staggered back, her wing dragging her down, twitching and useless. The doc hadn’t fucked around
. Ceramic-hardened plating reinforced Jaden’s arms and legs. An internal nose filter would help neutralize a chemical attack, but Tarkesh forbade its use.

She blurred out of focus as her claws raked at his arms. The cold-fire of her gashes brought a gasp from his lips
. His inbuilt-armor held, shielding muscle, veins and vulnerable tendons from her vicious talons. She kept coming at him relentlessly, swipe, parry, gouging at him first with a slice, then slashing his chest right-left.

No mercy. He hadn’t expected it. Not a second time.

But not controlled either. Not like her sword fight with Governor Tah. He analyzed her assault through the agony of the deep gouges she was wreaking on him. Rage blinded her. He needed to use that against her. He staggered under her next attack, she followed him down, and he surged back and punched straight through her flurry of blows. His ceramic knuckles smashed full on with her nose.

Bone crumpled and gave way. Her blood splattered him.

Sonil dropped to the floor and mewled into unconsciousness, her wings retracting.

Jaden blinked through a mist of sweat and blood. He’d landed a killer blow. Luck mixed with judgment. Rough ridges of her lizard form smoothed into the gorgeous powder blue woman he’d been dreaming of nightly. Heart pounding, blood roaring through his ears, lungs straining for air, he saw the ruined beauty of her busted face and almost puked at
the damage he’d inflicted on the woman he loved.

He
swayed where he stood, his iron-rich blood mixing with the slightly blackened hue of her life force covering his hands and chest. The pain of his wounds retreated to the edge of his awareness as the doc’s nanobots worked overtime to keep him on his feet and fighting.

He waited, but she didn’t move.

Jaden dropped to his knees beside her, a heart-stopping terror exploding in his chest, and then her left eye cracked open to stare at him with the fury of an Empress defeated.

His stomach turned.

God, she was gonna hate him for putting her through this
. He hoped they could somehow work around this brutal moment. Filled with self-loathing, he whispered, “Do you submit and agree to be my wife?”

Please Sonil, I want you. I
need us to be equal.

She shifted back into lizard-woman a split-second before
she attacked, just enough warning for Jaden to block her with his forearms. Claws raked his side as she screeched with inhuman decibels and knocked him onto his back. Suddenly she was on top of him, pummeling ferociously, talons raking his cheeks, and once more vulnerable to her anger.

Beyond
cool reasoning.

It was all he could do to keep her off his eyes and throat.

She had him pinned, and there was no more choice. He had to do it to survive. His insides twisted as he kneed her in the groin then head-butted her jaw. Her head snapped back as a follow through kick tumbled her off him and onto the stone floor. She landed on her side. Her head lolled over. Knocked out for sure this time.

You’ll have the strength of a fucking gorilla,
Doc had said
.
He hadn’t been kidding. Jaden had broken her jaw and for what.

He’d failed
, lost her for good.

I’m gonna throw up.

Jaden staggered back to his feet, drenched in blood. She’d sliced and diced him to ribbons. Only the chemicals in his bloodstream enabled him to stand. A normal man would have died already. His vision blurred in and out. Jaden rocked and fought to stay awake.

T
alons dug into Jaden’s shoulder. Oltu. “You think you have won, human, and it was a good showing, I’ll give you that. Now you must face me.”

Jaden nodded, his last sliver of hope crushed by
his victory. He wanted to prove to Sonil he was worthy of the Qui, on an equal standing, never to hurt her or take her throne. This ridiculous challenge had been his one chance to establish a place in the Qui court and it had been a long shot – the historical record held no account of an outsider winning a challenge against the Qui. He was functioning on nothing more than the hope of honor at this point, and the woman whose honor he held out for was unconscious.

She’d been ready to kill him.

“I win, Oltu. The Empress is down and she’s not getting back up anytime soon. And I refuse to kill her, so, I win. I have the right.” Crap. Oltu’s grip was the only thing holding him up.

“No challenger has ever won.” Oltu’s unfeeling lizard eyes assessed Jaden with a smug lift of his chin. “Tarkesh is a sporting event. An exhibition. The Qui relinquish the throne to another species? Never. You fought well, Jaden, but
you gained no rights.”

“I read it in your laws, in your history. I have the right, whether you like it or not.”

“And could you best me? Or Fitor?”

“And I?” K’rista snarled, her wings rustling as she circled them.

Jaden shook his head. He couldn’t best a wet paper bag right now.

Oltu laughed. “Do not
toy with the Qui, General. We never lose, even when we lose.”

“What happened to honor? Or is Sonil the only one to have inherited honorable genes in your family.”

Oltu’s claws pressed deep, forcing Jaden to his knees before the Lizard prince. “Honor and respect flows into the ruling seat of the Empire. The Court of the Qui reigns supreme. Honor is our due. We owe no debts of honor to you or Earth, or any other system. Only the Qui’s fondness for your company allowed this farce to take place. I would have killed you the moment I learned of your betrayal.”

Agony emanated from the shoulder Oltu was shredding down to the bone. Jaden cried out in pain. Movement caught his eye. “Sonil!
Please! I came here for you! I fought for you!”

“Too late, human.” Oltu pulled a half-meter curved blade from a scabbard at his back and hoisted it high with one arm, poised to take Jaden’s head off.

“Stop!” Sonil crawled towards them, clawing for every inch to close the distance. “He has earned the right! I order you to stop!”

Jaden swallowed in disbelief she could
still speak. He’d been sure that blow had broken her jaw.

Oltu looked at her sideways, his blade hand held high. “You would give this pale, hairless primate a place at your side? He’s not even human
anymore! They have modified his body to play this war game with the Qui. He is nothing more than a spy for Earth.”

K’rista stepped up,
pulled Jaden’s head back by a fistful of hair and extended a black sharp talon to his exposed throat. “Kill him, Oltu, or I will. Sonestra is bewitched by this creature. She no longer knows herself. His manipulations stain this court.”

“Mother, if you want to live past this night, release him! Now!” Sonil flowed up onto her feet, wings splayed wide, claws out in righteous fury.

Jaden’s heart jumped a beat. She was ready to gut her own mother, for him.

He’d won. Sonil was his by right, but claiming her would destroy the Qui royal family, and probably dissolve the empire.
She would never forgive him and he couldn’t live that way. She’d given him what he needed more than anything, what he wanted more than life itself – irrefutable evidence of her love.

It wasn’t just a chemical reaction. It was more than sex. They shared something real, and he could ask no more of her.

“Wait! All of you! I renounce any rights to the throne. Sonil, I only ask that you accept me as your consort. I don’t want the rights of the court. I never wanted your throne. I just want you to be mine.”

Oltu and K’rista let go of him at the same time. Absent their support, Jaden fell over. As his cheek kissed the blood-smeared tile of the courtyard, he heard Sonil cry out, “Why didn’t he
say so from the start?”

Because I wanted
you to know me as your equal. I wanted us to be husband and wife.

*****

Jaden woke to the soft slide of silky sheets on his naked, sore flesh. The scent of the pillow was unmistakable. He was in her bed again, after what seemed like a lifetime away.

He
rolled over and groaned as his bodily aches protested. The horrific throne-room combat scene flashed through his mind over and over, his fist crushing into her face, her blood on his hands. The images replayed so many times they seared onto his eyelids.

“Sonil?” His hoarse voice croaked when he called out to the empty room. She had been standing when last he saw her. Had she recovered so quickly? H
is stomach twisted in fear. Or… No, if she was dead, he wouldn’t be here now.

And if she was alive, why the hell wasn’t he strung up in some torture contraption?

The sound of running water drifted through the partially open door to her bathing quarters.

Groaning with the pain of sitting upright, Jaden shoved off the bed and walked gingerly into the bathroom, suddenly self-conscious of his nudity
, vaguely remembering being stripped. He’d almost forgotten what it was like to be her personal play-thing, paraded around wearing virtually nothing.

He found her pale blue body standing under the water spray, forehead down against the tile. It took a few seconds for Jaden to notice the black blood tint in the water running down to the drain. He dreaded seeing what he’d done to her once-lovely face.

Without looking at him she waved her hand. “Join me, Jaden. Let us wash away the evidence of your foolishness.”

He
edged forward warily, suspicious that she could be so casual. He’d fought her in ritual combat and almost dethroned her in the process.

He slipped into the stream of warm water, winced at the initial sting then wrapped his arms around her from behind. Still afraid to see the damage, he buried his face in her dark wet hair while the water washed away crusty flecks of blood from his many
wounds that had mostly healed. If not for the Doc, Jaden would have been bed-ridden for weeks. Instead, his near-death injuries had healed in scant hours.

Her wet scent in his nostrils, he couldn’t help but grow hard and his erection slid between her lovely blue ass cheeks.

She stiffened. “I can hardly believe you’d be ready for me this quickly. What did they do to you, Jaden? What abomination of science is this?”

The rasp of her voice put him on
alert. Sonil could turn at any moment then extract retribution for his actions at her leisure. Her consort had done the unthinkable, challenged the rule of the Qui, and he suspected there would be a hefty punishment.

“It won’t last
,” he said. “Give it a few months, the gene splicing will break down and I’ll return to normal.”

“Whose idea was it? Your president?”

He could feel the tension in her body and braced himself for an attack that never came. She waited silently, giving him the chance to explain. “I begged my doctor for this. If he hadn’t done it, I would never have survived Tarkesh. I did this to win you, Sonil.”

She turned to him then, and the deep bruising of her
skin and split, raw flesh of her nose brought a gasp from his lips. He dropped to one knee before her, squeezing back hot tears of regret. “I’m so sorry, Sonil. I never wanted to hurt you again, please believe me. That’s not why I came back.”

She pulled him up to his feet, reminding him of all that strength hidden within her tight, curvy little body. “I’m fine, Jaden. You broke my nose. I’ve been through worse. Now answer my question.
Whose idea was it?”

He could hardly stand to look in her
reptilian eyes with the deep shame he felt for hurting her. His throat tightened as he noticed the blue bloodshot streaks in her irises, further evidence of the trauma he’d put her through. “I wanted this. No one ordered it. In fact, I am probably a wanted man on Earth. I stole a prototype interstellar courier vessel to get here as fast as I could. They almost intercepted me before I made it into Qui territory.”

He delicately traced the lines of her swollen jaw, happy that he hadn’t broken
any more bones. He lifted his forearm to show her the dark, hard ceramic ridges that had saved his life. “I did this on my own, Sonil. So I could survive the Tarkesh.”