Dark Nine [18+]

Chapter Thirty-Six

Orlai's POV

Arcturus measures my neck and Rigil, Alpha Centauri's cousin, makes the iron collar and chain.

They both studied me silently.

I knew Kors came in all personalities from my research, but Alpha Centauri's Star Squad was known to be particularly vile.

Ninth Squad were extremely popular across the galaxy, and universally other Kors had a reputation too, but in terms of our Milky way, the primary Kors for us were Ninth and Star squad.

"You will be washed first," Arcturus speaks over me without looking me in the eye. They were trained not to get emotional with their prey. It would be rare for them to be ordered to keep me as a pet, so I am treated as a rarity.

Arcturus grabs my upper arm and takes me from Rigil, who watches me leave as he heats the metal to shape. Rigil has only distaste in his eye. I can tell he has trust issues. To be honest, I am glad I am being taken from him.

The collar of the damned sounded pretty awful, but I'd deal with that when it adorned me.

I had damned my own mate. I knew it. I knew I was cruel for doing so, but only one thing mattered in the universe to me.

It was my son.

Danger.

Nothing else mattered.

Not I. Not Alpha Centauri.

Danger was my focus, my maternal instinct was greater than any feeling in the world. I had spent destinies raising him, guiding him, helping him from the side lines. Any time he had trouble in his exploration of the universe, he had me to fall back on.

With the rise of technology, he was leaping across the universe exploring as far as he could.

I rarely saw him regularly throughout the last a thousand year, the grief I thought might kill me, but just as I was submitting to the fact I may see Danger less and less and less – he brought me home a Galactic Queen, who's Guardian was the man I had loved the most.

I know I am a martyr being here, but I had fulfilled my job as a mother.

Danger was brilliant, smart, strong – he needn't worry about me now.

I would face whatever life had left for me, with the same strength.

Unfortunately, Arcturus is the very one of Alpha Cenaturi's favourite Kor cousins that I wanted to avoid, as he was the most cunning and cruel. The interrogator of the Fey. Ruthlessness and mercilessness was exactly what you needed in wars concerning the existence of your own species, but it also meant he was very good at disregarding other species lives too.

Then there were us puny humans. Who were very good at wanting to protect everyone else and sometimes very poor at protecting their own kind in the search for loving everything beyond our reach. We had faults in our complex empathy and compassion, but we survived well enough.

Arcturus pulls me down one damp corridor into another, until I notice we're ascending to their chambers. Alpha Centauri's would be up this flight of stairs that we now approach, but at the very bottom... is a dark door – which Arcturus opens, dragging me inside. So he had the first floor.

I glare at him sideways as he takes me into his condo. I'm surprised by the civility of it, as he lets me go once we're inside. Instead of a cave, all around it's just like any home would be, but for a Kor, that's minimal furniture. All his is steel grey surfaces, grey walls, clean and empty. With a view of Planet Apastron's deep cut valleys, the depths of them were larger than the heights of most mountains on the usual type of planets. But this place was another hijacked Elion world from an ancient past, just like Dark Ninth was unnatural, so was this planet.