The Lawgivers: Gabriel Page 23

  For herself, Lexa thought it was their attitude of superiority that spawned it. Before, very few of them had had any sort of contact with the udai—they were mysterious, powerful, unknown entities that gave rise to fantastic myths and inspired terror. Now that they’d all had a chance to see them day in and day out and interact, they knew the udai weren’t gods or god-like. They were very little different than the people they so clearly despised and considered inferior and they had the same flaws and weaknesses.

  They didn’t feel inferior to the udai, but they did feel just enough inferiority to resent the udai thinking they were superior and that had led them to begin ferreting out their weaknesses, at first just to reassure themselves and then because they despised being driven from dawn to dusk and lectured until it felt as if their heads would explode. If this was what the udai considered improving their lot then they wanted no part of it! Nothing was wrong with the way they’d lived before—it was their way—and the damned udai didn’t belong!

  Lexa pushed her unpleasant thoughts to the back of her mind as she spied the gleam of moonlight on water ahead of her. Forgetting her weariness, she rushed the last few yards and looked around hopefully.

  There was no sign of Maura and her heart plummeted with disappointment. A nearly overwhelming desire to burst into tears swept over her. Swallowing with an effort, she looked up and down the banks of the stream as far as she could see for any sign of her sister. This was the place where she’d been told she could bathe, but maybe there were other places where people from other groups had been told to bathe?

  Weariness settled heavily over her when she considered walking up and down the banks in search, but she’d only had a few moments with Maura and it had been so long since she’d seen her!

  What if Maura had only been delayed, though? What if she walked down the bank and Maura came, decided she hadn’t come, and left again?

  There were so many people now it wouldn’t be easy finding her again, not when the udai watched their movements so closely and kept them at task!

  Finally, deciding she just couldn’t sit still and wait when the anxiety was riding her that Maura had meant another place, she began walking along the bank. She’d gone only a few yards when she heard above her a great fluttering of wings. Whipping around, she searched the darkness of the sky fearfully and almost immediately spied an udai man. Her heart skipped several beats, first in fear, and then in dawning gladness. “Gabriel?”

  She didn’t wait for him to acknowledge her. The moonlight bathed one side of his face in just enough light for her to identify him. The thrill that went through her banished any sense of caution. She rushed toward him, halting abruptly a few feet away when the realization hit her that he wasn’t her man. It might feel like he was—to her—but he’d made it clear that he wasn’t her man and never would be. To her surprise, he closed the distance between them, striding toward her and sweeping her into a tight embrace. “I never told you how much I like the way you say my name,” he said, his voice husky but threaded with amusement. “It annoyed the hell out of me at first, but I’ve missed hearing you say it.”

  Relieved that he seemed as glad to see her as she was him, she struggled to curl her arms around him. “I don’t say it right?” she murmured.

  “You say it just right,” he murmured, loosening his hold on her and dipping his head to skate his lips along her cheek in search of her mouth.

  Lexa met him eagerly, desperate to familiarize herself with his taste and scent again, almost as anxious to tear her clothes off and feel him against her bare skin.

  She didn’t hear the sound that prompted Gabriel to release her and push her to one side so abruptly that she nearly fell down, but she heard the second sharp intake of breath.

  “Lexa?”

  The voice penetrated her confusion. “Maura?” she asked, peering around Gabriel. She saw her after a moment’s search, cloaked in shadows near the tree line. “It’s ok. It’s Gabriel.”

  “He’s one of them!” There was fear in Maura’s voice, but far more loathing. “I recognize him. It’s the bastard that dragged us to this hellhole!”

  The confusion, barely cleared away, descended again as Lexa’s mind went wild with many realizations at once. Gabriel had fulfilled his promise to her! Maura wasn’t grateful. She was furious. Guilt flooded her. “He did it for me,” she said a little lamely.

  Maura gaped at her. “You! You sent him after us! Why? Why would you do that?”

  Sheer stupidity? “I was afraid you were dead! Afraid of what was happening to you if you were still alive. They’re trying to help us have a better life. I wanted that for you.”

  Maura stared at her a long moment and then turned hate filled eyes on Gabriel. “You didn’t used to be so stupid! The only ‘better’ life they’re offering is the afterlife! They’re gathering us all together so they can wipe us out. I can’t believe you’re with him! I’d heard rumors, but I didn’t believe it was you they were talking about. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t seen you with him!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Anger abruptly cleared away the confusion and the guilt. “He’s a good man,” Lexa said stiffly. “And he’s been kind to me. He only went to look for you because I begged him to.”

  Gah-re-al shifted uncomfortably beside her. “As much as I’d like for you to believe that, the truth is that we just made a sweep of the areas you showed me. I didn’t know she was your sister. She looks nothing like you.”

  Lexa glanced at him as he spoke, but before she could respond, Maura spoke again.

  “You showed him the villages?”

  “Maura ….”

  Maura shook her head. “I don’t know you and I don’t want to know you! They killed my man!” Her face crumpled. She uttered a harsh sob that stabbed Lexa like a knife. “I loved him and he’s dead and it’s your fault!”

  Horror washed over Lexa. She thought for several moments after Maura had whirled around and run away that she would puke. She dropped weakly to the ground, covering her face with her hands and burst into tears. “Oh god! What have I done? I didn’t mean it!”

  Gabriel stared down at her a moment, debating whether to leave or try to comfort her and try to explain. Finally, he knelt in front of her. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  Lexa snatched her hands down. “I did! I told you where to find them! I trusted you!” she screamed at him. “And you killed her man! She’ll never forgive me! And why should she? I would never forgive her if she did that to me! If you’d been ….”

  Gah-re-al felt some of the heaviness lift from him. “If I’d been …?”

  Lexa sucked her bottom lip in and shook her head angrily.

  Gah-re-al grasped her upper arms. “There was a battle no one anticipated,” he growled. “Three of the lawgivers were killed in the skirmish.”

  Fear squeezed Lexa’s heart painfully, fear for Gabriel, but in a moment her guilt and anger overshadowed it. “How many of my people died?” she demanded angrily.

  Gah-re-al released her abruptly and stood up. “You asked me to find your siblings. I promised that I would try. Beyond that, my orders were to round up all of the humans I found for rehabilitation and relocation. We walked in to a trap—with no notion that we would find anything different than we’ve found in every other village—amoral tyrants brutalizing the innocent. Instead, we discovered that they not only knew we were coming, they’d prepared to fight to the death—and they knew about our weapons and they knew how to get around them.”

  Lexa stared at him for a long moment, wavering, torn by her guilt over having a hand in Maura’s loss and the realization that Gabriel could’ve died.

  And all of it was her fault!

  “I trusted you. I believed in you.” Her chin wobbled so hard she couldn’t speak for a moment. “I would have done anything for you. I loved you, but you only wanted to use me.”

  Gah-re-al swallowed a little sickly. “But you feel none of those things anymore?”
>
  Lexa discovered she couldn’t bring herself to confirm it—because it wasn’t true. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing just how thoroughly he’d duped her, though!

  “If you’d felt any of those things,” Gah-re-al growled after a long moment, “it would take more than the words of a woman you haven’t seen since she was a child to convince you! You don’t know her!”

  Lexa swallowed with an effort around the knot in her throat, struggling with the urge to believe him, with the doubts he’d given rise to.

  But he’d abandoned her as soon as he’d deposited her here—without a word or a backward glance. “I don’t know who to believe anymore,” she said finally. “All I know is that it wouldn’t have hurt so much if I’d never found Maura again. I’ve lost her twice. And now I have no one.”

  The urge to tell her she had him was so strong, hit him so abruptly, that it was a struggle for Gah-re-al to prevent himself from uttering it. Distrust of the impulse kept him silent. He didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry for his restraint when she turned and left him abruptly.

  The sense that he was falling into a dark pit he would never escape swept over him, the feeling that he would deeply regret it, forever, if he didn’t say something. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop her even while everything inside of him screamed at him to do so.

  When she’d vanished from sight he realized it was cowardice that had kept him silent, not wisdom, not caution. He was afraid she’d reject him, fling it in his face.

  He didn’t think he could handle that.

  No, he knew he couldn’t.

  As long as he didn’t push it, didn’t force her to reject him outright, there was a chance that she would think it over and come back to him.

  Anger spawned by a strong sense of mistreatment wasn’t long in coming. She obviously had no clue of how much he’d risked to see her! And it wasn’t just his career that was on the line—although that damned well wasn’t unimportant. It was his livelihood. He’d be damned lucky if they only fined him and busted him down in rank to the lowest echelon! He could be facing imprisonment. They might decide to ship him to a combat position on another colony.

  Although they might not need to go to those lengths to put him in harm’s way.

  The commander had been furious about their losses in the skirmish with the natives. He’d wanted to declare war—and probably would have except for the politicians. They’d been angry, as well, but more inclined to dismiss it as an isolated, if unpleasant, encounter—something to be expected now and then given the fact that humans were such savages.

  He could see their point in a way. It wasn’t as if no lawgiver had ever been killed in the line of duty. He’d been appointed, himself, to replace a lawgiver who’d lost his life.

  There were two problems to turning a blind eye to the incident, though. It was the first time so many lawgivers had lost their lives in one engagement. It was the first time the humans had attacked as an organized group. And he, for one, thought they were completely wrong in thinking it was over and done with.

  Even the social workers were becoming uneasy with the tension that seemed to be building. They hadn’t expected the humans to be grateful or to embrace them. They hadn’t expected them to be able to see the ‘big picture’ and realize that it took work to build a civilization but would be worth it in time.

  But they also hadn’t expected the humans to begin to hate them instead of fearing them and more than one had expressed their opinion that that was the case.

  He thought Maura’s verbal attack was a very bad sign. No one had dared to contradict them or argue with them, and certainly not accuse them … before. To him, her boldness seemed an indicator that there’d been a radical shift in the perceptions of the natives.

  Of course, Lexa had been prone to argue with him from the start. He supposed it might simply be a family trait, but he’d never sensed the hostility in Lexa that he’d sensed in her sister.

  Possibly, that could be explained away by her loss, but he was far less inclined to dismiss any sign of rebellion than he would’ve been a few months before.

  His speculation about the restlessness of the natives didn’t occupy his mind long, unfortunately, before it went back to worrying over the encounter with Lexa. The sense of being ill used mounted. He didn’t suppose he’d actually expected a warm reception considering he’d left without telling Lexa he would be back.

  Mostly because when he’d left he’d had no intention of coming back. He’d been ordered to stay away from her and as much as that pissed him off he hadn’t thought scratching his itch with her was worth throwing away a career he’d worked damned hard for.

  He’d managed to convince himself of that—almost. He’d thought he had anyway.

  Justice Mer-laine had planted a seed that had jolted him to his core, though—the possibility that he had planted a seed.

  That hadn’t once crossed his mind until the justice had pointed it out. He supposed it was because he wasn’t accustomed to having to worry about that particular problem. Everyone used birth control. Everyone that wasn’t human. The natives had no birth control, however.

  He didn’t know why the hell he hadn’t thought about that while he was condemning them for breeding so indiscriminately, but the fact remained that he should’ve known that was the root of it. They had no way to prevent pregnancy except abstinence, and who in the hell wanted to do without? Particularly when one considered the misery of their existence.

  He supposed he’d also assumed—arrogance again!—that they were too different for that to be an issue.

  He wasn’t as convinced it couldn’t happen as he wanted to be anymore, not since Justice Mer-laine had pointed out the possibility.

  The mere thought of it was enough, for a while, that abstinence wasn’t a problem for him. All he had to do was think about it and his genitals shriveled. Nothing in his life had terrified him as much—not even his first few battles.

  After a while, though, he’d realized it wasn’t exactly fear that made him feel sick to his stomach when he considered the possibility. It was his own childhood, the sense of abandonment that had never left him, his anger that the man who’d fathered him had never come to claim him even though he had to know that his mother had died.

  And it was the life that Lexa had had and still faced.

  And it was the fact that any child he might have fathered on Lexa would face far worse than either of them had.

  That was what had finally driven him to seek her out. He had to know that he hadn’t done anything that unforgivably stupid! He had to know if he’d fucked up his life, Lexa’s, and condemned a child to abject misery worse even than the misery he’d known as a child.

  And yet the moment he’d seen her all he could think about was fucking her again!

  Gods! He’d lost his mind!

  * * * *

  Lexa was too miserable to notice much beyond her misery. She’d spent a near sleepless night after the encounter at the stream—and many more after that while everything replayed over and over in her mind endlessly. When she wasn’t reliving the horrific revelations of her meeting with her sister, she was going over and over the fight with Gabriel and in between both she was turning everything she’d said and done over and over in her mind trying to figure out how she could’ve done things differently and what she should have done instead of what she had done. The war going on inside her mind didn’t leave room for anything else for days.

  She didn’t even know how much time had passed until she was shaken out of her self-absorption as she headed back to the building site with yet another heavy basket filled with damp clay and a man stepped out of the trees along the path to block her. She jolted to halt, dropping the basket from suddenly nerveless fingers. Before she could do more than leap back and pivot on her heels to run, the man grabbed her. She managed to clobber him with her fist before he could grab her wrist.

  “Lexa! It’s me, damn it! Kyle!”

>   Lexa gaped at him, wondering who the hell Kyle was, but it slowly penetrated her mind that he knew her and when he did nothing but hold her to prevent her from fighting him, she focused on his face. A choking sense of suffocation swept over her as she took in the details of his face and realized he looked like Sir—except far younger.