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“Did I tell you how much I love the sound of your voice when you say my name?”

“I sound like a bloody toad. I’m croaking so badly I’m scaring myself.”

“Your vocal chords are just out of shape from being unused for so long. Drink some of that water and you should be back to your old self soon. My doctors have never let me down in the past.”

“You must be far more advanced in the field of medicine than our Intelligence officers believed.”

“We never allowed Earth to see our true way of life. If they did present a threat to us as I suspected, we needed to have some sort of power tipped in our favor.”

“So you took your belief that knowledge is power to an entirely new level of execution.”

“Indeed, we did. Earth’s forces will never see us coming.”

She shifted in the bed, letting out a tiny moan when the slightest movement caused agony to rip through her head. “Oh, man. I’m not going to be getting out of this bed for a little while.”

“No, you won’t be. I’ll be staying here with you to make sure of that.”

She looked up at him. “You really don’t need to feel as if you have to watch over me twenty-four seven. I’ll be fine. Really. I think with the excellent medical care of the Gaians, I’ll be able to leave this system before you and your mighty military make the first strike against Earth.”

The look on his face turned thunderous. She could see he was having a hard time controlling his temper. She’d really hit a nerve this time. He walked away from her, paced the length of her bedchamber, and then walked back toward her.

“You are not going anywhere. Do you think I’d let you leave me after all that we have shared? You made a pivotal error in judgment when you seduced me the first night we met.”

“Seduced you? I was burning up with an insatiable fever that was making me feel as if I was going to spontaneously combust, and you tell me that I seduced you?”

She briefly thought back to that night. He was right. She’d acted like a sexual hellcat. She had seduced him. Her stomach fell. She could only blame one person for her current situation. She had to blame herself. But what would happen to her uncle and all of her friends that she’d left back on Earth? They didn’t deserve to die in this act of retribution by the Gaian Empire. She leaned back against the pillows and let out a long sigh.

“I should never have seduced you. I’m sorry for doing that now.”

“Well, I’m not.” He sank down into the ornate looking chair that sat beside the bed. He tried to reach for her hand, but she pulled away in the nick of time and shoved Doorway to the Stars by Marly Mathews 41

her hand under the sheets. She didn’t miss the platinum band on her finger though.

Shocked, she pulled her hand free of the covers and held it in the light.

“What is this?”

“In your society, I think you call them wedding bands. In our society we call them love rings. But they essentially mean the same thing. You only wear them to signify your love and loyalty to your husband or wife.”

Her stomach rolled again. She fought the urge to heave. “I can’t believe this. You have finagled everything to your way of thinking. You’ve made sure you put your seal on me. This is fantastic. Next thing you’re going to tell me is that I’m now known as Princess Freya.”

The deadpan expression he gave her in silent answer made her want to sigh again.

She studied her surroundings. The room had obviously been equipped with the latest Gaian Medical Technology, and yet something told her that they just weren’t in a hospital somewhere. She felt as if she were in someone’s home.

“This wouldn’t happen to be your quarters in your castle, would it?”

“Palace, actually. It’s the royal seat of Gaian power.”

“Oh, great. I’m right in the thick of it, then. I’m married to the enemy, and I’m bloody well in your headquarters.”

“I wouldn’t say headquarters. All of our war planning is done offsite.”

“Offsite?”

“Yes. I won’t have our beautiful capital planet dimmed by such a dark thing as oncoming war.”

“You are actually serious about attacking Earth, aren’t you? Don’t you realize that in your quest for revenge you will inadvertently kill innocent people? You will be killing men and women and
children
,” she stressed the last word, “that are just like me. I don’t know how you’re going to be able to sleep at night. If I were you, I’d be beside myself with guilt.”

“How many people did you kill during your last war?”

She hated him for bringing that up and using it against her. It was a dirty trick.

“You’re a dirty rotten bastard. Not only are you a kidnapper but soon you’ll be a mass murderer!”

“Mass murderer? I don’t think you’ve quite grasped the significance of what this war will mean for the entire universe. Your home planet has gone into dangerous territory. They have begun to lose their sense of justice. They are involved in slave trading, and they are putting limits on the rights and freedoms of not only the citizens of the planets they conquer, but their own citizens as well. They’ve taken your society back to the your Earth Dark Ages. If I don’t strike now, the light I see at the end of our tunnel will be extinguished forever. This isn’t my choice. This is my duty. If you want to see your home planet return to its former glory, you will give me your loyalty and you will give me your blessings.”

“Blessings? I’ll damn you straight to hell, Aries.”

“Freya.” The pensive tone in his voice hit a raw nerve deep inside of her.

“Stop it. Don’t say my name like that. I don’t know why I even feel anything for you. I have to stop wallowing in self-denial, though. You are the first man to look at me with tenderness and respect in your eyes at the same time. You haven’t been an ogre to me by mishandling me physically, and some women in my situation would be reveling in Doorway to the Stars by Marly Mathews 42

the thoughts of being a princess. The only problem is, I can’t stand idly by and let you wage war with my home planet. There are so many people on Earth that I love.”

“But how many of them are still alive?” He looked away from her.

She sat up, pushing herself up on her pillows that he helped to plump up behind her. A stab of coiling fear wound through her heart. She almost forgot to breathe. She wasn’t at all liking the knowing look that had flashed in his eyes. She slowed her breathing. Perspiration popped across her forehead. She still felt a lingering pain from her injury. She knew she’d been given a painkiller. Fat lot of good it was doing her right now.

“What happened? You’re keeping something from me.” She sat forward and reached for him.

“I don’t think I should say anything else. The doctors informed me that you needed time to heal. You should rest. Try to take it easy. Don’t think about anything except your well being.”

“Shove my bloody well being. Aries? What happened in the time when I was out and you weren’t? I hate lost time. I have no recollection of the time when I was unconscious and that drives me nuts. During the war I suffered an injury that put me into a coma for almost a month. During that time, our side suffered enough blows to ultimately eradicate our chances for victory. I felt cheated. I felt lost.”

“I won’t tell you. I can’t tell you. You’ll take a hard hit with the knowledge my intelligence sources have gathered.”

“No.” Her nose started to sting, as tears gathered in her eyes. She could almost feel the sense of pervading doom in the air. “It’s about my uncle, isn’t it?” She shook her head. “I should have figured out a viable way to get him smuggled out of that stinking hole of a prison they had him in.”

“Freya, you need to calm down.” The serious look in his eyes only confirmed her worst fears.

“Don’t tell me to calm down!” She snapped. Sighing, she shook her head. “How do you expect me to calm down?” She knew it. He had that same look in his eyes that she’d seen before. It was the look of deep sorrow someone had when they had grave news to deliver. It was the look someone had when they were just about to tell you someone you loved had died.

A sinking sickening feeling lodged in her stomach.

“When?”

“When did he die, or when did I find out about his death?”

She pursed her lips, her eyes continued to sting. She took another shattering breath.

“When did he die?” She closed her eyes against the pain. Her uncle had once been a strong and vibrant life filled with exuberance for everything new and exciting.

“He died eleven months ago.”

“Eleven months?” her hands shook. She hadn’t been allowed access to see him for the last three years … but she’d just gotten a letter from him two months ago.

“Impossible. I have a letter from him that he sent to me two months ago.”

“I don’t think he sent it. They probably told him to write up a stockpile before they disposed of him.”

“Disposed of him? That sounds so cruel and callous. He didn’t have a death Doorway to the Stars by Marly Mathews 43

sentence, he was only in there for debt.”

“Debt he accrued by placing all of his wealth on the losing side of the war.”

Her head was spinning. She took a few more cleansing breaths. “I can’t seem to wrap my head around this. No matter what sort of shit hit the fan surrounding my Uncle Robert, he always found a way to emerge unscathed. He’s not dead. He’s always risen from the ashes of tragedy before. I have no doubt he’ll do so again. He’s my only living link to my family, Aries.”

“You can’t live in denial for the rest of your life, Freya. You need to come to terms with your uncle’s death, grieve and move on.”

“Move on? You might say he’s been dead for the past eleven months, but I’m just coming to grips with it. I won’t believe it. You don’t have any proof. And without solid proof you won’t convince me.”

She looked away from him, over at the portrait of him that hung on the far wall.

He looked so regal, so in control of the situation. Odd. He probably didn’t know what it felt like to not have control. He didn’t know how desperate she felt right now. The walls were slowly closing in on her. She was on foreign ground, in a no man’s land of sorts, and she felt as if she was suspended out in a sea of nothing. She had no one to anchor her to her old life.

“What about Macy? I left her and she was suffering from a terrible migraine, with her heart ailment ….”

“I sent my people to retrieve her, since I knew how worried you would be about her. The two of you have literally cleaved to each other for most of your lives. I knew you’d need to know she was safe.”

“Where is she?”

“She ran before my forces could get to her.”

“Ran? She has no street smarts, she was a tactical advisor in the war, and she has very little knowledge of what it’s like to be involved in hand-to-hand combat.”

“Really? I think you probably taught her a few things, and didn’t you and she receive a self-defense course in order to qualify as Doorway to the Stars guides?”

“We did. She barely passed. She’s a better thinker … she can solve problems like no one else I’ve ever known. In the end in order to secure her position as a tour guide, I had to ....”

“Let me guess. You had to pull a few strings.”

“A few strings, in a manner of speaking. I had some old debts to call in ….” She sighed again. “I should leave. You should get me access to a ship, I’ll return to Earth and I’ll be able to find Macy, I know of all of her old hideouts.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Look, I have a bounty hunter after me, I have far more baggage than you have houseroom for. Just make it easier on yourself and go and choose some other poor unsuspecting female to be the mother of your progeny. I just don’t make the cut. You should be able to see that for yourself.”

“I see you for what you are, Freya. I didn’t just select you based on your physical beauty. I told you I had researched you to my fullest capability. We are more compatible then you will ever realize.”

“I’ve done this dance with you before, Aries. And I’m worn out. Look at me!”

She placed her hand to the bandage still wrapped around her head. “With all of the Doorway to the Stars by Marly Mathews 44

medical advances you claim that your society possesses, I’m still lying her with one hell of a dull headache, and I’ve got a bloody bandage wrapped around my head. I must have been pretty damn close to the pearly gates of the great beyond. Don’t you think you’ve hurt me enough?”

“I didn’t hurt you. Your past hurt you. You are forgetting why we were attacked.

Had I not taken you, you would have been ambushed, and chances are you would be with your uncle right now.”

He looked toward the door. “I have to go. I have a meeting in ten minutes.”

“A meeting to plan your first strike against Earth?” The bitterness in her voice was so scathing, she inwardly flinched at the intensity of it.

“Perhaps.” His eyes flashed. Her heart skipped a beat. “However, that is not of your concern. You need to grieve and get better. I want you to focus on healing. Put all of your energy toward that.”

She sat forward. She didn’t want him to leave her line of sight. There was no telling what he’d do if she couldn’t keep an eye on him.

“Take me with you.”

He stopped midway to the door.

“I can’t. You’ll have your time in the sun, soon. I shall be presenting you as my wife and princess soon enough. As we speak, my mother is planning the celebrations.”

“Nice. So I basically have no say in anything. I can’t even attend one of your meetings with you.”

He snorted. “You have no power when it comes to Gaia going to war.”

“I have no power when it comes to anything in your world. I have no say in anything, not even my own future.”

“I won’t let you think you’re powerless. You just can’t sway my decision on the matter of war with your world.”

“Why? Why do you persist in this sickening endeavor? I just don’t understand why.”