Seduced by Two Warriors (11 page)

Chapter
Twelve

Gia
and Fallon flew back to Sera in the same craft they’d used to come to Addo with
the men. Their pilot was a neighbor woman who lived down the beach, and Gia
learned that Fallon could almost fly a spacecraft on her own now. She told Gia
she’d teach her.

They
packed their belongings into the cargo hold of the craft, and Gia officially
gave up the lease on her apartment. The guys had already taken care of the
lease on their condo, and Cord and Arlo had found someone to watch their home
while they were gone.

Gia,
Thane, Rune, Fallon, Cord, and Arlo had talked about what would be best for Gia
and Fallon, and had all agreed they should both work remotely from Addo so
Callie, Betsy, and Marianne had someone to stay with. There were plenty of
neighbors close enough to help if they should need it, and they would be safe.

Gia
liked the idea of being with the other women rather than stuck on Sera, where
she might not hear information as readily. It took the entire day, going back
and forth, to move their possessions and get everything squared away, but that
was okay. Gia needed something to concentrate on rather than having too much
idle time to think about her men.

The
men had left early that morning, and Gia hadn’t cried. She’d waited until the
spacecrafts were gone to do that, as had Callie, Marianne, and Fallon. Only
Betsy had kept a stoic face. As she and Fallon flew back to Addo for the last
time, Fallon showed Gia some of the basic navigational mechanics of flying a
spaceship.

“Never
in my wildest imagination did I think I’d be doing this.”

Fallon
smiled. “I grew up watching every one of the
Star Trek
spinoffs that existed, and I never thought I’d do this
either.”

Gia
glanced at the neighbor woman, but she was ignoring them. Just the same, Gia
leaned closer and lowered her voice. “And did you ever think alien men would
look human? I mean really?”

Fallon
shook her head. “No. I imagined tentacles and big heads.”

“Well,
part of their anatomy is rather large.”

“The
good
parts are.”

The
women laughed, and Gia’s heart felt a bit lighter than it had this morning. It
would be all right. They’d come back to her. They had to.

****

During
the next two days, the women kept the TV on, and even though everything said
was in the alien language, the other three had picked up enough of it by now to
understand most of what was said. The rest Gia or Betsy translated for them.
When Gia paid
attention, that
was. She tried not to,
but it was difficult since they hardly aired any regular programming. The news
stations on both Sera and Addo focused on nothing but the mission, and the
population’s reaction to it.

More
than half of the people they interviewed were shocked, upset, angry, or all
three. That wasn’t good. Fallon and Gia worked like crazy all day as they
half-listened to the news, typing content and updating websites. Marianne,
Betsy, and Callie helped as much as they could, but they were busy enough as
part of the communications staff for the Addonians.

Blake,
Vaughn, River, Cord, Arlo, Jakara, Thane, and Rune had landed on Voyeur Moon,
along with over seventy thousand other men, en masse, the same day the eight
had left Addo. The troops were now inside all three prisons, and they had
infiltrated the Zoo and the holding cells as well. That was as much as Betsy,
Marianne, and Callie had been able to glean so far.

Gia
knew it would be a while before any of them would hear from their men
individually, but as the third day wound down and the news stations were
reporting that the holding cells and the Zoo had been destroyed, she couldn’t
take it any longer. She asked Callie which team Thane and Rune
were part
of.

“They’re
with Jakara. You know that. So are Cord, Arlo, Vaughn, River, and Blake. Are
you okay?”

“No.”

Callie
gave her a sympathetic look,
then
motioned her over. She
pointed toward the computer screen. “See that?”

“What
am I looking at?” It was a beige grid with blinking multi-colored dots.

“Each
of these dots corresponds to the tracking device a brigade is carrying.
When the brigade is on the move, the dot moves.
They’re
color-coded. The red hued ones are
Regum
and the blues
are Addonians.”

Callie
clicked a few times and the grid zoomed in on only a few dots. She pointed
toward a blue one. “That’s them.
Jakara’s troops.
They’re inside the Zoo.”

Gia
swallowed hard. “How do you know where they are?”

She
clicked a few more times, and then the outline of buildings overlaid the
blinking dots. “This is how.”

“But
you can’t track individuals?”

“No.
Too risky.
One person carries the GPS device the same
way a person carried flags on Earth. It’s akin to their regimental colors. But
for them to each carry devices could lead an enemy back here, or to another
tracking station. If the person carrying the GPS device is captured, he has the
responsibility of getting it to another member of his team if he can. If he
can’t, he destroys it.”

“But
then no one knows where they are.”

“There
is one backup. So if both are captured and both devices are destroyed, that’s
correct. We wouldn’t know where they were.”

“But
they have radios and stuff, right?”

“Yes.
They can communicate with each other. And there are reporters now from both
Sera and Addo on Voyeur Moon. Nothing is secret about this mission. We’ll hear
something soon, Gia. It will be okay. Jakara is a warrior. Never forget that.
And so are Thane and Rune now. The guys know what they’re doing.”

Gia
turned around when she realized that Betsy, Marianne, and Fallon were gathered
close to Callie’s computer as well. They all sat down together to watch the
blinking dots.

****

Thane,
Vaughn, Blake, and Arlo finished rounding up the last of the prisoners in the B
Section of the Zoo. Others were busy with the remainder of the Sections. The
guards had already been marched out into the courtyard and executed, along with
the Wardens. Rune, Cord, and River were with the troops currently inside the
holding cells.

Thane
and Rune, along with River and Vaughn, and Cord and Arlo, had asked Jakara to
split them up in case one of them didn’t make it. None of the pairs wanted
their woman to lose both her men.

He
and Rune thought of Gia as their woman, regardless of the fact they hadn’t made
that official the way Cord and Arlo had done with Fallon, Jakara had done with
Callie, and Vaughn and River had done with Marianne. They were going to make it
out of this alive, and they were going back to her.

He
hated not being able to talk to her. She must be worried sick by now, and he
was even more grateful that she’d chosen to stay on Addo with the other women
than he’d been three days ago. She and Fallon would have felt too distant from
everyone for the duration, and that wouldn’t have been good for either of them.

He
was carrying one of the GPS devices that tracked their brigade, and another
soldier carried the backup. Thane wished there was a way to let Gia know the flashing
dot she could view online was his heart, beating only for her.

He’d
told her he loved her, but she hadn’t responded to that. He’d told himself that
was because she’d believed he’d simply said it in the heat of the moment, not
because she didn’t also love him. Later that night, after
Gia
had fallen asleep, Rune had chided him for saying the words at
all,
reminding him they’d agreed not to tell her. Thane had
told his brother to fuck off.

All
that mattered was Gia. He kept her dark eyes and all that dark hair in his mind
constantly. It was the only thing keeping him going right now. The haunted
faces of the Zoo prisoners were horrible to look at, and he could only imagine
how much more terrible it would be to face the women who were in the holding cells.
When he realized the depths of what Gia had endured, he longed to hold her
again and tell her it would be okay.

He
had to make it back alive so he could that. He had to.

****

Rune
was certain he’d be sick by the end of this day. Most of the women they’d
rescued from the holding cells were too thin, and the haunted, dead looks in
their eyes tore at his soul. Hearing what Gia had gone through was bad enough,
but seeing these women barely react when they were told their ordeal was over
was too much for any man to bear. Any decent man, that was.

The
guards and Wardens had all been executed, and now the women were being loaded
onto transports to make the journey back to Sera or Addo, where physicians
would first see them, and then they’d be given housing and jobs. They also
would be able to try to locate their families in
time,
even if it was to find out they were already dead. They had a right to have
some kind of closure after what they’d been through.

The
stench inside the tiny cells where they’d kept the women was horrible. It was a
wonder any of them lived without contracting skin or respiratory diseases. And
there were so many of them. The record-keeping was shoddy at best, but it
appeared they now housed over five hundred Earth women in this facility. Freeing
them all would take most of the day.

And
considering how many people had been taken from Earth in two years, Rune could
only imagine how many women had died in that time if there were only five
hundred of them in this facility today. How many were still out there, with the
men who had taken them? Would they be able to find those women, too, and get
them to safety?

Rune
wondered how Thane and the others were making out in the Zoo. He hoped they
were having as much success. These two facilities had been considered the
easiest to overtake since they weren’t as heavily guarded as the actual
prisons.

As
he worked, Rune kept Gia’s sweet face and dusky voice in his head. It was the
only way to keep from screaming. He’d never missed anyone so much in his life,
and this was the first mission he’d ever been on during which he had a woman to
think about. One who waited for his
return.
One he
couldn’t wait to hold again.

He
would return to her. He and Thane both would. And then they would spend the
rest of their lives making themselves worthy of her love.

Chapter
Thirteen

Gia
and the others finally heard something substantial on the fourth day. The news
stations aired footage of the holding cells and the Zoo ablaze. They reported
that all the Wardens and guards were dead, and every woman inside both
facilities, plus the male prisoners inside the Zoo, were on their way to Addo
or Sera.

Troops
were going door-to-door in the countryside, looking for citizens or Tyranns
hiding in homes, and other units were still inside the three prisons scattered
on Voyeur Moon. The reporters couldn’t get close to the prisons because those
running the mission didn’t want them hurt, but drones and other craft had been
able to do flyovers from time to time.

It
was estimated by each news station that over twenty thousand Tyranns had
already been apprehended, but that there were at least that many more either
hiding on Voyeur Moon, or working inside the prisons as guards and other
officials. The Regum and Addonians still had their work cut out for them.

The
women learned that the troops who had liberated and then burned the holding
cells and the Zoo were now joining the other teams scouring the countryside or
inside the prisons. That meant that Thane and Rune might find themselves in one
of the prisons.

Gia
asked Callie to find their dot, and when she did, she breathed a sigh of
relief. “They’re looking for homes.” She pointed to the far left of the grid.
“That is Atkins Prison, where Blake and Betsy were held.” Then she pointed
toward two other buildings. “And those are the other two. Our guys aren’t
anywhere near them.”

“How
long do you think this will take?”

She
shrugged. “No clue.”

By
the sixth day, Gia was cranky all the time. Even the ocean failed to lift her
spirits. The other women were on edge, too, and they were all snapping at each
other over silly things. The mood lightened considerably when Callie let out a
war whoop late in the evening, and they all came running into the room to
gather close to her computer.

“An
email,” she
said,
her voice breathy.
“From Jakara.
Finally
.”

They
pushed close to read it.

Callie, my one true love, I only
have
a moment. Communication is difficult so I’m sending
this to all of you who are waiting. Tell Marianne that Vaughn and River send
their love and cannot wait to see her again. Tell Betsy that Blake sends his
love and is counting the moments. Tell Fallon that Cord and Arlo miss her more
than words can say, and love her with all their hearts. Rune and Thane have
asked you to tell Gia they are coming back to her, and want to spend the rest
of their lives making her happy, if she will have them.

As an aside, they did use the “L”
word, but I’m not supposed to tell you all this. They want to say it to her in
person.

We are scouring the countryside
for citizens and Tyranns alike, and are approximately sixty percent finished.
Other troops have taken each of the three prisons. It won’t be long now, my
love. I cannot wait to hold you again.
All my love forever,
Jakara.

The
women all talked at once, but Gia stood in front of the computer and read
Jakara’s aside over and over again. Thane and Rune loved her. They’d told
Jakara that. Those two big, strong, alpha men had told their commander that
they loved her. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t asked him to pass that along.
She understood why they hadn’t. It was the same reason she hadn’t told them she
loved them before they left.

They
were coming back to her. She could feel it now, down to the depths of her soul.
And when they did, she would tell them, and then she would never leave their
sides again.

That
evening, the women cooked together and drank more alcohol than they should, but
it was a celebration, after all. The talked most of the night, about their
lives back on Earth, about their new home on Addo, and about anything and
everything else that came up. The mood was festive, bawdy, and lighthearted.

Gia
felt like she was back in middle school at a sleepover, and she hadn’t been
this comfortable around a group of people since before the invasions. She could
live here in this home, with these women and her men, for the rest of her life.
Was that really a possibility? She hoped so.

It
took three more days before the news stations finally had reporters close
enough to the prisons to show the outsides of the buildings on TV. The prisons
no longer belonged to the Tyranns. The combined forces of the Regum and
Addonians were busy transporting prisoners to Addo or Sera, in the same way
they’d transported the prisoners from inside the holding cells and the Zoo.

The
guards and Wardens of all three prisons had been executed, as had most of the
ancillary staff. Those who claimed they’d been forced to work in the prisons by
the Tyranns would be given trials on Sera in the coming months.

The
news stations also reported that ninety percent of the countryside on Voyeur
Moon had been swept, and every home within those parameters was now empty. As
soon as they finished the remaining ten percent, they would burn the prisons.
Each home they found had been emptied of people and their possessions, if the
people living there were ordinary citizens, and the home had been burned. The
Addonians and Regum were leaving no structures on the planet.

The
military bases close to each of the prisons, and next to the holding cells and
Zoos had been destroyed. There was one additional base, on the other side of
Voyeur Moon, close to where Jakara had lived, and that, too, had now been
destroyed.

The
power of the Tyranns was broken. If there were any left on Voyeur Moon, they
were in hiding, but the Regum and Addonians had plans for them, too. They had
deployed drones to fly over the caves and rocks, looking for heat sources.
Unless the Tyranns had built a secret underground bunker that no one had ever
heard about, they now had no place left to hide on Voyeur Moon.

As
the information that Fallon and Gia distributed reached the citizens of Addo
and Sera, their attitude on TV changed as well. Most expressed shock and
outrage that such atrocities could have gone on for two years without anyone
knowing about it. Many citizens of both planets volunteered to join the Regum
and Addonians who planned to help rebuild Earth.

As
Gia and Fallon helped Marianne, Betsy, and Callie gather all this information
and work on a database that one of the Ministry departments now oversaw, Gia
was struck over and over by the generosity of the people on Sera and Addo. When
she’d first come here, even after being rescued from the holding cells, she’d
looked at everyone as the enemy. They were the aliens who had invaded her
planet and then turned a blind eye while she was gang-raped by groups of men.

But
now she realized the majority of the people living on Sera and Addo had no idea
what had really been going on inside those facilities. Only one group was
responsible for it, not the people on all three planets. And that group was now
nearly wiped out. No woman from Earth would ever again have to endure what
countless others had gone through.
At least not at the hands
of the Tyranns.
Gia would dedicate her life to making sure of that.

The
men had been gone two weeks when Callie heard from one of the Regum generals.
She went into the communications room to talk to him, and when she came out,
the look on her face said it all. “The mission is a complete success. They’re
coming home.”

That
day on each TV station, the reporters showed celebrations going on in every
city on both Sera and Addo. They interviewed countless prisoners from Voyeur
Moon, who each told the same story. After listening to a few, Gia couldn’t
watch anymore. She’d glimpsed that same haunted look in her own eyes in the
mirror for two solid years. Was that what the guys had seen, too, the first day
they’d met her?

She’d
see them again soon. It had only been two weeks, but it felt like she’d lived
those first two years here all over again, only this time with the knowledge
that there were men she loved, and who loved her.

The
day dragged on with no word. The
group made dinner, and then
just as they sat down to eat
, each of their cell phones rang at the same
time. Chairs toppled over, and the room was filled with squeals and excited
chatter as they each ran to answer their phones.

“Gia,
it’s
Thane. We’re on our way to Addo.”

“Oh God!
I’m so happy! I don’t know what
to say!” She felt like a schoolgirl talking to her first crush on the phone.

“So
are we, love. We’ll be at the house in less than two hours.”

Love…

“Thank
you. I can’t wait to see you both.”

The
phone was silent for a few seconds and she thought she’d lost the call, but
then Rune’s voice was on the line. “And we can’t wait to see you, sweetheart.
We have so much to tell you.”

“And
I have something to tell you both, too.
But not on the phone.
I want to look into your eyes as I say it.”

She
swore she heard them high-five each other, and then Rune told her they needed
to go, but they’d see her soon.

The
group did more talking than eating, and when the first sounds of land crafts
reached their ears, they abandoned the table and the rest of their dinner to
run out onto the beach. Three crafts approached them at a rather high speed,
and when they stopped, no one waited until the men had disembarked to approach
the ships.

Gia
could hardly breathe as she ran toward Thane and Rune. They were still dressed
in their combat fatigues, and both men needed a shave and a haircut, but she’d
never seen them look sexier. Rune reached her first and pulled her into a tight
bear
hug,
twirling her around so many times she became
dizzy. She was laughing and crying so hard she couldn’t even speak.

He
kissed her, and she could barely catch her breath, but that didn’t stop her
from returning the kiss. As soon as he released her, Thane pulled her close and
held her so tightly she was sure she’d pass out. “I love you,” he whispered,
close to her ear.

“I
love you, too.” To finally be able to say it was so freeing that she cried
harder.

He
pulled away, the smile on his face bright enough to light up the dim sky, and
then he kissed her deeply, passionately, until nothing existed but him and
Rune. He released her, and then Rune gathered her in his arms again. “I love
you, too, Gia.
So much.”

“I
love you, too. I love you both. You’ve saved me, both of you. Do you understand
that? I was lost. I was dead. I
was only existing
.
Nothing mattered, but that’s not true anymore. I want to stay here, with both
of you.
For the rest of my life.”

She
swore Rune’s eyes were moist as he gazed at her. He cupped her face, and then
he kissed her again. “Just try and leave us, beautiful girl. Just try it.
You’re stuck with us forever.”

“There’s
no place else I’d rather be.”

They
each pulled her close again, stroking her hair and back, and Gia was lost in
their scents, their voices, and their touch. She was dimly aware that the
others had already gone into the house, but she didn’t care. She was here, on
the beach, with her two men, and this was where she wanted to stay forever.

They
loved her and she loved them, and she would make sure they always knew that,
every day, for the rest of their lives. This was her home now, and they were
her whole world. She belonged here, with Thane and Rune, and that’s where she
would stay.