Between Darkness and Light (16 page)

Reaching up, he tried to pull the Captain's hands away. He knew he was telling the truth, but he didn't want to believe it. The Captain's touch made it worse, heightened the need to be held by him, to surrender.

“Let me go,” he said, his voice tight with emotions he didn't understand. He scrabbled at the Captain's hands, feeling his own claws bite through the skin and draw blood. The metallic scent of it filled his nostrils, intensifying his feelings, making his eyes fill with tears. “Let me go!”

“Be still,” ordered the Captain, keeping a tight grip on him.

The voice vibrated through him and he recognized what it was even as he obeyed.

The grip loosened and the Captain removed one hand to wipe his tears away with his thumb. “What you're feeling is the call of our shared blood, Shaidan. It links father to son, family to Clan. It's what we are.”

“No!” he shrieked, wrenching himself loose and overbalancing the chair in his urgency to escape the pull he felt toward this male. “I don't want to be linked to you! You're not my father! You're a vassal like me! I saw you yesterday when M'kou made you kneel in front of the General!”

“Shaidan,” began the Captain, getting up to help him.

Scrambling to his feet, he turned and fled, the door opening automatically as soon as he got to within three feet of it.

The soldier on guard outside turned around instantly and made a grab for him, but he dodged past him easily and began running down the corridor, fleeing them all as if his life depended on it.

 

Rubbing the scratches on his hand, Kusac made his way more slowly to the door, aware that his first meeting with his son had been a resounding failure. He'd been too anxious, spoken of leaving here too soon, but despite his son's half Prime parentage, it had been impossible for him to ignore the call of their shared blood.

“They're looking for him now, Captain,” said the guard as he stepped into the corridor. “If you wait inside, he'll be brought back to you shortly.”

He shook his head. “Leave him be. He obviously doesn't want to see me today. There's nothing to be gained by forcing him. I'll try again tomorrow.”

“I'll take you back to the elevator then, Captain.”

He nodded, silently cursing Kezule for orchestrating the circumstances of their meeting the night before so that Shaidan could see the power the General had over him and his crew. He was in an even more impossible situation now—that of trying to convince Shaidan that they weren't Kezule's vassals.

As he reached out to hit the control pad to summon the elevator, he realized his hand was trembling. The meeting had shaken him. Now he understood why Kaid hadn't been anxious to meet his own father for the first time. He'd no idea how to treat a kitling of Shaidan's age, let alone a son he'd never met before: a son whose mother was the wife of an implacable alien enemy.

 

Dodging past the startled guard, Shaidan began to run, heading as far away from the office beside the Command Center and the Captain as he could get. When he ran out of breath, he stopped, sinking down onto the floor on his haunches, and sobbed. Why had the Sholan Captain and his crew come here? Until yesterday, he'd been content, known where his place was in the order of life around him. Now that security and order had been taken from him, overturned by someone claiming to be his father and wanting to take him away from the only family he'd known.

Reason and common sense began to return. The General needed and wanted him, why else would he have kept him? He wouldn't let the Sholan Captain take him away. If he worked hard, performed every task to the best of his ability, he could make himself indispensable. No matter what he said, the Sholan Captain was only a vassal like himself. His tears began to slow as he rubbed his hands across his face.

The smell of blood—his father's blood—filled his nostrils again, bringing back the flood of emotions that had terrified him. Something deep inside him did recognize their relationship, the pull of their shared blood, and ached to acknowledge that link. His tears began to fall again.

“You can't run away from what's inside of you, little one,” said a soft Sholan voice as a hand gently touched his shoulder.

With a whimper of fear, he tried to pull away and press himself against the wall. Blinking his tears back, he stared up, not at the Captain as he'd feared, but at a stranger.

“You shouldn't be here,” he said, attempting to keep his voice steady. “The Command level is forbidden to Sholans. It's only for the Seniormost.”

“I got lost. Besides, you're here,” the adult male said, mouth dropping open in a slight smile.

“I belong to the General,” he said defiantly. “I'm his vassal. I help him, have value to him.”

“Who told you that? The General?” The stranger reached out to touch his cheeks, wiping the tears away with gentle fingertips.

Shaidan opened his mouth to say yes, then stopped, realizing that the General had never actually said that. “No one told me, I just knew I was.”

“Don't you think that strange, Shaidan?” he asked, squatting down on his haunches beside the child. “You belong to no one but yourself, cub.” He reached out and tapped Shaidan's forehead. “In here, where it really matters. You owe the General gratitude, yes, for taking you from the Directorate, and for bringing your father here, but nothing more.”

“Your Captain says I belong to him because he's my father.”

“That's a different kind of belonging, one of family, of sharing the same blood ties.”

Shaidan surreptitiously hid his hands behind his back, hoping that the stranger couldn't smell the blood on them. “How can he be my father? I was birthed from a tank like the others. We all were.”

“Where are the others now, Shaidan?”

“The Captain took them.”

“He took them to those who could return them to their own parents. You know he did. Which means you all have parents, even you. And, yes, Captain Aldatan is your father.”

“Then why didn't he come to the Directorate and rescue us?” he demanded. “Why was it the General who came?”

“Because your father didn't know you existed until the General told him about you.”

“He must have known! How could he not?”

“Didn't the Doctor or the General tell you why?”

“They tell me what I need to know,” he answered automatically.

“Is that you or a Prime vassal talking, Shaidan? They may tell you what you need to know, but do they tell you what you want to know? Like how General Kezule knew who your father was and sent for him to take the others to their parents, and why the General kept only you.”

“Curiosity is unacceptable in a vassal.” His words were slow this time as he wondered how this stranger knew his thoughts as they had only just begun to form in his mind.

“But you are curious, aren't you? About your father and how you came into being without his knowledge,” the stranger pointed out as he stood up.

Shaidan stared up at the tan-pelted male in the gray tunic, wondering why it was so easy to talk to him.

“We have to go now, little one,” the stranger said, holding out his hand, palm uppermost to him. “They're looking for you. It's time to go back to them.”

“The General will be angry with me,” he said, shivering as he pulled his hands out from behind his back and accepted the stranger's.

“Most definitely, but what about your father?”

“I clawed his hand,” he admitted as they began to walk back the way he'd come. “Made it bleed.” He risked a question, and a sidelong look. “Would you be angry?”

The stranger laughed, squeezing Shaidan's hand reassuringly. “My cubs are long since grown up, but in the circumstances, I think not. It's a father's and mother's responsibility and duty to try to understand their cubs. You must learn to ask questions, Shaidan. If you don't feel confident enough yet to ask, then at least think them. No one can be angry with you for doing that. Some of the answers you already have if you look for them. There's more of your father in you than you know.”

“I'm a mind reader. I can hear other people's thoughts. So can others.”

“Can you hear them when you wear your collar?”

“No,” he admitted.

“So your thoughts are your own. Learn to be yourself, little one, rather than what other people want you to be. You have the first of many choices before you now. Do you want to be a vassal, a slave with no family, belonging to the General and living here, alone, with none of your own kind? Or do you want to be Shaidan Aldatan, firstborn son of one of the oldest and most powerful telepath families on Shola?”

“My father's a telepath?”

Stopping at an intersection of corridors, the stranger smiled down at him, letting his hand go to ruffle the hair between his ears. “Ask the Doctor, Shaidan, or your father. I must go now, before they see me. There's an emergency stairway around here somewhere. Remember what I've told you,” he said, running his thumb along Shaidan's jaw in an intimate caress as he turned to leave. “And give your father a second chance. This isn't easy for either of you.”

“Wait! Do I have a mother? Do you know her, too?” he asked, suddenly anxious to know.

The stranger hesitated briefly. “There isn't an easy answer to that, Shaidan. All I can say is that when the time is right, you'll know who she is.” Then he was gone.

As Shaidan watched him disappear down the side corridor, he heard the sound of booted feet approaching rapidly and his world suddenly began to close in around him again.

 

The General was furious. Though light, the blow that he delivered to the side of Shaidan's head lifted him off his feet and would have sent him crashing into the wall had M'kou not stepped in the way, using his own body to catch the cub.

“How dare you leave the Captain like that and make a liar out of me!” Kezule hissed. “I gave my word that you'd spend two hours each day with him. You'll go back instantly and stay there for the designated time, today and every day! Do you understand?”

M'kou helped Shaidan regain his footing.

“Do you understand?” thundered Kezule, taking a step toward him, crest fully raised in anger.

“I'm sure he understands, General,” said M'kou as the sobbing cub clung to him. “I'll take him up to Captain Aldatan's quarters for you.”

“Do that,” Kezule hissed, turning away from them. “Post a guard outside, and you collect him at the end of two hours. May the God-Kings help you if you try to leave early again! You disappoint me, Shaidan. I'd thought you better trained than that. Take him to the Doctor afterward, M'kou, I don't want to set eyes on him again today!”

Instead of taking the cub straight to the elevator up to the main level, M'kou took him to his own quarters first. Better ten minutes spent calming Shaidan down and cleaning him up than risking the Sholan Captain's wrath, to say nothing of Doctor Zayshul's should they meet her going past the sick bay.

 

When he answered his door, Kusac was surprised to find M'kou standing outside with a very subdued Shaidan.

“The General asked me to return Shaidan to you, Captain,” said M'kou, his hand resting familiarly on Shaidan's shoulder. “There's a guard outside your door to ensure your privacy. I'll be back to collect him in two hours.” He hesitated before continuing. “He has been punished for running away from you, Captain.”

Kusac's eyes narrowed as he reached out to tilt up his son's face. He noticed the swelling on the cheekbone. All thought of who Shaidan's mother was vanished instantly.

“Tell Kezule that if he ever lays his hands on my son again, he'll have me to answer to!” he snarled, hair and pelt rising in anger till it stood out like a mane. M'kou released Shaidan and hurriedly stepped back.

“I don't think . . .”

“Tell him!” he roared, stepping past his cub into the corridor so he was almost nose to nose with the General's aide.

This time M'kou stood his ground. “I'll tell him, of course, Captain, but the corridor is surely not the place for this discussion. Shaidan was told to remain with you and he disobeyed that order.”

“He's only a cub, dammit! A child, not one of your damned soldiers! If he needs punishing,
I'll
do it, not Kezule, or he'll get damned little cooperation from me and my crew!”

M'kou glanced across the corridor to where the other Sholans' rooms were. “As I said, I'll tell him, Captain. May I suggest we close this matter now before your crew becomes aware of it?”

With another snarl of rage, Kusac returned to his room and sealed the door.

“Follow me,” he said curtly to Shaidan, as he headed across the living area to the bathing room door. Opening the cabinet above the wash basin, he pulled out his personal medikit and began searching through it. He was furious because he hadn't been there to prevent Kezule hitting his son, the more so because he was powerless to stop it from happening again.

“Put the stool under the main light and sit on it,” he ordered, taking a tube of ointment out and putting the kit back.

He turned round as Shaidan, trying not to tremble, was sitting down. Fear-scent filled the small room, and when he saw the way his son's tail was flicking spasmodically, his anger with the General evaporated instantly.

“I'm not angry with you, Shaidan,” he said quietly, squatting down beside him. “You only did what any frightened kitling would do—you ran away. I'm angry with the General for hitting you.”