Needing me.
Needing us. My triad. My two battle-brothers, and I.
The Orb-Scimitar at my waist suddenly seems to come alive at my thoughts. It’s like the curved blade can read my mind. I feel it hum, and vibrate, gently and almost beneath the perception of most living things.
Orbs. The otherworldly, alien objects that power so much of our technology.
As Aurelian Warriors, we forge our own Orb-Weapons before we embark on our hundred years of service. After completing our training, we’re given a shard of Orb – that nearly priceless substance that fuels faster-than-light travel and weapons capable of searing through anything – and then we trust our vision to decide what four our personal weapon will take.
We craft a weapon that resembles the axes, swords, or blades of old – the ones once made from bronze, or iron, or steel…
…only we craft them from a substance that can cut through any of those with barely a thought. A weapon that can shimmer to life with a thought, and burn with the coldest heat imaginable.
When it comes to the type of weapon each Aurelian Warrior crafts – well, I sometimes wonder if it’s not the warrior, but the Orb itself that decides.
The blueish-black substance powers so much of what’s around us – and ever since I saw the Scorp gathered around that glowing, otherworldly sphere in the dark, dankness of that ill-fated cave…
…well, more and more, I’ve come to wonder if it’s the Orbs that actually control us, and not the other way around.
I shake my head. These are thoughts for another time.
The woman at the front desk stares at us – and my first, and most absurd thought is that she is most certainly not our fated mate. She trembles at the sight of us.
The thought might have amused me in times past – running into our destiny so obliquely.
Now, though, everything feels on edge. I’ve ceased to believe in randomness, or statistics, or math. I can feel the destiny resonating all around us.
“Room 1401, on the left,” the woman at the front desk stammers, and I take the three key fobs that will grant us access to the room we just rented.
“Is that on the top floor?” Conan demands.
The lady looks like she’s about to melt. She doesn’t know where to look. She’s never had three imposing, seven-feet-tall aliens in her front lobby before.
“Y-yes,” she stammers. “It’s… it’s a penthouse. There are only two on the top floor.”
“We’ll take them both,” states Evander calmly, throwing her enough credits to cover the bill – and substantially more.
The woman nods, and feverishly hands us more keycards.
“Confirm,” she orders the AI system – and as soon as it chirps and turns green, we’ve secured both of the luxurious rooms on the top floor of this hotel.
At the end of the hallway, the doors to the elevator open automatically. They must have sensed the key fobs being activated.
We step inside, and the elevators whisk us up to the fourteenth floor. There are no buttons on the smooth interior of the elevator. It runs entirely on the technology of the key fob.
“She’s here,” I state, as the elevator whisks us upward, and my battle-brothers look over at me without asking what I mean.
They both know exactly what I mean.
She.
Our fated mate.
Conan nods.
“I feel it too… I feel… Something, but I don’t yet know what it is.”
The doors to the elevator open. I step into the corridor first, scanning left and right for any sign of danger. The hallway is empty.
The doorways at the far end open automatically, sensing the presence of the key fobs. There are two penthouses on the top floor – east side, and west. I walk inside the western penthouse first, scanning the room.
It’s decorated in white marble – as white as our skin. A giant jacuzzi in the center of the chamber welcomes honeymooners, and although the furniture is designed for human scale – not the towering, seven-feet-tall frame of Aurelian warriors – it’s still a far cry from sleeping in a Reaver all night.
In fact, as soon as we enter the room, I’m hit with a sudden wave of exhaustion. I suddenly realize we’ve all been up for days. Adrenalin alone has kept us going.
On the middle wall, almost imperceptible, are the slight lines of a hidden doorway.
“Open,” I command, and the voice-activated controls open a hidden set of doors that open to the interconnecting second penthouse.
It’s an exact clone of the first, only facing to the eastern side of this towering building. I walk to the huge windows and stare down at the streets below.
The Amphitheatre, where the slave auction will be held, lies right below us.
It’s a beautiful old building, probably three-hundred-years-old, from my first guess – but well-maintained. I almost feel ashamed that my first thought is how we could use our attack ship to raze the ancient landmark to the ground – splintering it to rubble and dust with our Orb-Beams to save the women who are destined to be sold there.
After that display of power, each one of them would beg to join our harem. They’d fawn over us, eager to please us in any and every way possible.
“If we had our Reaver, we could blast it to ashes...”
Evander gives me a hard look. “Don’t question my decisions, Augustus.”
Anger boils up inside of me. For a moment, I’m so enraged that I even consider charging him – knocking my leader to the floor with my bulk, and battling him for dominance of our triad.
That’s how they used to do it – on those rare occasions in which there was a conflict between members of a Bonded triad.
Normally such events never happen – the hierarchy of an Aurelian Warrior triad is natural and organic. When, in the heat of battle, three warriors find themselves Bonded to each other, each naturally chooses their place within the triad. One becomes the leader, and he defers to the other two only when there’s a logical reason to; such
