Chapter 8: Chapter 8

ISABELLE

It didn’t take Izzy long to get ready. She hardly wore any makeup, and she’d tied up her hair in a ponytail. Once dressed, she made her way downstairs again and hesitated in the doorway.

Mikhlas, Silian, and Amy were all sitting in the lounge, the men folded into awkward positions on the sofa, and Amy in her father’s chair across from them.

She related a story about some drug bust she did a few years ago, but what Izzy noticed first was how Silian looked at her. His face no longer held that plotting-her-demise look.

She even caught him running his gaze over her when Amy looked at Mikhlas.

“All yours,” Izzy said to the room. “Mikhlas, can I have a word?” she asked, gesturing for him to follow her. He walked into the kitchen and she shut the door.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked quietly. Mikhlas looked at the door she pointed to.

“Silian? Yes. He will be fine.”

“I mean, he’s not going to want to get Amy back for what she did?” Izzy asked.

“He will not hurt your friend. Not to say that he won’t want a rematch,” Mikhlas said.

“Great. So, he won’t kill her, he’ll just beat the shit out of her,” Izzy said with a hint of fear in her voice she wasn’t expecting.

She knew, all too well, what a beating like that felt like. Mikhlas came over to her and stood in front of her.

“No one will ever hurt you like that again. Not as long as I am alive,” he said. Izzy dropped her head. There was that feeling again. The one of fear and panic at the thought of what Peter did to her.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get so serious so fast,” she said.

“Isabelle. I stand by your side, no matter what. If you command it, it will be done. We can find the man who hurt you and make him suffer before he dies,” he said.

Izzy thought about this for a moment. As appealing as it sounded to let this man crush Peter like a bug, he was still the father of her boys.

And as much as she hated him, she wouldn’t be the one to do that to him. She wanted to leave and forget about him forever.

“No. I don’t want to see him or think about him or give him the time of day,” she said. She pulled in a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“As you wish. But if I may be so bold as to give you my personal opinion?” he asked. She nodded and looked up at him.

“I would much rather see him begging at the end of my blade.”

Izzy smiled and shook her head. She could easily picture Mikhlas doing just that. He looked intimidating, and the very definition of a tough guy.

But the way he looked at her, with that unshakable honesty in those sapphire-blue eyes, made Izzy melt in the knees.

Despite his words, she sensed a gentleness to him. One you wouldn’t normally expect from a man like that. The way he spoke to her and how he always got so close to her.

Her heart began to race at the thought of him as the memory of the kiss they’d shared popped into her head. He frowned and stepped back.

“Do I frighten you?” he asked, a look of panic on his face.

“No. Not anymore,” she said.

“Then why is your heart so uneasy?” he asked. Izzy thought about what he said for a moment.

“My heart?” she asked when she couldn’t make sense of what he said. The way they spoke still felt a little strange to her.

“I can hear your heart racing.”

“You can?”

“Yes. I would hear it from a mile away.”

“How?”

“It’s one of the ways we are different. If I focus my hearing, I can draw in even the faintest of sounds from a distance.”

Izzy tried to process this for a moment.

“So, it’s like a superpower?”

“No. My race is simply born that way.”

“So Silian can hear everything we’re talking about?”

“If he wanted to, yes. But eavesdropping on the queen is a very bad idea,” he smiled.

“Why did you kiss me?” she asked, then clamped her lips shut, mortified that the question just popped out. Mikhlas frowned and tried to hide his grin.

“I needed a sample of your DNA for Prime to identify you.”

“Bullshit. You could have taken a hair or a drop of blood, but you kissed me,” she said. Mikhlas dropped his head, his smile gone.

“Forgive me, Dakira Isabelle. It was wrong, and I will accept whatever punishment you deem fit,” he said. ~Punishment? Why would I possibly want to punish you for it? I want you to do it again.~

“No, Mikhlas I don’t want to punish you for it. I just…I wanted to know why?” she said, turning a little red.

“Partly because of my own ego. Once you are crowned, no one will be permitted to touch you on pain of death except your family.”

“What’s the other part?”

“What do you mean?”

“You said partly because of your own ego. What’s the other part?” she asked. Mikhlas took a step closer to her again.

“Because you are very attractive. What man in his right mind wouldn’t want to kiss a woman like you?”

Izzy’s heart went into a tailspin again. He took another tiny step closer to her, and when she felt the heat coming off him on her face and smelled that citrus and cinnamon scent he seemed to give off, she looked up at him.

“It is because of me that your heart races like that. But it is not fear,” he said.

~Shit,~ she thought. “That’s not fair. You have an advantage,” she said.

He bent down and took her small hand into his large, warm one. He placed it palm down on his chest, and Izzy felt the pounding of his heart and a second beat, like an echo, through her fingertips.

She looked at her hand on his chest. It looked so small and delicate compared to the size of him. She felt his chest rising and falling and looked up at him. His eyes were a bright-blue ocean looking back.

She tilted her head up toward him and let out a nervous breath before arching her feet to stand on her toes and closed her eyes, expecting to feel his warm lips on hers and his hand glide up to the back of her neck.

“Are you expecting anyone else?” he asked.

Izzy opened her eyes to see him tilting his head to one side and a slight frown marring his features.

“What?” she said, her hand sliding off his firm chest as he stepped away from her. ~Wait,~ she thought before she remembered that she barely knew him, and bit her lip in frustration and confusion.

“Someone is coming. Prime just informed me,” he said, tapping his ear.

“No one else knows I’m here,” she said. Mikhlas’s frown deepened into one of concern as he looked at the door.

“Silian, we have company,” he murmured. A few seconds later, Silian came into the kitchen, with Amy not far behind, still drying her hair with a towel.

“What’s going on?” Amy asked when she saw the tension of the two men.

“Someone is coming,” Mikhlas said. Izzy heard the faint hum of an engine getting closer.

“It’s probably the Mounties. I told them to send a snowmobile here to check up on Izzy when I couldn’t contact her yesterday. Better late than never, I suppose.”

Mikhlas exchanged a look with Silian before turning to Izzy. “We shouldn’t be seen by the authorities of your world.”

“Sir, that cannot be the Mounties. I impersonated Amy and called them off,” said Silian.

Izzy opened the kitchen door and looked out the lounge room window. A snow bike pulled into the little valley, and she watched it stop next to Amy’s Mustang.

Two men in white snow jackets got off and came toward the door.

“They’re probably just neighbors or something,” Izzy said. “We’ll handle it, go back to the ship.”

“We don’t leave your side,” he replied.

“Fine, but just stay in here,” she said, as she walked out. Amy looked at Izzy with a questioning look.

A knock on the door made her jump. Izzy walked to the door and looked back at Amy, who walked a step behind her. Izzy opened the door and smiled at the two men.

“Can I help you?” she asked. The shorter of the two men had removed his scarf and goggles when walking to the door.

He looked to be in his mid-forties, with kindly eyes and an honest face, like you might see on an accountant or doctor. He returned her smile, a sardonic thing that didn’t suit him, then punched her solidly in the face.

MIKHLAS

“I do not like this, Captain. Dakira Isabelle should not be left alone with strangers, not until—”

The sound of a hard fist hitting flesh and bone breaking, followed by two erratic heartbeats, made them both race to the kitchen door.

Mikhlas squeezed his eyes shut for a second, to ease the burn in them, and pushed the door open to find Izzy on her knees, her face streaming blood with dark streaks running down her neck and onto her blue shirt.

A man dressed in white held her in place, one hand twisted into her hair, crouching behind her, his other hand holding a large knife to her throat.

Amy held her hands in the air, a gun pointed at her head, and from her posture, Mikhlas could tell she wanted to take it away from her attacker if it weren’t for Izzy.

She looked at him with panic in her eyes as he stopped just outside the kitchen, Silian at his side. Izzy. ~She is hurt, again. At least this time I will get a chance to punish those responsible.~

“You have company,” the man with the gun said. He moved the barrel to Mikhlas.

“Whoa there, big guy. One more step and my friend here guts her like a fish,” he said, nodding to Izzy on the ground, the gun steady and pointed toward his chest.

Mikhlas met Izzy’s tearful eyes, smiling at her before shifting his gaze back to the man holding the gun.

“Leave or die. Your friend is already dead. Don’t share his fate.”

“Man, what are you smoking? Put your fucking hands up, both of you before I kill you. You might be big, but chest muscles aren’t bulletproof.

“As for you, detective,” he took out a second gun and pointed it at her. “On your knees, bitch.”

From behind him, Mikhlas could hear Silian speaking, a volume pitched too low for the humans to hear. “Prime, transport Isabelle out of this room!”

~She can’t transport her—the man is too close. She’d have to take them both and that puts Izzy at more risk~, Mikhlas thought.

“You do not understand the mistake you have made in coming here,” Mikhlas said, hoping to draw the man’s attention to him. “This is your last chance.”

“Then send Iry down,” Silian whispered.

Mikhlas heard Silian tap his fingers together. ~A countdown~, he thought.

“Oh, you’re just asking for it.”

Two shockingly loud explosions from the primitive weapon, and Mikhlas felt the minor impacts against the nanite weave of his uniform.

With shocked expressions, the two men looked at him as his nanite weave responded to the impact, swirls of silver filigree breaking out across his uniform, and he felt a silver nanite skin cover his face.

“Don’t fucking move,” the man with the knife pressed against Izzy’s neck yelled. “I will slit her fucking—”

With a flash of light, Iry appeared near the ceiling behind the two men, throwing out one arm toward the knife wielder and releasing a spray of poisoned darts.

She landed on the back of the second man, who pulled the trigger and another bullet impacted his face, making him flinch.

Iry opened her wide jaws, showing her sharp serrated teeth, before she bit down hard on the man’s neck, and a bright splash of red blood burst forth.

Both men instantly went stiff, with their bodies rigid and frozen in place.

Iry then gracefully leaped onto the wall next to the kitchen window out of the way as Mikhlas strode forward, allowing his anger to burn in his eyes, morphing a combat blade into his right hand.

Amy looked at him, and he heard Silian’s sudden intake of breath.

She took her hand from her stomach, uncovering a bright flower of blood before she slid to her knees on the polished floorboards, her breathing and heartbeat erratic.

Silian leaped past him toward Amy, but his focus remained on Izzy, who trembled and cried with her eyes shut, not knowing her attacker crouched frozen and defenseless.

He reached them and pulled the knife away from Izzy’s throat with his free hand, his angry grip strong enough to crack the bones in the man’s wrist and threw him to land boneless on the floor.

He sank the tip of the blade into the wooden boards and held his arms out toward Izzy.

“I’m here. He won’t hurt you,” he said and she opened her beautiful teary hazel eyes, and he saw the relief in them before she leaped into his embrace. ~I swore she would never again be hurt like this.~

Hesitantly, with trembling fingers, he took her face in his hands. Her nose looked bent out of place high on the bridge, swollen, and still bleeding. Bruising beneath her eyes was already starting.

“Prime, heal her,” he said. He could hear the terrified racing of her heart, and tried to smile at her, even though at this moment he wanted nothing more than to take his blade and dismember the man responsible.

“It won’t hurt for much longer,” he whispered as the nanite film fell from his vision and the microscopic machines coursed down to heal her.

“You need to help Amy, please,” she begged. Mikhlas turned to look at Silian. He held one hand against Amy’s wound and he could see the silvery filaments of his reserve nanites stream down toward her.

“Silian is looking after her. She’ll live,” he said.

Izzy began sobbing, trying to pull him toward her, and only pulling herself into him.

~You’re not allowed to touch her~, he thought before gritting his teeth and wrapping his arms around her. He turned his head to look at the small man who still held the knife in his hand.

Unknowingly he’d driven his blade into the wood in a place where the paralyzed man had no choice but to look at it. Good, see your fate. He thought in satisfaction, as he waited for Prime to finish.

When Izzy pulled her face away from his chest, he turned his head back to her and smiled. Her delicate features restored, she whispered, “Thank you,” her throat tight and filled with emotion.

“You never need to thank me, Dakira Isabelle,” he said, wishing he could lower his lips to hers at that moment. ~You have to let go of her. You’ve held her too long already, you fool~.

He unwrapped his long arms from around her and levered himself to his feet, turning his red gaze to the man on the ground and plucking his blade from the floorboards with a metallic twang.

“Protecting you is my duty. So is punishing anyone who dares to harm you.”