Unknotted

Son and Soldier

Rokan

Flood lights positioned at the corners of the Keadanian camp on the outskirts of Lothny Creek cast striped shadows through the trees. Neat rows of tents wove through the sparse grove and lined the newly forged dirt road that led to the interior of the camp. The foliage and tents opened in the camp’s center. Three cattle trucks idled, their engines rumbling, beside dozens of prisoners kneeling in neat rows like the tents around them. I knew from my time in boot camp that riding in a cattle trailer wasn’t the most comfortable form of transportation, but it was an effective means for moving large groups of hybrids.

Tydeus pulled into an empty spot of trodden grass and cast me one last unreadable glance in the rearview mirror. There was no honor in putting off the coming punishment. I had messed up. Bad. However my ultras punished me, I deserved.

I pushed my door open and climbed out. A cluster of Metellia’s inner circle members—the lot of them brutes—paused their work of questioning the prisoners to smirk at me. Apparently, word of my misstep had already spread. Heat climbed up my neck, and it was difficult without access to my dominance not to shrink beneath their mocking stares.

“What’s your form? Which beasts do you possess?” one of Metallia’s brutes asked a prisoner. Metallia had so many in her inner circle that it was impossible to name them all, not like I cared to anyway. Hanging out with a bunch of bitter, man-hating women wasn’t exactly what I would call a good time. The tight-faced woman held her pen over a clipboard in a way I could almost imagine it a deadly weapon.

“I-I-Ibex and dart frog,” the prisoner stammered, eyes fixed on the ground. The prisoner was slim, her light hair knotted and clothes dirty. Bruises covered one side of her face. Three young children hugged her skirts.

Each prisoner had been collected from the battle the day prior. Once forces under Ultra Glark’s authority gathered them, Metallia’s thugs set to work questioning and sorting. The whole process—from taking conquered hybrids from their homes, to our rough handling of them once detained, to the callous interrogations that followed—irritated me. Despite my efforts over the last three years to persuade Glark to change how we tested new Keadanians’ coavani knots and distribute needed aid, things had continued as they had for the last decade. But why? Testing their knots could be easily conducted in the field. Wouldn’t assessing what aid and protection they needed be easier if conducted at their residences? And what did their forms have to do with anything?

Once, I had asked Glark that last question. In return, he offered a rambling explanation about ensuring the strongest hybrids remained in Keadan and exchanging hybrids with weaker forms, returning those we could afford to part with, back to their families.

His show of mercy had silenced my questions. Though a piece of me still worried at the unspoken ones. Like, weren’t all hybrids valuable? Each, no matter their beasts form, added cords to our coavani knots, strengthening them and increasing the available magic during the tides.

Wasn’t that truth the reason why every territory strived to grow the population either through raids or reproduction. At times, the pressure to bear offspring was overwhelming, though not nearly as much as the push to claim more sub-territories and their inhabitants. The more hybrids knotted beneath Glark, the more magic we had to claim territory and defend our borders.

Why, then, would we surrender any hybrids, even if the opposing territory had some of our soldiers? It wasn’t as though a captured hybrid could be forced to knot with enemy territory. It took ultras from both sides agreeing to transfer a knot.

Again, I figured it came down to mercy. Enough families were scattered due to the Expansion Wars; why not reunite those we could?

“Dart frog? Do you secrete poison?” Metallia’s inner circle member asked.

The prisoner nodded. “It’s quite potent, ma’am.”

She made a note on her clipboard. “Put these two”—she pointed her pen at the two older children, ages around six to eight—“in trailer two. The little redhead can go in trailer one with his mother. They’ll be returned to Namen.”

The prisoner’s head jerked up, eyes wide. “What?”

“You’re going home.” The guard smiled, but something about the expression was icy. “Thank Metallia for the show of mercy.”

“But—but I don’t want to go back. My husband… He—he—”

Metallia’s minion tilted the prisoner’s head up, making the curtains of hair slide away from her face. “He gave you that black eye?”

The woman’s lip trembled, and she nodded, hugging the redheaded child in her lap. “That and worse, ma’am. I don’t want to go back. Please… Please don’t send us back.”

I wanted to say I hadn’t heard this kind of heartfelt plea before but beaten women in Namen were as numerous as Whisps in the sky. So many were eager for us to overthrow their sub-territories, hoping of a better life for themselves and the children often forced on them.

The brute rested a comforting hand on her head and sighed. “I’m sorry.” She turned away, fingers snapping. “Trailer two for her. One for the others.”

“Wait.” I shoved past Tydeus toward the prisoner. “You can’t send her back, especially not to her abuser. If she wants to stay, she can stay.”

“Is that so?” Ultra Metallia’s deep feminine voice singed like fire across my skin. She had slipped out of the command tent, unnoticed. Now she strode forward, hybrids with eyes fixed on the ground parting quickly before her. She was tall with a lean, athletic figure and hair that was reddish when the tides were in. Her eyes glittered with lethal rage. Rage directed solely at me. “By whose orders? Yours?”

I snapped my mouth shut, silencing my protest and dropped to a knee.

She loomed over me, her shadow somehow bearing an immense weight on my shoulders. “Give me one reason not to beat you.”

I was grateful the magic was out. My dominance was so close to hers in power that resisting the urge to challenge her was only accomplished through hours of rigorous training and a solid dedication to the prophecy. Usually, I had no fear of losing control. I never lost it. Except, I had tonight. Now I wasn’t confident I could keep my dominance in check, especially not with her screeching at me in front of dozens of hybrids. Humiliation chaffed like a sweaty uniform worn too long.

No one intervened as she circled me; I could hardly blame them. We were trained not to speak against our ultras and would execute any who dare try to challenge them.

What Metallia ranted, I could hardly guess. Her voice had jumped out of the frequencies my muffled hearing could compute. But, with shoulders bowed and eyes downcast, I bore it.

“Enough Metallia,” Ultra Glark said from the entrance of the command tent. His deep voice sounded exhausted, his words more of a request than a command. I dared to lift my eyes to find my ultra dressed in slacks and an untucked button-down shirt, the sleeves rolled up his forearms. Like his pragmora, he was in his early fifties but still fit, his muscles pulling his shirt tight across his back. “Officer Angevin understands you’re upset. I think the whole blasted camp knows.”

Metallia’s lips puckered and twitched, as though she had more words to impart on me. She released a controlled breath through her nose. “Are you going to take care of him, darling?”

“I will, sweetheart.” He circled the prisoners and wrapped his arms around her, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Why don’t you head to bed? You might be able to snag a few hours before we depart for the Den in the morning. I’ll ensure my men are prepared for the meeting tomorrow.”

I slid a gaze to Chet who stood in front of the SUV and silently asked if he knew what Glark was talking about. Chet shrugged, shaking his head.

Metallia stepped close to Glark, smiling, but her words were biting and low enough that only I, kneeling almost between them, could hear. “Prove you haven’t gone soft, Glark. Don’t you dare go easy on him. He’s a soldier, not your child.”

Glark kissed her again without a reaction beyond a tightening around his mouth. Then, Metallia stormed around the command tent with half of her brutes trailing, the rest continuing with prisoner interrogations. The woman and her redheaded child were loaded into the second trailer. Her other children ripped away and put into the first. Their cries lanced through me, knotting the muscles through my back and driving my fingernails into my palms.

Wrong. What we were doing, it had to be wrong. How was sending that woman back to her abuser and life of cruel suppression helping the prophecy? How was it merciful?

“You had a busy night,” Glark said, snapping my attention away from the screams echoing from the trailers. He clasped his hands behind his back. “Walk with me.”

He led me, Chet, and Tydeus into the relative privacy of the command tent. A pair of lanterns spaced about the confinement illuminated the table covered in the maps they used to plan the invasion of Lothny Creek. On the stack of maps, a laptop was open, the local news broadcasting on the screen.

Sure enough, my face was displayed above a running banner reporting about some factory explosion that had happened yesterday. In the photo, I hardly recognized myself. A snarl pinched my face into something grotesque and cruel, my teeth were clenched tight and bared. My hair a windswept mess and shirt tattered from the woman’s clawing. I looked down. How had I not noticed that the fabric—designed to be able to shift with me—was little more than a blood-splattered rag?

“Care to explain why a picture of someone who looks exactly like you is all over the news?” Glark asked, his voice level, like a loving parent about to offer a wise reprimand.

I dropped to a knee again, head bowed. “Forgive me, Ultra. I lost control. I accept any punishment you deem fit.”

(Chapter continues in part 2)