“But what are they?”
“Contamination. Dishonor. Torture.”
I froze, the marks taking on a much more sinister meaning. I leaned forward and kissed one of the marks on Thomar’s chest. When I lifted my gaze, it was to find Varin had stepped closer, the bulge of his hard cock clearly visible in his uniform pants. I reached out slowly and took his hand, raised it to my lips, and kissed a similar mark on his wrist. “I think they’re beautiful.” And they were. Scars. That’s what they were. Proof that my mates were survivors. Tough. Resilient. Fighters. Like me.
I had some scars of my own, and I hoped they would feel the same.
Varin stopped breathing as my lips lingered on his skin. Maybe he did want me after all.
“What did the doctor mean when he said your minds are linked?” I asked, looking up at him through my lashes.
Varin pulled his hand from mine and took a step back as if I’d splashed him with a bucket of ice water. From a pocket he pulled a thin black ribbon and held it up for me to see. “They used collars just like this. The Hive forced us to create an unnatural bond using Thomar’s mating collars. We hear each other’s thoughts. Feel each other’s pain.”
I studied the innocent looking ribbon of black. Remembered Rezzer’s words about me not wearing a collar. “Was that supposed to be mine?”
“We will never ask you to wear it.”
“So the Hive bonded you and Varin. Mentally. Like mates?”
“Yes. But we had no mate to balance our aggression, to soothe us or to feel pleasure at our touch. The Hive experimented on us, used the collars to determine if we would be able to endure more pain, accept more integrations than we could survive on our own.”
“And did you?”
“Unfortunately. Our minds grew together until it became difficult to separate his thoughts from mine. We feel everything as one, see through two sets of eyes. Their experiment was successful. We are not able to separate our minds.”
I looked at Varin’s neck, only now realizing he did not wear a collar. I looked at Thomar’s unmoving form. He, too, wore no collar. “I don’t see any collars.”
“They imbedded them along our spines, integrated them with our nerves and brain tissue. They cannot be removed.”
I glanced down at Thomar and ran my hand over his arm, savored the heat of him, the strength I could feel just below the surface of his hot skin. “So he asked the doctor to kill him so your minds wouldn’t be linked anymore?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Varin was silent so long I forced my gaze from Thomar’s face to look at my second.
“Varin? Please. Tell me.” I used my softest tone, the voice I’d used to comfort my little brother on the worst nights when we hid in the closet and prayed for morning.
“He is in constant agony, and he cannot make it stop; the doctor cannot cure him. There is no physical ailment causing his pain, only the integrations.”
“And you feel what he feels? Everything?”
“I do.”
Now I began to understand. The lines of pain around Varin’s eyes. The despair in his gaze. The lack of hope. I knew that look well. I’d seen it in the mirror thousands of times.
“Can he feel what you feel?”
“Yes. But it takes extreme emotion or pain for me to reach him. His torment is nearly impenetrable. The Hive tested his limits, desired to test their methods on his royal blood.”
Royal blood? What did that even mean? Was my NPU thing translating correctly? Prillon Prime didn’t have a king, they had a prime and he was mated to a human named Jessica. Everyone knew that. Even the out-of-touch humans on Earth knew that one of their own had gone into space and become a queen.
Or were there two queens? Two. Definitely two.
Whatever. Did I care if he was some kind of alien prince?
Nope. I had zero shits to give in that department. If my stepfather had taught me anything, it was that being famous did not mean you were a decent human being. I did not care about royalty or fame or money. I cared that he was mine, and I was not giving him up without a fight.