23. Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-three

SaKura pushed through the heavy, dense fog of sleep. It was a slog to approach consciousness. He sent his senses out to search the room. The first thing he noticed was his mate was missing.

She was gone. His heart was in his throat as he sent his enhanced senses through the house. There was no one there, including Cleo. The air was heavy and damp with dread. There was a problem, and he knew it centered on Jenna. He forced himself to sit, refusing to open his eyes. There was no sense looking for what wasn't there. Instead, he sent his senses farther out, looking for Kala. He searched the entire property to find him. There were traces of where he used to be. Most notably was at the Duran. That was where he picked up the highest concentration of his mate and Kala's presence.

Leaning against the headboard, last night flew through his mind like it was a reel to a movie. The heaviness of an unnatural sleep came over him. This time he was skating on the surface, not drowning under the heaviness of sleep. He could feel Jenna as she woke, and unfathomable sorrow flowed between them. Her soft steps were almost soundless, but there was still a faint swish as her naked feet walked over the solid wood floors. A brief smile touched his lips as signs of his mate taking on some of his characteristics made him proud.

He opened his eyes and looked towards the crown that he had been driven to lay out last night. He thought of presenting it to her the way one presented a present to his queen. That thought fled when he felt compelled to leave it for her to find this morning. Something he had done in his sleep without conscious thought. He studied the crown, gaining the ability to breathe. She picked it up and placed it on her head. Lifting should have been enough, but wearing it took all doubt away. Casting his eyes around the room, He spotted a piece of paper on his nightstand that shouldn't have been there. Reaching over, he picked it up, feeling the thickness of the paper as his heartbeat slowed with dread.

Clickbait,

Did you know your father put your picture up on a website? He wanted you from that moment forward. When you moved next door, he (Jeffrey) convinced himself you were his. You avoided him at every turn and now he's tired of waiting. He'll kill everyone in your life to get what he wants. Your sister and that abomination she carries along with the monsters. They may be strong, but no one knows the earth like we do. Maybe your mate will die, or you could survive. If you don't come tomorrow to this address, I can assure you he will die.

Humanity against Monsters

SaKura dropped the letter like it was on fire. The earth shook, rocking the bed and the pictures on the wall from his anger. The red in his eyes spread until that was all there was. His claws lengthened and shortened, becoming sharper with each flex. He stalked to the bathroom, taking his time to wash. When he came out, the modern-day Diza, who could rule a world, was gone. All that was left was the pagan warlord, who would fight for what was his.

He reached for a loincloth that was handed down from one ruler to the next. His papan held onto it until he knew who would become the next ruler of their planet. On earth, they may have called him the high king. Not that the government needed that information.

He walked outside to find his brother waiting for him. When the earth shook, Rakha knew it was a result of SaKura's anger.

"Where's Bella?" SaKura wanted to make sure she was safe after reading the note left for Jenna. He didn't know how she got it without him knowing about it.

"Bella is home with Thad watching over her. She cannot leave without going through him." SaKura nodded. His brother wasn't hard, but would not allow harm to come to his mate.

"You should be home with her."

"I should be by my brother's side. He who would be king will one day have me as his most trusted advisor." SaKura couldn't fault the logic. One day, his brother's position would be second to that of him and Jenna.

How would Diza change when a mated pair ruled the planet? He often wondered after meeting Jenna in her dreams. His father was a good king, but pleasure sharing took too much of his time with multiple females until… He shuddered at the thought as pain sliced through him. He refused to allow the Tan-ge to take one more female that was Diza, even if it was through mating.

"They die." It was as easy as ordering lunch. Rakha inclined his head upon hearing the proclamation that anyone involved in Jenna's abduction would be killed. His king spoke. His words could not be dismissed or broken.

"Your mate's Duran is missing." Sakura's smile was evil.

"Yes, she is." He assigned gender to the Duran, never thinking of it as an inanimate object.

"Why am I not surprised that you brought a fully functional AI-enabled Duran to earth?"

"Because you know me?" Rakha's shoulders shook as he tried to suppress his laughter.

"I know you, brother. Let's go get your mate." SaKura looked for the hummer but didn't find it.

"I left it at home. I wanted Bella to have a way of escape." SaKura placed his hand over his heart and then his brothers. Thinking of home was their first mandate not only as royals but as Dizan. That's what rubbed salt into the wounds left behind by the Tan-ge attack. The Dizas always placed their females first. They made their home.

Rakha placed his hand on his brother's because he, too, was sporting deadly shoulder spikes that could kill.

"They call it evolution on this planet," Rakha told his brother as he went to the unassuming case that held the two Spindrifts. "It's what happens when the body changes to embrace the environment surrounding it."

SaKura knew he was talking about how the Dizan body changed over thousands of years. Their scientist has asked more than once why the radical changes. Shoulder spikes that used to never retract now did along with their claws. Many wondered if it had anything to do with leaving their planet or meeting aliens along the way. Now SaKura believed he had the answer. The goddess had known one day they would have to mate with a species that didn't have the natural defenses of the Diza. The changes enabled them to be compatible.

"The goddess knows best." Sakura swung a leg over the spindrift, starting it with a bounce that he had seen several humans do when they started their bikes that acted like the original spindrifts thousands of years ago.

Rakha gave a loud laugh. "As Bella would say, you got game."

SaKura smiled. His teeth were sharper than any knife.

"Did Jenna wear her crown?" The air thickened between them as SaKura's fear and dread escaped his control briefly. Rakha's hand went to his chest as he tried to breathe through the emotion that overwhelmed him.

"She placed it on her head before she left." SaKura grabbed his emotions in a tight grip, reigning them in.

"Your mate is a frya. The living gems will help to sustain her life." Rakha's spindrift lifted, waiting for SaKura to lead the way to his mate.

"I'm sorry, my beloved." Those were the words his mate spoke to him. She wasn't thinking or she would have remembered she could passwords and thoughts to him. She sent it with the desperation of a female who knew she'd never see her beloved again. The heartache was enough to render him unable if he allowed it to. Beloved. He held the word close, wanting to hear how she felt from her lips. Preferably as they pressed against him.

SaKura's spindrift lifted as he concentrated on the connection between him and his mate. When he was in the other world with her, he had seen with his own eyes the golden cord connecting them. It got thicker with every minute that passed. There was nowhere Jenna could go that he couldn't follow. The Tan-ge didn't know that. They also didn't know that if one half of a mated pair died, the other would as well. They believed the pain of heartache and the rampage they went on caused others of their kind to end their lives in the most painless way possible.

That lie stood the test of time. Their one shot in the dark hit home. Not because the Tan-ge understood the Dizas. They simply believed females were the way to most societies collapse. Kill the females; the males will follow. To find the Dizas still thriving a century later proved the Tan-ge never understood who its foe was.

"I got her." A sigh of joy came from him. There would be no sounds that could carry giving away that he was hunting for his mate. He took off with Rakha following. They circled the city twice, each lap getting closer to their destination. The Tan-ge thought by incisively driving in random circles that Jenna's scent, her very essence, would be so far-flung that it would be impossible to track her. What the tan-ge knew about the Dizans could fit in a thimble, with most of it left empty.

SaKura wanted to speed up but knew that patience and subterfuge were on his side. He split from Rakha, each taking a different direction to look for the Duran. SaKura almost ran into the Duran before it shimmered back into view. The door opened, and he parked the spindrift in the open space before he got off.

"AI." Jenna hadn't named her Duran.

"Crown." Pictures of a male dragging Jenna behind him showed up on the empty windows and the screens. "Your mate wanted you to have these pictures."

"Do you know where she is?" Pictures of an abandoned house flashed on the windows. The street was lined with them. Knowing which house she was in would make rescuing his mate easier.

The scent of Kala was heavy in the Duran. "Kala?"

"He is with Jenna. I don't believe she knows." He understood. Rosetta was afraid to tell Jenna that Kala was with her. If she didn't know, then she would act unprotected and not send any signals that would make the Tan-ge aware that she was being looked after as well as hunted by her mate. There was the chance his frya would make Kala stay behind, scared that he would get hurt.

"Excellent job, Rosetta. I'm glad that you were the one to be with her."

"She's mine." It was a growl as deadly as SaKura's. The Duran rejected several Dizas after the females were deceased. The last family she worked for said her pain was unquenchable. He took a risk, but he knew that together Jenna and the AI would be an unstoppable force. That she followed Jenna to help when the time was right confirmed his suspicions.

Rakha set his spindrift down next to SaKura's. "AI, nice to see you."

"You also, First Advisor." She stood on protocol with those who were not hers.

"You're always so formal. One day you will call me Rakha."

"Maybe. You have a delightful mate."

"If I had known that was the way to get into your good graces. I would have found her earlier." Rosetta's laugh was pleasant, an alto chime that made the males smile.

"SaKura?" Rakha said.

"Almost," SaKura said. "I don't know how to explain it. Think of a door that is creaking with the promise of opening. If you hurry the process, the door becomes stuck at whatever part of the process it was in never opening."

"The humans use the example of a caterpillar and a butterfly. Same difference," Rosetta said.

SaKura and Rakha were tense as they waited for the right time to break into the house where Jenna was being held.

Rosetta redoubled her efforts to get audio from where Jenna was being tortured.

There was a loud crack that made SaKura and Rakha flinch.

"You don't understand," Jenna's pain-filled voice said. "I'm going to kill you."