Hearts of Ishira (Hearts of Ishira Saga) (82 page)

“Come in, Chelsea,” she said, offering a comforting, maternal smile as the girl collapsed against her and wept her heart out.

It was going to be a long day.

Hunter felt Arianna’s distress from the command center. He was talking to his parents, showing them the various systems his computer folks had cobbled together. Trey and Bev were eagerly explaining how they had been working to translate each others’ databases, so that information was available to everyone, whether they could read or write the other’s language or not. When Hunter sensed Arianna’s dilemma, he was a bit surprised that his mother and Sean stiffened, as well. They looked at each other and excused themselves.

“What do you suppose is wrong?” Aleah asked, linking her arm with Hunter’s as they headed for the suite. Sean followed, his eyes constantly moving, taking note of his surroundings, as well as the mental energies within the group.

“You couldn’t Read the issue?” Sean asked, surprised. Aleah shook her head.

“I got the feeling that she needed some support and guidance, but not what for.”

“Ri and I have a very special bond, I think. I don’t remember ever being able to Read someone’s mind as clearly as with her.” Hunter smiled, then met Sean’s eyes. “Though Sean is able to think words to her.”

“I was like that with your father,” Aleah smiled wistfully up at Hunter. “And I am, to a lesser degree with Geoff. But with your father, it was as though I could smell what he was smelling, see what he was seeing, and feel every heartbeat when our passions were high.”

“Mother!” Hunter stopped, gaping at her.

“Oh, don’t be a prude,” she laughed. “There are all kinds of passions, many reasons for elevated heart rate. You know that. That’s what I meant. The other thing, too, of course. But you know what I mean.”

She chuckled at his chagrin, but didn’t tease him further, as they were already at the suite.

“Oh my!” Aleah breathed, staring aghast at the door. The mental energy emanating from the apartment was intense. Hunter, knowing that Arianna would be overwhelmed by it all, since he was himself and she didn’t have nearly the years of experience or training that he or his mother had, hurried into the quarters and marched right over to Arianna’s side.

All around her, half of her girls were arguing, wailing, yelling, or just plain weeping as though their hearts were breaking. Lost in the emotional tsunami, Hunter just stood at Ri’s side and blinked. His mother, though, immediately took charge of the situation. She clapped loudly, getting their attention, though only the Readers knew that the clap was merely a physical signal that accompanied her mental command for them to be still and pay attention.

“Now, what in the world is going on in here? There’s enough mental angst coming from here to stop a whole battalion of Readers!”

Hunter grinned at the quip, but the girls didn’t seem to get it. At a mental pull, he looked down at his mate. Ri’s tortured eyes very clearly said,
“Get me out of here!”

He helped her up and went with her out to the balcony as his mother gathered the girls into the living room and had them all sit down so she could sort out the problem. Sean watched Hunter and Ri, wanting so badly to be with them, but he sensed that Arianna needed the mate she knew better right now. Instead, he took stock of the feel of the room, gently looking into the women’s minds to figure out what was wrong. Frowning at what he found, he went into Counselor mode, as Ri would call it.

Ri, now at a bit of a distance from it all, was finally able to take a deep breath. Hunter knelt before her, his hands rubbing her temples. He was concerned at how badly her head was aching, and added his energy to hers, bolstering her mental shields. She rewarded him with a small smile as the throbbing in her head eased and she was able to concentrate just on him. For a long moment, she leaned her forehead against his, breathing in his scent and his presence, fortifying herself. His love washed over her, strengthening every part of her, and she sighed in relief.

“I really wasn’t prepared for that!” she breathed softly, looking into their quarters at the women arranged around Aleah. “They just started showing up this morning, crying like they were dying or something! I understand that they’re worried about their mates’ mates showing up, but really…
I’m
the one they come to?”

“Well, yes,” he chuckled. “You’re their leader, their friend, and their mentor. Naturally, they came to you when they were scared and hurt.”

“Your warriors don’t do that to you,” she pointed out. He shook his head with a rueful grin.

“They do it all the time, little one. Especially since the arrival of a certain crashed slaver ship and its surprising cargo.”

She stared at him in surprise. He grinned at her and moved to sit beside her, his arm around her shoulders, holding her to him. “An officer’s job, a leader’s job, is not just to lead, but also to guide.”

Arianna nodded to show that she recognized the difference.

“The men have fears and doubts, just as we do. When those doubts get the best of them, they know that I am there to help them past the mental blocks. It is my job, but I also enjoy it. I like being their mentor, a brother- and sometimes father-figure. I never imagined that I would become that for them for such an extended period, but I have. Just as you have, whether you like it or not.”

“I don’t mind it so much anymore,” she admitted, threading her fingers with his over her shoulder. “I actually kind of like it sometimes, now that I’ve gotten to know them all. Some of them feel like sisters or cousins or even daughters, even though I’m not old enough for that. It’s nice to be needed, to have wisdom and knowledge that you can pass on to help someone else. But today…”

She sighed, leaning her head on his chest. He kissed her forehead.

“Today it was too much, too quickly,” he filled in. She nodded.

“Thank you for coming, love,” she whispered. With a sigh, she sat forward, steeling herself. “I think I can handle it now, especially since your mom is here. But Hunter, we have a serious problem. We need to get these women talking to each other, not to me or your mother. And I don’t know how to help them with this. It’s completely out of my realm of experience.”

“We’ll handle it as a family,” he assured her, then hesitated, thoughtful. “I think that, while your ladies are getting used to the idea, we should have every Reader possible on hand to help them.”

She sat up straighter, glaring down at him.

“If this is an effort to get me to spend time with your brother…” she warned.

He shook his head, wrapping his arms around her and tugging her against him for a firm, sweet kiss. “I would like for you to get to know him,
not
as a potential mate, but just as my brother. But that’s not why I say that he should be involved. Sean is… he has a special touch with young women and helping them get past inhibitions. Back home, he was actually sought after when girls were having serious self-image problems or had been attacked in some way and needed help getting past that. I think that he would be very useful in this case. It wouldn’t hurt to try. And I need to get Geoff in here to help, as well. He is definitely a father-figure and should be able to help.”

Ri sighed and looked at him with a bit of exasperation.

“Hunter? My love? Have you noticed that the men of your race don’t age badly?” she asked him. He blinked at her, not following. She groaned. “Look at Gust. He’s a century older than you, but still handsome, sexy, and looks like he’s only a few years older. And you look younger than me, dammit.
You
see Geoff as a father figure, but the girls are going to see him as just another handsome, virile warrior.”

Hunter pondered that, then shrugged.

“Either way, he’s a fully trained and incredibly gifted Reader, and he’s raised several daughters successfully into adulthood, so his insight will be invaluable. Now come,” Hunter helped her off his lap and onto her feet. “Let’s go figure this latest crisis out.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They also ended up calling on Bev and Salaiya for help, when Bev stopped by to talk to Ri about the exact issue their friends were having. When she realized that not everyone had been fortunate enough to have mates who knew how to help the issue, Bev had hurried back to get Salaiya to help sort the situation out. Some of the girls had actually been consoled, but most of them were still stuck in the Bible-belt mentality they’d been raised with, and though they had accepted having more than one ‘husband’, they couldn’t seem to wrap their brains around sharing those men with their original mates.

Bev and Salaiya moved the group of women willing to talk to their mates and the other woman off to the great hall, acting as intermediaries between the old mates and the new. The Readers had their hands full with the remaining girls, who wouldn’t even face their problems, but were talking about finding a way back to Earth, creating a new compound for the forsaken women, or some other such nonsense.

Hunter assured the women that it would take centuries to return to Earth in one of the current ships, considering none of them had a working warp drive any longer. He also reminded them of the many dangers that lurked in the forest, and the fact that though it was a warm afternoon, autumn was coming quickly, with winter too close behind for the men to help the girls build a settlement. He showed them videos of the first winter the men had endured, and that shut the women up very quickly. Watching how fast and thick the snow fell, without warning, and how many men had been caught outside of the compound and died… that was sobering.

The women left that afternoon, thoughtful and quiet.

“That was… different,” Sean said, many hours later, as he sank wearily into one of the chairs across from the couch. Hunter rolled his eyes, then groaned when that small action brought his headache back. Ri whimpered weakly from her face-plant sprawl over Jace’s lap, and Aleah looked up at Jace, begging him for a drug powerful enough to let her sleep through this particular problem. Geoff just chuckled and poured wine for them all. It was the last of a vintage from their family winery back on Thorsan, but he deemed it appropriate for the occasion. Arianna took a glass and sipped cautiously until she was sure it was palatable. Finding it cold, sweet and refreshing, she happily settled back to sip on it. Hunter held his glass to his throbbing head.

After a few minutes of silence, Hunter looked up and glared at Arianna.

“Your world sucks.”

She stared at him, unable to hold back a little snort of surprise. She’d said such things to him before, but he’d never said it to her. At least he’d used it correctly.

“I agree,” Sean scowled angrily. “Do you know how many of those girls have been violated?”

Arianna said nothing, blocking the dark thought in her head quickly. But Sean’s eyes darted to her, narrowing. She kept her head down but met his gaze from beneath her lashes, mentally begging him to drop it. His mental touch was gentle but firm as he assured her that they would talk later. The ‘
whether you like it or not
’ was implied.

“That kind of thing happens all the time on my world.” Ri sat up, trying to ease the tension in her lower back. “But let’s not dwell on that. We need to figure out how to integrate these families. And I’m lost. There are very few religions back home that allow polygamy, and even among those, it is not really the norm.” She explained about the Mormon sect of Christianity and how even among Mormons, polygamy was only embraced by a small percentage, and decried by the rest.

“So yes, it’s not a completely foreign concept, but it is one that is looked on as contemptible to many of these girls. They’ve been brought up to believe that it is wrong and ugly.”

“Ironically, by the same fathers and uncles who molested them as young children,” Sean spat. He stood up and paced restlessly around the room. When he stopped and looked back at Ri, she felt his genuine confusion and frustration. “I don’t know how to approach this situation. In our world, these things do not happen to our children, not by their families. I do not know how to process it.”

“Sean, don’t try right now,” Ri said wearily. “I don’t know what to do, either, but we have to do something. Don’t we?”

Thankfully, as it turned out, they didn’t. The teams worked things out, but it took some time. The ‘other’ women were gracious and understanding, patient with the Earth girls as they learned to live together. It helped that Arianna and Bev collected as much information as they could on marriage and cohabitation laws and traditions, both secular and non-secular, from their world and presented it to the Thorsani women.

Not to be out-done, Bev then worked with Salaiya to do the same thing from the Thorsani perspective and presented it to the human girls. Knowing each other’s cultures and traditions helped smooth over most of the hurt feelings, since now each knew where the other was coming from. It also helped, a lot, that there was no ‘seniority’ or pecking order. The women were equal in the household, just as the men were, though ultimately, if a decision must be made, it did fall on the team leader. It was their way.

Once the Earthlings realized that they still had a place and a say in their family lives, they stopped fighting the situation, stopped thinking that their men would dump them for the previous mate, and life finally settled back down.