What they Made

~ TARKYN ~

Tarkyn watched her carefully, poised to hold Harth back if it looked like she would attack again. His mate was clearly tense and fighting anger.

"I am Chimera," she said through her teeth. "But I cannot control how I came to be. I can tell you that the humans did nothing but harm us. I was taken from my people, the females were separated from the males. They were forced to breed and bond with males and… they destroyed us," she hissed. "I have no loyalty to them at all. Humans are fucking evil!"

"Not all of us," Rika grumbled.

Harth was still tense and her expression skeptical, so Tarkyn tightened his grip on her hand.

"Please explain, Harth. You said they made you? So you weren't… bred?"

"I don't know who my mother is, but whoever she is, it's a technicality," Harth said bitterly. "I wasn't raised by parents. I was… fed and clothed and sent to Thana when I was young where the adults helped me. But I never had a family. Not a true one. I was taken by the humans for their experiments even before they took all the females. It was… horrific. I'll never… I'm not going back to that! Ever!" she said fiercely.

Tarkyn nodded, squeezing her hand to reassure her. "You're here now. You're with me. I won't allow them to take you, Harth. Just rest. We only want to understand… your shift is very similar to ours. But… you said you can understand everything when you're in your beast form? What—"

"You can't?" she asked quickly, her eyes cutting back to him, surprised.

Tarkyn pressed his lips together. "I have control of my beast. But I had to learn that as I grew. My beast is not me. Not really. There's a connection between us—"

"Perhaps we should let Harth explain how things work for her?" Gar interrupted him. Tarkyn blinked, irritated at first by the interruption. But then he realized… he'd been about to reveal things about the Anima to someone who was not one of them.

He sucked in a breath. He'd been a soldier his entire adult life, high ranking even as a young male, and then the current Queen's Captain and Defender of the People since she took dominance.

Working with the royals and at the peak of security, his life had been marked as a secret keeper. He never spoke loosely. He always used care so that he wouldn't reveal information to any who shouldn't have it.

Had the matebond addled his wits? Or was this just because he was so weakened by the past few days? He prayed he wouldn't make such a mistake again.

He turned, keeping Harth at his side, but behind his shoulder just in case, because everyone—Gar, Rika, the soldiers nearby—were all staring at her intently.

Harth swallowed. "I already told Tarkyn… we are… creations of the humans. They made us. They kept us imprisoned. They… experimented on us. They wanted to improve themselves, use us as… as crops to help humans who are weak and—"

Gar turned to Rika quickly, his face paling. "Did you know?"

But Rika's expression was confused. "That's impossible. They hadn't replicated the Anima… I mean, they talked about trying… but our technology wasn't advanced enough yet, not to reliably splice the DNA. That's why we came here. The few that existed in the other world weren't useful to us in that way. They were too different to humans—"

Gar looked at her sharply. "What other world?"

She turned to him, frowning. "Where Pegg is from. I told you. That… space between your world and ours. The way we had to come through—where the Portal connected. There was a gateway from the human world but it was much safer than—"

"THERE'S A GATEWAY HERE FOR HUMANS?" Harth recoiled.

Tarkyn rushed to hold her, to pull her close. "No, no, we closed it. Don't be afraid. We closed it. There is no gateway, Harth. I promise you."

She trembled in his arms, and Tarkyn's heart swung between the huge relief of holding her, and the tense frustration that everything they said seemed to mean different things to them. How would they ever find peace together—how would their people find peace—if they both heard things the other didn't mean to say?

"Our people fought the humans and won," Gar said, his voice thick with grief. "But it cost us greatly." He looked down at Rika, his eyes shadowed. She put her hand on his arm.

Harth had let go of a tense breath when he'd reassured her, but then she stiffened again. "Wait… when? When did you beat them?"

"A year ago," Tarkyn said quietly.

Harth frowned. "But… but they… we still fought them just three months ago."

Tarkyn shrugged. "Different humans?"

"Wait." Rika's voice was thoughtful and they all looked at her. "Harth… what was the date when you ran from the humans?"

"I don't know," Harth said bitterly. "We were rarely given any of that kind of information."

"Can you remember any date? Anything recent?"

Harth frowned. Tarkyn was confused. Clearly they were talking about the calendar, but why—

"I only know that when I saw my own papers, when they were considering me for… for mating… it said I was created in spring of 2049."

The number meant nothing to Tarkyn, but Rika's mouth fell open.

"Are you certain?" she gasped.

"Yes."

Rika snapped her head to look at Gar. "This is…"

"What?" the male asked, concerned.

Rika swallowed, then glanced at Harth again before she answered her mate. "I left the human world in 2012. We were… the people I worked with were at the cutting edge of technology, Gar. I'm not saying I knew everything they did or were working on, but… Gar that means that Harth is from the future—at least, the future for me. It never even occurred to me that the Portals might cross time, but… Gar, she must be what they made after we defeated them! She must be their answer to not being able to take the Anima they'd planned to capture."

*****

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