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  “Forgive us, Sovereign,” one of them said, his mandibles clicking with agitation. “But the cloak resists all weapons we have used on it and we are trying to be careful not to injure the valuable ten’sora beneath.”

  X’izith’s first impulse was to chastise the worker angrily for giving yet another excuse while producing no results. But his attention was caught by the worker’s choice of words.

  “Beneath,” he muttered, looking closely at the breeding platform. It was nothing but a table, really—a flat surface mounted on a central pedestal. The girl was crouched there in a ball with the cloak covering her back and head and feet but X’izith didn’t think it was covering her face. She wouldn’t be able to breathe if it was and she would have passed out long ago instead of continuing to hurl insults at him from inside her protective covering.

  So it was reasonable to suppose that if he could reach her from under the table, her face might be exposed. Or at least her lips, which was all X’izith really needed…

  “Worker,” he called, motioning with one claw. “Come—we must try a different approach. Fetch me a tunneler.”

  Tunnelers were a subset of workers able to secrete a corrosive acid which ate through anything. They had been essential in building X’izith’s underground lair beneath the Martian mountains. Using that same acid to eat a hole through the tabletop of the breeding platform would be easy. And then, once he had access to the girl’s face—her mouth…

  “Worker,” he called. “Bring me also a honey dispenser.”

  The Blood Honey would bring any female to quiescence. Before long his new Breeding Queen would be happy to spread her legs for his barb.

  Of that, X’izith was certain.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  “Are you well? You look pale, son of my Brothers.” Baird eyed him anxiously from where he sat, in the pilot’s chair of the war ship. As leader of the Kindred fleet, the Beast Kindred Shad remembered as “Uncle Baird” was at the head of the battalion and Shad had asked to fly with him—hoping to get to Harper sooner.

  “I’m fine,” he protested, though he wasn’t at all sure it was true. He’d had another episode of what he was beginning to think of as “fading” just a moment ago and had sworn he could almost see the console of the ship through the palm of his hand. At the same time he felt that tugging sensation—as though someone or something was trying to pull him away, pull him back. But back where?

  Could Sylvan be right that he was being pulled back to his own timeline? If so, he had to resist it somehow—at least until they rescued Harper. What was happening to her, even now?

  Though Sylvan had been quick to believe his tale—thank the Goddess—Shad had still wasted precious time getting from the beach to the HKR building and up to the Mother Ship in the first place. Also, a battalion of war ships couldn’t be readied instantly. Although, to his credit, Baird had gotten the fleet into the air in record time.

  “Are you ready to fold space?” Baird asked him and Shad knew he was really asking if he was able to fold space. A good question since he technically didn’t belong in this time. Would he suffer adverse effects from jumping through the space-time continuum when he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?

  Shad thought it was entirely possible. But what else could they do? Flying to Mars in real time, even using hyper-speed, would take too long. By folding space instead, the Kindred fleet could arrive en mass, hopefully giving the Hive no time to mobilize.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be, I guess,” he replied. “I just want to get to Harper.”

  “Of course you do.” Baird cleared his throat. “Sylvan says you have a partial bond with your female. Let me know if you feel her once we make orbit around Mars. I’ll bring you right to the spot and we’ll go in together.”

  “Thank you, uh, Uncle Baird.” It felt strange to call the male by the name Shad had used for him in childhood. Wrong somehow, since they were almost the same age in this timeline.

  “Just Baird is find.” Baird shook his head, his golden eyes glinting in the lights of the control panel. “Still can’t believe you’re little Shad all grown up. Um…Sylvan says that Daniel is there too? In the future—your present?”

  “Daniel is our rock—he led us through so many raids and kept us together no matter what the Hive threw at us,” Shad told him. “You can be proud of him—he’s going to grow up to be a strong, honorable male.”

  “Good to know.” Pride gleamed in Baird’s eyes and he nodded. “There’s just one question I have though about all this past/future crap—if you don’t mind.”

  “Ask.” Shad shrugged. “If I can answer, I will. It’s pretty confusing, I know.”

  “Well…” Baird shifted in his seat. “Sylvan told me how you couldn’t come to us at the Mother Ship before—how you were warned you shouldn’t be in the, uh, same time period twice—at the same time as your younger self, I mean.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Shad looked down at his hands—thankfully they looked solid. At least for now.

  “But what I don’t get, is why you didn’t at least call us,” Baird said. “I mean, you could have called the HKR building and warned us the Hive was hiding out on Mars, right? Wouldn’t that have solved the whole problem? I mean, we could have launched the attack and changed the whole course of history, right?”

  Shad shook his head.

  “You think I never thought of that? I tried, Baird—Goddess knows I tried to warn you so many times. But the past resists being changed. Every time I tried to use Harper’s cell phone or any other phone or communication device I could find, it would go dead or else cut off in the middle of the call when I was talking to the HKR personnel. I never successfully got a message through once.”

  “Oh.” Baird looked chastened. “Sorry, Shad. I should have known you’d think to try calling. You always were a smart kid.”

  “Too smart for my own good,” Shad muttered, looking at his hands again.

  “Look—there’s the fold.” Baird pointed to the red gash opening in the blackness of space which had appeared on the viewscreen. “We’re good to go.”

  “Let’s go then.” Shad shifted forward eagerly. “I need to get to Harper. Gods, I hope she’s all right!”

  “I hope so too,” Baird said grimly. “Is she any good in a fight? Can she defend herself?”

  “She’s very brave but she didn’t have any weapons with her,” Shad said. “She was wearing a protective cloak. It might help if it traveled with her when they transported her.” He looked at Baird. “Do you know if clothing gets transported along with living flesh when the E’lo stones are used?”

  “Sorry.” Baird shook his shaggy head regretfully. “Not my area of expertise.” He cleared his throat. “Listen, I want you to know we’ve got our best warriors going in with us. And we have someone who’s had first hand experience with these bastards—a warrior name of Varin. He nearly killed X’izith back when the Hive were camped out on Earth’s moon, but somehow the bastard survived.”

  “He won’t this time,” Shad said grimly. “This time I’ll finish him myself.”

  “May the Goddess hear your prayer and grant you victory,” Baird growled. “Here we go!”

  The ship accelerated forward and the entire war battalion vanished into the rift in space.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  After what felt like hours of the huge, awful insects sawing, hammering, and tearing at her cloak of thorns, Harper found the sudden silence ominous. Surely the Hive king—what had Shad told her he was named? Something with lots of Zs in it. Anyway, surely he hadn’t given up so easily. He’d been really determined to have her and had told her so in no uncertain terms.

  When she’d first appeared in the weird, underground chamber lit by the dim, red glow of pulsing insect abdomens protruding from the walls around her, Harper had been petrified with fright. It had all seemed so alien, so awful and the stench in the air was beyond anything she’d ever smelled—thick and sweet and meaty like rotting f