Chapter 3

 

 

 Once upon a time, thousands of years ago, there was a queen of the Third Grand Clan called Rosxyn, and she was so extraordinarily beautiful, intelligent, and kind that she had suitors from all over the galaxy. But Queen Rosxyn kept rejecting all her suitors, declaring that she wanted to dedicate her life to ruling her clan.

Not all of her suitors accepted her rejection easily. One of them, Marvik of Clan Shieksu of the First Grand Clan, was so mindless with infatuation and rage that he kidnapped Queen Rosxyn and forced an archaic marriage bond on her, the type that was impossible to dissolve.

The fallout was unimaginable. Despite countless attempts to break the bond, the assaulter remained bonded to the Queen. In the end, unwilling to compromise her clan, Queen Rosxyn abdicated in favor of her brother. 

But the story didn’t end there. When the First Royal House refused to be held responsible for Marvik’s harmful actions against the Third Royal House, the political scandal turned into a military conflict, eventually involving all of the grand clans in the greatest planet-wide war in the Calluvian history, a war that nearly wiped out the entire population.

It took decades to recover from that war and its consequences. 

To prevent something like that from ever happening again, the Council of the Grand Clans had proposed a solution: to bond all children’s telepathic cores from an early age. Such a childhood bond worked differently from any other telepathic bond, digging itself deep into the child’s psyche and making it impossible for someone to force a marriage bond. Any other time such a proposal would have undoubtedly led to a debate on consent issues, since children couldn’t give their consent, but after years of bloodshed and decades of rebuilding, no one wanted something like that to happen again and most were relieved by the solution. 

But every now and then, there were people who rebelled against the bond, everything it represented—and everything it had stolen.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Seyn walked down the familiar corridor leading to Harht’s quarters, excited and impatient to see his best friend for the first time in five months. He had been off-planet when he’d gotten the news of Harht’s return from Terra. Seyn hadn’t been able to return to Calluvia sooner, no matter how much he worried for his friend. And he was worried. Harht had seemed off when Seyn called him. He had told Seyn they’d talk when Seyn got back—as if Harht was afraid that someone would overhear what he had to say. That had certainly piqued Seyn’s curiosity.

“His Highness is expecting you, Your Highness,” the palace AI said in its neutral voice. 

“Is Ksar home, Borg’gorn?” Seyn said before he could stop himself. He hadn’t seen Ksar in twenty-four days and he was perfectly happy about it. He just…he just needed to know if Ksar was in the building. He felt off-kilter if he didn’t know for sure.

“No, the Crown Prince is at the Ministry, Your Highness.”

Seyn pursed his lips, wondering if it was true or if Ksar had told Borg’gorn to tell him that. Not that it mattered. It wasn’t as though he wanted to see the asshole, either.

The door to Harht’s quarters slid open and Seyn strode in.

The familiar room immediately put him at ease. He’d always liked Harht’s rooms for their floor-to-ceiling transparent walls with spectacular views of Pheriana Bay. The Second Royal Palace was located in one of the most beautiful places on Calluvia, surrounded by Pheriana Bay and Baldur National Park. Sometimes Seyn almost wished to live here—his parents’ palace was surrounded by foggy swamps and the Gray Mountains and it was nowhere near as pretty—but then he remembered what living here would entail. No pretty views would compensate for Ksar’s presence under the same roof.

Shaking the thought off, Seyn focused his eyes on the single occupant of the spacious room.

Harht was seated on the couch, and there was a hologram of some planet in front of him, but his violet eyes were focused on Seyn. Harht smiled at him, his face as dear and kind as ever. Truth be told, Seyn had no idea how they had become such good friends when they couldn’t be more different. Harht was a gentle soul: kind, trusting, and a little naive. He always believed the best in people. Harht liked everyone. His only flaw was his relatives.

“Harht,” Seyn said, reaching out with his mind to his friend’s. To his surprise and concern, Harht’s mind didn’t feel as tranquil and welcoming as usual. 

“I was starting to think you’d been kidnapped by the barbarians on Sol III,” Seyn said, eyeing Harht discreetly. There was something different about him. Something off.

Harht frowned and gave him a telepathic smack. “Humans are not barbarians. Don’t be a snob. And I’ve been back for ages already. Not my fault you were off-planet.”

Seyn scrunched up his nose and gave Harht a sheepish smile. “Ugh, I was being a snob. Good thing I have you to tell me when I act snobbish and top-lofty.”

“Ksar must have rubbed off on you,” Harht said with a smirk that didn’t quite look natural. 

“Don’t even joke about it,” Seyn said, flopping down on the couch next to Harht. He scowled. “You have permission to kill me the day I start acting like Ksar.”

“Sorry,” Harht said, patting Seyn’s shoulder. “He’s not a monster, you know.”

Seyn scoffed. “He’s your brother. Of course you’d say that. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about that asshole.” He met his friend’s eyes. “What’s wrong, Harht?”

“Harry,” Harht said, his voice wavering a little. “I got used to the name and I like it very much.”

Seyn’s curiosity flared, but he just nodded, having a feeling that this was somehow important to his friend. If Harht wanted to be called Harry, he could do that. Harry suited him better, actually. It sounded softer. “So, what’s wrong? You’re giving off some really negative vibes.”

Harry waved his hand to remove the hologram and opened the security settings of the room.

“What are you doing?” Seyn said, watching him curiously.

Harry turned off the cameras and then looked at him. “I don’t have the bond to Leylen’shni’gul anymore.”

Seyn felt his eyes widen.

For a moment, he could only stare at Harry. 

“What—Are you serious?” 

Harry nodded. “I felt it gradually weaken on Earth and then it kind of broke, I think? Just the night before my parents recalled me, actually.” He blushed a little for some reason and said quickly, “I thought the bond might rebuild when I returned home, just like my other telepathic links to my family, but it’s been twenty-two days and nothing has happened. I don’t know what to think.”

Seyn didn’t know what to think, either. “Have you talked to Leylen’shni’gul? Does she still feel the bond on her end?”

Harry shook his head. “She’s still in that boarding school on Meniiuf II. No communications are allowed unless it’s an emergency.” He seemed to hesitate. “I don’t know if I should tell anyone.”

Seyn raised his eyebrows. “Why not? I’m sure the mind adepts will just reestablish the bond. I mean, it’s been in your mind forever; it shouldn’t be hard.”

“I...” Harry bit his lip and glanced around the room. “I’m not sure I want the bond back.”

Seyn stared at him. 

“Okay,” he said slowly. “Who are you and what have you done to my best friend? You always made fun of me when I bitched and whined about my bond to your brother, and now you suddenly don’t want the bond, either? You never had a problem with Leylen’shni’gul.”

Harry sighed, his eyes sad, which was very uncharacteristic for such a happy person like him. “It’s just...” He ran a hand through his brown hair. “I feel so much better without the bond. I feel like I was half-blind all my life. All my senses are better now.” Harry pursed his lips. “I don’t get it. Why does the bond make our senses worse? We’ve always been told the bond improved us.”

Seyn looked away, forcing himself to think rationally instead of allowing his indignation to take over. If it was true that the bond made all their senses worse…

A half-forgotten memory niggled at the back of his mind until he finally remembered what Harry’s words reminded him of. 

“I heard some rumors when I was on Planet Bienr last year,” Seyn said. “I thought they were bullshit, but...maybe they weren’t.”

“What rumors?”

Frowning thoughtfully, Seyn played with a lock of his hair, an anxious habit he’d never quite outgrown. “They have these legends...of the Contact with our ancestors. They were scared of them, Harht. They claimed that some of our ancestors could kill with their minds.”

Harry chuckled, but Seyn just looked at him seriously, and Harry’s amusement disappeared.

“Surely it’s not true?” Harry said. 

Seyn shrugged, feeling uneasy all of a sudden as he remembered all the inconsistencies he’d noticed when he researched his stupid bond. “It’s been thousands of years. I always thought it was fucking weird that our history books were so hush-hush about the decades between the Great War and the Bonding Law. The Contact with Planet Bienr happened around that time, too.”

It was odd that the sixty years between the end of the Great War and the introduction of the Bonding Law were barely documented. Allegedly, the Bonding Law had been introduced to protect telepaths from forced bonds like the one that had basically started the most devastating war in their planet’s history. However, there were side effects of the childhood bond, side effects that were always mentioned as an afterthought, if mentioned at all, something that not many people knew. The only reason Seyn was so well versed in this subject was because he’d spent countless hours—years—researching everything remotely related to the bond.

It was well known that the biological weapons used in the Great War made the population nearly infertile. Desperate to save the race from going extinct, Calluvian scientists had started an experimental genetic program that aimed to fix people’s reproductive systems. It had fixed the problem, but nowadays few knew that due to limited testing, there had been unforeseen consequences. The genetic experiments had caused mutations of various kinds, bringing back extinct physical traits and affecting some people’s telepathy. 

Those physical mutations still existed to this day but were rarely spoken about in polite company. Seyn knew that Harry carried the throwback gene only because Harry had told him about it.

But if the physical mutations were barely spoken about these days, the telepathic mutations weren’t spoken about at all. The strangest part was, even the historical records were all very vague when they mentioned the telepathic mutations, only stating that they’d disappeared when the Bonding Law was implemented. Allegedly, the disappearance of the telepathic mutations was just an unexpected side effect of the childhood bond. Allegedly.

“But what does that have to do with the bond dulling our senses?” Harry said, bringing his knees up and hugging them. 

Humming thoughtfully, Seyn considered it. “Telepathy is our sixth sense. If the side effect of the Bonding Law was the disappearance of telepathic mutations, it makes sense the bond affected our other senses, right?” Seyn pursed his lips. “And when the Council realized that the bond messed with people’s senses, of course they kept it hush-hush. That’s probably why they force the stupid bond on us so young—babies are too young to remember and notice that something is off.” He shook his head. It still didn’t add up. “But it’s a bit ridiculous to go to such extreme lengths to protect us from forced bonds, isn’t it?”

Harry was chewing on his bottom lip. He said slowly, “What if it’s a lie that the Bonding Law was introduced to protect us from forced bonds? What if the bond was invented specifically to get rid of the telepathic mutations?”

Seyn stared at him, surprised beyond belief. The thought had occurred to him, but it had seemed too outlandish to contemplate seriously. But if Harry—the naive, trusting Harry who usually scoffed at conspiracy theories—thought that it was possible…

“If you’re right…” Seyn said. “If you’re right, of course the Council wouldn’t care about small side effects like dulled senses as long as the mutations were suppressed too.” Seyn sprang to his feet and started pacing the room, becoming angrier the more he thought about it. “I knew the bond was stupid, but I had no idea it was actually messing up my body in more ways than one.” His heart sped up as something occurred to him. He stopped pacing and whirled around, looking at Harry. “Do you think I can do it, too? Go to a very distant planet like Sol III and get rid of my bond to your ass of a brother that way?”

Harry sighed, exasperation flickering over his face. “I don’t think it’s that simple. If it were that simple, everyone who traveled to distant planets would get their bonds broken.”

Seyn shook his head, his heart still beating fast and hard, excitement coursing through his body. “The transgalactic teleportation was improved just seventeen years ago. Up until that point, we couldn’t travel that far. And you said your bond had broken completely only after months into your stay on Sol III. I don’t think any Calluvian ever stayed for so long on such distant planets. Until you.” Up until very recently, they couldn’t travel to such distant planets like Terra using teleportation. Their knowledge of Terra had been largely based on what their ally planets that were located closer to Terra knew about it, and the information hadn’t been updated in a very long time.

“You can hardly disappear for months,” Harry argued. “And you have no idea how to survive on Earth.”

Seyn waved his concerns away. “If you could do it, I’ll manage just fine.”

Harry gave him another telepathic smack. “Hey!”

Seyn laughed, feeling so damn excited that he could barely contain it. “You know I’m right. I’m surprised you didn’t get yourself killed or starved. You’re too damn naive and kind for your own good.”

Harry pouted. “I’m not. I was a very believable human. I learned how to use a coffee-making machine in ten minutes!”

Seyn looked at him blankly. “I have no idea what you just said. But anyway. It’s decided: I’m going to Sol III—I mean, Earth,” he corrected himself, trying to get used to the planet’s new native name. Their records said that the planet’s native name was Terra, but it made sense that the planet’s language would change in the thousands of years that had passed since Sol III had been first located. 

Harry heaved a sigh. “You know, it upsets me that you hate my brother so much and are willing to do anything to get rid of the bond to him. Why don’t you want to become his king-consort? It’s a huge honor and you’ll really be my family, then.”

Seyn felt a pang of guilt. “Harht, don’t take it personally, okay? Just try to put yourself in my shoes. Would you want to be bonded for life to such a cold, mean bastard like Ksar? Do you know he never smiles at me? Never! He always looks at me like I’m an annoying little bug beneath his feet. Hell, he ignores me most of the time! That is, unless he’s criticizing me for something—”

“But—”

“And that’s not all!” Seyn said. “He completely blocks me out of his mind. You know all the stuff people say about the bond being a path to your bondmate’s mind? It’s bullshit, as far as our bond is concerned. He has never touched my mind. Whenever I try to reach out to him, I run into that ugly impenetrable wall that makes me feel dizzy and sick. Why would I want to be bonded for life to such a person?” Even thinking about that ugly not-wanted-keep-away wall blocking him out of Ksar’s mind made his throat close up, and Seyn scowled, hating that Ksar’s rejection was still affecting him that much. He shouldn’t care. He didn’t care. Fuck that asshole. Fuck him.

“If you get your bond dissolved, Ksar will be bondless again,” Harry said, looking at him pleadingly. “He’s been waiting until you reach the age of majority as it is.”

Seyn scoffed. “It’s hardly my fault his first bondmate died. Lucky girl.”

Harry gave him a reproachful look. “Seyn! Death is no joke.”

 “I’m not joking,” Seyn said defensively. “Death is preferable to the fate of being Ksar’s bondmate. I wasn’t even born then. It’s not my fault Ksar has to wait until I reach twenty-five. He’s too old for me anyway.”

“He’s just eight years older,” Harry said. “If you get your bond dissolved, he’ll have no other options. Everyone else is matched up.”

Seyn didn’t feel particularly sympathetic. “He can always get bonded to some poor baby and wait until it grows up. It’s what they did to me, isn’t it?”

Harry sighed again. “Fine,” he said. “Let’s say you found a way to get to Earth and stay there for months. Let’s say you got the bond to Ksar dissolved. What are you going to do, then?”

Was Harry kidding?

 “I don’t know,” Seyn said with a wide grin. “But I’ll be free to make my own choices. I’ll be free of him. I’ll be free to do whatever I want.”

Something flickered in Harry’s eyes, some ugly, sickening emotion coming off him in waves.

Seyn’s smile faded. He eyed his friend with a frown. “What was that? Are you okay?”

Harry took a deep breath, avoiding his eyes.

“I met someone on Earth,” he said at last, looking down at his hands. “We’ve become…very close. I miss him so much.” 

“Oh,” Seyn said faintly, more than a little surprised. He sat on the couch and put an arm around Harry’s shoulders. Their species wasn’t much for physical affection, but he had a feeling Harry needed it right now. He was right: Harry leaned into the touch eagerly, as though he was touch-starved. 

Seyn wasn’t sure what to think. 

“Wait,” he said, sitting up straighter. “If you aren’t bonded anymore, can you feel sexual attraction?”

Harry blushed. “You’re shameless. You shouldn’t be wondering about such things.”

“Bah!” Seyn said. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s natural. It’s the stupid bond that turned us into sexless beings.” He scowled. “You know, I’m surprised the bond allows us to have sex at all. Actually, if the technology of artificial wombs had already been invented at the time, I’m sure they wouldn’t have even bothered to give us back the ability to have sex.” Seyn had always found it strange that bonded Calluvians couldn’t feel sexual arousal until their wedding—and then suddenly could. Now it all made sense. The Council had made a single amendment into the Bonding Law fifteen years after the law was introduced. The bonding ceremony at the age of twenty-five hadn’t been in the original law. The Council probably hadn’t expected that the childhood bond would suppress the brain’s sexual arousal centers too, so the problem was likely fixed by a mind adept during the bonding ceremony—without affecting other parts of the bond.

Even thinking about how much their brains were messed with made him feel a little bit sick. 

“It almost makes me wish the technology of artificial wombs still didn’t exist,” Seyn said. “Then they wouldn’t have bonded me to another male.” Noticing Harry’s exasperated look, Seyn shut up, flushing. He knew he was a little obsessed with the subject. Fine, he was more than a little obsessed where Ksar was concerned, his hatred for him clouding his ability to think straight. It was ridiculous of him to wish for the technology of artificial wombs not to exist—he wouldn’t have been born at all without it, since his parents were a same-sex couple.

Seyn looked at Harry curiously. 

“What?” Harry said.

“Is it true that humans still have such things as heterosexuality and homosexuality?”

Harry nodded. “Heterosexuality is considered the norm there.”

Seyn pulled a face. “That sucks. Though, it would be great to be given options instead of being bondmate-sexual. It’s a pity your bond broke so late and you didn’t get the chance to explore your real sexuality without the bond bullshit.”

Was Harry avoiding his eyes?

Seyn studied him. No, surely he was just imagining it. 

“Maybe we should go to Earth together,” he said, testing the waters.

Harry’s gaze snapped to him, hope flaring in his violet eyes before disappearing. “Don’t be silly. No one would let us go. Don’t you think I didn’t try? The trips to pre-TNIT planets are regulated by the Ministry of Intergalactic Affairs. Special exceptions can be made, but there must be a very good reason. Considering that the Lord Chancellor of the Calluvian branch of the Ministry is Ksar, good luck trying to convince him that you have a good reason to visit Earth.”

“Dammit.” Seyn sighed. “Can’t you talk to him? He might be a high-handed ass, but he’s your brother.”

Harry grimaced. “Ksar won’t sanction it if there’s no good, rational reason. So I didn’t even try talking to him about it after my parents said no.”

“You still have more chance to convince him than I do,” Seyn said. “At least he doesn’t hate you.”

“He doesn’t hate you, either,” Harry said, very unconvincingly. 

“Right,” Seyn said with a snort. If there was something he could always count on it was the fact that Ksar detested him, and vice versa. “You’ve always been a terrible liar. I’m surprised that humans didn’t suspect anything. I guess you’re lucky they don’t believe in aliens.”

Harry gave a strange, meek smile. “Some of them think there are aliens out there, but they don’t actually think they look like humans. They have really weird misconceptions about aliens.”

“Humans look like us, right? Can I pass for a human?” Seyn knew most sentient races in the galaxy looked similar enough, but there were still differences. Sometimes the differences were subtle, but sometimes they were too obvious.

Harry eyed Sean critically. “I think so,” he said, his tone hesitant. “But it doesn’t matter. We aren’t going to Earth.”

Seyn smiled. “Wanna bet?”

He left Harry’s room, the beginning of a plan forming in his mind. 

Really, Harry should have known better than to bet with him on anything.

Granted, it wouldn’t be easy to arrange. The use of TNIT—transgalactic nearly instantaneous teleportation—was heavily regulated and monitored by the Ministry, especially when it came to trips to pre-TNIT planets like Earth. There was no way they could use the Calluvian TNIT—Ksar would never sanction it—so Seyn had to look for other options. Traveling on a spaceship all the way to Earth was obviously out of question; those things were slow as hell and outdated for a reason. Luckily, Seyn had a lot of friends on other planets; being a sociable person (not an attention whore, as Ksar tackily put it) finally paid off.

So seven days later, Seyn sent Harry a message that said, “Get ready and come to my house at ten in the evening. We’re leaving.”