Chapter One

This was her uncle's idea of justice, she was certain.

After all the headaches she and her brothers had given him during their youth, Luke Skywalker had put her here just to enjoy watching her suffer what he'd put her through all those years ago.

No wonder he'd had a smile on his face when he told her of her new assignment, he'd known it would be an absolute nightmare.

Dealing with rambunctious Force-sensitive children always was.

How did Dad do it? Jaina Solo wondered, groaning as she used the Force to nudge the telekinesis toys scattered across the room into one corner.

Her uncle and mother had at least had the Force to help them combat three little Jedi terrors, but Han Solo had no connection to the Force and hadn't been able to draw on it for reinforcement when his unruly children got out of hand the way that Luke and Leia had.

Yet somehow, he'd managed to be the authority figure just the same.

I could use his advice right now, Jaina thought with a sigh.

She'd always prided herself on being tough, she was the Sword of the Jedi after all, a Jedi Knight and a hardened warrior. She'd faced down hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong without faltering, she'd endured torture and imprisonment, worked her way out of an endless parade of traps and difficult situations, all without breaking a sweat.

But a dozen little Jedi brats had her at wit's end.

When her uncle had decided to send her to the Maw, she hadn't argued, not much anyway.

It had, from a logical point of view, made sense. After all, she wasn't much good to the war effort in her present state, she wasn't fit to fly an X-wing much less participate in ground combat. She'd gone from being at the front line to a liability, someone to worry over and protect, and she hated it. There was a war waging across the galaxy and the Republic needed every Jedi it had, and she was just another burden on the Jedi.

At least at Shelter she could actually be useful, even if it was only by instructing the next generation.

"The children adore you, Jaina," she muttered under her breath, mimicking her uncle. "You're a legend to the younglings, they'll be so eager to learn from you."

Ha!

Luke was a traitor, he'd sold her out to those little brats.

"Contemplating murdering your uncle again, are we?" a familiar voice said from the doorway.

"Envisioning every last detail," Jaina retorted, turning to find Tionne looking at her with a sympathetic look on her face, silver eyes kind and knowing.

"They were hard on you today?" Tionne asked, slipping into the room and bending over to pick up some of the various toys at her feet. Without waiting for an answer, she smiled wryly. "Some days are worse than others, you just need to get some rest. Tomorrow will be better."

Jaina gave her a skeptical look, but didn't bother to argue.

In truth, she knew that the younglings weren't actively trying to drive her crazy, it was just as much her hormones as it was their behavior, but at the end of the day she didn't know whether she wanted to cry in frustration or wring their tiny little necks.

Some mother you're going to be, she told herself irritably. What happened to maternal instinct?

As if in agreement with her assessment, her unborn child gave her a sharp kick.

Kidney shot, right on target.

This kid was going to be a terror, she could tell that from the start.

He got that from his father, no doubt.

"How are you feeling today?" Tionne asked, eyeing her with an appraising gaze.

"Like a bloated bantha," Jaina grumbled. "My feet hurt, my back hurts, my ankles are swollen, and this little guy keeps using me for target practice."

"Babies do tend to get restless toward the end of term," Tionne pointed out as she collected the last of the toys from the floor. "He probably knows that it's almost time for him to be born, and is impatient to come into the world and meet you."

"That or he's trying to kill me from inside the womb," Jaina said dryly.

Tionne gave her a tolerant smile.

"Sorry," Jaina sighed, rubbing her temples. "Mood swings."

"You need rest," Tionne said gently. "You're due in less than a week's time, Jaina. You shouldn't be on your feet all day. Kam and I can cover some of your classes, you should be conserving your strength."

"And sit in my room all day watching old holovids?" Jaina snorted. "These kids drive me crazy, but it keeps me busy and that's what I need right now. If I have too much spare time on my hands, I'm likely to start thinking all sorts of crazy things, like whether or not my son is going to come out holding a red lightsaber."

"Your mother and uncle certainly didn't," Tionne reminded with a frown. "Despite the fact that your grandfather was a Sith Lord."

"Not when they were conceived, he wasn't," Jaina shot back.

"Jaina," Tionne said slowly, with mixed disapproval and regret in her solemn opal eyes. "I know you don't like to talk about him, but just because the baby's father is a Sith doesn't mean that your son is going to be one."

Jaina closed her eyes. "I know that."

"And I would think," Tionne continued in a gentle, but firm tone. "That you, of all people, would know better than to hold a child responsible for the sins of a parent."

"I don't," Jaina sighed, opening her eyes to give the older woman an affronted glance. "That is... I love this baby, he's been trying to kick me to death for nine months, but I love him." She smiled despite herself, letting her palm splay across her stomach, feeling her son stir. "And I know he's good and pure and innocent, I can feel it, but in my heart I... I'm scared that he won't always be that way."

"Because of his father."

"Among other things," Jaina murmured.

This little life had been growing inside of her for nine months, nine long months filled with all of the negative energy of war, and surely all of the grief and anger and bitterness swirling inside of her had left some sort of mark on the child in her womb.

She tried so hard to shield him from it, but sometimes it was all so overwhelming.

Every time she thought of her baby brother, her heart broke all over again and that frenzied tangle of rage and despair would rear its head inside of her, making it hard to breathe.

Her family had sent her to the Maw to protect her child from the Yuuzhan Vong, but how was she supposed to protect him from herself?

"You worry too much, dear," Tionne told her with a gentle smile. "It's not good for you."

No, it probably wasn't.

But it was impossible not to worry, with the Yuuzhan Vong rampaging through the galaxy and her family scattered across the front lines, fighting the enemy with everything they had, while she was here helpless to do anything for any of them. Every day she dread that the comm-call she knew might come, telling her that her mother or father or brother or aunt or uncle was dead, just like Anakin.

She worried about what would happen if they never won, and if the Yuuzhan Vong ever found her son.

If that happened, she didn't have to wonder what would become of her son, she knew what the Yuuzhan Vong would do to him.

It was the reason that he'd been conceived in the first place, after all.

"The children are already off to bed," Tionne said. "Why don't you go ahead and get some rest, and I'll finish cleaning up in here. I'm sure Ben is waiting for you to come tuck him in."

Jaina smiled wearily. "Thanks, Tionne."

Sure enough, when she reached her quarters, she found Ben sitting on his bed in the room adjoining her own, fidgeting with his blankets. "You're late," her young cousin accused her as she slipped into his room. "Can't sleep until you come."

"I'm sorry, kiddo," Jaina apologized. "I'm here now."

"Yeah," Ben agreed, then blinked up at her with his steely gray eyes. "Can I read?"

Settling herself on the edge of his bed, which was no easy feat with all the extra weight she was carrying around these days, Jaina raised an eyebrow. "You're going to read to me for a change?"

Ben nodded eagerly, holding up the datapad that contained his bookchip for The Little Lost Bantha Cub. "Been practicing," he announced proudly.

"Okay, then," Jaina said, leaning against the wall. "Show me what you've got."

"After the san... sandstorm that drove him from home," Ben read from the datapad, stumbling over the words a little. "The little lost bantha cub wandered alone."

As he read, or recited the well-worn poem, it was hard to tell, Jaina smiled softly, resting a hand on her stomach, and let his soothing little voice fill her ears. She had a sudden memory of Anakin at that age, eager to show off his own reading skills to his big brother and sister, and of Jacen rolling his eyes but begrudgingly sitting through it lest he suffer Jaina's wrath.

It seems so long ago, she thought wistfully.

Those had been simpler times, and she longed for the more peaceful days of her youth.

As peaceful as things could have been anyway, with the endless number of kidnappings, the political upheaval, the constant conflict with Exar Kun and his Sith Order...

Funny how all of that seems so trivial next to the Yuuzhan Vong, Jaina observed with bitter amusement.

She'd handled more than her share of daunting enemies in the past, from the Ssi-ruuk to the Yevethan and the Chiss, but none of them had ever truly frightened her, not the way the Yuuzhan Vong did. Not even the brief time she'd spent as a captive of the Sith Lord Brakiss when she was eleven had shaken her as badly as her experiences with the Vong.

Those other enemies had been dangerous, to be certain, but the Yuuzhan Vong were like nothing they had ever faced.

Jaina knew that firsthand.

It had been just months after Anakin's death at Coruscant, after her little brother sacrificed his own life in order to take out Shimrra, and she'd been off balance with grief. The death of the Supreme Overlord had not stopped the Yuuzhan Vong, and it was soon discovered that Shimrra had only been a puppet for the true power behind the throne, the mad Omini.

Jacen had been hunting the deformed Vong ever since, determined to finish their brother's mission.

So while Jacen was off on his quest, Jaina threw herself into the war, leading every strike she could, fighting in every engagement, and volunteering herself for every crazy plan that Intelligence dreamed up.

Her parents had worried, but she'd refused to pull back.

As long as she kept fighting, she would survive, because she knew the moment she lowered her lightsaber, the pain of losing Anakin would consume her.

But she'd poured too much of herself into the fight, and she'd burned out, just like her mother had feared.

They took her at Ylesia, broken both in body and spirit.

She still, even all this time later, had very little recollection of the events en route to the breeding facility on Helska IV. There were blurry snippets of physical pain, of agony burning through her body, but the memories were only half-lucid, and in truth she was not sure she wanted to remember.

The scars on her back implied it had not been a very pleasant trip.

And it had only been a prelude to what was in store for her once they reached Helska IV.

Later, she would be told that she had been in the Yuuzhan Vong's clutches for nearly eight months, but the days and weeks had all bled together while she was a prisoner. The systematic starvation and drugging that the Yuuzhan Vong had used on their captives had been more than effective at carving away at her already dwindling strength, and more than once Jaina had been certain that she was on the verge of death, only to have the Yuuzhan Vong bring her back again.

After all, they had plans for her and weren't about to lose out on their prize so easily.

If not for Tahiri, she would still be there.

It had been Tahiri who, despite her fears of tapping into the side of her that the Yuuzhan Vong had shaped, had put on a frighteningly convincing performance of Riina Kwaad finally coming to the surface and exerting control as the Vong had intended.

Tahiri who compromised her own integrity in ways Jaina couldn't imagine, for her.

It had taken the Jedi weeks to uncover what the Yuuzhan Vong wanted with Jaina, and then months after that to track down the location of the breeding facility. There had been some difficulty in getting Yuuzhan Vong prisoners to talk, but Tahiri, drawing on the Yuuzhan Vong inside of her, had known how to break them. From there out, Jaina's rescue was entirely in Tahiri's hands.

And in the hands of Daeshara'cor, who, poisoned by an amphistaff bite, had been the willing victim needed for Tahiri to prove herself to the Yuuzhan Vong.

Jaina had not seen it, of course, but she'd heard about it later.

Nom Anor had given Tahiri a couffee, never believing that the young Jedi would actually use it, but Daeshara'cor was already dying anyway, nothing could stop that now, and she wanted her death to mean something.

So Tahiri slit the Twi'lek Jedi's throat, and won over the confidences of the Yuuzhan Vong.

It had taken her nearly two months to gain access to the breeding facility, two months full of deeds and sins that Tahiri had never spoken of and Jaina was too grateful to inquire about. What she did know was that the Yuuzhan Vong had constantly thrust Tahiri into positions where she had to prove herself, or die, and she had what was necessary in order to get to Jaina.

She'd done it because of Anakin, who'd died too young at twenty.

And left too much behind.

He'd married Tahiri on a whim shortly after their strike team had recovered her from Yuuzhan Vong hands at Myrkr, and Jaina had stood beside the younger girl while Luke conducted the ceremony.

Anakin had been soaring that day, and Tahiri's smile had been bright enough to light up the entire room.

Now Anakin was dead, and Tahiri had not smiled since.

The woman who appeared in the doorway of her cell to rescue her, dressed in voodum crab armor and carrying a couffee stained with blood, had not been the girl that her brother married. Losing Anakin, and being forced to live without him in the midst of the horrors of war, had hardened Tahiri into a new woman, but when she knelt at Jaina's side after killing the ysalamari in the room, Jaina had wept in relief at the familiar sight.

Tahiri had helped her to her feet, and offered her the lightsaber the Yuuzhan Vong had taken from her upon her capture all those months ago, and together they had made their way out of that sithspawned place.

A Jedi team was waiting in orbit to whisk them back to the safety of the Jedi's stronghold.

But instead of relief, Jaina had felt nothing but terror at the prospect of being reunited with her family. The fear of having to look her mother in the eye and tell her the things that had been done to her, the things that she had been forced to do, was so overpowering that it made her physically ill.

Tahiri had known before Jaina's broken confession, in the month she'd spent infiltrating the facility she had learned all of the terrible details.

And so, in a gesture uncharacteristic of the hardened woman she'd turned in, she'd let Jaina sob out all of her pain, humiliation, self-disgust and fear, all the while simply holding her and whispering fierce promises of vengeance on her behalf.

Six weeks later, Tahiri had shown up at Shelter in the middle of the night, with Mezhan Kwaad's head in hand.

It had done little to give Jaina peace, but knowing the vile creature responsible for it all was dead had sent vehement joy surging through her heart.

After all, Kwaad was the one who'd held her in such awful conditions, who'd starved her and drugged her until she was desperate enough to allow herself to be forced into intimacy with a Sith Lord that she loathed, one who loathed her equally in return.

It was because of Kwaad that she was pregnant with said Sith Lord's child.

Jacen had not been able to look at her for days when the rest of the family learned the truth, and then he'd taken off again to continue his pursuit of Omini.

Her father had tried, but she had been able to see the terrible pain in his eyes whenever he looked at her, the pain of a man who thought he had failed his daughter. Her aunt had been furious on her behalf, all burning hatred and scathing fury, raging all of Jaina's own anger when she hadn't the strength to do it herself. Her uncle, being the wise Jedi Master that he was, had told her that she had done nothing wrong, that this child was a gift from the Force, a light in the endless sea of despair surrounding them.

And Leia, whom Jaina had so desperately been afraid to see once her mother knew the truth, had merely embraced her, smoothing her daughter's hair and drying her tears, and promised that everything would be okay.

As bleak as things had seemed, that was when Jaina knew that her mother was right.

A soft snore startled her out of her bittersweet reverie, and Jaina looked down to see that Ben had fallen asleep, his datapad still clutched in his little hand, and she stifled a chuckle.

Only Luke's son could fall asleep while reading aloud.

"Sleep tight, kiddo," Jaina told him, pressing a light kiss to his reddish gold hair, and then pulling his blanket up over his sleeping form.

He looked so innocent in his sleep, but she knew it was misleading.

Ben was as much of a troublemaker as she and her brothers had been at that age, which didn't bode well for her own son.

It seemed genetic that any child born into their family was going to be a handful.

Swiping her hand over the light panel, Jaina dimmed the room and smiled as Ben snuggled deeper under his blanket, then backed out, letting the door slide shut behind her with a low whoosh.

She started to turn, and the hair on the back of her neck bristled in warning, but pregnancy had slowed her reaction time.

A mist hit her in the face, and her vision blurred.

Jaina swayed on her feet, overcome with dizziness, and weakly searched for the wall with her hand, but strong hands grabbed her by the shoulders to keep her from falling, and she felt her legs give out beneath her as the world around her darkened.

The last thing she saw as she lost consciousness was a familiar pair of green eyes.

And Kyp Durron's infuriating smirk.