Author's Note: I love being on vacation, really. There's nothing like it - it's better than having a week off from work when the office is closed. That's because while I'm away, happily writing (and doing yoga and drinking wine - DON'T JUDGE), the rest of the crew back home is slaving it out. Heh heh heh. I continue to own nothing except my characters.
To Craze - I am so glad you appreciate my writing and the fact that I have these characters do twisted things. For example, cheating on their partners. But you're right; that's life, and life's not always nice.
To Emie Mac - Don't worry, Erimar's not gonna blow Jeff's cover. THAT PART is too good to blow on Erimar. Sven has never met Christiane, so he wouldn't have any idea who she is. As for Aidan, well, he is growing up, but there's more to his story coming down the road in this book.
To Sally On - Maahox was never my favorite, but I'm sure you agree he is really, REALLY fun to write. He might have almost as many good lines as Lance. As for Erimar calling Romelle "Romy," I think Sven was more shocked than angered by it.
To Wade Wells - The part I hated the most about the new Voltron Force cartoon was the fact that they made Lotor look like a huge, bumbling, incompetent idiot. If I ever make Lotor look stupid, it's b/c his OTHER head is doing the thinking, like in this case. As for Erimar, well, you know my man Sven has superb self-control. Uh...wait a second, let me rephrase that...SOMETIMES he has superb self-control. Also, I put the last section of this chapter in for you, since you've been asking for some of your man Keith's backstory.
Title Song: "Don't Trust Me" by 3OH!3
Romelle felt sick.
Emma stood in front of the mirrors, trying on her wedding gown one last time before the ceremony tomorrow. She looked stunning in it, even without the hair, make-up and jewels to go with it. No, Romelle felt sick for a different reason.
Clarissa, Emma's older sister and the reigning monarch of Planet Exxus, was a raging psychopath who was downright cruel to her younger sister.
The thirty-three-year-old queen was beautiful. In fact, beautiful might have been an understatement. Clarissa's waist-length mahogany-brown hair, thick and shining, gave her regal diamond-studded tiara a run for its money as her crowning jewel. Her navy-blue eyes were fringed with dark, thick lashes and framed by perfectly-shaped eyebrows. Her skin was the most porcelain-smooth shade Romelle had ever seen, with the slightest pink flush to her cheeks. Her lips were plump and dark pink as though they were perpetually bee-stung, and the sculpted lines of her cheeks, her nose, her forehead, and her jaw were so meticulously carved it hurt to behold her.
But as soon as she opened those bee-stung lips, Clarissa turned into the ugliest woman in the Azure Quadrant, and possibly the entire universe.
"Emmaline, this is a royal wedding," she scolded her younger sister. "I can't believe that you aren't covering up your arms. That's not royal protocol. You're going to embarrass yourself and everyone else."
Emma stood atop the seamstress' dais in her strapless wedding gown. Romelle thought that the young princess looked beautiful, even if her arms were bare. "Rizz," the young bride-to-be countered softly, "I'm not the crowned royalty of Exxus. You are. So I didn't think I needed to follow the royal protocol for a wedding gown."
"That's just it. You didn't think." Clarissa crossed her arms and shook her head with a disgusted expression on her face. "You never think. Gods, you are so lucky you found a prince who thought you were charming, though I don't know how he came to that conclusion. I feel sorry for him."
Romelle drew in a sharp breath. "With all due respect, Queen Clar -"
Emma's phone rang at that moment, which gave them all enough pause as she answered. "Oh, Bandor. I'm glad you called." She shot a poisonous glance in her sister's direction, then returned her attention to the phone call. "Oh, great! I'll tell her. I'll be there as soon as I can." She smiled, giddy with happiness. "I love you, too. See you soon."
Looking up from her phone, she turned her face towards Romelle. "Bandor says that your cousins are here from Arus. Could you please help me out of the dress? I'd like to meet them."
"Is your fitting done?" Romelle asked, keeping Clarissa out of her line of sight. She didn't care for the queen, and she didn't trust her as far as she could throw her. "Don't rush it - this is your last fitting before the wedding."
Emma nodded, turning to face herself in the mirrors. "It fits, and it looks beautiful," she said as though her sister wasn't in the room. "I love it, and that's all that matters."
Clarissa scoffed, but otherwise said nothing.
"Clarissa," Romelle snapped, "perhaps you might like to meet up with the other guests. I can take care of your sister and help her finish up here."
The queen nodded. "Yes. That sounds like a good idea."
Once Clarissa had left the room and was out of earshot, Emma looked at her reflection and smiled. "This dress isn't so bad, right?" she asked, looking for reassurance. "I think Rizz is just ticked off that I'm getting married before she is, and I'm so much younger."
"Well, with her attitude, it's not hard to see why she can't find a husband," Romelle offered.
"Yeah, she is a witch. Steve and I are used to it, though. We forgive her." Her face turned almost wistful as Romelle unbuttoned the gown. "We lost our father incredibly young - I don't even remember him. Then, when Zarkon attacked our planet, our mother was killed. Rizz took the throne at an unusually young age, and it's made her hard. And bitter." She shrugged. "I don't even know if she wants to get married."
"Was she one of Lotor's victims?"
"Who wasn't?" Emma stepped out of the gown and lifted it onto the dress form. "Lotor was always taken with a pretty face, and he held Rizz captive for a short period of time. She was never the same when she returned to Exxus. I think he might have raped her, but she won't talk about it."
Biting her lip, Romelle suddenly could sympathize with Clarissa. She felt terrible about disliking and not trusting the queen. "I should apologize."
"Don't bother. She doesn't like sympathy."
As Emma threw her clothing back on and stepped into her shoes, Romelle knew that she had to greet her cousins from Arus. But she had one more person she wanted to see first: her husband.
Clarissa and Romelle had lived through very similar situations: being captured and raped by Lotor. Neither one of them had lived an easy life. It occurred to Romelle that if Clarissa was a raging psychopath to everyone around her, well, how had she acted towards Sven? It wasn't her own fault that Lotor had captured her, raped her, and attempted to kill her, just as much as it wasn't his fault that he'd been mauled by a robeast and infected with Haggarium.
Keeping her anxiety in check with her new-found revelation, she kept pace with Emma as they made their way to the hangar to greet their cousins.
Hawkins and Newley stood in the hangar, watching as the maintenance crew did minor repairs to the Explorer. "I can't believe we're leaving again tomorrow," Hawkins sighed as he studied the work being done. "I feel like we just docked."
"We did just dock," Newley pointed out. "In case you forgot, you overrode the Space Marshal's eight-week allotment by two weeks, which cut into our docking time almost entirely." He smirked. "Has she forgiven you yet?"
"She did. But not the first night."
"I don't blame her. We're only here for a couple of days, and then we take off again. She must have wanted to murder you." He chuckled to himself. "Some first year of marriage you two are having. You've barely seen each other in six months."
Hawkins exhaled. "I know. It's so funny, Rich - whenever we're out in space, time passes so quickly, I lose track. I miss my wife, but I feel like I'm alive." He paused, and Newley could hear the pain in the commander's voice as he continued. "But when we dock, I dread leaving. I hate to leave her. I really, really hate to leave her."
"Jon," Newley told him quietly, "you have twenty years invested with the Alliance. Twenty and out, right? You could retire."
He nodded. "I could. I hate to retire, though. I've always thought of the Voltron Force as my family, and I'd hate to abandon them."
"But you have a family now, Jon. Or, at least, a wife. And I'm sure there will be a little one or two coming along somewhere down the line. Besides, since you're married to the Space Marshal, who says you have to retire fully? You could get a desk job or something behind the scenes. That way you can still stay in the thick of the action, but you can go home with your wife at the end of the day."
Hawkins nodded. He understood the captain's words completely, and yet, at the same time, he could not. He knew what his friend was trying to tell him, but he didn't know if he could do it. He had spent twenty years on the Explorer - never on the Voltron Force, but always on the bridge of the Explorer. It was comfortable; he was more at home there than anywhere else. But now, with a wife and a Manhattan triplex and an inheritance that included places to live in Paris, Boston, and Las Vegas, was a starship really home?
He thought about Lenora's words to him on their wedding night. You're my home, she'd told him, and she sincerely meant it. He needed to think about that from a different perspective. She was his home, just as much as anywhere else. And maybe he didn't need the bridge to be his home anymore - he needed his wife.
"Rich," he said slowly, forming the words as he thought them, "there might be something to that retirement idea of yours."
The captain merely clapped him on the shoulder in reply.
Impatient. His lord was always impatient.
"Tomorrow," Wade told Lotor. "Not today, tomorrow."
"Why?" Lotor asked, his eyes glowing with a Haggarium-laced anger. "Why should we wait that long? Why should we waste time when we could be moving on with our plan right now?"
"You have no patience," Wade scoffed.
Amen to that, Maahox thought.
"We need to wait until tomorrow," Wade continued, a measured control in his voice. Maahox liked the Sky Marshal more and more the better he got to know him. "My intelligence - my spies, I should say - tells me that Prince Bandor of Planet Pollux is marrying Princess Emmaline of Planet Exxus tomorrow. Captain Keith Kogane of the Voltron Force, as well as Princess Allura and Lady Larmina of Arus, will be in attendance. Lance McClain, the pilot of the Red Lion, will be off to Planet Brann to initiate talks of an alliance, with the cadet Daniel in tow. In addition, Vehicle Voltron will be departing for an eight-week exploration mission tomorrow." His eyes gleamed in understanding. "Tomorrow, King Lotor, is the perfect day to capture Christiane Kogane. By the time anyone realizes she's missing, both Voltron Forces will be split up or away from home base."
"Good thinking," Cossack spat out. "I know I'm not known around here for my thinking, but that sure sounds like a good plan to me."
Aggravated, even Lotor had to concede that there was a benefit to waiting until tomorrow to capture the girl. "Well, can you blame me?" he finally shot out. "I have not had a girl that beautiful in my harem in a very long time. I can't wait to ruin her." He licked his lips.
Maahox shuddered. "My lord, could you please say something a little less - creepy - about your plans for this girl?"
"Coming from you, Maahox? That's rich." Lotor looked annoyed, but he did not strike Maahox or do anything else resembling a toddler throwing a temper tantrum; he redirected the subject instead. "I can wait until tomorrow if it means we will be victorious. But you had better promise that we will be victorious, Sky Marshal."
Wade shrugged. "Of course, King Lotor, we will be victorious."
How could they not be?
Her heart pounding, Morgan slid by Jeff in the hallway and made her way to Keith's dorm room. She felt like she was being punished. Whatever she did - and she didn't know exactly what it was that she had done - she didn't think it was such a big deal. But apparently, her boyfriend did.
Keith was a good guy, and he was a good boyfriend. But he had problems, bigger problems than she could contend with.
Morgan's life had never been great. She was a hell-raiser just a few years ago; she smoked pot, lost her virginity at thirteen, hung out with the wrong crowd. She supposed most of it had to do with her father abandoning her and her mother when she was six. But she had moved on, and ten years after he left, she'd found a chance to make her life better, and possibly a person to share it with.
Her boyfriend, though, was even more messed up than she was, if it was even possible for such a thing to exist.
She turned the knob and entered his room, locking the door behind her. "Keith?" she asked hesitantly, sitting down in Jeff's desk chair. "Hon, do you want to tell me what's going on?"
Seated at his own desk, he merely bobbed his head silently. His turquoise eyes were blank, and his blue-black hair rippled down to his shoulders in a mullet that only a mother could love. If his mother had still been alive. His parents had been dead for four years.
She sensed that his parents were at the bottom of this. They always were. His mixed-up emotions and intimacy issues with her were rooted in the loss of his parents and his sister. His sister wasn't dead, but they had been separated in the system, and as far as he knew, Christiane was still a ward of the state.
"Morgan." He stated her name as though he had a mouth full of bile. "I heard you were with Andrew today."
"Andrew?" she repeated. The cadet he was referring to was a classmate, one who - much like Sven and Aidan - had been obsessed with her roommate at the beginning of the year and had even asked her out before she got serious with Sven. "Oh, yeah. Andrew and I have to work on a project together for our Interplanetary Relations class. It's due in a couple of days."
He spun around in his chair to look at her. "You've spent the entire day with him. You ate lunch with him. You had dinner with him. You were in his dorm room with him for a very long time. He even kicked his roommate out so the two of you could be alone together."
"Keith! We are working on a project!" she cried out, exasperated. "What, do you think I'm cheating on you with Andrew?"
He didn't need to reply. The look in his turquoise eyes said it all.
She drew in a sharp breath. "You don't trust me, do you, Keith." She didn't ask it as a question. She meant it as a statement.
His silence was all the response she needed.
"Keith, I don't need a boyfriend who doesn't trust me, and I certainly don't need a boyfriend who doesn't believe me when I tell him that I'm not cheating on him. What proof do you need from me, blood?" Morgan paused, gripping the back of Jeff's chair so hard that her knuckles blanched. "Is this your parental-issue thing again? Do you have intimacy issues you aren't dealing with?"
He gritted his teeth. She had never seen such anger in his eyes. "Get out of my room now, Feld."
She stood up. "You know what? You're right, Keith. Don't trust me. I'm not good enough for you." She snarled. "No, I take that back. You're not good enough for me. Good-bye, Kogane."
Exiting the room, she slammed the door with such force that some of their floormates opened their doors and peeked their heads into the hallway to see what the commotion was about. She noticed Jeff's head peeking out of Lance's and Sven's room, concern deep in his dark eyes. Kelly and Cinda were peeking out, too, as well as Ginger and Lisa.
"It's OVER!" she announced to them in a scream. Then, tracking her footsteps back to the main stairway in the middle of the hallway, she made her getaway.
"Morgan!" Lisa cried out worriedly. "Where are you going?"
She smirked before she exited through the door. "Andrew's room." She paused, staring directly at Jeff. "Tell your roommate," she told him coldly, "that he got what he wanted. He was so sure that I was cheating on him with Andrew. Well, now that we're broken up, that's exactly what I'm gonna do."
"Morgan," Jeff sighed, "think this through better, okay?"
"Later, Amigo. Right now, I'm gonna hook up with Andrew." The door closed behind her, and she furiously climbed up the next flight of stairs, taking the steps two at a time. By the time she arrived in front of Andrew's door, she was out of breath and her pulse was racing.
Andrew answered his door. "Morgan. What's wrong? What happened?"
"Are you alone?" She looked beyond his halfway-decent looks and his cropped sandy-blond hair to peek into his room. He was.
"Yes. But -"
"Good."
She cut him off with a powerful kiss. Andrew, being a normal sixteen-year-old boy who was unwilling to pass down a golden opportunity when it presented itself, went through all the motions as he brought Morgan over to his twin bed. Maybe not the most romantic setting, but it served its purpose. But she found that she couldn't do it. She couldn't bring herself to have sex with Andrew. Excusing herself, she slipped out of his room like it meant nothing.
It really hadn't meant anything. She loved Keith. Blast it, it always came back to Keith.