Chapter 25

A/N: Apologies for the delays, sincerely. I apologise. The life of a teacher is never truly theirs. Here's your next update!

His heart pumped as he navigated the walls of the castle, leaving behind the desperate, injured soldiers following him further and further away. The last 24 hours were nothing in the face of what was to come; his past was nothing in the face of what was to come. Adrenaline coursing, he made the sharp, final turn and as the green beam scanned his tall, wet frame, he cut down the waiting soldiers by the door.

'It's time! My time! The ultimate throne is mine!'

Gleefully, eyes wide with excitement and pure pleasure, Lotor jump across the table, swiftly slashing left and right as blood rained from the severed throats of the Kings. Stopping at the head, he froze as he watched the unconscious figure slumped in the plush, black chair, hair cascading around the voluptuous drule queen. Lifting her fantastic mane from her face with his dripping crimson sword, he stared at the unaware woman before him from a blank, bloody, stained face.

"No...It won't be entertaining this way, Merla. I'm Lotor, the hunting king . I will kill you when I choose." Grabbing a fistful of scarlet curls, he swept his gleaming blade across multiple times. Satisfied with his artwork, he let her head drop onto the cold surface with a thud. Swiftly, he lept from the steel conference table and rushed the approaching guards impeding his way.

"My time!" he yelled as he drove his sword through the last of them. He didn't know how or why, but that fool Kogane had paved his own destruction with his own hand! The drule empire had been handed to Lotor on a gorgeous, filthy, platter. Regicide. But it was a platter no less. Launching himself off the walls and onto a flying transport vessel used for interior reconnaissance, Lotor ignored his injuries. He had originally been annoyed at them and the man who had inflicted them, but now, their pain ripping through him drove his ambition. He could taste blood and victory in every breath he drew, striking down any who stood in his way or very much were surprised by his swift appearance.

Time. He was running out of time! Turning a final right he landed steadily on his feet as the craft crashed into the panicked guards, plowing through them and exploding. His final obstacle awaited helplessly behind the smoke, and he wouldn't have had it any other way. Dilating his yellow glowing reptilian eyes, he concentrated, waiting for the sound of movement. A shift from the smoke to his left made him pounce, impaling the offending target. Razor sharp as his fangs, his senses picked up more movements before he swiftly cut them down. And they stood no chance. Every corner of the room was now silent, dead silent, and his racing heart pounded in his ears as his gaze waited for a clear picture, a sign: his target. Catching sight of the glimmer of blood red and dark green armour, he flew across the room, slicing the offending figure on the floor. His gaze drowned in bloody, but he didn't care. This was his greatest and final attempt, and the theater accompanying his movements was a necessity. Especially when taking down his own father. His strikes slowed until the figure on the floor was unidentifiable, a mass of raw flesh on the floor. The smoke had cleared like a mystical curtain, revealing strewn bodies across the room,victims that he had earlier targeted.

Silence.

A silence broken by the howling wind that entered the hollow windshield of the ship. The sun was rising over the horizon, bathing the world on a new era. A new drule era. Emperor Lotor's era! Roaring into the light of dawn, Lotor had never felt more alive, more free, more him.

"Min.."

He didn't finish the word as he felt rather than saw the blade that had been thrust into his chest. He had been cut enough to know that he had been impaled. He watched as his own blood spilled from his chest in a steady stream, trickling to mix with the blood of the other dead Kings. 'A sign, maybe?' He thought as his life became undistinguishable from those he'd taken. He tried to speak, but his body rejected the idea, forcing his blood to flow into his lungs, making him wheeze and cough.

'Not now... not when I'm close.' His mind screamed.

"Curse you, Kogane! Curse you and your fucking children!" yelled Lotor as more blood came up, choking him. He was drowning in his own blood. Being murdered by his own blood.

"Kogane, eh?" the deep baritone responded with a howl of laughter, forcing Lotor's body to seize in shock. The warm fluid could very well have been ice water as it flowed down his body.

"It can't be..."Believing his mind to he playing tricks on him, Lotor stared at the sword protruding from his chest. The shape. The colour, the weight. How familiar it was. Kogane had fought with a katana. This sword impaling him, was a steel red drule sword. A sword he knew well. A ceremonial sword he had had forged.

Zarkon laughed again at his son's obvious confusion. At his helplessness. At his weakness.

"A fool like you never learns, does he? What did I tell you before boy? What did I teach you?"

A twelve year old Lotor lay in his bathtub, the residue from his first victory against a general's coup still filling him with pride. His people feared him, admired him, envied him. Undoubtedly a genius of his generation, they all had no choice but to bow to at his brilliance. Half drule as he was. They had bowed. As he ducked his head beneath the water to cleanse his hair, he felt it. A presence. In his private domain. Before he could lift his head out, he was grabbed by the neck, forced down beneath the warm waves. Desperately, he beat the arm, scratching the thick forearm, pummelling it for dear life. But it wouldn't move. He felt his lungs burn for air, begging. His mind slowed as the oxygen depleted, depriving his thoughts of direction, his limbs of power. Suddenly, he was pulled out of the water and thrown across the expensive floors, naked body slipping to a stop after a few yards. Wheezing viciously, he crawled to his discarded sword before clumsily unsheathing it. Pointing it at his enemy. His father.

Zarkon stood there laughing at his panicking son, enjoying his pain.

" Boy. You are worthless! You could not even escape from a bathtub. The mighty Prince Lotor, protégé of his time, drowned to death in his filthy bath water!"

Shakily standing, a furious young Prince jumped at Zarkon, who avoided him, forcing Lotor to bang his head on the porcelain side of the bath. Exhausted, Lotor blinked as he listened to his father shamelessly taunt him for a few minutes more. As he was leaving, Zarkon stopped by the door suddenly.

"Remember Lotor, if you cannot kill your worst enemy first you will lose! Everything you achieve is mine. Your life is mine. Your achievements are mine. Why? Because I spared a weakling like you. A Prince is a threat to the King. And it goes the other way. If you fail to kill me first, you have failed. In Everything. Even if I fall at the hand of another. You are ultimately, my greatest failure."

Lotor looked hatefully at his father, ignoring the rumbling that had started on the outside. As his consciousness slipped, he felt the evil presence he had thought dead appear before his father.

"My King!" screamed Haggar, who plummeted to the floor from thin air.

"NO! Not King. Emperor."

He felt the sword as it was withdrawn from his body, but he didn't feel it when he hit the ground.

...

Keith sat in his pyjama bottoms on the bed, grateful for the simple luxury known as a hot shower. Simple actions helped in slowing his mind down after all the updates they'd received. The force had been given 24hours to recuperate before they presented themselves to the brass. After watching Lieutenant Mclain almost pass-out from cussing Sven out, he was relieved that their team, his team , was coming together. If they could survive whilst he was unconscious, then the force had a chance. Slowly, he lifted his left foot in discontent, analysing the still reddened, newly healed skin. An impossibility in normal human medicine. When he had landed on the Umbra, he had accepted the inevitable fact that he may never walk again as the gruesome pain wrecked every nerve and muscle in his feet. After facing torture, he now realized that he had been naive. The world still had more ways to inflict pain than he could imagine. His lion was covered by a dense blue field that drew out the poison from its body. The majestic beast was calmly sitting, responding to the ministrations of his mate. Keith sighed enviously as he turned his gaze to his own mate, the feeling of loneliness hitting him hard. Her chin was set and she refused to meet his gaze. When he'd come to, his exhausted eyes had met her teary deep pools and his ears had captured her pleas for him to live. Now, she was attempting to widen the distance between them again. 'Hell no. That's not happening.' Right now, he had decided to silence the soldier in him. That man had survived once again. That man has cheated death once again. That man, who knew risk, would risk his life again.

What bothered him the most in the silence they were in now was one question: For whom should he live?

That man lived for his career. That man lived for his duty. That man served his companions above and beyond the call of duty because that was what he was: a hardened soldier who was going to fulfil every mission. He was still that man. But something had changed when he'd woken to her pleas. Someone was begging him to save his own life for himself. For her. He wasn't just that seasoned soldier, proud of his achievements and unwavering sacrifice. He was that man who had his woman. Solely his. Something that others yearned to find and others had lost. The life he'd risked was tied to someone else on an entirely new level. It wasn't his own anymore.

'She rejects me because of how unattached I am to my own life? She's also a soldier, so she understands how this works.' His thoughts were disrupted by a low growl from his lion. It had been a warning before both beasts disappeared. He tried to remember the last time he had dreamt of doing something for himself, but failed to. ' Am I really that selfless that i want everyone's happiness above my own?' His heart quickened in response and he froze. He sighed again in resignation as his conscience condemned him.

"Liar. You are not selfless. You're a man who's selfish enough to die without anyone figuring out how selfish some of your desires are. You joined the army because it gave you a new identity whilst killing the old one. You save people so that you feel something other than loneliness. You're not interested in the next rank or cozy quarters or women. You're looking for the next place to die. And she's figured it out. She's not shutting you out. You never let anyone in. Given her trauma, why should she love a suicidal maniac?"

'Who am I doing this for? What do I want?' Both those questions seemed to be leading the same answer. His gaze followed her as she quietly gathered the remaining medicines and placed them in the kit. She had been tidying up since he'd woken up and had been avoiding him. News about his recovery had been received with hearty cheers and stern orders. The force had crippled the drule empire, pushed back the umbra and freed the drule slaves in only a few hours. He knew that secrecy, swiftness and strategy had led to this tremendous push, but he could now see what the people around him had yearned to see: Hope. But for the first time, very much to his discomfort as a man of discipline, he decided to delay his response to his superiors. They could wait. This couldn't. He noted that her hair seemed to bother her as it had fallen out of its traditional bun. He noticed her huff slightly in frustration before she reached up and undid the messy updo. He noticed her pout as she searched her supplies for a brush, maybe, and failing to find it. His heart kicked as he realized, not for the first time, how young she really was, how new and experienced she was at the same time. What a paradox she was. The woman who'd saved him begged him to live, the woman in front of him was trying to keep him away. 'Which one was the real her? How far apart from each other were both those women? Which side reflected her truly? Which side was she willing to show him?'

He set his leg down, watching as her quest led her to the chest of drawers illuminated by the side table lamp on the floor. Glancing at him for a split second before quickly turning away, she rummaged through the top drawers before pausing uncertainly on the third, which contained some of his personal items. Pulling out the drawer carefully, she reached inside before closing the drawer quietly. In her hand, a porcelain white hairbrush. Gracefully she placed herself on a cushion near the lamplight and started brushing her golden mane quietly. And every damn stroke mesmerised him. She was his ethereal beauty. Did she have any idea how she was making him feel?

His feet had a mind of their own as they walked, determined, toward her before he dropped onto a random cushion in front of her. Her movements paused for a moment before she continued her work. Her ritual. He raised his hand silently toward her with a request. At first he thought she would refuse, but her eyes searched his for an answer. There was no challenge in her eyes, no fear. But caution. Heart pounding, he met her gaze unwaveringly. She handed him the brush and he received it, clasping her hand along with it. A short scream soon followed as Keith pulled her toward him, closing the gap between them once and for all as he trapped her in his arms tightly. She willingly received his passionate kiss, her whole body burning up, trying to keep up. She knew something had changed as his kisses left her hungry, his mouth attacked her neck as his hands travelling under her tank, pulling it higher. His touch burned her as he caressed her skin, drawing a moan from her that only encouraged him further. He was driving her crazy, and she loved it, raking his bare back with her nails. This was a madness she had never allowed or experienced, a madness she would gladly live with.

They had both decided to change.