The mistresss cyborg, p.1
The Mistress's Cyborg, page 1
The Mistress’s Cyborg
Galactic Storm Book 3
Candice Gilmer
Contents
Can the past be resolved?
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Turn the page
The Virgin’s Cyborg
Dear Reader
About the Author
Other Books by Candice Gilmer
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Flirtation Publishing
Wichita, KS
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The Mistress’s Cyborg
Copyright © 2021 by Candice Gilmer
Cover by The Book Brander
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All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Can the past be resolved?
The Terran Empire is at war with The Rhimodian cyborgs. The Terrans believe the cyborgs have stolen a system of planets from them. At least, that's how it started.
It degenerated into hatred and fear.
Lady Bianca arrives on the a lava-filled volcanic world of the Rhimodians, she meets Harbin, a few days before the negotiations.
The cyborg is much taller than her, and almost immediately annoyed with meeting her. However she's not afraid. Maybe she should be.
While cordial, Harbin is much more interesting than she expected. His suit was also so tight, she saw all of his assets, and fine assets they were.
Irritated at his assignment, Harbin meets with the Terran emissary, Lady Bianca and is immediately drawn to her. They both have similar desires--to see the end of the war.
Harbin's Craving, however, makes it difficult to focus on what she needs because of what he wants.
He wants her. Plain and simple. He cannot get her out of his mind.
Then an explosion changes everything.
Bianca hides on the icy rock of Sol-1, with Harbin. The frigid temperatures leave them both physically close to one another to keep her safe. A true test for Harbin's Craving, for certain.
And when others show up attempting to attack Bianca, Harbin must do everything in his programming to keep her safe.
Even if it means sacrificing himself.
Prologue
12 Years Ago
“Stay back,” Bianca said, waving her handkerchief at Empress Fallon. “You do not want a cold on your way to make peace with the Rhimodians. You could take the virus and make them all sick and kill them off or some such thing.”
Fallon laughed. “And what a tragedy that would be. A cold brings down a cybernetic army.”
“What a silly notion,” Bianca said, covering her face before she sneezed. “Why are you here, anyway? You should be getting ready.”
“I just wanted to make sure you were well.”
“I’m not. That’s why I’m not going,” Bianca said. “Though truly, I wish I were. It will be so boring around here without you.”
“I am sure you’ll find something to entertain yourself. After all, you won’t have to be running after what I want. You can spend a few days enjoying yourself.”
Bianca didn’t really feel like she’d be enjoying anything. “Head colds will not make anything pleasant.”
Fallon smiled. “Probably not. You can catch up on your reading, I suppose. Or…”
Bianca crossed her arms. Here it was, the task. She knew Fallon wanted her to do something while she was gone. They had already discussed it before when Fallon had initially begun the idea of facilitating peace talks with the Rhimodians.
“You still want me to watch him?” Bianca asked.
Fallon, with her pretty eyes, dark brown and flecked with golden speckles, blinked a few times. “Please?” She glanced up and down the hallway.
Bianca followed her gaze and saw the guards posted down the hall, close enough if needed but far enough away to give the two of them the illusion of privacy.
“I assumed,” she said. Another sneeze was coming on, and she covered her mouth.
Fallon leaned away from her, taking half a step backward. “Should I send a medic? You seem to be sneezing a lot.”
“I am fine,” Bianca said. “I took some medicine a bit ago. I should probably be getting back to bed soon, though.”
“Yes, of course. You need your rest. Your nose is red.”
“I imagine it would be, with the wiping of it so,” Bianca said. And it was raw. She could feel it. She would have to put something on later to soothe it.
Fallon didn’t step into Bianca’s suite, but she did enter the doorway, closer than she probably should have. “Whatever you need to do,” she whispered.
“Are you sure?” Bianca asked, setting down the handkerchief. “He does not suspect anything?”
“He does not. And with everything in place, he shouldn’t, including your help, my friend.”
Bianca bowed. “I will do as my Empress requests.”
Fallon opened her mouth like she was going to object to Bianca’s formal answer.
But she stopped.
Bianca met her gaze. They both knew what Fallon was asking of her Lady in Waiting. And Bianca would only do it for her. No one else would get such a commitment from her.
But no one else would ask so much from their Lady in Waiting, either.
“More wine?” Emperor Bron leaned over, filling Bianca’s glass.
Whether she wanted the drink or not.
It didn’t matter.
She would drink. And she would do her duty.
For Fallon.
“Thank you, Your Majesty.” She accepted and sipped on the drink. The wine was strong, and she remained careful not to drink it too fast. She would need her wits about her tonight.
“Have you heard from the Empress? Did they arrive?”
He turned and glanced at her, his eyebrow raised, the red room making him look taller than he was as he stood over her. “Why do you care?”
“My Lady is on an important mission. I want to know how it is progressing.”
A smirk passed over his face. “If you cared so much, you would have been with her.”
Bianca looked down.
She did want to be there, to support the Empress. That was what a Lady in Waiting did.
She supported her Empress.
If that meant pretending to be sick in order to keep the Emperor’s attention while the Empress was gone, then that was what the Lady in Waiting did.
While Bianca’s cold had been a ruse, as planned by her and Fallon before she left, now, she felt horrid about the part she had to play to find out what the Emperor was up to.
The Empress left with the girls and got them away from him and his scheming. If Fallon could bring peace, the Emperor would lose his fight in the people’s eyes, and the Senate could regain control.
It was a risky game they played.
Fallon, Bianca, and the Rhimodians.
Something to stop the Emperor’s greedy grab for the Sol system.
But they would do what they must to bring back stability to the Terran Empire.
That was the plan, in any case.
The Emperor reached down and touched her chin. She turned up to meet his dark eyes. “Your true loyalties are revealed, Bianca.”
She took a sip from her wine to distract herself from the trembling. “How do you mean?”
He smiled at her again. “Oh, sweet little Bianca. As if you thought I was a fool.” He sat down next to her. Far too close, in fact. “I know you have been watching me. I see you staring at me whenever I enter a room.”
“I…” She didn’t dare say that she watched him like she would watch a snake prepared for his attack.
Oh, why had she agreed to do this? What was she thinking?
To pretend an attraction to the Emperor was difficult. He remained highly suspect of anyone. But to do it and keep him unaware of the movements of people around him? The ones who did everything they could to offset his power over the new, violent war?
She had lost her mind agreeing to this.
“I know,” he said as he put his hands on her neck.
If another man had done it, she might have found the move sensual. Maybe even sexy.
But not this time.
He yanked her toward him, wanting a kiss.
They were mere centimeters apart when a pounding on the Emperor’s door made them both jump.
The Emperor leaped up.
“What?!” He demanded as a guard burst into the room.
He stormed over to the guard. “I should have your head!”
“Forgive me, Emperor Bron.”
“I will not! I will—”
“The Empress is dead!”
Everything went still.
Bianca couldn ’t even breathe.
Surely, she had not heard that.
The guard must have spoken wrong.
She took a step forward. Opened her mouth to say something, but the words had vanished.
“You lie,” the Emperor said, drawing a blade from his hip. One Bianca didn’t realize he wore.
“I have the confirmation,” the shaking guard said, holding out a data card. “There was an explosion. The Empress took the brunt of the blast. Killed her.”
Bianca shook her head.
No.
No, this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
She wasn’t supposed to die.
She was supposed to be free.
She took a few more steps toward the Emperor.
He held out the data card.
An image appeared, and there, in the clarity of the hologram, they watched the explosion. How the bulkheads fell. Where Fallon was, and how they crushed her.
The only sound Bianca could make was a gasp.
The Emperor merely stood there.
Bianca crossed to him, and he wrapped his arm around her.
She clung to him.
He dropped the data card, and they stood there, holding one another.
It felt like both moments and years they stood there together, embracing.
“The babies,” Bianca said. “Where are the babies? The girls?”
The Emperor glanced at the guard. “Where are my daughters? Dead as well?”
The guard shook his head. “They are alive. Injured but healing.”
“Get my daughters back here,” he said, and his entire posture changed. He stood up straight, his shoulders back. “And get me the Senate High Council. Now.”
“It is late, Your Majesty.”
“Get them here now! I want witnesses when I declare war in the name of the Empress.”
Tears poured down Bianca’s face.
She could only think of the girls. Were they going to be okay? How badly had they been hurt?
“Your Majesty,” Bianca said. “What about the girls? Who will care for them?” She crossed to him. “I can do it. I will care for them. Here at the palace. Make sure they have what they need.”
“Fine.” He pulled off his shirt and started to undo his pants.
“I will leave now--”
“No.”
She blinked. “Pardon?”
“You want to be their mother? Then get over here. On your knees.”
“I am not—”
“You want to be their mother? Then you will perform all their mother’s duties.” He pointed to the floor in front of him. “On your knees.”
The tears that poured down her face were for Fallon.
That her friend was gone. She'd never see her smiling face again. That this was what she endured married to the Emperor. That he'd treated her so callously and horrid.
And for herself. For now, she made her choice. Bianca chose her duty.
All of her duty.
For the girls.
1
Now
“And those are the latest casualty lists?” Caoimhe asked, looking at the data card.
Admiral Jeke nodded. “Yes, Imperial Princess. Straight from the latest battle maps.” The attacks launched from the outlying most planets in the Terran Empire.
“How are the refugee camps?”
“Overcrowded and needing relief. Many women and children have lost their homes.”
She shook her head. “This has to end. This has to be stopped. Every planet in the Terran Empire is precious. We cannot do this to our people and expect them to accept it. Or to the Rhimodians.”
“They are the ones fighting back, Majesty.”
She waved her hand. “But they die too. Their people do not deserve to be massacred because my father wanted their system to add to his own.”
The Admiral looked down but said nothing.
Caoimhe ran her hand over her brow. “What about the prisoners of war? Have we learned anything about them?”
“Only that they are Rhimodians. What has happened to them, I have been unable to find out, no matter how much I dig in the files.”
Caoimhe shook her head. “Maybe Freya would be able to learn something about those poor men.”
“Since when are cyborgs men?” Bianca said from across the room. She had been quiet, drinking her tea. And she was supposed to just watch and listen, but sometimes she had to interject something. “They killed your mother without any regard—”
“You were not there, Bianca. I was.”
“And you were a child,” Bianca countered. “You did not understand what you saw.”
“I was not a baby. I was eleven.”
“Not yet, you weren’t. You had four months to go if my math is correct.”
Jeke shifted back and forth from one foot to another and looked very uncomfortable.
“Your Majesty, if I may, I have—”
“Fine. You’re dismissed, Admiral.”
The officer nodded and left the room as Caoimhe and Bianca stared at each other.
At least, until the door was sealed behind him.
“And he’s gone,” Eleanor said as she came in from her bedroom. “I swear, you two are getting better and better with the play-acting.”
“We are both so full of passion,” Caoimhe said.
“Of course,” Bianca said.
The two of them were diligent about who heard what they said. They could never be too careful, for the Emperor would be told. And regardless of what Bianca believed about the war, the Emperor needed to think she supported him absolutely.
A wife in every way except name.
His mistress.
“Now, where were we?” Caoimhe asked. “The plans for the negotiations. I do believe we have all the details accounted for in the eventual bartering items?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
“The prisoners of war need to be returned, regardless of how the negotiations unfold,” Caoimhe said.
“So, you have decided that for certain?”
The princess nodded. “I cannot stand that we have Rhimodians here, being held against their will and likely being tested on and tortured—”
“We have no confirmation of that,” Eleanor said.
Caoimhe glared at her sister. “You’ve met our father. Do you really think he would pass up an opportunity to torture and dissect an enemy?”
“Good point,” Eleanor said.
"I do believe Admiral Jeke is doing his best to find out, at the very least, where the prisoners are and what state they are in," Bianca said. "He is compassionate toward them."
Caoimhe nodded. "I need them to secure the negotiations."
"Let the Admiral take care of it," Bianca said. "You have many other things to be concerned about."
"I know," she said, tossing her dark hair over her shoulder. "I think I have my first gray hair." She picked at a long hair in the middle of her dark ones. "It is not blonde, in any case. I am sure it is white."
Bianca walked over to her chair and stepped behind her to inspect. And she hated seeing it, but it was not the only white hair the girl had.
Gray too early.
"You're far too stressed," she said. "You need to find some time to relax."
"That is hard to do when you're attempting to end a war and overthrow a tyrant."
"A tyrant who has managed to maintain the support of the people for years," Eleanor added.
"Through lies and manipulation," Caoimhe added.
Bianca leaned over to Caoimhe.
Looking in her eyes, so much like her mother's, it was like looking back in time for Bianca. Like she stared not at the princess she'd raised but at her friend, who was determined to keep the Terran Empire in place.
Now Caoimhe has taken on that mantle.
Bianca ran her hand over the girl's face. "You are not here to correct every one of your father's mistakes."
