Nate's Fated Mate(49)

"Welcome to my world," Nate said.

"I know. If it helps any, the Guardians aren't behind any of this crap fest," Sheena said.

"My father worked for them. How can you be so sure?" Nate asked.

Sheena paused, stared at the man she loved, and then decided to just tell him. "Because I'm being recruited to be one."

Nate pushed back in his chair and stared. Sheena? A Guardian? "You're certainly smart enough. But … " What could he say to her? Stay and be my wife instead. Don't take the highest honor on the planet. He couldn't do that to her. He wouldn't. She hadn't done it to him even when he was being a naïve idiot. 

Sheena shrugged once more. "I haven't said yes to anything, but I've talked to all of them. While they were testing me, I tested them back. I needed to know if they were telling me the truth about their motivations and their morals. I discovered they were."

"So what explains my father then?"

Sheena smiled. "Let's find out, shall we?"

"How are you going to do that?" Nate asked.

"I have a way of making people tell me the truth."





Chapter Sixteen





"Thank you for securing him for me," Sheena said, her body no long over-reacting to Darcone's answering growl. She shared his preference for ripping her former father-in-law's head off his shoulders, but that would not serve their purposes nearly as well as what she had in mind.

Sheena pulled a chair over and sat directly in front of the chair Nate's father was tied to.

"My absence will mean your eventual death. Your own organization will see you as a threat if I go missing."

"Oh, you won't be missed. The Guardians will just go to another universe and bring back a nicer version of you. See? Problem solved."

"You're just the Matchmakers's daughter-a scientist. You know nothing of the real world."

Sheena glared. "I know I love your son more than you or his mother does. I know I'm not about to let you fuck with Nate's mind any longer or try to kill what's left of my family. You're going to tell me everything I want to know and we're going to come to an agreement."

"Why would I do that?"

Sheena grabbed his jaw, held his gaze, and pressed the delivery tube in her hand against his neck. She gave him twice the dose Nate and Scott had gotten. "You're going to do it because I said so."

She waited a couple minutes until he started blinking. "You look tired. I think you need some sleep."

"Too much going on to sleep," he said, eyes rolling back in his head.

Sheena waited two minutes more. "Who were the six people you and my boss watched be incinerated?"

"Experiments. We replaced the originals with their alternates. No one even suspected."

"Why did you do that?"

"Alternates do what we say. They want to go back to their home and we use that to our advantage."

"But they can't go back to their home, can they?" Sheena demanded.

"Re-insertion is possible, but too difficult."

"So what was the goal with all that collecting and replacing of people?"

"Goal?"

"Yes. Why bother to replace those exact six people?"

"They're the ones who operate the portal."

Sheena rose and paced. "All six of them?"

"Yes. I hired them myself."

"Who directed this to be done? Novus Prime or the Guardians?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Who ordered the deaths of the originals? Who ordered the alternates to be brought here? Was it just you and the Novus Prime director working on this?"

"Many fund our efforts. Even criminals want things to change. The aliens cannot be allowed to steal our females any longer. By controlling the alien portal, we can travel anywhere in the known galaxy or across universes. One day we will find the proper weapons to fight them. That will be true liberation."

Sheena closed her eyes. So the cover-up was going on right under Guardian noses. "What about biologics?"



       
         
       
        

"Weapons of the weak. If humans are meant to die, so be it. Not every threat can be neutralized. Death with dignity is honorable."

A fatalist. She was grateful for that. They ignored things like plagues and sickness and the horror such things took on people's lives. "And what about our treaties? What about our peace with the aliens? They saved us. Our presence is only possible because of that history. Humans alone would have lost that war."

"Not proven. Intervention was too costly. They have taken our women. With the matchmakers gone, that would be obvious. No one would believe the lies any longer."