Page 13 of Barbarian Daddies

“They’ve got some people inside, too,” Yossul assures her.

“It’s still incredibly dangerous. I’m gonna talk to her about it,” Jewel says, shaking her head.

“You will do no such thing,” I shoot back. “She may be your friend, and I completely understand your affection and desire to protect her, but Cynthia won’t be alone. She’ll be with us and some of our best fighters.” I’m not giving away all the details of the mission, but I do need Jewel to take a step back here. “Cynthia has been in our charge for a while now. I’m sure you can agree that we’ve done a good job of keeping her safe. It’s imperative that we get her input on the facility before we plan a siege against Sapphire City.”

Jewel thinks about it for a moment. “She hates being coddled.”

“Precisely. Risks must be taken if we’re to emerge victoriously from this war,” I reply, then look at Yossul and Fadai. “That being said, I would like to know your options if our strategy fails.”

“If you get captured while infiltrating the city, you mean,” Yossul clarifies.

“Yes. And should any efforts to retake Sapphire City fail, what would you do? What would the Kreek clan do?” I ask.

The brothers exchange a deep look while Jewel discreetly analyzes their expressions. She’s been around them for long enough to anticipate certain reactions, and I notice the corner of her mouth twitching slightly. She’s amused. My guess is they’ve already talked about it more than once.

“Your brother’s lobbying operations through Sapphire City are likely to yield results,” Yossul says. “I do trust him in that sense. We may have a better shot at taking the city with at least some of the civilians on our side. That being said, I’m concerned about the Sky Tribe military. Specifically, the brass. They do not listen to reason. They’re determined to win at any cost, innocents be damned.”

“Selina Sharuk, in particular,” Fadai adds. “She is ruthless and relentless. We thought Umok was bad until we crossed paths with Selina’s death squads.”

“I agree,” I reply.

“But I also think we need operations of our own,” Yossul continues. “We need to keep at least some of our troops focused on finding the rest of the Sky Tribe’s starships and taking them out. I promised you and Kai we’d bring our best fighters to take Sapphire City, and I intend to keep that promise. However—”

“You’ll spare a few for the starships,” I say, smiling.

He nods once. “I don’t want more earthly women here. It’s not fair to them, and it’s not right for us. If we perish, we perish, though I do believe Sunna’s fire will spare us.”

“I think you’ll have a better shot relying on Cynthia’s biomedical talents than on your legendary fires,” Jewel scoffs.

“Faith is of the utmost importance for the Fire Tribe. It is this faith that has stopped us from claiming you and your friends by force,” Yossul kindly reminds her. “I do rely on Cynthia, and she’ll get all the support she needs from us. Always. But I have also become accustomed to the prospect of failure, in which case, I think we can go out with a bang and with enough dignity to make our species count for something.”

The idea of Sunna’s people eventually dying off fills me with dread. Anxiety tends to clutch my heart tightly, ruthlessly squeezing whenever I try to imagine a world where my people are no more. Brief moments of despair make me wonder if the Sky Tribe’s methods may actually be acceptable, but my very soul rejects that premise with undeniable rage.

Yossul has a point. If we die, we die with dignity and honoring our history, our traditions, and our moral codes. The Sky Tribe have renounced all three for the purpose of survival, and I doubt they would even consider Cynthia’s efforts if they were to come to fruition.

They’re too set in their stubborn ways, too fixated on altering the Sunnaite’s genetic code so a future plague won’t bring us to the brink of extinction again.

“What would the humans do?” I ask Jewel. “If they were close to extinction, what would they do?”

She tries to smile, but she can barely look me in the eyes. “I think they’d be just as split on this topic as you are. We’d try to reach other worlds and probably try to bargain for genetic material. But we are nowhere near as technologically advanced as the Sky Tribe to actually reach an inhabited world, let alone study their people or negotiate anything. We would likely work on genetically engineering our future children in a desperate attempt to survive, but we cannot stop Mother Nature. Sooner or later, we will all die. Nothing lasts forever.”

“No, but we could make it last for a little while longer,” Fadai concedes with a mild shrug.

“That being said, and while I don’t have the greatest faith in my own people if the roles were reversed,” Jewel replies, “I will not rest until every single Sky Tribe starship is reduced to molten metal and ashes. No one else needs to go through our ordeal. No woman deserves to be taken from her world and forced into breeding for your people’s needs.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I can spare a few fighters myself for this effort, if you need them. They’ve sabotaged Sky Tribe outposts before, and they’ve gotten pretty good at building and detonating explosive devices. You’ve been a good teacher to them, Jewel.”

“Ah, yes, the Yellow Bunch,” she laughs. “I miss those guys. I didn’t see them anywhere the other day when I passed through, though.”

“They’re up in the Cloud Mountains until next week, closing off some of the roads and paths connecting the eastern regions to ours,” I say. “The Sky Tribe’s mercenaries use those routes to transport weapons and ammunition, so we decided to make it harder for them to resupply.”

The Yellow Bunch are some of my best and brightest, all five of them under twenty-five, rowdy but incredibly smart and agile. Toras, Ally, Keo, Shai, and Ruzen were enticed by Jewel’s ability to work with explosives since she first went down into the mines to collect the materials herself.

They watched her closely and even sat through chemistry lessons with her and Cynthia to better understand the reactions between various elements—that’s usually a field reserved for Sunna’s engineers and medics, yet my grunts were able to pick up on the theory and have been great at putting it into practice as well.

“I think we could use them, yes,” Yossul decides. “If you can spare the boys, Maur, I’d be most grateful.”

“Of course. Kai will be briefed once they’re deployed. I’ll deal with him then. He’ll understand.” I pause and look at Fadai, remembering he still has scouts scattered across the western lands, searching for the starships. “Any word on the new locations?”

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