Page 86 of The Alien's Private Redemption

"We need to get as many of the triggers out of her as we can. That's going to require being a little less delicate than we've been."

"No," he said immediately. "Yes, I agree that we need to make removing the triggers a priority, but no, we can't be less delicate than we've been."

"Zoric, I understand she-"

"No, you don't," he interrupted. "You think you do, but your people have been torturing my people's mates for centuries to remove them from us. You've treated the Bond like a coercion to the point that I don't think any of your people have actually formed one in those same centuries. I don't know if the determination to remove them came from jealousy that you stopped having them or if the ability to stop having them came from the torture and, quite frankly, I don't care."

"You abducted them," Ae-cha hissed.

"And how else were we supposed to court them?" Zoric demanded. "When we look like this? When your people have hunted us with the humans, trying to destroy us while all we've done is try to keep our families safe from you and the monster we were cursed to protect."

"Contain," Ae-cha said quietly.

"What?" Zoric demanded.

"I've been reading through some of the records Cooper shared and found a mention of the monster your people were serving. A unit of Elite Guards were sent to capture him and bring him back to the capital for trial and execution. The last message received from the guards was that they had captured him and were responding to a distress signal."

Zoric received the information like a body blow.

"What were his crimes?" Zoric asked.

"Genetic experimentation that resulted in a sullying of the Dragor bloodlines. He was one of a dozen conspirators and the first one to be captured."

"What happened to the rest?"

"I don't know," Ae-cha said, softly. "There's no mentions beyond the fact that they were wanted for the same crimes. It's a fairly minor mention and the only reason I found yours is that it was in a list of units that had gone missing."

His heart hurt. His life, his people's lives, had been built on a lie. Somewhere in the distant past, there had been a horrible accident, and a monster that was supposed to be executed had ended up controlling the soldiers who had been sent to bring him to justice.

And not just them, all of their descendants on an alien planet, where they were forced to live in fear and hiding. He didn't know how Ushu had managed it but he was certain the ancient Dragor had manipulated the situation to his advantage at the first opportunity.

He had no idea when Ushu's ambitions had changed from experimentation to extending his own life but it made certain rumors and stories make more sense. It also explained his constant interest in the human women that the Chelion took as Mates. And their children.

The experiments on the children were the worst.

"Why did you tell me this now?" he asked.

"Because something, somewhere, went horribly wrong and I think your Mate may be part of fixing it," Ae-cha told him.

"How?" Zoric asked. "If her Uncle is like Ushu-"

"I don't think he is," she said. "I've been analyzing the memory and it doesn't feel like he's Dragor."

"What else could he be?"

She shook her head. "I don't know but I think it's important that we find out."

Zoric nodded. "I'm still not going to let you hurt Angela."

"I don't want to hurt her," Ae-cha told him. "I want to help her."

His gut told him she was telling the truth but their long history meant he couldn't trust her easily. She wanted an acknowledgement, some indication that he would help her. Instead, he asked something that had been bothering him for a while.

"Have you discovered what you’re a Remnant of?" he asked. "In all those records, have they talked about your people?"

"We've always been the Remnant of the Court of the Jade Princess," she told him. "We don't need new records to know that."

"I just thought you'd have more insight into why you're the Remnant of the Court of the Jade Princess, that's all. Ushu was fleeing something for the Elite to capture him, then land here. What was the Princess fleeing? How much of what we know is just our version of the story?"

---