Page 56 of Forbidden

“Then do what you can.” He watched as Mikkarn barked a set of instructions into his communicator, and he and Akahana disappeared. Taber looked at Khan again. “I’ll take care of Davin.”

“You can’t do it alone, Taber.” Kiril gripped his shoulder firmly.

“I have to. I’ll find him. And when I do, he’ll wish I’d killed him here.”

“Taber.” Khan blocked his way when he would have left. “There’s another way.”

“I don’tneedanother way.” Taber tried to shove the larger man out of the way, but Khan stood his ground. “All I need is to get my hands on the bastard, and I’ll strangle the life out of him, just like he did my woman!”

“That’s right.” Khan grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “Your woman! Publicly claim her as your mate, and Davin will challenge. He won’t be able to resist.”

“How thefuckis that going to help?”

“Didn’t Anna explain the Chamber of Souls to you?”

“No.” Taber hesitated, uncertain. “She was too busy explaining the whole soul’s mate thing, and I was too eager for a good night’s sleep without worrying about invading Akahana’s dreams. She was going to explain later.”

“It is quite important that you know this, Taber.”

“So I gathered. Tell me.”

Kiril chuckled. “You’re just like my Mara. If all humans are so demanding, I hope the Universe doesn’t see fit to give me another human mate.”

Taber would have growled, if he’d thought it would help. “Just spit it out.”

“The Chamber of Souls is a place where the souls of our people wait to be reborn. It is said that each soul there remembers every past life he or she has lived, and in the Chamber is the only place where mates continually find each other. But they cannot express their love physically,” Kiril explained.

“What do you mean, ‘continually find each other’?”

Khan leaned against the windowsill overlooking a crystal lake with mountains surrounded by an aurora that reached halfway down their elevation. The atmospheric phenomenon appeared lower to the ground than previously possible -- a result of the atomic blast and the resulting radiation cloud as it spread across the country at the beginning of the war. When it was visible, being indoors was preferable. “Think about it,” he said. “What are the odds that you and Akahana would find each other, halfway across the galaxy?”

“I see your point. One could go several lives without ever finding his mate.” Taber took a breath. “So you’re born, you die, and your soul ends up in this Chamber place where your ‘soul’s mate’ will meet you when she dies.”

“Yes. You don’t find your mate in every life. And as we’ve recently learned with Mikkarn, Kiril, and Mara, a soul can have more than one mate. In their case, they are all three mates to each other. Knowing that, I have no trouble believing that Akahana could have more than one mate.”

“Wait a minute, I’mdefinitelynot any kind of mate to that Gamin character. I refuse to believe that, almost as much as I refuse to believe that he could have been her true mate. There has to be a glitch in the process somewhere because how could any higher power, or whatever determines a soul’s mate, stick someone as gentle in nature as Akahana with someone as viciously mean as Gamin?” Taber paced restlessly about the room. “A person couldn’t be that mean in only one lifetime. His soul would have to be rotten to the core.”

Khan raised a hand to hush Taber. “You don’t know that,” he admonished. “None of us do. Perhaps it is something you can find out in the Chamber of Souls.”

“Then take me there.”

Khan shook his head. “You’d have to go into the Chamber, and that simply isn’t possible at the moment.”

“Well, why the hell not?”

“Because Akahana has to go in with you, and --” Khan paused before standing straight from his lazy stance and advancing on Taber. “And you have to make love to her in the Chamber.”

Taber backed up a step -- not because he felt threatened by Khan, but in shock. “Never!” He pointed a finger at Khan. “I’ll never subject her to that.”

“You may not have much choice, my friend. It may be the only way to get Davin off your back. We can fight him -- even kill him -- but there will be others. I’ve been doing a little investigating, and unless I miss my guess, Gamin had a host of friends who are exactly the way he was.” He turned his back and placed his hands on the windowsill. “First we must protect your Akahana, then there are more women we must find and protect. And they do not have other mates.”

“Damn you all to hell,” Taber muttered. “All I want is to make Akahana comfortable and let her heal.”

“I know, my friend.” Khan sounded troubled, and Taber was surprised at how much he’d grown to like him in such a short time. This man was nothing like the Khan the Merciless Earth had been told about. “It’s just that this may be the only way totrulykeep her safe.”

“Okay. Start at the beginning.” Taber desperately needed to understand what he was up against. “Why would I have to make love to Akahana in order to get inside the Chamber?”

Khan turned back to Taber. “Normally, one only enters the Chamber of Souls if he is challenging the validity of a mate claim, or if he is being challenged. Then both mates must enter, along with the challenger. The souls awaiting rebirth will wait for the couple to join, and if they are mates, they use the ensuing sexual energy. It is possible for mates to enter the Chamber to ask something of the ancient souls there, but it isn’t something to enter into lightly.” Khan leaned back against the sill, one hand bracing him, the other gesturing as he explained. “When a living being enters the Chamber, the souls draw energy from them. That energy can be either the person’s life force, or the energy created when two mates join sexually. The only exception is during a challenge. If the couple engaging in sex are not true soul’s mates, the challenger’s life energy is not used, but rather the life energy of the falsely mated couple.” Khan held up a hand when Taber would have questioned him. “Don’t ask me why, it is simply part of life and religion as we know it. We do not question the ways of the souls, because they have given us advice and kept the peace for longer than recorded Gothe’maran history. Personally, I’ve always suspected that they can’t stand for a couple to claim to be mates when they aren’t because many of them have not been able to physically touch their mates for many lifetimes.”

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