Page 73 of Dark Rebel's Reckoning

A sharp knock on her door pulled her from her self-pity fest, but before she could respond, the door swung open, and Jade's figure filled the entrance.

"What are you doing?" her mother asked, her eyes taking in the scene—the tablet, the scattered papers, the textbook.

Drova resisted the urge to close the video. "Studying," she murmured.

Jade arched a brow. "By watching a video?"

"It's a class. An instructional video." Drova gestured to the tablet. "Parker said I could find classes on YouTube if the book was too difficult. And trust me, algebra is just mind-numbing."

To her surprise, Jade nodded approvingly. "Adapting to overcome obstacles is a good strategy." She walked into the room, her gaze shifting to the algebra equation on the screen. "I applaud your initiative. This looks like a foreign language to me."

It was on the tip of Drova's tongue to ask her mother whether the Kra-ell had something equivalent to algebra and whether kids learned it at school, but she was afraid to ask in case her mother confirmed her suspicion that the Kra-ell were too dumb to learn things like this.

As long as it was just her, she could live with that, but she refused to believe that her entire race of people was either incapable of, or had difficulty with, learning what every human runt had no problem with.

"I'm going on another mission tomorrow," Jade said. "That's what I came in to tell you before I got distracted. We are going to Iran to rescue more likely Dormants."

Drova straightened, her wound momentarily forgotten. "Can I go with you?" It would be much more fun than what she was doing now.

"No." Jade's tone left no room for argument, but Drova had never been one to heed such warnings. "Your wound is still healing."

"I can help," she insisted. "My compulsion ability isn't affected by the injury."

Jade's expression remained impassive. "The mission parameters do not require your specific talents."

"That's ridiculous," Drova countered. "Compulsion is always useful."

"Not for this operation." Jade sat down on Drova's bed. "It's a simple extraction. The targets are more of Kyra's relatives. Her sisters and their offspring."

"Wait a minute." Drova lifted a hand. "Are the girls we rescued her relatives as well and she didn't know?"

"They are her nieces, daughters of her sisters, which makes them Dormants, and that's why the Doomer abducted them. Thediagarawanted to create his own breeding program so he could amass his own army of immortal warriors."

"Wow," Drova mouthed. "That's even worse than what we imagined. But didn't we kill all of his underlings?"

"Apparently not. He told Kian and Toven that he sent people to get more of Kyra's relatives, who are also Dormants since Kyra has only sisters. Four of them."

Excitement flickered through Drova. "That's actually good. If the girls are Dormants, they will come to live in the village. I was worried about what would happen to them. I thought maybe Kian would send them to the sanctuary for Vanessa to take care of. They are no different than other trafficking victims."

Jade nodded. "You are right, but since they are Dormants, I have no doubt that they will come straight to the village. They will probably need a friend." She gave her a meaningful look.

Drova snorted. "And you think I'm the right person for that? Remember what happened the last time I befriended clan teenagers?"

She'd used them, compelled them to do things they would never have done on their own, and when she'd been caught and they had to determine her punishment, they had gone too easy on her, had been too forgiving. Perhaps that was why she was inflicting on herself the torment of algebra even though Kian pardoned her sentencing.

"That is in the past," Jade said. "These girls will be new here, and they have no preconceptions about you. On the contrary, you were part of the team that liberated them. They probably think of you as a hero."

"They have eyes, don't they?" Drova gestured to her face, with its pronounced Kra-ell features. "They'll be scared of me."

Something softened in Jade's expression, revealing a rare glimpse of the maternal concern she usually kept hidden beneath her warrior's exterior. "I think you're the one who's scared, Drova. We're born warriors, you and I, and fighting comes naturally and easily to us. It's the other things, the softer emotions, that challenge us. But if you want to become a leader one day, you need to confront obstacles and embrace challenges that lie outside your comfort zone." Jade rose to her feet and cast a glance at the video still playing in the background without sound. "I believe you already understand that."

Long after her mother had walked out, her words still echoed in Drova's mind.

She'd faced far more terrifying adversaries than four traumatized teenagers, but there was something about the prospect of friendship with them that felt more dangerous than any battlefield.

In combat, the rules were clear. Victory or defeat. Life or death. But friendship with humans who had never even heard of Kra-ell? There was no training manual for navigating those unfamiliar waters.

With a sigh, Drova returned to her abandoned algebra problem: 4x - 9 = 15. She stared at it, the numbers swimming before her eyes.

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