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of the sea and divided their people—with nearly half of them abandoning ship to take their chances on living among the primitives—he saw no reason to feel any differently now only because they appeared somewhat more advanced than they had been.
    Very likely those who’d chosen to live among them had been butchered by the gods bedamned savages—Kira, Omar, and Le were no doubt long dead and gone. He’d accepted that likelihood and the certainty that he would never see them again as soon as he’d discovered his brothers and his woman were missing and knew what they’d done.
    He could not abandon his post and go after them, though. The city had been in chaos from the moment the meteor shower struck, the citizens terrified, running around in a blind panic with no notion of where to go or what to do to save themselves. It had taken all he and his men could do to round them up and herd them into the stasis chambers before their floating city sank.
    He supposed they’d counted on that when they’d decided to betray him.
    Truthfully, he wasn’t certain he would have gone after them if he could have—his brothers, maybe—Kira—he wasn’t at all sure.
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    He supposed he would have felt compelled to if it had been possible. He had bonded with Kira’s other chosen, had learned to look upon them as if they were true brothers—not like his blood brother, but the ties had been strong.
     
    Kira was another matter.
     
    She’d long since killed the love he’d felt for her when they’d first joined. In truth, if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d decided she wasn’t worth dying over, he thought he might have been more than a little tempted to strangle her.
     
    The fury he’d felt when he’d discovered she’d aborted their child-- his child—for no better reason than because she hadn’t wanted to chance ruining her beautiful body rushed over him as if it had only been the day before that he’d discovered it.

    For him, it had been little more than that—only a matter of days before the cataclysm when he’d gone into stasis. It didn’t matter how long it had actually been. In his mind it was no more than that and it was still just as fresh and painful as if it had just happened.

    She could’ve prevented the pregnancy if she hadn’t wanted his child. There was no excuse for what she’d done—none. He knew it had been premeditated maliciousness on her part—all of it—getting pregnant to start with and then aborting it—all calculated to avenge herself against him for wrongs she’d imagined.

    He’d been stupid enough when they’d first united to believe her possessiveness was a sign of her love for him. He’d been wrong. It was only a sign of possessiveness, a sense of ownership. She hadn’t cared about him. She was incapable of caring about anyone but herself. She’d figured she owned him, though, and she’d watched him like a hawk, interpreting everything he did as a sign of faithlessness.

    If he left their home because he couldn’t stand to listen to her harping any longer and couldn’t trust himself to keep his temper in check, he was fleeing to his mistress. If he was late in returning home because of his duties, he was with another woman. If he didn’t want her because he was worn out from working twelve hours straight to earn enough credits to buy her the things she wanted, he had expended himself on some other woman.

    He should have realized sooner that she wouldn’t have been so quick to question his motives and morals if her own hadn’t been questionable. By the time he’d realized that she was painting him with her own brush, though, doing what she constantly accused him of, she’d already lost the power to hurt him.

    He hadn’t loved her when she’d left. He wasn’t even certain when he’d finally stopped loving her. He was certain of when he’d begun to hate her, though. That was when she’d informed him she’d aborted his child.

    He shook his head, trying