Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sorin
“ A gain?” Killan sounds surprised to be receiving communication from me twice in one day. With the bedroom door closed, I can hear Briar’s muffled conversation but not clearly enough to identify any individual words.
I slump against my headboard. “I want to talk.”
“Talk?” Killan sounds even more surprised. “Talk about what? Is your work progressing on schedule?”
“Yes.” I wave away his concern, not wishing to start a conversation about algae when I have other, more important matters on my mind. “I was set a task, by John Smith.”
“Akh.” Killan’s shoulders drop. Behind him I can see a whitewashed wall of the main house, and I can hear his footsteps. I think he is heading downstairs. A door opens, then closes, and he sits on his bed, mirroring my position. From his reaction, it is clear he knows about these tasks and mayhaps has been set some himself. “What does the task demand?”
Shrinking my view of him until it fills only half the screen, I pull up the message from LOVE GALAXY. It takes my old datapad effort to run the two tasks simultaneously, and the video quality drops, turning Killan blurry.
“Your second task,” I read aloud, “is to instruct your partner in the ways of Ril’os mating rituals.”
Silence follows my words. Killan shifts on his bed, resettling himself. Then he asks, “What did you do?”
“Nothing.” I shrug. “I contacted Roan’s datapad?—”
“Which I answered,” he concludes. “You distracted Briar with Lydia.”
“Not exactly… ” Except, that is exactly what I did. “She was anxious to know how the other Females are faring,” I say, trying to justify myself. “What would you have done?” I demand, resenting the note of accusation I hear in my own voice.
This time the silence stretches on. I sink lower, until I am practically lying horizontal, holding my datapad up with one arm in an attempt to keep the camera focused on my face.
I wish I had not called. I wish Killan would hurry up and say something. I wish I already knew the answer.
“We could research,” he eventually suggests.
“Why did our parents never tell us any of this? They would have known.”
“They were busy,” he says. “We could call them now.” But he is shaking his head even as he makes the suggestion.
“No,” I agree. Our father barely remembers who we are these days. And our mother spends much of her time caring for him. Or grieving Roa. She put so much of her energy into the farm after Roa’s passing that sometimes it felt as if she was trying to forget about her eldest child. Now, her thoughts are always on Roa, and she deserves to be left in peace.
“Ril’os. Mating. Rituals,” Killan says as he taps his screen. “Enter.” Another pause follows, presumably as the search results load.
I would copy him to see them for myself, except that my datapad could not remain in communication with Killan’s and run a simple search function concurrently. I glance at the closed door, beyond which I can still hear Briar speaking with Lydia on my newer datapad.
“There is a lot of information on the procreation act.”
“You do not need to read that aloud!” The datapad slips from my grasp and hits the floor. I dive after it and straighten to see a new crack across the glass and Killan staring straight at me. My hand holding the datapad has a distinct blue tinge, but I refuse to examine the rest of my scales, not needing further confirmation of my embarrassment. It was difficult enough calling about mating rituals. These are not topics we generally discuss.
“I was not going to,” he says, voice deadly calm. There is not a flicker of blue among his scales. His finger touches his screen again. I think he is scrolling through the results. “Rutting. Rutting. Rutting,” he says, evidently dismissing many of the results as he scrolls. “Rutting… ”
“Nothing else? I want something that is less… Something more… I want romance,” I confess, lowering my voice to ensure Briar cannot hear me through the door. Almost hoping Killan cannot hear me.
“This one says Ril’os Males become aggressive toward other Males when in the presence of a potential Mate.”
“That is all?” I already knew that. I had walked over a table to confront John Smith. I had wanted to hit Killan. I had wanted to fight Roan.
“Here is a study on the ideal temperature for Ril’os Females. Another on their sleeping patterns, their metabolisms, their hormones. There have been many studies.” He continues scrolling. “Many, many studies.”
Briar is not Ril’os. “Briar said I should ignore the task and do something I want instead.”
“That is one possibility,” Killan agrees, pausing his search. “So you really do wish for Briar to be your Mate?”
“I had thought that was obvious.”
He raises two hands in a gesture of appeasement. “I was merely checking. You could have been lying for the benefit of the cameras.”
I glance toward the camera mounted on the wall opposite, its lens focused on my face. Since coming into my room, I had forgotten I was being filmed, and now this entire conversation is public record. I snap my mouth shut, my throat suddenly thick with regret.
Killan clearly had not forgotten. Instead of dismissing my fears when I first called, though, he had answered me, giving me his full attention and disregarding any negative implications such a conversation might reflect on him. Those implications being that neither of us knows what we are doing. That neither of us is used to Female company and all the difficult emotions that accompany the vulnerable act of finding a Mate.
I want to thank him, but to do so would only draw even more attention. I will just have to hope that this conversation does not make it into one of the LOVE GALAXY episodes. John Smith has been collecting hundreds of hours of footage; he cannot possibly use every minute of it to build his broadcast.
“You are happy with Briar, I am guessing. You do not find her too… akh… ” Killan struggles to locate the right word.
“What?” I glare at him, straightening to my full height. “Do I find her too what?”
“Do not growl at me,” he snaps. “And I did not mean Briar specifically. I have barely spoken with her. I know almost nothing about her.”
“Then what?” Suddenly suspicious, I point at him on my screen. “Which of the Females have you been arguing with? Harlee or Lydia?”
“I have not—” He purses his lips, refusing to dignify my question with a lie.
“Come on,” I coax. “You argue with everyone who does not let you lecture them. That is how you communicate.”
“Forget I said anything.” A muscle twitches in his cheek. He looks away from the screen.
“You are very much like our mother.”
Still, he ignores me. Sulking. Looking suddenly younger than his thirty-eight years.
“Right now you remind me of Roan,” I tease, knowing exactly how to elicit a response.
“Pah!” His eyes flash.
“See. That is exactly what Roan would have said.”
“You are impossible.” And he ends the communication.
I drop the old datapad onto my mattress, allowing myself the luxury of hiding my face in all four hands, wishing I had not called. Wishing Killan could have given me a better answer. Wishing I knew what the fek I could do to persuade Briar to stay with me forever.