101. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
A nya
It’s been 82 standard hours and fourteen minutes since the thing emerged from the refresher and asked the doctor to be shown to a cabin.
I can’t call him Zar. He says Zar is dead, and it certainly feels like it when I’m in the thing’s presence. And I refuse to call him Rynn. That will never happen. So I’ve given him other names in the privacy of my mind—none of them nice. Thing is what I try to stick to unless he’s done something particularly heinous—which is every time I interact with him.
He made it abundantly clear he wanted to be housed on the other side of the ship from my cabin. He asked for the hallway as far from me as possible. He didn’t just hint at that. That’s how he requested it. In that nasally, totally non-Zar-like manner full of arrogance and disdain.
Shadow and Dax escorted him, with me trailing along behind, following all the way to his new doorway. Even as I watched, his tail gave him away. Zar’s tail rises when he’s happy. It waves like a flag when he’s exuberant. When he’s angry or hurt, his tail almost drags the ground. Luckily, those negative emotions are mostly a thing of the past. Well, were a thing of the past.
One thing is certain, he never carries his tail straight out behind him. It’s just not the way it works. When I followed him with his tail parallel to the floor like that, it was obvious why Zar never did it. It looks ridiculous.
Despite his ludicrous tail carriage, I followed him to his cabin 82 hours ago. I even pushed between two of the baddest motherfuckers on the ship to ask again. I’ll quit mincing words. I didn’t ask , I begged. I stood at his threshold and actually begged to sleep on the floor near his bed just to ensure he was okay.
He soundly rejected me.
I’m nothing if not resilient—and sneaky. I assigned myself to the room next to his. Not that I’ve slept except for when fatigue overtakes me and I can’t take another step. It gives me an iota of comfort knowing he’s on the other side of my wall. Besides, did anyone really expect me to be able to sleep in the cabin I shared with my mate? In a room strewn with small items he made for me or gifted me with? The male who called me Beloved? The sexy lion-man who made love like a God?
For the fifth time since he soundly rejected my offer to sleep on his floor, I’m on my way to his cabin. The male likes to eat. He always did, and nothing has changed. The first time I arrived with food, the thing scrunched his nose and complained about the look, the smell, the portion size, and when he quit bitching and took a bite, the taste. It did not, however, prevent him from eating every last morsel on the plate. He says Zar is dead, but his taste buds are still alive.
I don’t just leave the plate of food, either. I bully my way in and stand while he eats.
The first time I brought food, there were two chairs at the small table and I bellied right up to it. I chattered away the whole time, all the while dying on the inside. Dying.
That first meal was two days after making love in that cave. Two days after his alleged death. But I shoved all the grief and anger deep inside me and dished up a plate of his favorite foods, and I waltzed into his room, sat inches from him, and talked.
Part of me hid in the back attic of my brain, weeping so hard she couldn’t think straight. But another part of me talked nonstop until he cleaned his plate.
“Remember last time we visited Paragon?” I asked. Not waiting for a reply, knowing I wouldn’t get one. I continued, “We had a list a mile long of places we wanted to visit, things we wanted to do, but except for a few obligations we couldn’t escape, we made love night and day.”
Thing’s face pinched as his gaze flew from mine.
“Do you know the moment I knew I loved you?” I asked, trying to trick him, tempt him to look at all of Zar’s loving memories.
“You’d been injured in the fight for our freedom. It was at that moment I knew I’d never be able to live without you.”
“I’m not Zar,” he’d said flatly, without eye contact. “He’s gone.”
A bullet to the heart wouldn’t have been more painful than that response.
In the intervening days, I’ve brought him every meal. He’s made it clear he doesn’t want to wander the hallways or darken the door to the dining room, which leaves him at the mercy of someone bringing him his food.
Since I threatened every male and female on this ship that I’d make them walk the plank if they fed him, that elected me as his only means of sustenance.
He’s not without his own resources. He removed the spare chair. I’m nothing if not motivated. I just stand in his room and talk while he eats. The pace of his eating has become swifter with each meal, but that doesn’t stop me.
I don’t know why it took me three days to think of it, but today I grab a chair, put his meal tray on it, and breeze into his room with the means to have a long chat. I even brought my own plate, filled to the rim with food.
I’m even more desperate today than I have been. We arrive on planet Boklorn tomorrow where he’s slated to meet with the Symbiont Council.
Thing is impossible to engage in small talk. I found that out days ago. He makes it clear by body language he doesn’t want to hear one word of my trip down memory lane about Zar and me. He’s even mentioned on more than one occasion that he knows every minute of Zar’s life, and he could watch it all if he wanted—that made him blush.
Ton’arrs blush in an interesting way. Their skin is covered by fur, so you can’t see any color changes, but they get nervous and their noses twitch. In Zar, it was endearing. Thing just looks like he smells something rancid.
He finished his very proper tirade about not wanting to hear my stories by reminding me my mate is gone, that there is no way for him to rise from the dead, that those “synapses are permanently and irretrievably severed.”
Fuck you. I still have hope.
Although Thing doesn’t engage in small talk, he’s too proper not to answer direct questions, so that is now 90% of what our conversations consist of.
“What happens tomorrow?” I ask, then take the smallest bite humanly possible. It’s maybe the size of a pea, a small pea. Thing would never be so rude as to kick me out before I’m finished eating. I’ve orchestrated this meal to go on for days if I want to.
“Tomorrow I will leave this ship and go to the Symbiont Council’s conference room. There is an antechamber there where I will conduct a ceremonial bath, then don white robes appropriate to the belated welcoming ceremony. After the ceremony, I will continue my work of amassing knowledge to be stored in this… new body. Zar will continue to be productive.”
He interrupts his discourse with a bite of food. While he chews, I try to find traces of Zar in him. The other Anya starts weeping inside me again. It’s maddening, crazy-making, to sit inches from the form of the male I love and not be able to reach him.
The warm look in his eyes when he gazes at me, the way he could never have gone an entire meal without grazing the back of his fingertips against my thigh, or sharing a penetrating look. Those are completely absent. Gone.
Even his mannerisms are nowhere to be found. Not the way he cuts his food or chews or lifts his glass to his lips. He’s far too proper and nothing like my lion-man.
“Since this is the first time in over two hundred annums that anything this… unusual has happened in a joining, there will be questions.”
“You pretend to be so high and mighty,” I blurt. “How can you justify invading Zar? Just taking him over and killing him without remorse?” I usually try to be calm. I haven’t accused him like this before. But he’s leaving tomorrow and I want him to acknowledge everything he’s taken from me.
That expression he usually wears when he’s in the same room as me—the one where it looks like he smells something bad—falls from his face. For the first time since we met, he looks at me with compassion.
“I should have apologized sooner. Now that I’ve assimilated his memories, I see my error. I was formless, sightless. I thought the transfer was happening as it has for millennia, according to plan. I assumed I had been invited. I see now why you think I invaded. If I could do it over again I would have simply died on that mountain rather than enter a being without permission. I apologize.”
I suck in a startled breath. I think he’s being sincere. I didn’t believe an apology would make me feel better, but it… soothes me somehow.
“Can’t you just leave?” I whisper.
“I’m sorry. Zar is no longer alive. He can’t come back.” He straightens his spine, lifts his chin, and says, “I have taken the liberty of asking Captain Shadow to…”
I wanted to listen. I was tuned in. But the words “Captain Shadow” threw me for a loop. There has only been one captain on board this ship since the insurrection—Captain Zar. It’s a travesty. A shock. A jolt to my system. For a moment I want to join the weak, crying Anya in my mind’s attic, but I put a lid on it. I’ll cry the moment I close the door behind me in my new cabin.
“Pardon?” I ask, feigning I’d been overly interested in the next pea-sized morsel I was transporting from the plate to my mouth.
“I’ve asked… for the Fool’s Errand to wait before leaving atmo in case, on the off chance, that one of the Council might have questions about the event.” Did he know using the words Captain Shadow would decimate me? Is that why he said them? Or did he simply stumble into them?
“So we’re to cool our heels to be at your beck and call?” After this slips out, I consider apologizing for my snark, but nope, not gonna happen.
“It would be very kind of you to do so,” he replies as he delicately wipes the corners of his mouth with his napkin, like some fop in a historical novel.
Kind. Yeah, that’s what I want to do, be kind to my mate’s killer. No. He. Is. Not. Dead. I refuse to believe Thing killed him, no matter how many times he tells me otherwise.
The idea that strikes me next couldn’t be more crazy. Insane, really, especially after that little interchange.
“Rynn,” I say. My voice has that deep timbre that would instantly perk Zar’s ears. “You know, in effect, you’ve made me a widow.”
I just threw that out there. If I could have thought of a way to make it even more of a guilt trip, I would have.
“Again, I apologize. I’m sorry.” He barely manages to make his voice contrite. His gaze is focused on the congealing gravy on his plate.
If this were really Zar, I’d know he wasn’t sorry by his tone of voice, but if I give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe this is the sound of contrition Rynn-style.
“I think you owe me something,” I say, wondering if this will earn me even a moment of eye contact.
His gaze snaps to mine. Now I’ve got his complete attention.
Go ahead, Anya. This is a crazy, terrible idea. The craziest, terriblest idea ever thought by your mind or the mind of any other being, living or dead. Go for it.
“I would like to share my mate’s bed. One last time before you leave.”
I’ve never seen this look on Zar’s face. I believe if there were a picture in the dictionary next to the word “aghast” this would be it.
“Miss Anya,” he splutters.
Good job, Thing . Put as much verbal distance as you can between us.
If I were a nice person, I would shut up, stand down, take my unholy offer off the table. Instead, I double down by spearing him with my gaze and continuing, “I’d like to make love to my husband one more time.”
He stands so fast his chair clatters to the floor behind him.
“I have… regrets about what happened. It was unfortunate, but your mate allowed me, albeit unwittingly, into his body. The damage was done before I knew I wasn’t in the body of the acolyte who travels with me for this express purpose.”
For one split second, he wears a Zar expression—one of true contrition, sorrow for hurting me. When Zar and I were locked in that cell together three years ago, I knew this expression well. He’d lived a terrible life, and it showed in the look on his face, the slump of his shoulders, his mournful eyes. Rynn shows me this for the briefest moment, then returns to his pompous self.
“I’m not willing to do such a thing. Arclites are celibate. We take a vow. We keep our emotions at bay so we do not corrupt our internal information repositories.”
I can’t hold back anymore. My lips are trembling, and I can’t contain the hot tears stabbing behind my eyes. I put myself out there with this stupid, idiotic request, which only earned me one more rejection. I wish the vastness of space would swoop in and swallow me.
“And Anya.” He waits for my gaze to meet his. “Even if I could, I wouldn’t do it because it would harm you. Do you understand?” he asks. And now, in this moment, he looks like the male I love. For just this brief second, something real sneaks through his defenses and he lets me see his compassion. “It wouldn’t be Zar. I’m not Zar. It would be like eating a picture of food you love, not the real thing. He’s gone. You can’t get him back.”