CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
AIDEN
I opened the front door of my villa, glad to be home, but also aware that the mere fact that we were back somewhere familiar didn’t mean the roiling thoughts in my head were going to magically go away.
Zeke had been quite insistent that I should tell Jai that I wasn’t his intended master.
Jai felt no loyalty to the man who had paid for his training, Zeke had said, and moreover, he was enthused about the idea of ending up with an entirely different master.
But while that might have sounded very much like an open and shut case, I was all too aware of the distress it could cause when a dimari found out they weren’t quite as wanted as they’d assumed they were.
Jai stepped through the door behind me, and I waited with resignation for him to turn his scales black.
He’d turned them purple at the last possible second before we’d left this morning, and given his silence and his ongoing scowl on the way home, I didn’t expect anything to have magically changed since then.
He bent down and took off his shoes, his scales still purple, and I undid my boots and toed them off, leaving them kicked not quite neatly beside his. Then Jai closed the front door and let his gaze drift across the living room, his eyes avoiding mine.
Finally, he changed his scales to… blue. Very similar to the deep, ocean blue that Kade’s naturally were, just a shade or two darker.
Blue. I hadn’t seen him voluntarily be blue since I’d met him.
Zeke had said their conversation had ended on a tense note, and that Jai had all but bolted from the room when Zeke had given him permission to leave. So what the hell could have happened between then and now that could have inspired him to let his guard down enough to be blue?
I shoved the idea aside, adding it to the pile of issues I’d have to find a solution to later.
Instead, I swiftly checked the kitchen, then headed for the bedrooms when I didn’t see Kade.
The spare bedroom was empty, but I found him comfortably propped up in my bed, reading something on his comm. He smiled as he saw me arrive.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him. He had the bandage off his arm now, and I could see the neat line of stitches, along with a bright patch of purple bruising.
“I’m fine,” he said, in the sort of tone that meant ‘please stop fussing over me’. “I took another dose of painkillers, and I put a cold pack on the worst bruise on my thigh. It’s down to a dull ache, and I’ve been thoroughly entertained reading a detective novel.”
I felt a little of the tension I’d been carrying evaporate.
At least one of my dimari was fine. So I could put more of my energy into worrying about the other one.
“I had a thought that maybe we could all go out to dinner this evening,” I suggested.
“Somewhere nice on the waterfront. That’s if you’re feeling up to it, of course.
We can call a taxi to drive us down, instead of walking.
” The idea was designed to be partially a reward for Kade, for his good work during the mission, and partly a bribe for Jai, to hopefully convince him that there were positive sides to life here, regardless of his aversion to acknowledging them.
Kade looked at me with poorly disguised amusement. “A taxi? It’s a ten minute walk. I take it that reminding you of all of the exertions of my combat training would not be appropriate right now?”
I scowled at him, though I was trying not to smile at the same time. “Just because you can hike for two hours in the jungle with a broken leg, doesn’t mean that you need to, when there’s a perfectly civilised option available.”
Kade graciously conceded the point with a tilt of his head. “Then by all means, call a taxi.”
I left him alone to rest, intending to send a message to Bryce, letting him know what Zeke had said about Jai.
I was heavily leaning towards telling him the truth, but planning out exactly how to do so was going to take some effort.
I pulled up Bryce’s contact in my comm, but before I could start tapping out a message, an alert popped up, a bell chiming at the same time.
It was coming through on the military channel.
With a frown, I opened the message, wondering if there was another emergency at the base, or if something had gone wrong with one of the dimari we’d just found homes for.
“Fuck!” I spat the word out, cursing the thought I’d just had about the dimari.
Because, of course, no sooner had I opened the message than I found out that that was exactly it.
Sora, the dimari who’d been trained as a pilot, had apparently just found out that his master, Captain James Gell, hadn’t bought him after all.
James had sent me a frantic message, urgently requesting help to deal with the crisis that Sora now found himself in.
On my way to the base, I responded. Tell him that you like him very much, you’re very pleased with the work he’s been doing for you, and that I’m on my way to explain to him what happened.
Having a dimari find out they hadn’t been bought was always a tough situation, but for it to happen so early in the process of bonding with his master was a disaster.
I didn’t bother with my military uniform, just pulled on my shoes and grabbed my wallet and keys.
Then I dashed into the bedroom. “Kade, I gotta go to the base. Sora found out…” I cut myself off sharply, aware that there was a chance Jai could overhear me.
“He found out something he shouldn’t know,” I finished, giving Kade a look of alarm.
Hopefully, he’d figure out what I was trying to say without me actually saying it.
“Don’t know when I’m going to be back, but if it gets too late, you and Jai are free to make some dinner.
We might have to postpone that trip to the restaurant. ”
“Yes, sir,” Kade said, easily rolling with the change in plans.
“Jai?” I called, heading back to the living room. Jai was in the courtyard out the back, pulling a few weeds out of the garden, and he came to the back door at my call. “Emergency at the base,” I told him. “I’ll be gone for a couple of hours. If you need anything in the meantime, ask Kade.”
“Yes, sir,” Jai replied, with a far more cooperative expression than I’d been expecting. Until now, he’d mostly just scowled and snarled.
With that, I bolted out the door and ran all the way to the train station. But I wasn’t going to catch a train. As efficient as the transport system was, in the middle of the day on a weekday, a car would still be quicker.
I found a taxi outside the station, waiting to pick up a passenger from the constant flow of foot traffic, and I leapt into the passenger seat.
“The Hon military base,” I told the driver, tapping at my comm to link my account to the payment system.
“And I’m in a hell of a rush, so I’m not saying break any traffic laws, but if you could get me there as quickly as possible, I would greatly appreciate it. ”
The Wasop woman in the driver’s seat gave me a wicked grin, then checked her mirrors and put her foot on the gas. “I’ve always wanted someone to do that,” she said cheekily. “Jump into the car and yell ‘Drive, just drive!’ Well, okay, that’s not quite what you said, but it’s close enough.”
“I’m glad I’ve made your day,” I said, able to see the funny side of the situation. “Seriously, though, this is a real emergency. But even so, I’d prefer we both make it there in one piece.”
? ? ?
Tiki – the taxi driver – pulled to a rather abrupt stop in the visitors’ section of the parking lot at the military base.
“Thank you so much,” I said to her, as I hit ‘confirm’ on the payment option, then leapt out of the car like my ass was on fire.
I’d given her a brief rundown of my job on the way here, and she’d told me a story about her sister, who’d found out that her fiancé had been lying to her about his job for the past two years.
It was a relatable story, surprisingly similar to a dimari finding out the truth about their master, and she’d seemed genuinely sympathetic to the fact that I now had to go and try to get said dimari to understand the real situation.
While the story didn’t help me in any practical sense, it had bolstered my mood a little, and I walked into the conference room where James and Sora were waiting, feeling apprehensive, but also hopeful.
Sora was sitting at the table, his head down, his scales shimmering with flutters of purple and teal. James was slumped in a chair on the opposite side of the table, looking like someone had just run over his dog.
“Ah, Aiden,” he said, when he saw me. “Thank you for coming.” There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in the words – which I took no offence to whatsoever.
“How did he find out?” I asked first, because exactly what Sora knew – or thought he knew – was going to have a significant impact on this conversation.
I didn’t bother trying to hide anything from Sora.
At this point, the only way forward was to tell him the raw, stark truth, and then try to get him to understand that he was very much valued and appreciated, despite the situation.
“It was one of the other pilots,” James said, shaking his head.
“There’s a lot of banter that goes on over the radios.
We went on a test run to the Gema system – to see how Sora handled the ship and to make sure there were no issues for taking a longer run.
Once we came back through the Rendol wormhole, Horley and Baz were shooting the shit, and Baz let it slip that we found a crate of dimari that came out of a Eumadian ship we shot down. Sora heard everything.”
I nodded slowly, then I skirted around the table and took a seat beside Sora. He didn’t look up.
“Must have been quite a shock, huh?” I said to him. “To find out that your master didn’t actually buy you?”
Sora shuddered and hunched further in on himself, but said nothing.