Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
Axel
Nora pulled me aside as we got ready to head into the meeting at the Pentagon, shoving me into a small office of some sort and looking around.
She pulled out a small device, and I frowned at it.
“What’s that?” Kitten“A signal scrambler,” she said.
“Not that I want to sound paranoid, but…” She shrugged.
A scrambler would block signals from bugs, but she efficiently checked the room as though someone could be listening anyway, like she was paranoid.
Which I supposed a lot of us in the intelligence community were.
I didn’t exactly know what Nora was, just that she was US military intelligence, and that I got the idea that she was perhaps a little older than she looked, maybe in her late thirties or early forties.
Perhaps a higher rank than the military would normally send into this kind of situation.
She checked the scrambler one more time then, finally satisfied, she turned to face me, crossing her arms over her chest. “Can I trust you, Mason?” she asked.
I chuckled. “Can I trust you, Wilder?”
She rolled her eyes, then lowered her voice. “I know you love the prince, and I know you’re emotionally enmeshed in that weird threesome thing you have going with that woman. But do you trust the Aunga’ri are here with good intentions?”
I hesitated, then met her curious eyes. “I do. He’s shown me.”
“Shown you?” She frowned, backing up.
I kept my voice quiet, glancing around, because I didn’t want to sound crazy. Or to be removed from my post. “Battles he’s been in. I’ve seen his memories of a planet they tried to help before that was destroyed. Memories from when he was very young of their own planet as it was destroyed.”
“How?” she whispered, but somehow I knew she knew. I had seen her with the commander, seen the way they seemed to communicate on a different level.
“You see it with the commander, don’t you?”
“I don’t know what I can trust.” She hesitated. “How do we know they’re not fucking with our heads? If they can get inside our minds, they can tell us whatever they want.”
I laughed. “I don’t know what the commander’s mind is like, but T’ukka is without artifice.
He shows me things that he doesn’t mean to show me as well as those he does.
I trust him.” She still looked skeptical.
“I can control him as much, if not more, than he can control me. And Mia seems to have a firm grip on us both. It’s an emotional connection, deep and unbreakable. ”
She hesitated. “Are you sure?”
“Is that not what you feel with the commander?”
“Sometimes. I don’t know what to trust anymore, don’t know what’s coming from me and what’s coming from him.” And I realized that the same bond that made me feel grounded and whole was throwing her into a tailspin.
“It’s real. The commander loves you and would do anything to protect you, even summon the wrath of a prince.
” I met her eyes and widened mine, and something clicked for her.
She frowned up at me, studying me with golden brown eyes that were really lovely.
I knew she was smart and a fierce fighter, capable and beautiful.
“I see why he loves you. Let him love you, if you care about him the same way. He’s a good man. ”
“I don’t know about that,” she murmured. “But if we are to believe that the Aunga’ri are here for the greater good, we need to sell that to the higher-ups without sounding brainwashed.”
I hesitated. “Why would they think we’re brainwashed?”
“I believe the Vul have been plantings seeds of dissent with their spies. They have taken the time to learn about the humans, perhaps better than the Aunga’ri. The Aunga’ri come in as bold, benevolent helpers. The Vul seek to understand before they destroy.”
“So they’re on Twitter,” I said.
She snorted a laugh. “Pretty much. They’re invading human media channels, leaking a conspiracy theory that probably can’t be reeled back in at this point.
You know how it is with conspiracies. If they disappear, they gain more strength.
People have their screen shots, people see the government stepping in to stop their rants and they flip out even more. ”
“Fuck.”
“Right. But seeing that Vul the other day, the one you fought with Mu’ol, the way he blended in. It has me in a tailspin, and I’m not sure how much to share with the higher-ups.”
“Just how high up are you?” I asked. “What’s your real rank?”
She hesitated then sighed, running a hand through her curly hair. “High up enough that I haven’t been in the field like this in quite a while. They’ll listen to my advice but we need to tread lightly, to approach it with clear minds and no emotion. Am I clear?”
I nodded. “You take the lead, Nora. I trust you to do it correctly.” Saying this sent a shudder of tension through me, because while I trusted T’ukka and Mia implicitly, those were really the only two people in my life that I’d ever trusted.
There was no choice but to place my trust in this woman, who seemed capable and competent, but how could I know that she wouldn’t go to the council and say the exact opposite of what she was telling me?
“In this case, I think less will be more. But they need to know that what’s coming is insidious, that it’s unlikely to be a bunch of space ships that appear in the sky and shoot at us like a Hollywood movie.
” She pushed the button on her scrambler and stood, straightening her uniform.
I followed her out, eying the other members of the attaché who had joined us for this meeting.
Why had she singled me out? Were there others we couldn’t trust?
Trust no one. And when we walked into the meeting to give our report, I watched Nora’s eyes widen.
Up on the stands was a man I recognized, a young American soldier named Rob McCarthy.
Nora pulled me behind a group of soldiers who were watching the proceedings, nodding in time with Rob’s vehement speech.
We hadn’t heard the beginning of it, but the end was enough.
“We need to understand that we’re being attacked on two fronts here.
The Aunga’ri and the Vul both seek to destroy Earth.
These armies leave a path of destruction in their wake, and now they’ve made our planet their next battleground. ”
“Fuck,” Nora whispered, her eyes wide. “We need to get the fuck out of here and get back to Montana.”
We both turned, quietly slipping back out of the room, and ran headfirst into a group of soldiers. “Sir. Ma’am. We’ve been instructed to detain you as possible spies.”