Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
AIRIK
It was nearly morning when the ship lost power, along with its ability to purify water.
The ship seemed to cry as it thumped three times in a futile attempt to pull power from the energy cores.
But the failing reactors, beaten to death by age and lack of maintenance for the two days Airik had been preoccupied with Nora, had nothing left to give in their overheated state.
Relief washed over him when he found her still asleep under the sheets, unaware of the fate that had befallen them.
He grabbed her dry clothes and knelt beside her. She faced away from him, the tail of her hair the only part of her he could see over the covers.
Giving himself the small pleasure of watching her, his breathing slowed to match hers.
After a moment, looking wasn’t enough. The Veynari couldn’t see him. And even if all six of the Ourex were in the room with him, it couldn’t have stopped what he was going to do next.
Entranced, he brought her hair close to him. Maybe if he allowed himself this small indulgence, then the more maddening, obsessive thoughts would die. He’d touched her before—just a fleeting curiosity. This was nothing more than that.
Her hair was much thicker than his, with waves that escaped its binds. Bringing the end to his nose, he shut his eyes and breathed. She overwhelmed him. Floral. Sweet. With a feminine essence that called to his blood.
Oh, yes…he’d be haunted by her for the rest of his life. But was that worse than regretting having never known this part of her at all? Carefully, he set her braid down beside her.
“Nora,” he said. Softly, so she didn’t startle. “Time to wake.”
She turned to him but was still fast asleep.
“Nora,” he said again, brushing the hair from her eyes—to rouse her, of course.
Still, she slept.
They had to leave soon to ensure they’d reach shelter by the river or the “agricultural research” marker on his navigation charts by night.
In one swift motion, Airik yanked the blanket from her, thinking it’d wake her.
Her shirt had ridden up her body, revealing the curves of her hips and the soft swell of her belly. She wore impossibly small pink shorts with smiling yellow faces printed on them. A little pink ribbon rested on the band, just below her navel, twisted in loops.
A hot rush of want slammed into him. Stealing his breath, he was buried in a primal energy he’d never allow himself to feel if there were a warning or choice.
The feeling was so oppressive that Airik threw the blanket back over her like he’d uncovered a deadly animal.
He turned away, his hands clenching into fists.
How was he meant to go on like this? To travel with her? To be forced to carry her, have that body against his?
He adjusted his trousers and thought of everything he hated to stop his cock from responding. Littering in protected lands. Loud voices when a quiet voice would do. Gursht—the Iralian word for near.
His mind controlled his body, not the other way around. He was a morazir. Rising through the ranks and surviving—despite being wild—through the sweat of his efforts and the toil of his intellect. He was untouched. Untaken. Unconquered. Unkillable. Unbranded, most importantly.
She was an annoyance. This was not the first time he’d seen the female form—he’d seen them in the required breeding instructions all Veynari citizens were made to watch once they were entered into the matching system.
He’d survive it. He was not a slave to the little human who was supposed to be dead had he done his duty correctly.
He could not get lost in her large brown eyes that looked as though they contained eternity.
He pushed the image of Nora’s perfect—forbidden—body into a silk-lined box in his mind, where he could grapple with it later. Blood dispersed to the rest of him. Most importantly, it reached his brain, and he could think properly again.
A metallic glimmer under his desk caught his attention. Nora’s necklace that she’d torn off in anger. Not knowing why, he shoved it into his pocket, beside the neural chip that had programmed his progenitor’s language module, unable to ignore the irritating hope that one day he could repair it.
Airik returned to her, absolute steel in his resolve, ice in his blood. He took a deep breath and nearly shouted, “Nora!”
She shot up, tangled in the sheets. She blinked several times, then rubbed her eyes, panicked. “I can’t see!”
“You are okay.” He rested his hand on hers, allowing her to take it. “No power, so no lights. Time to go.”
Leading her outside the ship, where she could see, he shoved her own clothes into her arms. “I cleaned. Get dressed.”
Nora looked at him, then the clothes. “You washed them for me?”
“Yes,” he said, again struck by her gratitude.
She hurried under the ship, behind the ramp, for privacy while changing.
The forest was innocuous, its depth seemingly infinite.
According to the navigation charts in his pocket, the city of Buriji was about a day’s walk inland if it were just him.
Three or four with her limping beside him or on his back.
Five or six if he needed to stop and give himself space from her.
Which, now that he’d seen what lay beneath her clothes, he’d undoubtedly need.
An ear-shredding scream rang out.
Instantly, he was at Nora’s side, gun already drawn and charged.
“Something licked me!” She grabbed his arm, then remembered herself and let go. “It went in there,” she said, pointing to where the ramp drew into the ship.
He looked her up and down. She was already dressed, wearing the slippers. His lip twitched. “What went in there?”
“I—I don’t know what it was, but when I screamed, it squeezed into that hole. Look—its tail!”
Blue fur whipped wildly back and forth, sticking out from the crevice where the ship’s ramp was meant to be stored. Something rustled from within the outer hull.
Airik grabbed the fur, yanking hard. Two little yelps sounded—one from the creature and one from Nora. Holding the tail firm, he gave another sharp pull.
“Don’t hurt it!” Nora cried out.
He looked to her, still gripping the thrashing tail.
“I mean…it was kind of cute.”
“Cute?”
While focusing on Nora, something wet and cold snuffled his hand. He turned slowly, irritated that he’d allowed himself to be distracted again.
A pair of large green eyes peered back at him, nestled in a puff of blue-and-purple fur.
Airik gasped. An ooshi. Here, on Ed’un. A creature made to be a companion for sapient species, on a planet that no longer had any.
It blinked several times, then let out a weak trill.
“What is it?” Nora asked, taking a step forward.
“Stay there,” Airik ordered. “I do not know if it’s safe.”
He turned back to the ooshi. “Armo,” he said, commanding it to be calm. How many times had he said this word to his own ooshi a lifetime ago? His throat burned.
The ooshi made a panicked bark.
“Armo, ooshi-ti,” Airik said again. Calm, little friend. He drew its long tail out with firm pressure, letting it know it wouldn’t get lost in the belly of the ship.
With the caution of an animal betrayed too many times, it bared its teeth, trembling.
“Balya i ya,” he said. Come to me.
It let out another trill, like a sigh. Slowly, it shuffled forward. When it came close enough, he grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, dragging it out in a whipping mass of fur.
“Is that—a fox?” Nora asked, coming much too close.
Airik let out a growl, stepping back. “I told you to stay.”
Both she and the ooshi froze. He looked between them. Why did it obey an English word?
“An ooshi.” He held it up so Nora could see. Its singed, prismatic fur clumped together. “I think it wanted to hide from the rain. Come close to see, slowly. I will not let it hurt you.”
She reached a tentative hand up before turning to Airik. “Is it okay?”
“It will be okay.” He knelt to the ground, and Nora followed. Her ankle seemed to be doing a little better.
A small sound vibrated from the ooshi’s chest, its slit-pupiled eyes darting furtively between both of them. Nora let her finger hover, just short of the ooshi’s face, letting it decide to touch her. After a pause, it nosed her, eyes wide with hopeful suspicion.
“Aren’t you the cutest?” she said gently, tickling under its chin.
The ooshi’s pupils opened into large black circles, and it barked out a declaration. It twisted out of Airik’s grasp, then hopped into Nora’s lap, nearly knocking her down.
“Careful!” Airik caught it by the back of its neck, pulling back.
“It’s okay,” Nora said, tapping his arm. “Let him go.”
Suppressing another growl, Airik did as she asked.
She patted its neck, and the ooshi responded by nudging her chest. “An ooshi,” she laughed, now giving the creature more confident pats.
Airik watched, something prickling in his chest, as the ooshi flipped over to bare its belly and paw at her hand. No. You don’t have time for this, he thought, recognizing the gesture and where it would lead. Before he could tear the ooshi from Nora, she hugged it to her chest.
The ooshi’s pupils went wide, then narrowed again, taking in Nora before giving him a secondary glance. Its tail wound tight around her waist.
It had imprinted—its purpose fulfilled.
“I’m sorry I screamed,” Nora crooned. “I must’ve scared you. I didn’t have such a great first experience with animals here, so you must excuse me.”
Her finger caught on something around its neck. When she pushed the fur out of the way, she paused, revealing a band.
Fuck, Airik thought, the human word perfect for what was unfolding.
“Enough.” He lifted the ooshi from Nora’s lap, but it hooked its claws into her pants and squealed in protest.
“You wanna stay with me?” In a bold move, she pushed Airik’s arm away. He stood there, his arm still outstretched, as the ooshi gave him a smug look.
She searched the frayed collar, parts of it hanging on by a thread. “How long has this planet been abandoned?”
He poured water into a depression in the ground and set two portions of nutrition gel beside it. “Nora, it is time to go. We have already wasted suns.”
“Are you sure this planet is abandoned? There’s obviously someone else here. This little guy belongs to—”
“There is no one here. There has not been for a very long time.”
Nora held the ooshi close to her chest, though half its body hung off, too large to sit in her lap. It purred louder.
“Say goodbye.”
“How long has this place been abandoned?” she asked firmly.
His jaw ticked. “Since the year I was born.”
“Are you sure?” She patted the ooshi’s head, frowning. “How long do these things live?”
“I am sure. They are made to be friends for life and have the same years as a person.” His fist clenched on the sword’s handle. “I know because I had one when I was small.”
Nora’s breath hitched. “So they live long lives.” She looked down, her color paling. “Which means this one…”
“Has been here since then,” he finished for her.
He saw the precise moment the tragic pieces of the ooshi’s life came together in Nora’s mind.
“He’s been alone for all this time?”
Airik searched for something to say to stop her tears, to ease his own pain of having to witness them. “Yes. But do not forget that he’s survived. He must be clever.”
She shook her head, cradling the ooshi, her fingers brushing its long fur. “But…you’re telling me he had a family that loved him enough to give him a collar? A family he was made for and then…” Her voice trailed as the tears broke in full force.
“There were no families here. Only people who studied the planet and…other things. Maybe he belonged to one person only.”
“He was loved once—even if just by one person,” she insisted.
Her tone was not all sorrow but anger, too.
“Forgotten? With no one around and no explanation of what he did wrong? And he… And he…” All of Nora’s weariness and grief of the past few days burst out in her sobs that tugged on Airik’s heart.
For the thousandth time, he wondered if supernatural forces hadn’t conspired to torture him.
She cried with a distinct gleam in her eyes, an overly bright look as though she wept for memories. Airik didn’t know if she spoke of the ooshi or herself or if she’d somehow seen into his heart and it was for him she cried.
He petted the ooshi from ear to tail, a practiced stroke he’d done hundreds, if not thousands, of times a lifetime ago. “We need to leave, Nora. I know what is in your mind. And I say no.”
The ooshi perked up as if it understood the fate Airik had just decided for it. It twisted its long, dexterous tail into her hair as if to say it was too entangled now to be left behind.
“I don’t think he likes that answer.” Nora sat up straighter. “Please…if he’s made to be a pet, then he must’ve been miserable for all these years. He can follow us. I think he’ll be a good boy.”
“He has survived, and he looks well and still young. He will continue like he has.”
“But…you said he’s made to be a friend, and I think he’s my friend now. See?” She raised her arms to show the ooshi had pressed itself into her side, curling around her body. “We can’t be separated.”
“Is he your friend? Already?”
“Yeah. Just like you’re already my friend.” She gave him a smile that could’ve led him off a cliff.
Shame drilled into him at her innocent proclamation. If only she knew what he thought of her. How inadequate that word was for what she was becoming to him.
“Am I…your friend?” he asked, his voice suddenly hoarse.
Do friends want to hunt every pulse point on your body, sucking on them until you’re a writhing mess?
Do friends want to trace each vein visible beneath your terrifyingly thin skin until no part of you remains undiscovered?
Do friends want to fill you so completely that every word in every language loses meaning and you can’t even say the word friend at all?
He clenched his teeth and turned away without waiting for her reply. Fuck. These would be the worst days of his life.
“Please don’t make me leave him behind,” he heard her say.
“You can barely walk,” he said, swallowing a thick mass of something in his throat. “You are giving me an extra life to carry.”
He looked at the ooshi, who now had its tail wrapped around his ankle.
A morazir can’t ever be a friend.
He turned, not helping her up and ignoring the confused noise she made.
“I do not have—or need—a friend.” He gave both the creature and her a pointed look. “Especially not twice.”