Chapter 60
CHAPTER SIXTY
AIRIK
Airik thrust open the door to the room Xallix had disappeared into. The latch broke off, clattering to the floor. Immediately, they were hit with the oppressive smell of burning wires.
Xallix sat on the floor in the small cell, his long legs bent to fit in the narrow space. He worked over a computing screen. Beside him, his small tools lay in a neat row, but no exposed wires or equipment.
The moment he saw Airik, he jerked up, and his hand went to his side, where it met with nothing. “What do you want?” he sneered, making no effort to get up, not even to put himself on even footing with a morazir.
“Are you finished?” Airik made a pointed effort to look around the sparse room that didn’t even contain a work desk.
He couldn’t identify the source of the smell.
But he often smelled things that weren’t there, like iilas berries.
Not wanting to reveal that his senses couldn’t be trusted, he pressed on. “Where is the equipment?”
“Airik,” he heard Torren say behind him. “We’re on a schedule. Why are you acting like you don’t know how all of this works?”
Airik stood over Xallix, catching a glimpse of the omnislate’s screen. He should have been calculating the tectonic values of Ed’un’s core. Instead, the screen showed the topography of Buriji and its buildings.
A milky third eyelid closed on Xallix’s eyes as he looked past Airik to Torren.
“Don’t look to him. I am the one asking,” Airik said, stepping closer. “I am the one you will answer. How long until you’re finished?”
The torjarin scoffed. “I don’t answer to anyone wild.” Holding Airik’s gaze, he swiped his work clean. “The Veynari have fallen to great depths if a wasteline like you has any authority to command at all.”
Still holding Nora’s necklace, Airik’s fist quaked. He felt one of the points pierce his skin, and he bit his tongue to keep quiet. Once they returned to Zarmur and Nora was safely settled, Airik could show Xallix what it meant to be commanded by a morazir.
“You might not be subject to brands,” Torren said to Xallix, stepping between them, “but if you’re imprisoned and reeducated for insubordination, I promise you’ll be begging for a brand instead.
Now, answer the questions because I’m due for a status report anyway—where is your equipment?
I watched them being loaded myself. What have you been doing since we landed? ”
Xallix’s thin lips tightened as he looked between them.
He remained arrogantly calm, despite being the focus of barely contained anger.
Others in the same position as he had jumped into flame pits to escape a morazir’s wrath.
“The calculations are incomplete,” he said. “I’ll configure the engine tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” Control of Airik’s temper dwindled, like water slipping through a sieve. “Planetary decommissioning takes mere minutes to configure. I’ve already done the calculations, and the neural engine does the rest. Why not now?”
Jaw ticking, Xallix gave Airik a hard stare. “As I’ve stated, I serve the Veynari, and I will not fail them as you have. The calculations will be done when they are done. I am in no hurry—”
“I am in a hurry,” Airik gritted out. Each muscle in his body electrified.
“How unfortunate for you, then.” Xallix’s black tongue slipped past his lips, tasting the air. His eyes closed in pleasure as he moaned. “Something smells…incredible.”
“Hello.” A small voice spoke up from the open door.
The three of them whipped back to find Nora standing in the hall, arms crossed over her chest. Lucky braced before her, his focus locked on Xallix, fangs bared.
Good boy, Airik thought, an unease stirring in the back of his mind that Lucky sensed anything amiss at all.
Bright-faced and clean, Nora wore the red uniform of a forgeling. Only youth-sized clothing would fit her. The color was meant to identify bodies in the field, but on Nora it made her look like a flower within the metal prison Airik found them trapped in.
To his twisted delight, she wore her hair wrapped around itself in a ball, not her typical braid. He allowed himself to imagine—even if only a delusion—that she couldn’t bear to twist it unless it was he who made it for her. Her braid was now his.
She cleared her throat, lips curling into that crooked smile of hers—shy and earnest. “I didn’t know where to go to be out of the way,” she said. Not once did she look up, keeping her gaze down.
They’d have to endure this for the foreseeable future.
He raised a hand to brush the scar under his eye, but before he could set her at ease, Xallix spoke.
“That clothing doesn’t do much to hide her shape,” he said, his tongue slithering between his teeth. “I’ve never seen a human so…healthy—her mounds are rounded and full. How precious that she tries to hide them—”
Airik turned, drawing his sword. In one stroke, he drove it between Xallix’s legs, a hair’s width from his cock, smashing through the computing device that he still held.
It split in two, the glass shattering with a ring, as did any vestige of control Airik had upon his temper.
Pieces pushed into Xallix’s hand repelled by the sword’s gravity.
The torjarin looked up, his swirling eyes pitch black. As if rage overrode instinct rooted in pain, his hands fisted, embedding the glass further into him.
“Do not look at her.” The rumble of Airik’s voice barely escaped the tightness of his chest. “And what do you know of how a human’s health should be?”
Behind him, he heard Torren’s disappointed sigh.
Xallix opened his fists, first the left, then the right, as if needing confirmation of what had just occurred.
Dark blue blood pooled in his palms. His eyes on Airik, he stood, a vibrating growl thumping in his chest. “You won’t remain unbranded for much longer,” he said in a guttural tone.
He turned his palms face down, then shook them to dislodge the glass pieces.
Glass and blood alike fell to the metal floor.
Nora made a small sound. Xallix’s head pivoted to face her.
He smiled. “The human is worried for me.”
Airik had just enough sense to turn his sword before jamming the handle into Xallix’s chest, trapping him against the wall. He felt a pull on his harness, too aggressive to be Nora, so it must’ve been Torren.
“Stop it,” his friend warned.
A frantic trill sounded, and something soft curled around his leg, just over his boot—Lucky trying to tame him, too.
The only person he could not hear was Nora—most likely too terrified of him to speak.
Let her see. That this is what you are. What you have to be. That this was necessary. Xallix proved to be a direct threat to Nora, and Airik had learned—as a young boy—to crush and control the space around him if he had any hope of surviving it.
“This is twice now that you speak of her.” Airik pressed hard to the center of Xallix’s chest until he let out a stifled grunt.
“Do not look in her direction. If she speaks, you forget her voice—it’s not yours to have.
If she crosses your path, you’ll turn and go the other way.
She’s not relevant to your task and does not exist in your world.
If I must remind you of this again, I will ensure that it hurts.
” He glanced down at Xallix’s bleeding hands. “More than I already have.”
Black and red swirled in Xallix’s eyes, like fire caught in a cyclone. His lips peeled back, revealing rows of small, triangular-shaped teeth.
Shock snapped through Airik’s body. Such teeth were not characteristic of torjarins, and neither was his overly muscular build.
Xallix must’ve been a hybrid. An impossibility, as the few hybrids walking among Veynari Interstellar Shield ranks were restricted to on-world tasks. In some ways, worse off than being born wild or designed as a prime. The only hybrids Airik had seen were on the launch way—
“Osian,” Xallix spat, referring to Torren’s genetic line.
A name and a word, which meant null. Torren came from nowhere, and Xallix meant it as an insult.
“If I can’t access my data, then this mission is in danger.
Rectify the animal you’ve brought aboard.
You’ve said it yourself—even you won’t survive another brand. ”
Torren yanked hard on Airik’s harness, tearing him away from Xallix. Airik did not look at Nora, who he heard step back to a wall.
Shame at his lack of control held him still.
“Ulliel, hear me,” Torren breathed, pushing back his hair. He depowered his gun—which at some point he must’ve charged—and gave Airik a scathing glare. “I beg of you to find me. To save me from these two, who’ve somehow gone as feral as the planet we’re on.”
Giving Nora a strange look, both apologetic and annoyed, he sighed. “Take your human to the galley and feed her. If she continues to wander as she just did, then I’ll be forced to restrain her for her own safety.”
Fuck, Airik thought. Everything was going wrong. He turned to Nora, compelling his face not to smile or scowl.
As she took a step, her leg must’ve twinged because she stumbled to one side.
She braced against the wall, but as she uncrossed her arms, the center of her clothing—too tight over the curves of her body—split, revealing a bite on her throat and another on the top of her breast. Oblong purple and red marks, with the four larger indents of fangs.
“Shit,” Nora gasped, rushing to cover herself. “I—” She looked to Torren, eyes wide, explaining with words he wouldn’t know. “I hurt myself. It happened in the crash—”
Torren let a small smile play on his face and lifted a brow. He could not understand her lies, but he knew the truth.
She looked down to Lucky, her breath quickening
Not once did she look to Airik.
Xallix let out a clicking growl, his forked tongue whipping through the air. He looked to Airik as the clicking in his throat settled into a slow laugh. “She is…injured,” he said, the way someone who had just discovered a scandalous secret might.
Suppressing the urge to catch Xallix’s tongue and sever it from the root, Airik bit his own.
Nora. Nora. Nora.
“You want to keep her for your own purposes. Untouched. Untaken. Unconquered. I wonder what else you’ve done to that body—”
Torren thrust an arm under Xallix’s jaw, silencing him. “It must be hard,” Torren said, his voice dropping into an ominous octave, “to suffer from such an inability to learn from recent mistakes.”
The torjarin grabbed at his arms, sharp claws sinking into his skin, searching for breath.
“Don’t fight me. You won’t win. Will you be a proper boy and listen? I don’t want to end up having to kill you both to preserve my sanity.”
Xallix narrowed his eyes, gaze darting from Torren to Airik. He grunted but didn’t deny the order.
Torren pushed away, then straightened his shirt and smiled.
“There now. We’re all settled.” He spun around, surveying the mess.
“Xallix, I don’t want your blood all over my clean floors—it’s a safety hazard for my small friend.
” Lucky nudged his hand and purred. “Go to the regeneration chamber, and be silent as you go. I’m tired of hearing grunts and growls. ”
Xallix lazily sauntered out of the room, in no hurry.
When he was gone, Airik let out a breath, staring at the wall where he had pinned Xallix.
Only Torren moved, untying then retying his hair. He glanced at the bloody floor and sighed. “Why have you made everything so hard?” he asked, finally looking to Airik. “This was the exact same affliction that caught your—”
Instantly, the words died on his tongue, the near-mistake staying in the void of unspoken words. His mouth turned down, and probably not knowing what else to do, he tapped his thigh for Lucky to come.
The ooshi made a sound, staying by Nora’s side.
“I want to eat,” Torren said. “I won’t feel right doing it unless I know you’ve all eaten, too.”
Nodding to Nora, Airik turned to go to the door.
“Can you…can you carry me?” Her voice shook.
Airik’s body flamed, and his stomach curled with want and denial. “Nora,” he said—an urgent warning.
“Please.” She made an exaggerated limp as she walked. “I need help. But really—I need you. I thought I could do this. But I can’t.”
He could see her fight the nervous smile on her lips.
“My beautiful liar,” Airik said, his heart shredding, preparing the following words.
“I want to hold you until the suns burn out and time ends. But—” He motioned to the blood on the floor.
“I have made things bad. Worse. We are always watched and heard.” He pointed to the prismatic globe in the corners of the room.
“Not just by Xallix, but by the ship. When we return, someone will look. To make sure no oaths were broken.”
Nora’s face paled, staring at the sensor. “Th-They already know I’m here? That we—”
“No…but they will know soon once we go through the door in the sky.”
“Oh,” she said. “I should have stayed until someone came for me.”
A prisoner. That was what he had made her.
Torren scooped Lucky up into his arms, waiting for them.
Dark thoughts raged—more dangerous than Airik could’ve ever imagined himself to be. The human is not unkillable.
“I don’t want anyone to know what you are to me,” he said. “I need you safe, far from me. You have to walk, Nora. I will get you more gel for your ankle after we eat.”
Her lashes shuddered as her eyes grew misty. But then she smiled as she caught a loose strand of her hair and brought it to her lips. “Okay,” she said.
Airik’s heart thumped, his veins nearly bursting with a hot rush of love. This forgiving creature was his.
But before he could touch the scar under his eye, as they’d decided, she turned and left.