Chapter 46
"I'm going to regret this," I said as I stared in the mirror.
King Makrus stared back at me from where his image was projected on the side of the mirror. He had called me to tell me that my little hoomon had asked her friend to let Zale know it was urgent that she speak to him.
The request boiled inside of me, but at the same time, I couldn't put this off any longer.
She had shown today that she was willing to fight to protect me.
She was willing to do so when the odds were against her.
That had warmed the cold lump that had settled in my heart when I realized she didn't see me for who I really was. It forced me to face myself in the light of her loyalty.
I had been treating her unfairly.
I had been avoiding her and avoiding the conversation we needed to have. I had been avoiding it because I was afraid of the truth - that she had willingly abandoned me to go after an Emperor.
This was a mess of my own creation.
I needed to fix it.
"You already regret this," he said as he inspected me. "You missed a spot under your chin. I don't know why you didn't just tell her the moment you realized she thought you were two different people."
I carefully lifted my chin and dabbed on the temporary dye with a brush. My natural color had been growing in, and I hated doing this to it again. The chemicals needed to wash it out would bleach my fur again, making it translucent and shine white like a diamond.
"I wanted her to realize it was me on her own," I growled.
"So you wanted to play games with her?" he asked, finding the sore spot and stabbing it with his words. "Playing a guessing game so that you know she loves the real you does the opposite of what you want. You've pushed her away by pretending to be different from who you are."
"I'm going to tell her now," I said, hesitating before the next words came out. "I just want to see how she interacts with me first."
"You want to test her again," King Makrus grunted. "That's not going to work out like you hope."
"It will be fine," I said. "She is mine in either case."
"That is not guaranteed," he reminded me. "These hoomons are different. Just because she has agreed to be your mate doesn't mean she will stay with you if you are cruel to her."
"I will never let her leave me," I snapped, cringing from the words as they rolled out, but still feeling the truth of them. "I will keep her safe."
King Makrus's eyes tightened, but he said nothing.
He didn't have to say anything.
He knew what had happened to my first mate and my mother.
"We will speak later." I ended the call abruptly.
I examined my work in the mirror, making sure that it was fully dried, the temporary dye firmly in place. What I needed to know I couldn't find out in my royal role.
I needed to know what she really thought of me.
As I walked back into my quarters, an alert flashed, lighting up the room as a harsh tone echoed through it. I burst across the room, going through the blast doors to my personal command center.
"Report!" I snapped, opening the channel to the operator's center so that the entire wall of my private office turned into a view of the operations center.
"Sir, the Tevintith Garr space station has reported a large unknown force approaching," the communications officer reported, showing no surprise at my appearance. My crew was used to my fur dye. "We are the closest fleet."
I tapped on my desk, bringing up the message that accompanied the alert.
"Change course," I ordered. "Head for the station. Inform the fleet."
"Yes, sire," the crew replied in unison.
I swiped my hand to close the connection.
I opened a new channel.
The screen split into a panel of twenty squares. One after the other, each square flicked on as the captain of that ship responded to the call and opened their channel.
Once the screens were full, I began.
"We are changing course," I ordered. "There is an unknown fleet approaching Tevintith Garr. You have received the details. I want a full rundown of battle projections based on the current data. The station has sent out scouts to gather more information that will be coming in soon. Thoughts?"
I settled down into my chair.
This was going to be a while.