Chapter 47 #2
He loved me, but he had left me, but he hadn't left me. He loved me, but he had given me away, but he was right here. He loved me, but he had betrayed me, or had he?
There was something I was missing.
Something big.
I realized I hadn't been using the translator tablet.
I'd left it on the bed.
"How can you understand me?" I asked.
His shoulders relaxed with the question as if the change in topic was a relief.
"Using the data provided by the Shek'invitali we now have software set up on our wrist units." He held up his wrist. A small holographic image of a generic cat elf projected in the air above it.
"So I don't need this anymore?" I asked, watching as the image moved. It quietly sang a translation, soft and unobtrusive. I hadn't noticed it; I'd been so enraged and stressed.
I pointed at it. "I want one of those."
"Oh, I have one for you in here," he sang as he walked over to one of the walls. He tapped on a small indent, and a drawer slid out. He plucked a small wristband out of it and held it out.
I frowned.
“How long have you had this?” I demanded. “Who put that in the drawer?”
“These are the prototypes,” he said. “I will be outfitting the entire ship with them. I am the one who placed that in the drawer.”
I took a deep breath and took it from him.
There was another issue at hand.
"Zale," I exhaled. "Why are you here? Why do you even have access to this room?"
"This is your room," he sang back as he walked away from me to the bathroom. "And as I said, I've been an idiot. I have been avoiding you when I should have spoken to you. But sometimes, it is much easier to show something than to say it. Will you help me show you?"
I followed him into the bathroom.
He opened a cupboard set low in the wall. Inside was a large jar filled with a shiny black liquor, similar in color to his fur. It was strapped to the inside of the cupboard. Next to it were several bright white pads.
Zale grabbed two of them and handed one to me.
He stripped off his clothing and stepped into the shower.
My eyes widened as I took in that body I craved. I hadn’t seen him in so long and seeing the cut lines of his muscles, the strange alienness of his furred body, the section where his tail met the base of his spine.
Heat flared in me.
I stood outside of the shower and crossed my arms.
I wanted him but he was off limits.
No way in heck I was going to get caught with another man in the Emperor's shower. I kept my eyes locked on his face. I'd given my word to the Emperor, and I wasn't going to tempt myself with what I couldn't and wouldn't have.
Zale had one minute to show me what he wanted me to see, and if it involved him stroking himself, I was going straight out the door.
He turned on the water, slipped his hand inside the pad, and then held it up to the water.
Then he put the pad against his shoulder.
He looked at me, his eyes piercing me as he ran the pad down over his shoulder and along the back of his arm where his fur was. Black sloughed off his fur like water off a squeegee. Where the pad passed over, his fur was left translucent, like a celestite crystal.
I clutched the pad in my hands.
I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as all my emotions came crashing down, walls built of anger and fear suddenly losing all of their foundations.
I had built a fortress out of heartache.
But my heartache existed only in my own mind.
Zale had never left me.
He didn't betray me.
I never slept with a different man.
He was right - he had been acting like an idiot.
He took off his wrist unit to scrub the fur under it, then slipped it back on.
"Will you help me get my back?" Zale sang. He put his wrist unit back on.
I pulled off my clothes and stepped into the shower with my Emperor.
A strange sense of calmness fell over me.
"Why didn't you just tell me?" I asked as I held the dye removal pad under the water and then moved to sluice his back. Under the artificial calm I could feel the brewing of my emotions. Anger, betrayal, hurt, pain - they were all there frothing in a toxic mixture.
All I wanted was a man I could trust.
And instead I got an alien who lied to me.
"I got caught up in my own head," he sang softly as I ran my hand down his back, removing the dye. "I didn't realize you didn't know it was me at first, and when you asked to say goodbye to Zale… I should have told you then."
"You told me you had doubles," I pointed out. "I thought Zale was one of them."
"I know. I realized that later," he sang. "I am sorry I took so long to tell you."
I ran the pad over the small of his back, feeling the strong muscles that sat on either side of his spine, powerful chords of strength that must have taken years to develop. There wasn't a single inch of him that was soft. Not counting the fur I was currently wiping free from dye.
I wrapped the pad around the base of his tail and, in one quick motion, sluiced the whole thing to the tip.
His entire body shuddered.
He started to turn, but I put a light hand on his hip and pushed against him. He stopped.
"I need to finish back here," I said, kneeling to run the pad down the back of his legs.
He put his hands on the shower walls.
He didn’t look back to see that there were tears running down my face, mixing with the water.
"Why do this at all?" I asked, ignoring what my touch was doing to him and to me.
It had been too long. I had been pushing him away, not knowing I was rejecting him to be loyal to him.
Just touching him like this was making every nerve in my body stand to attention in anticipation. "Why dye your fur?"
I wasn't going to push him away anymore.
This alien, this Emperor - he had never left me.
That thought mixed into the toxic pot of pain that was brewing in my chest. It didn’t stop the waterfall cascading down my face, or the level of agony that was twisting through me, clawing at my heart.
He had just stepped away for a moment to take off a disguise.
So fucking what.
He should have told me sooner.
"Freedom," he replied. "The dye gives me a level of privacy.
Even if citizens recognize me, they pretend like they don't. I made it illegal for any company to allow videos of anyone wearing this dye, so all of the networks will automatically filter out any videos caught of me.
It gives me privacy and freedom from the cage of my position. "
“Then why mess with the teenager’s video?” I asked, the bite of my anger starting to rise to the surface, piercing the calm. He was lying to me again, wasn’t he?
“Just because something should be automatic, doesn’t guarantee it will be,” he said. “Better to take care of things yourself then rely entirely on technology.”
It was just another excuse, another explanation that was perfectly reasonable.
The calmness broke, shattering.
I threw the pad on the ground with a wet slap and rose to my feet.
Something in me snapped.
I grabbed the base of his tail in my fist, and yanked it - hard.
“How could you lie to me?” I demanded, the pain in my heart painting my words with a sour shriek. “How could you avoid me? You brought me here and left me all alone!”
He snarled, his ears flattening, but he didn’t turn around.
I yanked on his tail again and it lashed in my hands, the soft, wet tip of it striking against the outside of my thigh.
“I’m sorry,” he said to the wall. “I made a mistake because I was afraid and hurt you because I wanted to escape the cage I was brought up in. It wasn’t my intention to cause you pain. My behavior wasn’t your fault and you didn’t deserve it. You deserve better and I will give it to you.”
With those words, those simple, easy words, the hurt in my heart softened.
He didn’t blame me for what he did.
He wasn’t acting like it was my fault that this happened.
He was acknowledging his part for this misunderstanding between us and addressing it, both acknowledging the impact of his upbringing on his foolish behavior without dismissing his own responsibility for his actions.
That was something I didn’t expect from average people.
Let alone from a person who had been raised to rule an Empire.
Coming from him, it was downright impressive.
But there was something in his words that merited further investigation.
“What were you afraid of?” I asked.
He bowed his head, the water streaming through his hair so it plastered forward to his face.
He was still facing away from me, towards the wall, and it made him look like the weight of a solar system was pressing down between his shoulders.
I stared at the strong muscles of his back, how his shoulder blades lifted as his neck arched.
There was a familiarness to it, to the heaviness of the silence between us.
He was struggling to find the words.
I knew what that felt like, when what I had to say hurt so much that the simple act of saying it outloud was like walking on a beach filled with shards of glass, slicing my feet open with every step forward to bring that darkness out into the open.
“If you aren’t ready to talk about it, you don’t need to,” I said, releasing his tail to gently put my hand on his back.
“My mate assassinated my mother and died in the attempt,” he said, his eyes still focused on the wall.
“It was an arranged mating, where a large selection of potential mates came forward in a great event to find the few who my osae would respond to. There ended up being only one. My first mate wanted me for the position and power. I was in command of the royal fleet and at her request, I left her in the capital city with my mother. She requested a private audience with the late Empress, insisted on even the servants leaving, and attempted to push her into a water feature right before the freeze cycle. My mother fought back and they both went in.”
That was horrible.
No wonder he wanted me to want him as Zale instead of throwing down the whole Emperor title right from the get go. His first wife literally killed to try to be Empress.