35. Chapter 35
thirty-five
Hue
“You are quite ghastly to the eyes. If you intend to seduce or assassinate me, I must insist you spare yourself the humiliation and choose the ladder.”
I’m speechless, slack jaw and heaving, around panicked, jumpy breaths as the male rises from the bed, his four-paneled wings flaring out as if to steady him.
The male continues his deep scowl as we both take stock of one another.
His skin is like that of all his species, pale and soft, if not lightly downy.
His long hair is mussed around his shoulders, decorated as lavishly as he is with his braids and charms. So long it reaches the bottom of his pecks in the billowing deep V of his shirt.
Among him are more adornments than I think I’ve ever seen on any being other than perhaps the alien call girls who often haunt the inner rims of more seedy stations.
When he reaches the middle of the room, snapping his hand out suddenly, I scream again, readying myself for a killing blow. My eyes squeezed tight and arms wrapped around my belly. Far away, Melion rages. No pain comes, but the room is brighter now.
Oh, he was only turning on a light.
He rubs his temples before letting himself collapse into a nearby backless chair. His wings fluttering until they tuck tightly onto his back. “Explain to me why there is a loud, grotesquely pregnant human in the chambers of my ship before I call for my guard.”
“I ugh… my name is Hue. I’m here to… well, I—"
“I am highly debating just killing you.”
I frown at him, still panting. “I am pregnant!”
His eyes drop to my exposed stomach, and for the first time since slipping out of the temple, I am suddenly aware of my state of undress.
A free-flowing skirt and more or less a band around my breasts are all I’ve been wearing lately.
Everything else making me feel like a tubed meal replacement.
He pulls a face. “Yes, very aware. Please refrain from pulling my attention to it again.”
What a fucking ass—
His hand lifts toward a bell-like mechanism on the wall.
I lurch forward, all but slamming myself on top of him to snatch his wrist. His long, pointed ears slam backward at the assault, and it seems his haggard, intoxicated state has made me grossly misunderstand his physical ability.
A blink later, I’m pinned against the wall with a hollow thud, my head bouncing off a beautifully framed piece of art before it crashes to the ground behind me.
Another panicked breath later, there's a violent knock at the door. “Prince Ravian is everything well?”
Fear hits me hard, and I can feel Melion’s rage again pulsing through the bond, and somewhere very far away, I hear an all too familiar roar. Leaving no doubt, my mate is aware of everything.
My lip wobbles, the prince.
Holy fuck, fucking, fuck, shit! A goddamn alien prince regards the offending lip as I shake my head, pleading with my eyes.
“Prince Ravian, we will make entry if you do not—"
“Beat on my door again and I’ll leave you behind!” he snaps back through the door, and I hear only a long-suffering sigh before they leave.
I nearly sag against the male still pinning me to the hall.
“Explain. Now,” he commands, and for the first time, I see it… the prince, the renowned Kalzait coldness I had nearly forgotten to be terrified of in the heat of the moment. A species that is so advanced that they keep the whole of the universe in their pocket.
“I’m here to get my mate. He’s… he didn’t—"
He huffs out a snide, bitter laugh. “You’re here to free the murderer?”
“I’m here to make sure everyone gets a fair—"
Something flips in his jewel-toned eyes, something very close to hate. “Do you assume it was fair when he snuck onto a protected Space Station and filled my little brother so thoroughly with toxin that his small bones locked. Locked so hard they had to be broken to lay him flat in his grave?”
I can smell the alcohol on his breath, his iridescent wings trembling with rage.
Flashes of cold, prone bodies of people I loved fill my mind with an ugly hopelessness.
Tears well in my eyes, taking his attention seconds before he huffs, shoving off me and letting me collapse backward, sliding halfway down the wall.
Because it’s horrible. It's so horrible. What can I say? What do you even say to someone like that? If it were Mom, or Sor’en, our baby, or Jin, would I listen?
Of course not.
“By the old gods, do not cry,” he mumbles, digging his fingers roughly into his long, silken hair as he turns his back on me. Apparently, very sure I’m not a genuine threat. Which is fair, I’m like a few blinks away from entirely dissolving into hysterics.
He doesn’t turn when he speaks again. “You called the murderer your mate. I assume he collected you on one of his many murderous trips star side for Adder.”
“They forced him! Sor’en would never hurt someone without—"
He turns toward me with a withering look. “I couldn't care less about anything else he did. His manifesto was easily fact-checked. I am simply here to collect him to stand before the King and Queen for what he did to their prodigal son.”
“Have you spoken to him? Asked him to explain? There’s got to be something else, some reason.”
“A reason to kill a defenseless child,” he offers, pointily looking at my swollen stomach.
That does it.
A big, nasty sob leaves me as I let myself crumble the rest of the way to the floor. “He’s my mate. I-I can’t lose him. I can’t just, not try!”
The uncomfortable look on the regal male's face only makes me sob harder.
I’m entirely caught off guard as he plops himself on the floor in front of me, his back against the end of his large canopied bed.
His pretty greenish wings lie limply on either side of him on the plush floor.
His next question is even more baffling.
“What is it like to feel a life growing inside of you?”
My head snaps away from his wings, my voice numb as I answer honestly. “Scary. Really, really scary.”
His eyes linger on my stomach.
“Would you like to feel?” I ask, my sobs breaking off into hiccups.
He keeps staring. “What a disgusting offer.”
But he moves toward me anyway, we’re both quiet and still in the room, our misery from opposing sides of the same horrible story mingling as he lies his palms on my belly.
My baby rolls, making the prince jerk his hands back before pressing them to me again. This time with more care than before. “Fascinating. Our women do not do this.”
“Have babies?”
He stares at my stomach when he answers, his brow furrowing when the baby doesn’t move again. “Carry them. We have used artificial surrogate wombs long before I was born.”
“That’s sad.” I sniffle.
He removes his hands, looking up as if that hadn’t occurred to him, but when he makes to move away from me, I capture his wrist with my small hands.
It takes both of mine to hold even one of his.
“Please…” My words trail off because what can I say?
How can I ask him to spare Sor’en in the face of what happened? I can’t.
Prince Ravian sees it the moment I realize it too. “These people are monsters. I can offer you and the child safe passage, but know that it will be hated wherever it goes.”
I sniffle, finally letting go of him as an idea pops into my head. “Let me show you, let me show you that they are not what they’ve been made out to be. Please.” A painfully warm pang fills my heart, it’s the same words Sor’en spoke to me all those kintics ago in the dark halls of Vortara.
He huffs. “Most do not know we possess that ability.”
I offer him a sad smirk. “My mom loved learning about other species.”
“Impelling one's mind is… quite uncouth, improper among my people. Barbaric.” He lays heavy emphasis on the C.
“I get the impression you rarely care what’s proper among your people.”
His wings flutter with amusement as he chuckles, his features lightening and his eyes coming to life for too short a moment.
For the first time, my pulse slows enough to realize how truly stunning Kalzaits are as a species.
Ethereal even, like fae from the Old Earth stories mom would tell me at night.
Up until I actually saw a Kalzait in person, and they started giving me nightmares instead, and she stopped.
I lie my hands on my belly. “But it won’t affect my baby?”
His wings flutter with some kind of emotion he quickly schools, but judging by his tone, I would almost assume he was offended. “Of course not.”
“I thought you wanted to kill us,” I offer, trying to ease my nerves.
“I am still debating it.”
I almost laugh at that, but all I can manage is a small smile. Because I am suddenly quite sure I am in no danger at all with this male.
“I cannot let him go, human.”
My lip wobbles. “All I’m asking for is a chance. Just look, Xyreliths are good people. Maybe after you see that, then you’ll be in a place where you can hear him. His side of things.”
Ravian eyes me sideways at that. “He has refused to give a side.”
I huff, the sound breaking off into a sob. “Because he is a self-sacrificing fool. Look, if you get the truth and you decide to free him—"
“We wanted a chance before, now we ask for freedom,” he quips irritably.
“I want my mate returned to me, and our people left alone. I’m not asking for reclassification, just protection.”
He glares. “I have no authority to offer an entire planet protected status, nor will I likely feel inclined to after I watch your mate murder my brother.”
I pause for a second, realizing his slip. He's already decided to impel Sor’en too. I do my best not to let the small victory show on my face. “But your father does. There are these… flowers that grow here. Perhaps they are medically significant. It would be worth his while.”
I know what I’m offering, that I have no right to, the sheer insanity of it, but anything has to be better than hiding in the domes.
The male scoffs. “And you think he listens to me?”
“I think you’re far more clever than you let on, prince.”
He heaves a sigh, resting his spiked elbow on a raised knee. “I stand to gain nothing from this, and as I have mentioned, I am suffering horribly from a hangover.”
“You stand to gain a clear conscience, a medically significant flower, perhaps even one strong enough to clear your headache.”
He barks out a light. “Lie back, human.”
My pulse thuds rapidly in my head as his tail wraps around his own leg. If the stories are true, there is a microscopic, barbed stinger sheathed inside. I hope to never find out as he settles himself beside me, and I shock us both by offering him my trembling hand.
Then he shocks mostly himself when he takes it, willing to lend me a moment of comfort despite who I am and what I’m here for.
It's only then that I see the long, delicate antenna that untucks itself from where they were blended with his hair.
He leans forward, the heady spice of him making my gut churn.
Not because he smells bad, no, he smells wonderful.
But because I long for florals. Ravian gives me no warnings as his Anette antenna to my temples.
It starts as a slight sting, nothing too bad, before my head splits in two.
The roars from somewhere else on the ship haven’t let up, but the sound he makes next leaves no doubt of the state he’s in.
I try to shut it off, try to keep the pain from the bond with Melion, but it’s no use; I’m a bundle of agony.
For a moment, I wonder if it has been a lifetime of only this pain.
The domtics dragging on like zentics as talons strip and rip into my mind until suddenly the pain stops.
The last thing my exhausted, spent mind sees is Prince Ravian panting as dark blue blood trickles from his nose.