36. Chapter 36 #2
The lives I took to keep Adder from attacking our planet. To telling the galaxy what I had done.
We would’ve been eradicated, exterminated like vermin.
I still don’t know what lie he told to cover up the death of a young Kalzait royal, but Vortara shut down for many orbits following.
Something about a space gas leak in the Outer Rim.
Talks ended with my people, the Kalzaits had bigger problems now than trying to offer a small, nothing planet protection in hopes of studying us.
It could’ve saved us. So many females, my friend, so many generations of hiding could’ve been forgotten. Maybe we could’ve been welcomed into space.
Now they certainly never would.
The agony leaves me all at once, leaving myself and the prince panting. When my vision finds me again, my body is well beyond spent, and I’m surprised to see the male truly shaken.
A sickening, dangerous hope fills me before my logical mind thinks better of it.
“You—" he stutters before brushing himself off and straightening.
Returning to his arrogant posture and blank stare as easily as one would when slipping on a garment, but his voice betrays his emotions as he clears his throat.
“He grabbed you.” His hands shake as he tucks antennae back into his hair.
My mate fails to stifle a little sniffle. “You didn’t do it on purpose.”
“It was still done,” I whisper.
Ravian huffs. “I had thought the Sor’en from his stories was an imaginary beast he dreamed up to make our lessons less boring. He… he loved you.”
I swallow past the sudden lump in my throat. “He was my friend,” I offer simply as if that explains it all.
And it should.
But I am what I am.
“Return my mate to me, Prince Ravian,” I order, but the plea is in my eyes.
I wish to watch my child grow.
To teach him that he is not a monster.
He shakes off the last of his emotion after that. Huffing again, but this time far more dramatically. “Well, this just became a far more complex day than I had planned on having.”
Hue perks up, but she’s moving slower. Groaning as she gets to her feet.
“Why?” The hope in her voice bolsters mine, and far away, Melion’s too.
It would’ve made all this far too easy to companion here to take my mate away from the ship.
You cannot chain a shadow. I assume some energy tech keeps him out.
Likely for the best, Melion can be trigger-happy at the best of times.
He shifts his hands through his hair, his wings fluttering as he smacks the control panel bio-coded to him, and I doubt many others on the wall. “Because now I must commit treason, and my family is not known to be a forgiving bunch.”
“You’re letting him go,” Hue cries, finally flinging herself into the safety of my arms. “Oh my god, thank you.”
“Please, it is not for you. Clayan would have demanded no less. Also, you promised me some great medical advancement to keep from being skinned alive.”
He turns to me me. “Thanks to you,” he addresses me with a pointed glare that lacks any proper heat, “I am the last remaining air to the Kalzait throne, so it is unlikely they will kill me if I return with a pretty gift.”
My mate peeks up from the crease of my arms. “That is a horrible joke.”
He rolls his eyes before opening the cell door. “You are mated to a mass murderer. The skies will implode the day I take morality lessons from you.” The sound of my remaining chain releasing to the floor makes her wince.
“Are you alright?” I ask, worry needling my current sense of relief.
Hue takes a deep breath. “I-I think I might be giving birth soon.”
Panic strikes me hard before Ravian urges us into the hall, my instinct screams at me to move spatially, but is it impossible with whatever shield they have in place.
“Off my ship quickly, then. I hear that is a rather grizzly affair,” Ravian adds unhelpfully.
I lift my mate protectively into my arms as more than a hundred shocked and downright enraged stares find us as he leads us toward the exit.
It doesn’t escape my notice that my mate sees too, her brows furrowing in worry for the unbothered male.
But his wings twitch with each hushed challenge. Each shocked and disgusted glare.
He will pay for this, in one way or another. The sacrifice is not lost on me.
By the time we’re at the opening, a voice finds us, the first to speak up loudly.
“You will not spit in the face of our—"
I turn quickly just in time to see a large Kalzait male, a blade gripped in his hand, hit the floor beside Ravian.
The prince's guard swarms the area in the next moment. The tip of Ravian’s stingered tail jerks free wetly from under the male's chin, a formerly unknown weak point for his species that I file away for later.
It is hard to imagine a reality in which I walk away from this clean. A reality in which I even should.
“Assassinations or suction, it's always one of the two,” he offers, gathering his tail in the cloth he tugged from the band of his pants to clean it free from the pale blood common to his people.
My mate lets loose a nervous little giggle, making me frown and scent her with my oil as the doors open to hundreds of Xyreliths gathered around the ship.
I nearly flinch as they roar in unison once the doors open. It is the most unbalanced display from my people I have ever seen, no doubt inspired by the tiny human in my arms who cheers too, making an exhausted laugh sneak up my throat.
“You came!” she calls out to the crowd, but one robed male in particular nods, lowering his head to her in an act of humility seldom seen from a Balla’mar.
“I’ll be in contact about our new trade agreement, botanist,” the prince offers beside me, staring out at the crowd unmoved.
I frown. “What trade—"
“Oops, yeah, uhm, sorry about that,” Hue offers, tugging her bottom lip into her mouth. “Prince Ravian, thank you again. Truly. We’ll be waiting for your call.”
The prince nods, his eyes lingering on her belly with an odd expression of dread before they trail up to the scar on her neck.
I shift my mate from his gaze with a low growl.
“Human, do you wish to stay here truly?” he asks her, ignoring me.
Equal parts rage and gratefulness fill me at his apparent tenderness for my mate.
Only my mate does not require his tenderness.
She has me, so it is mostly rage. Before she can open her mouth, he speaks again.
“I can take you to Lunareth now, so that you may lay your mother to rest. It would be nothing. We have long-held connections within their governing body.”
It occurs to me then that he also impelled her mind; everything in me is still.
A horrible, selfish part of me bristles as she hesitates.
My hurtful little mate wounding me once again.
My eyes snap to hers. In the new light outside, I can finally see the stunning evidence of her bond with our Vena’lel, who is still flinging himself into the energy shield in a desperate attempt to reach us.
Her golden-green eyes are now sporting a streak of opaque white bisecting her iris like a lightning bolt.
I ache. Do not make me force you again to stay.
Her eyes are wide on him, though. And if I thought him impelling my mind was painful, I had not yet experienced agony.
Her hands shake as she brings them to her necklace and removes it, making my heart shutter to a stop in my chest. “I know, considering everything, it’s a lot to ask.” She sniffles. “Way too much to ask, but could you take her for me? I-I belong here.”
I release the breath I had not realized I was holding. I am growing quite weary of kidnapping my own mate.
The male nearly stumbles as he leans in to accept the chain, his pointed ears tucked tightly to his head to make it easier for her. His pale green shining wings in the same position as he bows, allowing her to place it around his neck. Palming her other tooth.
It was something Clayan had done in front of me many times, each time we parted.
The Kalzaits are a proud species, bowing only to those whom they feel a great deal of adoration and respect for.
The staff and guard of his staff gasp, quickly dispersing out of respect for their prince.
In humbling himself, placing himself below my mate, he is saying something quite profound, not to her, who seems none the wiser of the hidden gesture, but to the group of his staff and guard.
His pointed glare as he lifts lets me know he wishes me to keep such things to myself.
I glare back. Again, without any actual heat.
Hue glances up at me, at the top of my head, and it occurs to me for the first time that she can see my shimmer. Her hands are frenzied as she clears it for me, in a gesture common to my people, making me laugh.
She laughs too until a sudden burst of fluid soaks my arm, under where she rests, leaking down my side. “I-holy fuck, my water just broke.”
“What?” Ravian and I say in unison before he adds quietly. “Gross.”