Chapter 16
New Clothes
Two days later, as they were getting ready to go down to the common room for the evening meal, Kora came bursting into Aelanna’s room.
“Come quickly, Blayze brought a suitcase full of clothes, in Nayli’s room.
” She said it all in a rush, grabbed Aelanna by a hand and pulled her from the room.
Dresses, pants, and tops of all different colors were scattered about.
Nayli was in the bathroom, holding a red top to her shoulders in front of the mirror.
“Help yourselves, girlfriends. There’s plenty to go round,” she called. “The dresses are too long but Blayze says Darren can shorten them, and he can alter some other things.”
Hearing Darren’s name was a stab to Aelanna’s heart. He’d been around, but he was avoiding her. She could sense him close by; he was in the corridor, guarding them, but he sent Lero and Blayze when the warriors had to interact with them.
Taking her courage in both hands, she asked him in the corridor if he could shorten the two dresses she’d picked out.
Darren knocked on Aelanna’s door and she let him in. Her room was small, dimmer than the rest of the Ohirin facility, and for that alone Darren was grateful. The harsh lights outside in the corridor had been clawing at his eyes. Here, at least, the shadows softened the edges of everything.
A pale blue dress lay across the bed, and she wore a green one that trailed on the floor.
The color of a precious stone on his erstwhile planet, a cloudy green that artisans carved trinkets and jewelry from, she looked sensational in it, but having been made for Dheltan women, it was far too long.
No doubt the blue dress was the same. She clutched the fabric of the skirt in front of her so she wouldn’t trip over it, and he could see her feet and ankles. The sight didn’t help his self-control.
He’d sent the case up himself to Nayli after discovering the girls’ main luggage had been “misplaced.”
Aelanna moved beside the bed, fingers brushing the fabric of the blue dress. “They’re lovely,” she murmured, “but… they’re too long.”
“I’ll fix them,” Darren said.
She blinked. “You sew?”
He did. In his own culture, he’d taken an interest in clothes design and dressmaking, and he was good at it. It was a respected profession for both men and women, but only practiced in the Dheltan enclave on Ohiri these days.
“Move to the middle of the room and hold still,” he said.
Taking a tin of pins from his pocket, he knelt, gathering the hem of the dress she wore.
The color suited her more than the blue one, he thought; it complimented her red hair, like the twilight of home.
He pinned the fabric to the right length with quick, precise motions, hands steady.
Aelanna watched him, head tilted. “You’re good at this.”
“I used to be a couturier,” he told her quietly. “On Dhelta.”
Her breath caught as she looked down at him. “Before…?”
Avoiding catching her eye, he kept his head bowed. “Yes.”
She stood still as he worked, the hem brushing his knuckles. Her scent, a mix of floral shower soap, human — something uniquely her, unbearable — curled around him, making it difficult to breathe.
When he finished pinning the first side, she turned slightly so he could reach the other. Her hair fell over her shoulder, brushing his cheek. He froze.
“Darren?” she whispered.
He winced, a tiny movement that he hoped she hadn’t noticed. “Don’t move.”
But she did. She stepped back, forcing him to rise. Her eyes searched his face, her look a mixture of worried and quizzical.
“You’ve been cold with me,” she said. “Ever since we arrived.”
He didn’t want to go there and he looked away. “It’s nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s not nothing,” she pressed, and moved closer. “You barely look at me. You barely speak. I thought we were friends, but you won’t even stand near me unless you must.”
“Aelanna—” He clenched his jaw. Friends. They could be so much more.
“Why?” Her voice trembled. “What did I do?”
His head snapped up, then he stood. “You did nothing.”
“Then why are you cold to me?”
He exhaled slowly, the breath shaking. “Orders.”
Her brow furrowed. “What orders? From who?”
“From Crukugs.” The name tasted like ash. “He told me not to get close to you, to any of you.”
Aelanna stared at him, stunned. “Why?”
“Because you’re intended for Ohirin warriors.” The words scraped his throat raw. “Because this mission is an experiment. Because you’re… valuable.”
Her face went white, and he felt bad for the situation they found themselves in, and worse that he hadn’t warned her. He’d avoided thinking about it, tried to push it out of his mind, but they couldn’t avoid the day of reckoning. It was inevitable.
She stepped closer, voice breaking. “Is that why you won’t look at me? Why you won’t talk to me? Because he told you not to care?”
He closed his eyes. “I don’t have a choice.”
Her hand touched his cheek — hesitant and agonizingly tender.
His breath stopped and he opened his eyes. He had thought if he couldn’t see her he may be able to get more self-control, but her scent overwhelmed him.
“Aelanna,” he said, “don’t.” It came out more of a rasp than a word.
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t… I can’t protect you if I let myself—”
He broke. His hand rose, cupping her jaw, thumb brushing her cheekbone with a reverence he hadn’t allowed himself to feel. She leaned into him, soft and trusting, and something inside him shattered.
He pulled her to him and kissed her.
Not gently, not at first. It was a desperate, aching thing, years of restraint bursting through his fragile self-control all at once. She gasped against his mouth and stilled, then she kissed him back, fingers curling into his jerkin, pulling him closer.
He softened then, the fierceness melting into something slow, tender, devastating. Her lips were pliant, yielding under his, her breath trembling, her hands shaking as if she couldn’t believe he was real.
When he finally pulled away, their foreheads touched, breaths mingling.
“I’m not supposed to want you,” he whispered.
Aelanna’s fingers traced his jaw. “But you do.”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t push me away.”
He opened his eyes, and for the first time since Dhelta burned, he let someone see the truth in them, the yearning, the tenderness for her, the pain that she could never be his.
“I won’t,” he said.
And he meant it.
Darren shut the door of his room behind him and slumped against it for a moment, letting the quiet settle over him.
He still tasted her. His whole body hummed from the kiss, flare take it!
He didn’t want to think about it and pushed it out of his mind.
A sudden clarity doused him like a bucket of cold water.
He always shrank from thinking about painful things.
.. but awareness stopped his train of thought.
He wasn’t alone.
Lero and Blayze were already in his room. Lero sat on the edge of his bunk, elbows on knees, staring up at Darren like he was trying to burn a hole through him. Blayze, who was pacing up and down the small room, stopped and faced him.
He didn’t want to think about how irresistible she’d felt, how understanding, how she’d looked at him like he was something worth saving.
He’d taken the dresses with him to stitch them; not because he didn’t trust himself in the same room as Aelanna, that he struggled to keep from touching her, but because stitching took time. He told himself that, anyway, then he changed his mind. From that moment on, he would face his problems.
Blayze said, “You’re late. We need to talk about the plan for tomorrow morning, remember?”
Darren hesitated. He had Aelanna’s dresses over one arm, and he wasn’t inclined to give himself away by looking at them. Instead, he laid them over the back of an upright chair.
Lero sniffed the air like a Dheltan hunting hound. “Is that… perfume?”
To Darren, the quarters were sparse; he didn’t spend any time here, and his room smelled of stale neglect, but his jaw tightened. One exception to his newfound resolve: he refused to discuss his personal life with his brothers.
Lero slowly got to his feet. “Darren... ”
He didn’t reply.
Blayze’s eyes widened. “Oh, burn me in the flare! You were with her. That’s why you have her clothes.”
Darren squared up to his brother and met his eye. “Blayze—”
“You were,” Blayze said, nodding to the gowns. “You were with Aelanna.”
Lero stepped closer, his expression as sharp as Darren’s pins. “Did something happen?”
“She asked me to alter the hems, that’s all. Nothing improper happened.” It was half a lie. Is this where he was at now, lying to his brothers?
Lero’s anger rose. “You kissed her.”
Blayze made a strangled noise. “Darren!”
Darren exhaled, long and slow. “It just happened.” It sounded a lame excuse, even to him.
Blayze threw his hands up.
Lero rounded on him. “Blayze, don’t say anything.”
Blayze flashed defiance. “We’re leaving for Drypso tomorrow — Drypso — and Darren’s out here kissing the girl earmarked for Ohirins,” he snapped.
Darren’s voice dropped to a warning growl. “Enough.” But it was true.
Not hiding his frustration, Blayze clamped his mouth shut and folded his arms.
Lero stepped right into Darren’s space, eyes searching his face with that middle-brother intensity that always saw too much.
“Darren,” he said quietly, “tell me the truth. Do you care for her?”
Darren’s breath caught in his throat. It choked him and he looked away. What if he faced the problem, if he admitted it? To himself, as a minimum, and to his brothers. His shoulders slumped in defeat, and he opened his mouth to reply, but Lero cut across him.
“You do.” Lero’s voice had softened.
Blayze sank onto the bunk. “Son of a lizard! We’re dead. We’re all dead.”
Darren scrubbed a hand over his face. His brothers were one more reason he had to face up to what he’d done, if it impacted them. “I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“But it did,” Lero said. “And now we have to deal with it.”
Blayze groaned into his hands. “Crukugs is going to smell it on you. He’s going to know. He’s going to—”
“He won’t touch her,” Darren said, voice low and lethal.
Both brothers went still.
Lero nodded slowly. “So that’s where we are.”
Blayze looked between them, face pale. “Are we really doing this? We’re going to defy High Command for a female?”
Darren met his gaze. “Not for a female. For Aelanna.”
His brothers stared at him for a long time.
Feeling like a condemned man, Darren sank onto the edge of the bed, exhaustion pulling at him. His whole body ached and his heart felt like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest. He hungered to be in Aelanna’s arms, body and soul.
Lero sat beside him. “We’ll figure it out. After all, Blayze and I might have the same problem.”
Darren stared at him, at the rare moment of brutal honesty from his brother.
“I’m not letting her go,” he muttered under his breath.
But Lero caught it and nodded once. “Then we're not we letting go of ours.”
Blayze groaned. “But how? How can we keep the females when we don’t have a planet to escape to?” He flopped onto the floor dramatically. “We’re doomed.”
Darren shifted his gaze to the wall, Aelanna’s voice echoing in his mind.
Then don’t push me away.
He closed his eyes.
The brothers stayed together in the dim room, exhausted but defiant.
Tomorrow, they would leave for Drypso, disillusioned but not defeated.