Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Voices drifted through the walls, tickling Rykal’s sensitive hearing. “Found you,” he whispered. He tapped on the wall and was rewarded with a hollow echo.
There was a room on the other side, and there were humans inside.
“In there?” Arin frowned, scrutinizing the section Rykal was pointing to. Her blue eyes flicked up and down, searching for an opening. “Are you sure?”
“I’m rarely wrong about these kinds of things.” The other warriors thought he was a bit insane, but sometimes Rykal thought he could feel things; hunches and so on.
Arin tapped gently along the wall, looking for some kind of door or entry point, but it was seamless.
Rykal shrugged. “We’ll wait until the others get here, then I’ll just cut it with something made from Callidum. They can’t escape. I just want to have a little chat with the woman who thought she could blow me into oblivion.”
“Little chat?” Arin’s tone was skeptical. “I suspect your idea of a ‘little chat’ differs from my definition of a ‘little chat’.”
“Yes, but we have the same goals in mind, don’t we?”
Arin shot him an exasperated look. “My goal isn’t to kill every human or alien who rubs me the wrong way.”
“She tried to kill me with missiles, and she was going to kill you,” Rykal growled, his killing intent rising as he remembered the blank-faced woman who had snatched his precious Arin away and left him to die in the escape pod.
“Revenge is my blood-right.” He paused, studying his mate carefully.
Some of the things she said baffled him.
He couldn’t understand the way humans thought sometimes.
Or maybe it was females in general.
Rykal shook his head. “How are you able to be so calm about it after what she did to you? If you wish, I will grant you first choice of weapons and first choice of retribution.” He moved closer to her, inhaling her intoxicating scent.
She definitely had a calming effect on him; without her nearby, he would probably still be seething with rage.
“I’m more angry about what she did to you,” Arin said quietly, her eyes cold and clear. “I’m furious. If I think about it too much, I scare myself, because I think about doing terrible things to her, and then I realize that I’m not the noble peacekeeper I thought I was.”
“You wish for revenge?”
“Very much so. But our culture is different from yours, Rykal. We don’t make revenge into an art form.
We have laws to deal with this kind of thing.
When you killed those men back there, a part of me rejoiced, because I wanted them to die.
There was a small part of me that took savage delight in it, and that terrified me, because it showed me that I’m capable of terrible things. ”
“But revenge is a natural part of life.” Rykal was struggling to understand her logic. Humans seemed to believe in justice without bloodshed. Was such a thing possible?
“Not where I’m from, it isn’t.” Arin pressed herself against him with a sense of ease that pleased him greatly.
“But in this case, I can see your side of the argument, and I can see why you consider it justified. I’m just trying not to give in to my darker urges.
Compared to humans, you Kordolians possess so much power.
Being so close to it is a little scary and a little intoxicating, and in the face of all that, I’m just asking myself whether I’m still capable of doing the right thing. ”
“Ah.” Rykal blinked, trying to comprehend her reasoning. “You’re trying to be just and follow the laws of your people.”
“Something like that.”
“And are you certain justice can be done in your so-called ‘Federation’?”
“Actually, no.” Arin looked up at him with her pink lips slightly parted, and Rykal was tempted to devour her in a devastating kiss. But this was a serious conversation, so he restrained himself.
Something was being pressed into the palm of his hand. It had the familiar weight of sweet, pure Callidum.
“So on this occasion,” she said softly, “I’ll ignore the law, because the law has ignored us, and look what happened. Just don’t kill any of the other humans, and try not to kill that woman, E1, if you can avoid it. Promise me, Rykal.” Her tone became stern, her clear blue eyes like chips of ice.
Rykal’s fingers curled around the familiar hilt of one of his throwing daggers. “You kept this?” His eyes widened in surprise.
“Hidden in my flight jacket. I only ended up using one of them. You can open up the wall with it, right?”
“Naturally.”
“Fine. Do what you have to do, but promise.”
Rykal sighed. “I promise not to kill any of the other humans.”
She curled an arm around his neck and kissed him. “We walk a fine line, don’t we, my Kordolian?”
“Between life and death, or right and wrong?”
“Both,” she murmured. “And ever since you entered my life, you’ve turned everything upside-down.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like a good thing.” Rykal couldn’t hold on any longer. He returned her kiss, making sure it was deep and devastating enough that Arin was reluctant to let go.
“Mm,” she sighed. “Upside-down in zero Gs isn’t a bad thing at all.”