Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
The comfort the food offered before is absent as I eat my dinner. It fills my stomach but does little for the emotional whiplash that Mekkra gave me in the bath. Am I so fucked up from my time in space that any shred of kindness has me feral for a monster?
I lie in the giant bed, staring up into those dimmed red lights that signal nighttime on this ship, and let my mind cycle through all the things that might happen tomorrow.
Some scare me, like the thought of being tied to an alien for all eternity.
But some of those thoughts entice me, too.
If the warlord could make me come by faucet alone, what will it feel like if I let him touch me outside of the blur of an aphrodisiac?
I hate that moisture slowly builds in my core at the thought of him, and I press my palm against my mound to stop the blood from rushing to my pussy.
It doesn’t work—and I know if I just lie here, I’ll need to find another release for myself.
It’s like Mekkra has activated my long-dead sex drive, which makes this so much more complicated than it needs to be.
I eye the hole in the console to which Starcroft retreated after dinner, with no signs of life or even as much as a blinking light.
I can’t just stay here and masturbate until morning; I won’t let Mekkra have that kind of power over me.
So without my robot attendant, I decide to take in a little of that stale station air and walk... maybe even explore my new home.
I grab one of the sheer robes, throw it over my shoulders, and press the door lock. With a whoosh it opens, even though part of me thought it might be locked. Is it possible that Mekkra trusts me? Maybe there's just nowhere for me to go on a station floating in space.
The dim hall thrums with red light as if a bulb is about to burn out.
I pad barefoot in the opposite direction of the kitchen, deeper into the station than I’ve been before.
As I walk, the narrowness of the hall opens into yet another atrium full of living plant walls.
Garnet alien flowers open and close, blooming as if they’re breathing.
While beautiful, they look dangerous, sentient even. Something instinctual, some long-lost part of my caveman brain, screams Don’t touch!
For once in my life, I listen.
I walk past the flowers and into a half-open doorway.
The metal sliding door looks much like the one to my room…
that is, if someone had bashed it open so badly that it might never close again.
I run my hand across the jagged bits of metal as I pass through, my fingertips tracing along the long drags of what look like claw marks.
This room is smaller and much colder than the space I was in before. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust to this darker space, and I’ve got to rely on whatever light is streaming in from the other room. But as I blink, I can make out what looks like a crude monument.
A large sheet of steel has been plunged into the floor so that it stands straight up in the air in the center of the room.
Alien writing looks crudely scratched into the metal.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what it says, as the translator chip the Deenz installed in my brain only works with speech.
It feels important, though, and I lean in closer, trying to see if I can parse what they might mean.
As I lean in, I catch the faintest glint of something out of the corner of my eye, and as if I’m in some kind of trance, I reach out to it.
Whatever lies there next to the crude monument pierces my skin, and I yelp before nursing my pricked finger between my lips. The ferric taste of blood fills my mouth, and I move to the side, letting more of the light from behind me reveal what just cut me.
Right next to me are the hulking bones of what looks like another Drefling. The quill-like spines across the skeleton’s back cut me with the lightest of touches—proving that the ones Mekkra possesses are as deadly as they look.
I stumble backwards, wanting space between me and the long-dead alien.
Who the hell is this? And why was his body just strewn here on the floor and left to rot?
I shouldn’t be here.
I keep backpedaling until I hit something in the middle of the room, and I can’t help it when the scream escapes my lips.
“Mae, clam down, it is only Starcroft.” The robot hums as he floats around to the front of me. He cocks his little digital face and frowns. “Are you injured?”
“You scared the shit out of me!” I grumble.
“You’ve soiled yourself?” the little bot, who takes things very literally, asks.
“Ugh, god no, it’s like a figure of speech—I’m fine.”
My uninjured hand is still clutched to my chest as I try to catch my breath.
“Well, I am glad you’re well…and clean.” He smirks. “But I must ask, what are you doing here?”
Here.
“What exactly is this? Who was that?” I point to the pile of bones.
“This is a sad space, a memorial even.” Starcroft buzzes past me and floats over to the long dead alien.
He shines a little light over his body and is quiet for a moment.
If robots can’t feel, he’s doing his best impression of someone who can.
“Warlord Mekkra doesn’t like to speak of this, but I have no directives to keep this information from you.
This is the spot where Warlord Mekkra last fell into the red oblivion. ”
He speaks as if I should know what he’s talking about.
“What’s the red oblivion?” I ask, just knowing it’s going to be something terrible. You don’t wrap up something nice and pleasant with a name like that, and I doubt the bones on the floor died of too much affection.
“Oh, I suppose you don’t know about that. The term red oblivion is a Drefling name for when their kind succumb to the madness of being unmated. It is incredibly unpleasant.”
Madness.
“Did Mekkra kill him?” I know the answer already.
“Yes, he did. Although I don’t think he wanted to, if that helps.”
It doesn’t. It might even make it worse.
“But who was this? Someone who tried to take over the trade routes?” I’m trying to quantify his actions. I’m not sure why though, I know he’s volatile. This shouldn’t shock me—should it?
“My brother,” a voice from the hallway says softly, reverberating off the metal walls of the space heavy with grief. Starcroft snaps off his light, like a child in trouble for reading too late in bed.
I turn on my heel, and my gaze lands squarely on his body, filling the threshold so that no external light bleeds around him. For a moment he’s silent, but even in the darkness I can see something sharp splash across his face.
“You weren’t meant to see this... Even I do not come here.”
“I didn’t know—”
“No,” he cuts me off. “You did not.”
He’s not accusing me, but his voice is so thick with tension I can’t help but feel as though I’ve broken some unspoken rule.
“What happened?”
He draws a deep breath in.
“I did.”
“Your own brother? What did he do?” I can’t keep my voice neutral. How could someone kill their own kin?
The air shifts from the chill of before to something heavier and hot.
“I told you—I’ve been unmated for too long—I lost control. He tried to stop me from hurting a cargo ship that wandered too far off course.” Mekkra’s eyes go glassy, as if he’s replaying that day in his head.
“They were no threat to us, and my brother saved them, but not before I cut his throat for his insolence.”
He steps forward, past me, and suddenly strikes the metal memorial, smashing in the corner. Sparks fly as his claws scrape the surface.
I flinch, but I don’t run.
“I’m so close to losing control again,” he pants, voice rough. Even though he’s fraying at the edges, it feels like an admission. Like he’s showing me his weakness.
Mekkra’s pupils are blown wide when he turns back to me, the spines along his back fully lifting.
He’s standing on the precipice of losing himself again.
But for the first time, I can see that he’s actively fighting what his biology threatens—underneath his fear and hostility lies a shame that cuts deep.
And that shame is seemingly completely out of his control. I see some of my pain reflected in him.
Instead of retreating to my room again, I do the thing he least expects. I step forward, channeling all my rage and hate about my situation into something else. I wrap my arms around his waist, avoiding the spines along his back, and just hug him.
We’re both fighting for our fucking lives, and neither one of us has had much say about it.
“You wish to…comfort me? After learning what I’ve done?” he demands, heat radiating off him in waves.
I don’t answer. There’s no need for me to justify myself. I don’t know the name of his brother; he’s only a ghost to Mekkra.
“But you have seen the evidence of my cruelty with your own eyes…”
I can feel his hand hovering over my shoulder.
“I am not safe.”
I tighten my hold; Mekkra’s breath stutters in his chest.
Slowly, as if I were too sacred to touch, his arms wrap completely around me. I press my cheek into his abs, the softness of his fur tickling my nose. His body heat flows against my skin, ebbing any chill out of me.
The madness may live inside him, but so does his choice to fight it.
“We will wait,” he says at last, quieter now. Controlled again, but barely. “For our mating ceremony.”
A pause, and he tilts my head up with his thumb. Something softens behind his eyes. Maybe it’s my willingness and knowing that he could soon be free of the madness that threatens him. Maybe it’s seeing his brother’s bones.
“Today, I must honor the dead.”