Chapter 43
YIRI
I dropped out of the vessel before the pilot gave the all clear. I know the depth of my own damned lagoon. I could wait around for them to fuss about altitudes and safety, or I could get to my Aneah before something happened to her. No choice to be made.
Qhev’in’s halting bark cut through the air as I dropped.
I didn’t even feel it. No force in the universe could stop me now.
I hit the water with a splash and started swimming with everything I had, cekets parting for me, racing alongside me as I pushed through the lapping waves.
I caught a glimpse of the deck as I fought the water, a trickle of relief seeping in at the sight of Xokat stumbling from Qhev’in’s bark.
I dove under again, spearing through waves made choppier by the descent of the vessel behind me.
When I resurfaced, I looked up again only to stop dead in the water as my Aneah, my gorgeous fucking wife…
shoved Xokat off the deck. Off the deck and into the ceket infested lagoon.
My friends took their prey. They knew what to do.
Part of me howled with fury that I didn’t get to make him hurt for the fear and pain he’d caused us.
The rest of me roared with pride that Cora took that into her own hands.
Xokat’s screams filled the air as his blood mixed with the blue water of the lagoon, the red, frothy foam obscuring the worst of the attack from view.
I started swimming again, my moment of shock and awe giving way to my need to hold Cora in my arms now.
“Yiri!” Her cry cut through Xokat’s pathetic dying wails. “Oh, god! Be careful, baby!”
I chuffed a laugh, water spraying before I dove again, kicking hard and pushing with all my strength as my arms cut through the now churning water.
Baby. Never thought my chest would fill with so much pride at being called baby.
My Aneah worried about me, but I was safe enough.
I’d have to swim into the thick of the frenzy to be in any real danger.
I bypassed it and grabbed the edge of the deck right where Cora stood, hauling myself up.
Before I could get my feet under me, she leapt with a sob, throwing her arms around my neck and her legs around my middle.
I groaned with relief, catching her to me and stumbling only a step before I held us both safe and strong.
“Aneah.”
“I’m sorry about the mercenary,” she said, hugging me close.
“It was a shock, I guess, but you saved me, and I froze you out.” She kissed my neck and then my face, the salt of her tears mixing with the saltwater on my skin.
I was wet through and soaking her pink dress, but the damned thing was ruined already.
Fuck! The snarl in my throat couldn’t be stopped.
What did he do to her? But she kept apologizing between her peppered kisses.
“I get it, though. I swear I do! Sometimes you have to kill a guy. As long as you don’t go on some kind of senseless killing spree, I’ll assume you have a good reason.
I’ll know you’re doing what you need to do. ”
“Aneah.”
“I won’t freeze you out again. I was going to tell you at the party.
You were going to come outside, and I was going to tell you then, but then everything happened so fast, and Xokat wanted to sell me.
And then he left me alone with that guy, and I had to kill him.
So I get it. Sometimes you have to. And it’s so quick.
The knife goes in so easy. It’s not hard, but it is hard.
And at the same time it isn’t, you know what I mean? ”
“Fuck,” I choked out, holding her head in my two hands and making her look at me with those beautiful eyes. “Yeah, I know what you mean.” Her makeup, usually perfect, was smudged to shit, coming off under the pads of my thumbs as I held her gaze. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she nodded. “I’m-I’m okay. I’m scared.
Or I was. But you’re here. And I flew the cruiser!
All by myself. God only knows where I was, but I found Covara, and then I kept going.
They did something to the navs, but I found your spot and the cekets made like a circle?
” She held up a finger, looping it around in the air.
“In the water. I was worried I might land on top of one of them, but they were like right here, Mom! And I set it down in the circle and didn’t crash at all. ”
“Such a good girl,” I said with a watery chuckle.
“And I dragged the guy out here and dumped him,” she rattled on. “We need a new bed, by the way. He died on it. I took his shoes off? Because that seemed better for the cekets. I didn’t get Xokat’s shoes. Will they be okay? Should I have stripped them down? I didn’t want to. I hope that’s—”
“Cora,” I said, bumping my forehead to hers. “Stop. You did everything perfectly. You are perfect.”
“The cekets—”
“They can eat anything,” I said. “If they don’t like it, they drop it. Forget about the cekets. Are you alright?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not hurt?” I needed to look at every inch of her and be sure, but I couldn’t bring myself to put her down. Not yet. “What did they do to you?”
“Drugged me.” She made a scrunched face. “It was some nasty shit, too. I thought all your drugs were top tier here. I had a headache like you wouldn’t believe. It’s a little better now. I ate some zibe fruit before I found the patches and put some on Xokat. He was flying after I woke up.”
“There was another male?”
“In’vion,” she said, the scrunch deepening. “Don’t freak out, because I haven’t had time to freak out about it yet, and he’s dead, Yiri.”
“I won’t freak out,” I promised.
“He tried to kill me,” she said, her voice smaller and quieter than before. “In our bed.”
Every muscle in my body went taught with barely restrained wrath.
“Your phase blade was under your pillow.”
I swore, squeezing my eyes so tight I saw shapes on the insides of my lids. “Cora....”
“It was easy,” she said, her voice still too small. “You know? He was a person, and I know I should feel bad about killing him, but I don’t.”
I searched her eyes for the truth, but only strength shown back at me.
“I don’t,” she repeated. “It’s a little harder to wrap my head around Xokat, but give me a day or two. I’ll get over it. He said they should sell me to Ibaruta. How does that work? I’m already married to Yiri Fucking Ahlon.”
“Yes, you are.”
Her focus shifted over my shoulder, and she frowned. “Hey. Is that Qhev?”
“Yes.”
“He gave you a ride? That was nice. I’m glad you two are getting along.”
With a grunt, I said, “He’s a surprising guy.”
Distracted, Cora broke out of my embrace and lunged for her furry little son. “No, Mr. Darcy, you cannot go in your boat.”
She scooped him up before he could get in the floater, but he squirmed until she put him down.
“Well, if you don’t want to get a little bit wet from my dress, you’re not going to like it when a ceket yanks you in the water and eats you either!” Cora fussed over him, but the little monster darted past her and hopped in the floater anyway.
Cora spun on me, her finger pointing dangerously close to my nose. “You have spoiled our son!”
“I don’t think they’ll eat him,” I reasoned.
“You don’t think?”
Before she could get any more worked up, I bent and activated the lid on the floater, a glass bubble meant to keep seawater out of the refreshments it was meant to hold.
But it would do just as well to keep Cora’s cat safe and happy.
I gave it a push into the water, and Mr. Darcy did what Cora called loafing, his paws disappearing under his body.
“He’ll be safe?” Cora asked nervously. “They can’t break it?”
“They can’t break it,” I promised. I was pretty sure, anyway. Not that it mattered because the cekets wouldn’t—oh, shit.
Cora screamed and tried to jump in the water after him when a young ceket did try to eat the cat and the floater too.
But it was fine. The glass did not break, and one of the elders swiftly herded the youngster away.
Mr. Darcy leaned, trying to zip after them, but the floater stopped when it reached the preset distance limit from the deck.
“See?” I said, “He’s fine.”
By the time we sent Nerus and Kon away and Mr. Darcy finally came back to the deck, I was out of patience.
I wanted my mate, and I wanted her now. Whether that meant bathing her and holding her while she slept, or impaling her on my cock until she was so full she could barely breathe, I didn’t care.
As long as I could touch her skin and feel her heartbeat’s reassuring rhythm.
Lifting her off her feet, I carried her inside. Her legs wrapped around my middle, and her arms went around my neck, but she still said, “Mr. Darcy!”
“He’ll be fine, Aneah,” I murmured, my lips moving over the soft skin of her throat.
She didn’t protest again as I kicked off my shoes and carried her to her soft pink couch. Sitting with my mate astride my lap, I looked at her, taking in the bruises on her throat, and the dried tear tracks in her ruined makeup, the mess of her dark hair, and the torn, ragged state of her dress.
“Aneah,” I breathed. There were no words in Eissoini for how I felt, seeing her like this.
Horrified and murderous covered part of it, but there was a deep well of pride, too.
Any fear that she wouldn’t forgive me for killing the mercenary was gone.
Not only had she come to understand what I’d done, but she met me there, too.
My Ibar chosen mate didn’t wait to be rescued.
She didn’t weep for the foolish males who tried to take her.
She dealt with them as they deserved, and disposed of the evidence without waiting around for someone else to handle the dirty work.
This was what I saw in her that first night on BMM.
In a sea of batting lashes and pouting lips, my Aneah stood solemn and still in my frame, a knockout in her fitted skirt and sexy shoes, her lips at rest, not smiling, and her cat eyes glittering with the strength of diamonds.
She wasn’t a criminal. Just a human woman who’d never had anyone to depend on.
Maybe all these human women who came to Bion 8KV were just a fearsome as my wife.
Maybe they had to be to take that kind of risk.
But Ibar whispered to me that this one was special.
This one was life-hardened and stronger than she should ever have to be, long before I found her.
I couldn’t be prouder to call her my wife, and I’d do everything in my power to make sure she never had to do a hard thing like this again.
But the knowledge that she could. That she would… I swallowed back the painful lump of emotion in my throat.
Cora’s expression was gentle but teasing as she took my face in her hands, tipping my chin down so she could press a soft kiss to my lips.
“We’re okay, Daddy,” she said with a breathy laugh.
I nodded, releasing a long, shuddering sigh. “Tell me what you need. Sleep, a bath, food?”
Face scrunching, she squirmed in my lap. “I need out of this dress, for one thing.”
It was almost as stiff with dried saltwater as my own clothes, and probably irritating her delicate skin. It smelled like other males, death, and stale fear. Suddenly, nothing in the world mattered more than getting it off of her.