Chapter 13
Ysathea
I thought that, after the showdown with the creature and the revealing conversation with Thatcher, things would be different.
Granted, they were, but they hadn’t changed in the way I’d hoped.
Things had gotten worse, and I didn’t think that had been possible—or that I’d feel that way when it had already been days and there was no malfunction, no power outage. There was also barely any Thatcher.
I stood in my workroom by my favorite workbench as I played around with metal alloys and chemical compounds.
The threat was gone, or at least appeared to be, but I wasn’t feeling confident about it.
So I was here, working on creating a new suit of armor for Thatcher, one that would be able to resist the chemical composition of the acid the entity had sprayed at him.
Twice was enough; I wasn’t letting him get burned a third time.
Since all was quiet, I no longer had a guard assigned to me.
We were hurtling through space in pursuit of the pair of escaped gladiators.
The Vagabond was flying alongside us, and their pilot-and-navigator pair was timing each of their FTL jumps precisely with ours.
I’d gotten to work with Da’vi, their engineer, tuning the output of our engines to match theirs and keep our speed the same.
A fun challenge, and a brilliant, if rather surly, mind to work with, and I hadn’t enjoyed a single minute of it.
I thought that after that revelation, Thatcher would continue to follow me around everywhere if he could.
Except he’d become so busy with this current job that he had absolutely zero time.
I only saw him when I went to get my meals, staring broodingly across the mess hall at me.
I was also pretty sure he checked in on me each night and morning, but only because I’d set the hallway sensors outside of my quarters to record any activity.
He’d show up as if to check that I was there, then slink away again with his head hanging low.
Did he think he had to stay away because he’d proven to himself how “broken” he was by trying to attack Raukesh? He shared a bunk room with the Tarkan, and as far as I knew, the other male had not asked to be assigned to different quarters. He couldn’t have been that afraid.
When my eyes went to the sliver of hallway outside the engine room for the dozenth time, Ivo swore.
“Damn, Ysa. You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?
” he said. He ducked into my workroom, carrying a crate of small parts he was supposed to catalog and store.
Grunn was hot on his heels, and he wasn’t even carrying anything as an excuse for his presence.
His head lowered, his horn aimed my way.
Already grumpy and ready to charge headfirst, not that he would, but he’d use his words, and they would be sharp and biting.
My belly warmed with pleasure at the sight.
They thought they were here to talk some sense into me, and didn’t that make a girl feel loved?
See, this was why I’d adopted these two into my family.
Marked them the Ulinial way; a promise that I’d always have their back.
In return, they had my back too, and that was exactly why they were here.
Turning, I propped my hip against my workbench, leaned back, and crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, let me hear it. The sage advice, the observations. What am I supposed to do, guys?” I’d heard them whispering to each other on the other side of the engine room.
Grunn was partially deaf in one ear, thanks to the explosion that had scarred his face.
Whispering with my Rhico brother was practically impossible.
There was a reason they did not take him on missions that required stealth, and it wasn’t his size and massive Rhico feet.
At my hand gesture, Ivo shoved Grunn forward with two of his four hands.
He mouthed, “Go,” which the Rhico obviously didn’t see or hear.
He did start talking, though. “You’re moping!
” he said, like it was an accusation. “The thing is dead, and he’s no longer hanging out in the hallway.
All you do is sigh, work on his armor, and look for him even though he’s not there.
It’s disgusting.” Translation: Grunn was extremely worried about me, and he didn’t like seeing me sad.
Ivo rolled his eyes, the mood spots that dotted his face flashing with several different colors.
One clearly indicated his annoyance at how Grunn had messed up the delivery.
The Pretorian put his box down on the nearest surface one-handed, while using the others to shove the Rhico back so he could step in front of him.
“What our cantankerous coworker means to say is: Sure, humans supposedly don’t have fated mates, but blazing stars, they sure take to mating well.
We’ve got over half a dozen of them mated to males on this ship right now!
And here’s another thing to consider: Ulinial do recognize their fated mate.
Maybe it’s time you start listening to your own instincts instead of listening to what everyone else is saying! ”
The silence that followed that statement was long and deep, my mind spinning.
The empty cot, Thatcher’s certainty that he was too broken to be any good to me, other than as my shield.
The stalking even he admitted to, and the way everyone had been acting—even Ivo and Grunn at first—like Thatcher was a danger to me.
How incredibly torn I’d felt over feeling attracted when his behavior had kept crossing a line.
I’d send him away, and he’d glare and stay.
I’d demand answers, and he’d say nothing.
Even when he was kept so busy he couldn’t be here, he still checked up on me all the time.
At night, in the early morning hours, his glare at the mess hall, making sure I ate enough…
My instincts. They’d been in conflict with what my head had known from the start.
Through dry lips I said, “But it’s the Ulinial male that initiates the bond…
The female doesn’t know.” Grunn snorted like I’d said something incredibly stupid, and Ivo’s eyebrows went up like he was saying, “You hear yourself? Are you sure?”
Was I sure? Stars… Oh… Perhaps I was. I kept wanting him around, even though I didn’t want to at the same time.
His smirk—that half-smile he reserved only for me—was so damn sexy.
But it was that broken heart inside his big chest I coveted.
It deserved a little protecting, and while I might not fight physically, I definitely knew a thing or two about fighting for a person emotionally.
The way I’d fought to keep Ivo and Grunn on the ship and give them a home, even after they’d screwed up a time or two.
The way I knew family mattered, and you stood by them no matter what, and that family could be chosen.
Grunn stepped around Ivo, giving the Pretorian’s many arms the slip with sheer strength.
His fist crashed down next to me on the workbench, but I didn’t flinch.
That was just the Rhico way of emphasizing a point, and I was pretty used to it, and to smoothing a dent or two out of the metal surface from time to time.
“You need to tell everyone to mind their own business, Ysa. So what if the captain is concerned, or his mate? If you want Thatcher to shadow your every step, that’s your business.
If you don’t want him, you tell us and we’ll kick his ass. ”
Huh. I considered that, and came to the shocking realization that Ivo and Grunn would have done that in a heartbeat from the day it started.
Except they hadn’t. They’d moaned about it, complained, griped, but they had done absolutely nothing to stop it.
They knew me better than anyone in the galaxy, and it abruptly sank in that they’d taken my lead on this.
Even when I told Thatcher to leave, my guys had realized that wasn’t what I really wanted.
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Okay, you guys are right.” I straightened from my workbench, then quickly double-checked that I wasn’t leaving any unstable preparations out. “I don’t think I’ll be back today. Can you guys manage without me?”
Grunn grinned, Ivo scoffed, and then they shared a look that could mean all kinds of things, and definitely not that they promised they weren’t going to fight. They probably would.
I left anyway. Striding from the workroom, my head bent over my comm as I checked the last batch of messages I’d gotten today.
An invitation to join the girls for lunch—this time from Evie—so it was very polite and not pushy.
She was a diplomat to the core, and currently filled much of her time as a go-between for the Kertinal Empire and the locals of Radin, ironing out the details of a treaty that would see the planet become a production hub for the key component to a cure for Roka production pollution.
A cure our newest lady on the ship, Dani, had created.
See, sometimes this ship didn’t deal in death; it dealt in saving lives.
Perfect, they were meeting in the hydroponics bay, hardly a surprise.
It was their favorite place to hang out, because the massive, two-deck-spanning area made everyone feel like they were outside.
Maintained by Tasseloris, a Viridara male with special powers over plants, it was the lushest, greenest place on the ship.
I’d served on a handful of ships before the Varakartoom and lived on three different Ulinial colony ships.
None of them had this much plant life, or a hydroponics bay this huge and abundant.