Chapter 7
She woke up warm, which was wrong on every level she could think of before coffee.
Amelia hadn't woken warm in… shit, she couldn't remember.
She woke up with frozen feet and a stiff neck, hunched under blankets that had been thin to start with and hadn't improved with age, trying to work out whether the hot water would last long enough for a shower or whether she'd be washing her hair in the sink again.
She did not wake up in a bed that cradled her like a baby, under covers thick enough to bury her.
Her eyes snapped open and focused on dark paneled walls, with recessed amber lighting that brightened as she moved under the covers.
Right. The alien emperor's yacht, hiding in a mining shaft somewhere in deep space, with pirates circling outside.
This is fine. Everything's fine. This is my life now.
She sat there for a moment, staring at the ceiling and trying not to breathe too deeply because the pillow smelled like leather, with something underneath that was definitely not human. She breathed it in before her brain caught up with what she was doing, and then she stopped breathing entirely.
Don't be weird. You're not sniffing your kidnapper's bedding.
Then her eyes widened. It wasn’t Thyaar’s bedding, though, was it? Shit. That made it all the more weird.
Rolling over, she reached for the warm spot beside her and frowned when she found it empty.
Where was Barnaby?
She sat up quickly. The cat had vanished along with Thyaar, whose pillow and folded blanket sat neatly by the door, and a prickle of guilt worked its way up the back of her neck. She'd taken the bed and he'd slept on the floor when the bed was enormous and he could have—
Nope. Not going there. So not going there.
Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she dropped onto the carpet, which was thick and warm under her bare feet. Her borrowed shirt hit her mid-thigh. She tugged at the hem uselessly, then gave up. Until the ship finished with her pajamas, it was all she had.
She padded out into the corridor looking, she suspected, like a kid who'd raided her dad's wardrobe, except her dad had never owned anything this nice and neither had she.
She padded barefoot out of the bedroom and into the corridor. Thyaar's voice, low and exasperated, rumbled through the walls.
"...I have adjusted the protein ratio four times. Four. This is not a negotiation. What about this makes you think it’s a negotiation?”
Barnaby yowled back at him… a long, theatrical, deeply offended sound that she'd heard a hundred times before, usually when his bowl was empty or someone had moved his favorite blanket. He was a cat with opinions, many of them.
"I added the poultry compound. The medical scan indicated your species finds poultry compounds acceptable, so what, precisely, do you want?"
There was another yowl, longer than the first and somehow even more insulted. If it could have been translated from cat to human, it would no doubt have insulted both Thyaar’s intelligence and his parentage.
She padded down the corridor, bare feet silent on the carpet, and stopped in the doorway to the bridge.
Thyaar was in the pilot's chair with his back to her, Barnaby was draped across his shoulders like a ginger fur stole. The cat’s front paws dangled over one side of the big alien’s chest, and his tail hung down the other while he purred loudly enough to rattle the bulkheads.
On the console sat seven small containers, each one holding a slightly different shade of brown mush.
She bit the inside of her cheek so hard she nearly drew blood.
"What did he do now?"
Thyaar's head came around, and his expression was a masterpiece of exhaustion, bewilderment, and the defeat of a man who had never lost a battle until he'd met a twelve-pound cat.
"This animal," he said, "is draanthing impossible."
The laugh escaped before she could stop it.
"Yeah. Welcome to Tuesday."
Barnaby took that as his cue to abandon Thyaar's shoulders and launch himself at her. Twelve pounds of ginger hit her chest hard enough to make her stagger back a step, and she caught him on reflex, her arms locking around his middle.
"Barns, for fuck's sake."
He bumped his head under her chin and started purring as if he hadn't just spent the last ten minutes rejecting seven meals from an alien warrior.
“Little menace,” she told him affectionately as she dropped into the co-pilot's chair. He settled in her lap like he'd been there all along, kneading her thigh with his claws out because Barnaby believed in tactile affection and didn't care if it hurt.
"He's got a prescription food," she said, scratching behind his ears until he melted into a boneless puddle.
"For his stomach. It's the only thing he'll eat that doesn't make him sick.
Emily had it on auto-delivery every month.
Costs more than my rent, and I don't pay much rent.
" She paused, her fingers stilling in his fur.
"Well, I didn't, before Miranda canceled the lease. "
Thyaar's jaw tightened, and she watched him decide not to say whatever had risen to the surface. That one small motion told her more about his opinion of Miranda Evans than any words could have.
"So." She kept her voice light because she wasn't going to think about Miranda right now. "Emily. Is she okay? I mean, the last time I saw her, she was heading to the Mate Program offices to sort out some kind of alert. She said she'd be back in an hour, and then..."
She trailed off, because there wasn't a good way to end that sentence. Emily hadn’t come back. Then Miranda stripped the apartment and canceled the lease and Barnaby was the only thing left. “Did something go wrong? I mean I know something went wrong… but what the fuck happened??"
“She was matched,” Thyaar said. "And then things got complicated."
She blinked. “Wait… what? Complicated how?"
"She was taken." His voice flattened into something hard and controlled. "Kidnapped from the cargo bay on the station. A faction called the Purists. Raaevik was her bodyguard. He went after her alone and got her back, but they'd infected her with a biological agent. She's a carrier now."
Amelia's hands stopped moving entirely, buried in Barnaby's fur. "A carrier of what?"
Thyaar leaned his head back against the back of the chair and closed his eyes. He looked tired, as if he’d been running for days on nothing but fumes.
“No idea, I’m not a scientist. It was designed to kill anyone who carries certain bloodlines, apparently.
She can't go back to Lathar Prime, she can’t come back to Earth because of it.
" He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was quieter.
“But she's alive, and she's safe, and she's with Raaevik. The Emperor gave them a ship. They're on Parac’Norr, in exile.”
She sat, letting the words sink in as Barnaby purred against her stomach.
Em, kidnapped. Em, infected with something that made her lethal and now on some alien planet, in exile.
"You said Raaevik was her bodyguard," she said slowly, frowning as she tried to fit the pieces together. "Why did she have a bodyguard? Who was she matched to?"
Thyaar was quiet for a moment, then turned to look at her. “She was matched to the Emperor."
"The Emperor," she repeated, hearing the words but not believing them. “As in the Emperor of the Latharian Empire. That emperor?”
"Yes. That emperor.”
“Holy shit.” Then she laughed. “God, Em, talk about go big or go home!”
She wriggled around in her chair, bringing her legs up to curl up as she looked at Thyaar.
“Wait… but now she’s with your brother?”
He nodded. “The bond hit him like a supernova. He recognized her as his at first sight.”
“But is that..." She gestured vaguely. "I mean, that's got to be bad, right? Muscling in on the Emperor’s mate? Like… politically or something?”
Thyaar snorted. “It's treason. Punishable by execution." He said it evenly, as if he were stating the weather. "But the Emperor let them go. Whatever else he is, Daaynal is not a fool."
She looked at him. "And you? How did you end up involved in all this?”
"Emily asked me to bring Barnaby to her,” he said, “Before she left for Parac’Norr.”
Amelia looked down at the orange lump in her lap. Barnaby blinked up at her, slow and smug, as if he'd known the answer all along and had just been waiting for her to catch up.
“That thing you said,” she said after long moments. “About Latharian males recognizing their mate. First sight."
She didn't look at him. She was looking at Barnaby, at her fingers working through his fur, at anything that wasn't the broad-shouldered alien sitting two feet away.
“Does it always happen like that? Just... bam, you see someone, and that's it?"
Thyaar had gone still, the easy way he'd been sitting in the pilot's chair shifting into something more careful even though he hadn't moved. "The recognition is immediate. What happens after depends on the individuals."
She slid a glance sideways at him. His expression had shuttered but she forged on. "Have you ever... I mean, have you..."
She didn't finish. She didn't need to. His jaw worked, and his hands, resting on his thighs, went absolutely still.
"The bond is not something we discuss in detail," he said evenly. "It's considered extremely private."
Shit. He was bonded. He had to be.
He was bonded and she’d been… thinking about him. Like that. Even though she hadn’t meant to.
Shit. Shit. Shit.
She pushed to her feet, spilling a complaining Barnaby off her lap.
“I need to… I need some air.”
She needed some air… on a spaceship. That didn't make sense.
The air was the air on the ship, and it was the same wherever she went. He looked over at the cat.
Barnaby, despite being less than a tenth of his size, somehow managed to look down his nose at Thyaar. Then he swished his tail in annoyance and closed his eyes, effectively dismissing him.
Thyaar groaned and dropped his head back against the headrest with a thunk. He'd upset her. Draanth.