CHAPTER 19
ELERI
As she walked back toward the clinic after her visit with S’kasia, an unfamiliar urtazi male stopped her on the path back to town.
“You’re Eleri? The human?”
“I am. Is someone injured?” Eleri started to calculate how long it would take for her to get back to the clinic to retrieve supplies if she had to get to a patient emergently.
“No, nothing like that.” The male gestured toward the path. “Pyo was looking for you. There’s a call for you at the holocenter.”
Any forward momentum Eleri had felt from her conversation with S’kasia came rolling back down at her with more gravity than she knew how to handle.
It wasn’t the other male’s fault, but she couldn’t hold back the aggrieved expression forming along her face.
With any luck, he wouldn’t be familiar with human facial expressions, and she could bluff her way through the rest of this interaction.
“Thank you. I better head over then.” She cut the conversation off in an uncharacteristically abrupt way—perhaps S’samph was rubbing off on her more than she wanted to admit—and marched her way toward the little back alleyway where the holocom unit was housed.
She knew who would be at the other end of the line. Eleri steeled herself the best she could and tried to ignore the roiling of her stomach. When she was able to calm the shaking in her hands, she pressed the accept button, holding her arms tight to her torso in a protective stance.
“Eleri, big sister, it’s been too long. How are you doing?
” Rhys’ face swam into view. She’d been wrong.
Her mother wasn’t here to entreat her on her brother’s behalf.
The devil had come himself. Once he’d been charming and effervescent, her debonair baby brother.
Now he had the haggard, hungry gleam of an iridescence addict.
His once blue irises were fully ringed in silver beneath a shaggy mop of white-blonde hair.
Eleri straightened her back as she stared hard into the holoscreen. She’d spent so much time feeling sorry for her poor brother, letting him and her mother prey on her goodwill. “I’m not sure what you want from me. I’m not on Gaia anymore.”
Rhys laughed, the sound of someone rattling stones around in an empty can. “Can’t I just call to say hello? It’s been so long. Things have been so challenging for Mom since you left. I’ve been really worried about her.”
Eleri’s hackles rose. If things were difficult for her mother, it was almost certainly her brother’s fault. “What’s wrong with Mom?” She took the bait. She shouldn’t have, but she did anyway.
“You know how the gangs are on Gaia. After you abandoned us, they’ve become particularly rabid.” Rhys let out an exaggerated sigh. “We just don’t have enough to pay them off.”
Eleri shook her head, incredulous. He had to think she was oblivious; the manipulation was so blatant. Uncle Brennan wouldn’t threaten their mother unless there was something substantial on the line.
“How much is the debt?” she asked through gritted teeth. “I already know what you used the credits for, so just tell me how much.”
“What happened to you?” Rhys struggled to maintain his mask of good humor as he tried to figure out a response to her pointed question.
“Either tell me how many credits you’re asking for or I’ll end this call.” Eleri placed fingers at the junction of her eyebrows as she tried to soothe stress away from her forehead. The mask of her brother’s expression cracked, and the unhinged narcissism began to seep through.
“Eight hundred for the debt.” Rhys sailed past the number like he was asking her for an egg and not the near entirety of everything Aglao had given her.
“But Mom and I could really use an extra two or three hundred. Rent is due soon. You don’t want Mom to have to work and scrape at her age, do you? ”
It was a standard line. A standard tactic to get her to cave. Her brother knew how to play her like an electric guitar. But she wasn’t about to give up the credits Aglao had entrusted her with for her brother’s games.
“I don’t have any credits for you, Rhys.”
The shift happened so quickly that someone less used to Rhys’ mercurial nature might be shocked, but Eleri had spent the whole call anticipating the sneering and insults.
“Eleri, don’t be such a fucking prim. You have credits.
The IA pays its colonists well from what I’ve heard.
The ones who go to spread their legs get paid ever better, and we both know that’s what you did.
” Rhys’ laughter had turned raucous. “Don’t they give you credits for each egg that hatches? ”
The words shouldn’t hurt coming from him. It shouldn’t matter in the slightest what he thought. Rhys had made his own choices, none of them good. She shook her head, trying to pluck some logical thoughts free from the whirlwind of emotions swirling around in her head.
“You can’t talk to me like that.” The words were feeble and only served as a buffer to gain her a few more moments to collect herself. Rhys ignored her. The rings around his eyes grew darker as he changed tack.
“It’s been three days since I’ve had a hit. You’re a nurse, for fuck’s sake, you know what that does to a person. Have a little compassion.”
“It never ends. This hit will turn into another.”
“I’m literally dying over here! Fucking useless prim. Give me the credits or I’ll push Mom into the fucking bay. Hope you enjoy having that on your conscience.”
He wouldn’t. Without their mother he lost the apartment and his meal ticket, but it had taken Eleri years to realize which of his threats were actually worth heeding.
“I can’t do this anymore.” Eleri stood, wiping her own streaming eyes. “Everything I had on Gaia I gave up trying to save you from yourself. Mom made her choice to keep paying for you to abuse her. Don’t call me again, Rhys. I have nothing left for you.”
Rhys rose from his seat in the stripped bedroom of the apartment they had once shared and smashed his fist hard against the table.
Eleri winced in spite of herself. Blood welled from his knuckles as he started to scream.
“You fucking whore! You abandoned us, and now you won’t help.
Are you happy being an alien slut? It’s the best you could have hoped for anyway. ”
“Make up your mind. Am I a whore, or am I a prim? I can’t be both.
” Eleri winced away from him and reached for the button to end the call.
A hand closed around hers. Startled by the sudden intrusion, she glanced up to find S’samph behind her.
His torn frill was raised in an obvious display of aggression.
“Pyo mentioned you were here,” S’samph addressed her first before turning to face Rhys.
“You will get nothing from my mate. Do not call her ever again.” His voice was deadly low, and he tapped a single claw against the interface, ending the call, doing what Eleri’s hands had been shaking too badly to do herself.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She took a few breaths, steadying herself against the ferocity of S’samph’s gaze. “I’m used to it.”
“You shouldn’t be.” He knelt in front of her, holding out his hands, an invitation she accepted before she could consider the implications. “I understand why you left your home. I don’t understand why you let him haunt you here.”
“He’s my brother.” She knew it was a meaningless word; she couldn’t even pretend to defend him after what S’samph undoubtedly heard.
“He is not your brother. If you require a brother, K’kaen will be your new brother.” The way he stated this as if it were a truth made Eleri’s heart stutter. If only it were that simple.
“Just because I don’t like him doesn’t mean I can delete him.”
“Do you want to know what S’kasia would do to me if I ever dared treat her with half as much cruelty?”
“Your sister is a much braver person than I am.” Eleri tried her best to dam the tears she felt stinging behind her eyes.
S’kasia was a warrior priestess, a war hero.
She’d lost her mate and her children in one fell swoop and went on to cling to life with startling ferocity.
Eleri was someone with a terrible brother, but she couldn’t compare to the suffering her friend had endured.
“I ran away from Gaia because I couldn’t be brave anymore. ”
“Then you are calling me a coward as well.” S’samph’s rough hands squeezed tightly around hers. “When my planet imploded, I didn’t stay to evacuate civilians. I fled with my clutch sister. If cowardice saved our lives, then let us be cowards together.”
“You make it sound easy.” She freed one of her hands from his grip to wipe an inelegant trail of snot and tears away from her face.
“There is nothing easy about what I am suggesting.” S’samph pulled a hydropod from his pocket. “Have this. You are wasting your water.”
She took the hydropod with a small laugh. “Crying isn’t going to dehydrate me.” But the look on S’samph’s face was so severe that she popped it into her mouth anyway. The lukewarm water gushed behind her teeth as she bit a hole in the corner of the pod, and it steadied her somehow.
S’samph moved toward her. He was crouched close enough for her to smell the distinct musk of his skin.
“You are brave. And that monster you call your brother is the most useless ravik I’ve ever encountered.
” He paused with a curious expression on his face as if trying to read the lines of hers.
“I would embrace you if you would allow it. I have learned this is how humans express comfort and affection. You do not have a tail, so we cannot twine ours.”
“Yes, please.” Eleri managed a rueful smile through her hiccups and leaned toward him.
S’samph reached for her, sweeping her off the dusty stool in the holocom booth.
She should have been embarrassed by the sudden and overwhelming display of affection, but instead she leaned her head against his shoulder.
Sandalwood. That was the smell she’d identified earlier.
“He will not contact you again.”
“I’m not answering any other holocoms.” The promise was as much to herself as it was to S’samph.
“Good. I will alert K’kaen he is to assume the role of your clutch-brother immediately.”
Eleri burst out laughing. “You don’t need to replace my brother for me. I’m fine enough without one. The one I had didn’t do me much good anyway.”
“You expressed the loss of your brother as troublesome. K’kaen lost many siblings back on Latilla.
When latil’e lose their family, we take each other in.
No one should be without a family. I took K’kaen as my battle brother, so in turn, you shall be his clutch sister.
It is the way things are done among my people. ”
Eleri stared up at him. “Maybe you should ask K’kaen how he feels about this before you volunteer him for the job.”
S’samph’s tail twitched a few times, and Eleri raised a brow at his amusement. Finally, he released his hold on her. “Very well. I will ask K’kaen. But if he agrees, then you will claim him as your new clutch brother.”
“Only if he agrees.” Eleri stifled another laugh.
K’kaen was enough of an annoying hover to play the part of her brother if nothing else.
She never expected to find a new family here to replace the one she had left behind.
The interface on her wrist buzzed with the shift of the hour.
Eleri checked the time and then pursed her lips.
“I need to get back to work.”
“I’ll accompany you.” He placed a hand on her shoulder as they exited the holocom booth into the dusty alleyway behind Pyo’s office.
“So, if you adopt family members, is S’kasia your biological sister?” She wasn’t sure if it was a rude question, but she felt compelled to ask.
“Yes, she is my clutch sister. We have the same dam.” People were watching them as they strolled together through the town center.
Eleri’s face was still sticky with the residue of tears, but she knew they were really watching the possessive press of S’samph’s hand on her shoulder.
If there had been any question about his intentions toward her before, there certainly wasn’t now.
No one seemed surprised, but she noticed Myla leaning in the doorway of the general store, speaking to Iulia with a dark expression on her face.
Eleri glanced away, trying to focus on her conversation with S’samph.
Things had never truly resolved after the confrontation at Myla and Pyo’s home, the day she announced she was leaving to focus on her work in the clinic.
As they approached the clinic, S’samph slowed his stride. “Eleri do you feel safe to stay here alone tonight?”
“Of course,” she tried to respond with emphasis, but her voice was tight. “My brother is galaxies away from here.” Eleri started to enter the clinic, but S’samph didn’t remove his hold on her shoulder.
“I asked if you feel safe, not if you are safe,” S’samph said. “It is important to me that you feel safe. I know that ravik cannot reach you physically.”
“I’ll be okay,” she said. “Rhys has done much worse.”
“Let me stay here tonight.”
“Here? There’s nowhere to sleep other than one of the patient cots.” Technically her bed also existed, but she wasn’t ready to offer that particular option.
“I’ve slept on worse,” he responded, echoing her words back in a way she was sure was intentional. “Tonight, you should have company.”
“Thank you,” her voice broke over the words. S’samph placed a hand on her face.
“You don’t need to thank me. I’m your mate. It’s my responsibility to make sure you are well.”
“I appreciate it all the same.” Eleri wiped an errant tear from the corner of her eyes as she ushered him inside. He had called her his mate before, but this time the word left a fizzy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Mate. She was wanted. Someone had finally chosen her.