Chapter 11Something
OR SOMETHING
AMARA
“STOP!” I SHOUT, as I jump off the table and rush towards Vexar, desperate to stop him from mauling himself.
With all the strength I can muster, I pull at his hand, trying to wrench it back.
It’s like fighting a brick wall. My thrumming heart becomes a deafening roar.
Electricity bursts over my skin. Animalistic fear grips me.
Our eyes lock. And just as quickly as the chaos started, it stops.
His hand gives under the pressure of my own, the bolts of electricity stop, and my heart calms.
“What the fuck,” I say breathlessly.
His gaze falls to his chest, where five pin-pricks of blood well like red blossoms in a field of golden grain. “I’m sorry,” he whispers.
I drop his hand and step back. “Are you going to tell me what just happened?”
“Everything is fine,” he grunts.
“Are you sure, because it looked like you were trying to rip your heart out after confessing some heavy shit.”
“I was not trying to rip my heart out.”
“Then what were you doing?”
No answer.
I let out a ragged breath and turn towards the window. A gust of sand-filled air hits me, cooling my sweat-damp skin and covering me in a thin layer of grit. I close my eyes and press my palms into the table.
I’ve dealt with plenty of intense, fucked-up situations, and never once have I felt the way I did a few seconds ago. It was like my body was on fire and I was … terrified. Terrified that he was hurting himself. Terrified that I wouldn’t be able to stop him. Like some bone-deep instinct to protect.
Fuck. I don’t know.
The urge to trust him is so strong and seemingly out of place, considering everything that just happened, and yet, it’s exactly what I want to do.
He’s not at all what I expected a future king would be, and a part of me can’t stop wondering if he might be able to help me.
Vexar has power. If anyone can do something to actually stop the slave trade, it would be him.
I just need to know if he’s the kind of person who would rather fix his problems or ignore them.
I lift my head and stare at the wall of orange sand outside the window. “If you win your fights, what happens next?”
It takes him a long time to answer, but he eventually says, “I become king.”
“And if that happens, do you plan on changing how the Obligation is done?”
“Yes,” he says firmly.
I turn and point at his chest. “Let me clean that up.”
“Just to confirm, we aren’t going to be talking about this?” I ask, as I dab the blood from his chest with a clean square of gauze.
“What is there to discuss?”
“I dunno, maybe why you just mauled yourself?”
He grunts and turns his face away from me, clearly uninterested in the topic.
I was convinced he was trying to claw his heart out, but honestly, the gouges he left are pretty shallow, and that makes me think he isn’t lying.
At the same time, I was putting my entire body weight into his arm, and it didn’t move.
At all. It felt like he was really digging those claws in.
Or maybe his arm was locked in place? Or—
I let out a choked laugh as I realize why his arm didn’t move. “Holy shit, you’re scary strong.”
The tension breaks, and he lets out a laugh of his own that quickly turns into a groan.
“Sorry,” I say with a wince, “didn’t mean to make you laugh.”
He shakes his head reassuringly. “It is fine.”
Ready to get back to work, I move into position and run the sani-light over everything. “You know, I’m still a little shocked you haven’t passed out again.”
“Why would I pass out?”
“The pain,” I say as I open a fresh suture packet.
“I am used to pain. It does not bother me so much anymore.”
I glance at the scar that runs down his forearm. “Is that because of all the scars?”
He grunts in confirmation but doesn’t elaborate. Sometimes scars are just painful memories, and if that’s the case with him, he has a lot of painful memories.
“You good if I keep stitching?” I ask.
He nods, and I get back to work. But seconds later, he’s squirming and breathing like he just ran a marathon.
“You sure you’re ok?” I ask with a raised brow.
“Have you ever taken a life?”
I reel back, surprised by the question and the lack of preamble. “Well, that came out of nowhere…” I’m not sure if I should even answer that. “Why do you want to know?” I ask.
“I am curious.”
I click my tongue. “So are you in pain, or not?” He doesn’t answer, but he’s stopped squirming, so he must be ok. With a sigh, I give him an answer. “I have.”
“In combat?”
“Yeah, I’m not big on casual murder.” I start on the next suture, and Vexar doesn’t react at all to the forceps or the needle. Maybe it’s not the pain making him restless?
“Was that the worst part? Of being a warrior, I mean?”
I want to joke about his sudden shift in perspective—from being surprised I was in the military to now calling me a “warrior”—but I resist. He’s probably just looking for camaraderie, and if I’m being honest, I sort of want to give him that.
“No,” I finally say. “It wasn’t the worst part.” It was certainly in the top three, though. “Maybe that makes me a bad person, but when someone’s trying to kill you, you don’t have much choice in how you respond.”
“That does not make you a bad person.” He pauses, and I feel his eyes dance over my skin before he asks, “What was war like?”
“That’s a big question.”
“I have time.”
My toes rub along the inside of my shoes as I shift my weight.
“It was different than I thought it would be. There was a lot more waiting around, I guess. We’d spend weeks doing nothing and then suddenly, we’d be fighting for our lives.
After a while, the waiting got harder. Everyone was on edge, just knowing how quickly things could shift from calm to chaotic.
We’d be sitting on the side of a mountain, or in an empty house, or in the back of a truck, and guys would be praying for the next bullet to fly, just so we weren’t stuck in limbo anymore.
“It sucked, but it gave me a real appreciation for camaraderie and gallows humor.” I let out a hollow laugh.
“Honestly, if it weren’t for the jokes, I don’t think any of us would have come out of it sane.
We got through it together.” And that’s why being here is so impossible.
I’m alone. No one has my back, and at the end of a really messed-up day, there’s no one to joke about it with.
“I dunno. It was all just so surreal. Like we were living in a really weird, really fucked up dream.”
“What made it so surreal?” he asks, genuinely curious.
I rest my elbows on the edge of the mattress for some added stability while I continue working.
“The war I fought in wasn’t a normal war.
At least not in the way most human warfare had been fought up to that point.
We weren’t on a battlefield; we were in cities and villages.
There were always civilians around. We’d be in the middle of a firefight, look over into a house, and see some guy watching TV. ”
“That sounds very unsafe.”
“No kidding. We’d be walking down the street in full battle-rattle while people were out buying groceries.”
“And the enemy would attack with civilians around?”
This is easily my least favorite thing to talk about.
“Yeah,” I take a breath, “the enemy was desperate, and desperate people do some really, really fucked up things.”
He gives me a long look. “That seems to be something most species have in common.” A few moments later, he adds, “I have a question. You were a medic, but you speak like a warrior. Why?”
My cheeks heat, not because he said I “speak like a warrior”, but because it’s clear he’s genuinely interested.
I don’t think I realized how much I missed this kind of interaction.
“I was in the Navy,” I say, “which is just one branch of my country’s military.
The Navy trains its own corpsmen, or medics, and they’re really good at it.
” I squint and ask, “Am I confusing you with the terms?”
“Corpsman or medic is fine.” He smiles softly. “My memory was not wounded, just my flank.”
“Right,” I say with a chuckle. The guy knows a bunch of languages.
A few new terms aren’t going to trip him up.
“The Marines—the branch of our military that focuses on taking the fight to the enemy—doesn’t train their own medics.
Which makes sense,” I say with a shrug. “Those folks are about as far from healers as you can get. So, the Navy sends its corpsman to keep the Marines alive. And since the Marines bring the fight to the enemy, being efficient with resources is important. Having someone who only serves as a medic and doesn’t carry a gun isn’t efficient.
So, corpsmen who deploy with the Marines are trained like a Marine and fight like a Marine.
At least until someone gets hurt, then we become ‘Doc’. ”
“‘Doc’? Is that a title?”
“It’s more like a term of endearment and respect.”
“Doc,” he says, like he’s trying the word on for size. “I like the term.” The muscles in his side bulge as he shifts a bit. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”
I’m fairly confident that if Vexar knew what was actually going on here, he’d want to stop it.
Everything about him screams, “Good guy”.
Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but I think his heart is in the right place, and I think I have to tell him.
If not for myself, then at least for the other nurses who might still be stuck here after the Magistrate is dead.
My heart pounds and palms sweat as I search for the best way to start the conversation. Do I just come out and say I’m a slave? That this isn’t just some job that pays the bills? Or do I like, slowly work into the subject?
Fuck. And what if he already knows? God, I hope he doesn’t know. I really hope he doesn’t know.
The more I think, the more my anxiety builds. Just the thought of saying the words out loud has me—
Vexar’s hand flies to his chest as he says, “What is wrong?”
I jerk back, surprised by his sudden movement. “Jesus! What was that for?”
“Something is wrong. Tell me.”
I glance around, confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Tell me what is frightening you,” he says more firmly. His eyes are intense and focused, like he’s waiting for me to say there’s a xenomorph about to burst out of my chest. The muscles in his jaw tick, and he adds, “Your heart rate has risen. It is too fast.”
I drop the needle-driver and have to grab it as it swings from the thread embedded in his side. “How do you know what my heart’s doing?” I ask. “Do you have super hearing, or x-ray vision, or something?”
“Or something,” he says flatly.
“What the hell does that mean?” I quickly clip the thread and toss the shears to the side, waiting impatiently for an explanation.
His face hardens. “Tell me what you are scared of,” he orders. The thunderous roll of his voice vibrates through me, and my body reacts in the worst way possible, with a shiver and a wave of lustful heat.
Frustrated, I growl, “You can’t just demand things from people and expect them to give you whatever you want!”
A wildly inhuman sound vibrates through his chest—like the bellow of an alligator—and his eyes narrow with a heated ferocity that feels like a challenge. Like he’s testing me. And the need to hold my ground wins out over everything else.
I lock on to those impossibly green eyes, eyes the color of grass in early spring, and I give no quarter.
In seconds, I start to regret my choice.
My skin prickles. Breath quickens. And the longer I look, the harder it is to look away.
There’s an entire universe in those eyes, a million questions swirling, and a sense that I might already know the answers to them all.
To my surprise, he looks away first. I sink my fingers into the side of the mattress, trying to keep myself rooted to the planet while it feels like I might float away.
I don’t know what it is about Vexar that makes me feel this way.
It’s this strange feeling of rightness I can’t shake.
This heavy pull towards him. A feeling like I want to hold on and never let go.
Like I could curl into his arms and sleep forever.
“You are safe with me,” he says, breaking the weighted silence. “I will never let anyone harm you.”
I glance up, confused and about to ask what he means, when he shifts uncomfortably and my gaze catches on his tented pants. A surprised, “Oh,” escapes me, and I force myself to blink and look away. But it’s too late. He already knows I know, and there’s no going back.
With a groan of embarrassment, he reaches down and adjusts himself. Right in front of me. My cheeks burn as I tilt my head back and stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. Salacious thoughts take over my mind, and a liquid heat curls between my thighs, persistent and overwhelming.
“I am sorry,” he rumbles in that deep voice that does everything but cool the persistent desire building in me.
His fingers brush over mine, still clutched to the side of the bed, and the resulting full-body chills have me squeezing my legs together at a reckless speed. The bare skin of my knees drags over the unforgiving floor, and a sharp stab of pain burns up my right thigh.
There’s a flash of movement that almost knocks me over, but Vexar catches my shoulder and steadies me. He’s sitting up—damn, he moves fast—expression tense with concern. “What happened?” he asks, his voice almost frantic.