Chapter 9
Vytln
It was just basic common sense. She was their prisoner, she was their responsibility. And she was a delicate human female. The female crew just came to check on her, so clearly they felt kinship with her, and he felt it was his obligation to look after his female crew. He also wasn’t cruel.
Anymore. He wasn’t cruel anymore.
Her being a pest was annoying, but not a crime worthy of a death sentence. At least, not out in Coalition space.
Yes. There were many reasons to adjust one of the old, spare envirosuits for her. It wasn’t as good as the top of the line ones the other females had, but until they could purchase one, it was better to have it just in case. Especially if the life support shorted again.
Not that they’d purchase one for a prisoner. Of course. And since he wasn’t mating her, they definitely weren’t purchasing one for her.
He was still fine. He wasn’t trapped by this mating instinct.
“There is being two rooms in the secondary commanding center.”
Unprepared for the abrupt topic change, Vytln didn’t immediately know what Haven was talking about. He turned his head from the suit and frowned at her. “A second room? You mean the subspace generator beneath it? I’m aware it’s there.”
She shook her head, the human signal meaning no. “Secondary commanding was building inside another room. That room still being there. Behind the walls. Pipe is being there.”
It took Vytln a moment to understand what she meant.
Not because he was having trouble understanding her speech – that was getting easier the more she nattered at him.
No, he had to work out what she meant because he didn’t even think that there would be another room inside the secondary command center.
Or rather, he should say, the command center was the other room.
The Humility was an old ship, and it had served as a delivery vehicle for basically all of that time.
He didn’t know its full history, he doubted anyone did since it had been renamed, re-registered, and renovated multiple times over its life.
All he knew was that the smugglers they bought it from had worn out the last of its feasibly usable lifespan, and they had turned over what was little more than floating space junk with a barely functional engine.
It had been, at the time, their greatest prize, and their ticket off Rik-Vane. Vytln put a lot of work into making it livable, flyable, and comfortable over the years since their escape, and he was exceedingly proud of everything he had done.
But the secondary command center was not something he did.
It had already been there when they purchased it.
Most ships that were likely to see combat would have a heavily fortified bridge, separate from the main bridge, deep within the ship to be used in case of attack.
That way, if the bridge – which had more functionality but also more vulnerability – was damaged, the secondary command could continue to fight back and fly without issue.
Sure, the secondary command looked rough and ramshackle, but that wasn’t strange as the entire Humility looked like that. He knew that the secondary command had been retrofitted into place, but he thought the room had just been changed, not built into a different room.
But if that were the case, there was a space between them. And if the secondary command hadn’t been well built – and he knew it wasn’t – then it was likely that it was a wide enough space for pests to infest at their leisure.
“How’d you get in there?” He asked, closing the panel on the chest piece of the suit.
“Squeezing,” she said, taking a breath. “Too small for you. Giving me a pipe and I willing fixing the broken one.”
“Nice try,” he grumbled, scooping up the suit and returning to his trap. He handed the suit to her with a grunt. “Try this on. Make sure it fits.”
Haven took the suit from him and, after she had it in hand, let go of the hole and slid back into the nest with a soft call of joy. Like she enjoyed the fall.
It was tempting, unspeakably tempting, to step in closer and peer inside.
To watch her put the suit on. Not because she would get naked for it.
The enviro suits were designed to be worn over clothing.
It wasn’t necessary, of course, but the point of the suit was to go on in case of an emergency, and taking on or pulling off clothing would hinder that purpose, so it was capable of both.
She wasn’t getting naked, so there was no reason for him to be so interested in watching her change. It wasn’t a show. It wasn’t a teasing display.
But it was an intimate moment. It was a mimicry of a moment when she would be naked, pulling on clothing in their nest. After a long night wherein he spent the marks using his cocks to breed and plug her needy little hole as she cried out and dug her little claws into his skin. Claiming her, mating her, breeding her-
With a growled snarl of frustration, he turned and dropped to the ground in a low crouch, putting his back to the trap, the hole now above his head.
The hard metal body, a welded, jagged, sharp object, dug into the skin of his back.
One of the steps he put there to help his mate if she needed it to climb inside was cutting into his side, but he didn’t move.
He let out a long sigh, resting an arm on his bent knee as he stared into the familiar workroom.
Behind him, he could hear Haven moving inside, putting on the suit as he commanded.
Knowing she had that layer of protection eased something in him that had tightened the moment he had been told about the short in the air recycler and he realized she was vulnerable.
It wasn’t the best suit though. The other females had great suits.
Vytln and the others used the old ones that weren’t comfortable but would keep them alive, but the females were better cared for.
Haven was going to be cared for as well.
He’d get her a new suit when they made their next station stop.
He knew he would, even as he tried to tell himself that he wouldn’t.
She had to be safe. More than the need to claim her, to care for her, to breed her, there was the absolute, fundamental requirement to keep her safe. Like comparing the need for food to the need for air. They were both vital, one was just more pressing than the other.
More movement overhead told him that Haven had reappeared at the hole. He didn’t look up, but he felt her gaze on him.
“You are being okay?”
“No,” he said simply. Admitting it for the first time since he looked at his trap and realized that it had been triggered and he was once again caught in this position.
“Wanting to talking about it?”
He didn’t know. He was barely in a place where he could even acknowledge what was happening. He didn’t imagine that talking about it would make things better.
Despite his negative thoughts, however, he found himself saying-
“No one was ever meant to get near this trap, much less inside it.”
“Hm… You are really upsetting about this?”
“I certainly don’t like it.” He let out a long breath, running a hand over his horns. “I’ve been in this position before. With a female in my trap. I swore I would never let it happen again. That I’d never be in this position again.”
There was a moment of silence before Haven asked softly, “You having a mate already?”
“No.” His jaw tightened as his head dropped back against the trap.
“She didn’t mate me. She was taken from me.
No. That implies that she went against her will.
She encouraged him. She wanted him to take her from me.
She loved that she had both of us like that, and when she decided he was the better choice, she let herself get trapped specifically so she could convince him to take her away.
She knew he would like it. She knew it would make him wild for her because it involved taking something from me. He loved taking things from me.”
“Who is?”
He didn’t need to tell her. The only person he’d spoken his past to was Tanin, and that was because their captain demanded to know everyone’s history.
He wouldn’t tell anyone, but he needed to know about any potential threats they might have outside of Rike-Vane.
About any problems that might arise from something they were running from or that might be chasing them.
Vytln agreed to that reasoning and had explained himself to Tanin and Tanin only. How he got to Rik-Vane. Why he was there. What he wanted to do with his past when he escaped that place. What potential problems might arise from it.
But he had told no one else. That person, J’tll, was dead.
Their history was dead. Vytln was not J’tll.
The people from J’tll’s past, including the female that once willingly went into his trap knowing she only intended to play with his heart, were nothing to Vytln.
Why bring them up? Why let them infect this peaceful future J’tll’s death had bought him?
“My brother,” he said, his tongue moving even as his brain told him to let it die. “Kldyn. My younger brother. Not by much, but he was younger than me. But our ages were so close that we were raised nearly as twins.”
“Oh…”
“Yl’ln was a daughter of one of our mother’s associates.
She was raised with us at times. We knew her all our lives.
She was beautiful and vicious and manipulative.
” He smiled, enjoying those fond memories despite everything.
“I adored that about her. I loved watching her destroy others. The wicked pleasure she took in taking out our enemies was something to behold.”
“Mm…” The carefully neutral tone over his head pulled him back to the present. Back to the bitter bite of betrayal from his brother and the female he thought to once make his mate.