AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He doubted they were pleased to be standing beside each other at all.
Prince Hyg had made his proposal to Alistar Turner with a solemnity not normally shown during offers of engagement. The Drone accompanying him had looked as though her prince were throwing himself upon a sword and the Soldier had looked as though someone were stabbing him with one.
Sazahk hadn’t been present when Dominic had received the news of his upcoming nuptials, but considering that Dominic hadn’t reached out to him since, he didn’t think he’d taken it well. Only something truly upsetting could have kept the human scientist from engaging with Sazahk on his findings.
But Garin was closer to Dominic than Sazahk was.
Garin, who was now standing closer to the redhead than he had been when Prince Hyg took the stage. Sazahk still couldn’t see Garin’s face, not even through any of the room’s cameras, but he saw the flirtatious smile on the redhead’s pink lips as he looked up at him.
And he saw Garin turn to him as he replied to whatever inane thing had come out of his pretty mouth.
“Control your face.” Serihk stepped between Sazahk and Garin, blocking Sazahk’s view of him. “Your colors are a mess.”
Sazahk looked down at his hands to see them swarming with black, and he stuffed them into his robe’s sleeves.
“Would you like me to have him removed?” Serihk didn’t take his gaze off the Prince, but he raised an eyebrow.
“Who?” Sazahk turned pointedly back to the speech, though he let his implant filter out most of the words, not interested in the political niceties.
“That man talking to yours.” Serihk’s voice dipped into a growl and despite his directive for Sazahk to control his face, a sliver of red peeked above the collar of his own shirt.
“Garin is not mine, and it is not my duty to regulate whom he converses with.” Sazahk clenched his fists, hidden in the long sleeves of his robe. “He is more than free to strike up whatever conversation he likes. Even if that conversation is undoubtedly dull and vapid.”
Sazahk cringed after the words left his mouth. He wasn’t used to expressing cruelty toward people who didn’t deserve it and it discomfited him to hear it from himself.
Jealousy didn’t sit right in his gut.
But Sazahk’s dislike for the bitter, needy feeling didn’t make it any less potent.
Garin should be standing next to him.
Garin shouldn’t be standing next to that man.
Sazahk wanted Garin with him, and he didn’t normally want things like that, but wanted it now.
“I’ll have him removed.” Serihk turned to his klah’eel bodyguard in the corner, but Sazahk shook his head.
“That is an unnecessary abuse of power.”
Serihk nodded to the hulking woman with the sharp tusks and indicated the red head. “A minor one.”
Sazahk clenched his jaw and leaned over to hiss at his brother. “I do not wish to have him removed on my brother’s orders in an attempt to coddle my fragile feelings.”
Serihk made a noise in the back of his throat and waved his bodyguard down. “Fine.”
His brother’s protectiveness surprised and strangely pleased Sazahk, but it introduced a new concern to his muddled mind. If his brother was feeling protective, how might his squad be feeling?
For the first time since spying Garin and his pretty companion, Sazahk looked back at the table with Bar’in, Tar, Fal’ran, and Patrick. But instead of finding the combination of pity and protectiveness he had expected, Sazahk found Bar’in’s poisonous glare directed at himself.
Sazahk recoiled. That didn’t seem fair, considering it was his feelings under assault. He barely heard the applause at the end of Prince Hyg’s speech over the pounding in his ears of his own indignation. He started toward his squad, and Serihk stepped in front of him as he passed.
“Let me know how I can help.”
Sazahk pressed his lips together and let his instinctual defensiveness ebb away before responding, but still side-stepped his brother. “I don’t need your help.”
Bar’in rounded on Sazahk as he approached, his shoulders up and his fists balled, but Patrick pulled him back. He said something in Bar’in’s ear, then turned him, and pushed him in the opposite direction. He shot Tar a meaningful look, and Tar put his much larger hand on Bar’in’s narrow shoulder and led him away.
Sazahk had the somewhat mortifying impression he was in trouble and didn’t wish to be, something he hadn’t felt in a long time. One had to care about others’ opinions to care if they disapproved. But in the past few months, Sazahk had found people whose opinions he cared about.
