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“You serve your mistress still?” he asked.
Alina frowned. What did this asshole think was going on here? Did he think she was just going to betray her people after one—very questionable—act of kindness? “Yes, that is my job. Look… I couldn’t let you just die on my doorstep. But if you think I’m some turncoat that suddenly bats for the other team, you got another thing coming. Commander.” Even as the biting words spilled from her lips, Alina backed up a step, realizing how she was speaking, and to whom.
“Turn… coat?” Threxin turned to Renza, whose back spikes twitched in a shrug.
“Traitor,” she murmured. “I’m not a traitor.”
The emotional stress was making her suicidal. She was just so tired. Of everything. Of waking up every few hours, either to check if Threxin was still breathing or from some nightmare in which he chose that night to wake up and gut her in her sleep. Of worrying about Kaia. Of this secret looming over her in her cabin.
Of course she still served Kaia. In fact, Alina needed to keep a closer watch on Kaia and her health. She’d been looking worse. And now that Threxin wasn’t on the brink of death, Alina could get back on that.
CHAPTER 15
THREXIN
The human female was nervous. The redness that had spread on her fleshy upper face was a telltale sign of discomfort, as was the way her eyes kept shifting from one spot to another, refusing to linger.
Threxin sighed as she pressed a damp cloth to the dry aperture beneath his chest. It ran diagonally from his sternum to his hip and, being among the longest on his body, was especially prone to dehydration. The warm moisture induced a carnal relief that was inappropriate, perversely drawing out his cyan glow against all senses of propriety.
He had been nervous too, to have weird alien hands on him. It was wrong to have anyone other than a parent or mate care for these parts of him. And Koruth had never been the caring kind.
Threxin’s apertures had flinched shut at the human’s initial touch some ticks before. He’d had to force himself to relax enough to open to her.
He had also avoided looking at the female at first, occupying himself instead with a mental list of all things he had to prepare for the jump. There were four days left. Renza had suggested postponing, but that was not an option. Threxin’sabsence would already have been noticed, and missing the jump would only raise more questions.
Despite his best efforts, Threxin’s eyes were drawn to the female’s small fingers with their blunt claws. They were nimble but uncertain at first, even though the female had apparently done this many times in the past days.
But now he was awake, and the human sensed the discomfort of the situation as well as he did. They were both gritting their way through it, and as the ticks passed her touch grew more assured, falling into practiced, confident motions.
Too confident. Threxin hissed as she pushed the cloth too hard to the aperture, and she flinched back. “Sorry.”
She should be. The electric jolt the act induced was far from welcome. The way his apertures parted instantly against his will was even worse, and if he were human he would have reddened then as well. He’d gathered it was a sign of many human emotions, shame being the most relevant in that moment.
Threxin had half a mind to wave the female off and do the job himself, but he had already moved too much. The wound beneath the plaster in his chest had cracked, weeping at the edges.
“It is leaking,” he commented gruffly. She must not have cared for it as she should, because Threxin knew for a fact he was a rapid healer.
“I’m not surprised,” she muttered under her breath.
Threxin’s ears pulled back, apertures tightening. “Why?”
“Never mind.” She dabbed her fabric to an aperture that was clenched shut with suspicion. “Can you… just…” She motioned to it uselessly, asking him to open up. Perverse.
“I have been stabbed by one of your kind, human. I say the cause of my delayed healing isveryimportant.” Threxin lifted himself on his elbow, glaring.
The action drew her upright, exasperation on her tiny face. “Please. You’ll make it worse!”
Perhaps he had another way to get his answer.
He didn’t need it. He could threaten her to respond. It was experimental curiosity that made him do it. An inquiring tendril raised its spike, and Threxin, following it, reached a finger to catch its sharp tip beneath the human’s chin.
Her brow furrowed. Confusion. Fear too. She tried very hard not to look at him. Her eyes remained downcast even as she lifted her chin under the pointed pressure, thick lashes splayed over fleshy cheek mounds. But eventually with a perplexed and—amusingly—angrylook, she flicked them up to his, and that was when Threxin tried his experiment. He took her eyes.
It was pure instinct. It didn’t work on his own kind, of course. He’d only heard legends of it done on humans on the homeworld they had calledEarth. Something inside Threxin’s ribs guided him—black tendrils unfurling underneath his bones. His attention first unfocused, hazy as he fell into the brown of the female’s captured stare, and then oscillated back. The circle of his vision honed in, precise as a laser finding its mark.
He almost startled out of it when he saw the black of her pupils expand so suddenly. In nothing but a blink, the brown iris was no longer there, and all that was left were two endless voids. They were wide open and empty with invitation to claw inside them and see what was to be found.
Something warm slid down his finger. He registered that it had to be blood. It took Threxin a few ticks to validate that he had indeed not moved to pierce her. Instead, it was the human herself leaning forward, dragging the underside of her own chin along his talon and drawing blood to his knuckle as she went.
