ACROSS STARS AND BLOOD (The Malaki Series Book 1)

by L. A. MARIE

  I wailed a bit more before my mother tucked me in and kissed me on the head.

  “I love you, Thane,” she said, ruffling my hair. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Well, she’d been wrong about me, hadn’t she? I wasn’t going to find someone. I hadn’t come across anyone that had made me feel something other than lust, or disgust. I had fucked a few women, but discarded them after. I wasn’t the man my mother had hoped I would be.

  Just as well that she was gone, then. She would hate the person I’d become. Hell, there were days I hated the person I’d become. But fuck it, I was who I was and no one changed. And so what if I didn’t find my soul mate? I wasn’t sure it was for me, anyway. Having someone by my side was just going to hold me back, drag me down.

  And I didn’t need another person in my life who would ultimately end up being disappointed in me.

  I had more than enough of that going around to last me a lifetime.

  No, thank you. I was a lone ranger, doing my own damn thing, whichever way I wanted to do it. I broke the rules, I didn’t play well with others. And that was just fine by me. I didn’t need a soul mate. I didn’t need love.

  All I needed was to be left the hell alone.

  Chapter Twelve

  Emori

  After hiding away in the back of the ship for a long time, pulling myself together again, I returned to the cockpit and sat down in the seat that I saw as mine. Thane was always behind the controls.

  He glanced sideways at me when I sat down but didn’t say anything.

  “How far do we still need to go?” I asked.

  “Why? Working out how long you still have to overthrow me?” His tone was snide.

  I shook my head. “Fighting you doesn’t work.”

  He chuckled. “The sooner you know that, the better.”

  “You’re an ass, you know that?” I snapped.

  Thane pulled up his shoulders.

  I looked ahead at the space before us. It was dark, and miles and miles were filled with nothingness, a vacuum that lasted forever. It was strange to think that there could be such a vast space of nothing at all. It was weird to think that such a place existed. Where nothing could exist.

  My mind jumped to the conversation we’d had earlier, about the bond and the blood and the Noether.

  “This bond…” I started.

  Thane glanced sideways at me.

  “What about it?”

  “How does it work?”

  He sighed. “I thought I explained it.”

  “Not really.”

  Thane groaned as if he was frustrated with me. “What do you want to know?”

  “I didn’t think your kind believed in something like soul mates.”

  Thane snorted. “That’s a human concept.”

  “Humans don’t even have permanent bonds the way you do. You can scoff about it all you like.”

  Thane grunted something inaudible.

  “Did you parents have that?”

  Thane’s face darkened. “Yeah,” he said. “Fuck knows why, he’s an ass.”

  “Don’t assholes create bonds?”

  “They shouldn’t,” Thane said.

  I wondered what Thane thought about having someone for himself, then. But I didn’t ask.

  “I don’t understand how it works.”

  “It’s a physical thing. And a love thing. A combination, I guess. You have to have both. That’s not so easy.”

  I frowned at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Most people fuck for fun. Not for love.”

  I gaped at him. He must have had a sad childhood for him to think that love wasn’t so easily come by.

  “What—”

  “Stop it,” Thane snapped, glaring at me. “No more talk of soul mates and bonds. I’m sick of this shit.”

  Right. I forget that he was an asshole that couldn’t be reasoned with. Stupid me. I looked out of the front window again, out at the stars.

  “So?” I asked. “How far out are we?”

  Thane hesitated. “We have a way to go. It would be best if we bunk down for the night.”

  “The night,” she said. “Its been night all the time.”

  Thane rolled his eyes and pushed different buttons before he stood.

  “Is it on autopilot?” I asked.

  Then nodded. “And locked, so don’t try anything.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m not going to do anything.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I don’t trust you rats.”

  He pulled a face whenever he referred to me that way and it grated me.

  “Have you even seen a rat?” I asked.

  “Of course,” Thane said and walked to the back of the ship. I stood and followed him.

  “We’re not like that.”

  “Whatever,” Thane said. “You’re a pest.”

  I bristled. I hated how he talked about the humans. He was so condescending, and it was clear he hated us.

  Thane walked to the small kitchenette in the corner. It consisted of a few cabinets, a strange looking appliance that might pass off for a microwave, and an oblong shaped container that stretched from floor to ceiling. It had square partitions arranged in rows. Thane pressed against one of them and a narrow drawer opened silently. He took out two silver packs and threw one in my directions. I caught it and turned it over in my hands.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Food,” he said and put his in the little appliance. A moment later, he took out a plate of food.

  I gasped. “Just like that?” I asked.

  He looked at me with a quizzical expression.

  “It’s a hydrator,” he said.

  I had no idea what it meant but I did the same, putting my pack in the hydrator. A moment later, after a bit of humming, I had food, too.

  Thane leaned against the far wall, eating. I didn’t want to join him, so I sat down with the cabinets at my back and ate, too.

  I wasn’t sure what I was eating, but it was good. I was hungry. What time was it on Earth? How long had we been in space? Naira was probably awake by now, and furious that I had left. Had she gotten my message? How was she doing? I hoped she was okay.

  “We’re all the same, you know,” Thane said, chewing. I looked up at him. He didn’t make eye contact. He scraped his food around while he talked. “You call me an ass but we’re all just victims of the same circumstance.”

  I blinked at him. “Since when do you care what anyone calls you?”

  Thane looked up at me. “I don’t give a shit what you think. I’m just saying, we’re all the same.”

  I shook my head. “The Malakus and the humans are not the same.”

  “Not the Malakus,” Thane said.

  It took me a moment to realize that he was talking about himself. Not all Malakus, just him.

  “What do you mean, victim?” I asked carefully.

  Thane laughed bitterly. “The Malakus are your saviors, aren’t they? They came to a devastated Earth and turned shit around for you humans.”

  I nodded slowly. “I don’t know if there would still have been much of an Earth if it wasn’t for the Arrival.”

  Thane pulled a face. “Right, the Arrival. You talk about the invasion so reverently. Bullshit.”

  “Am I supposed to hate those that fixed things for us?” I asked.

  Thane thought about it for a moment. “The Malakus aren’t as peaceful as you think.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked. “They’re helping us.”

  “Yeah, they are,” Thane agreed. “But you don’t ever ask yourself why? Why are they helping the humans regain their strength?”

  “Because we share our resources with you.”

  Thane burst out laughing. “Do you think we can’t take it if we want to? We gave you a choice, remember? We’ll help you if you share… or we’ll just kill you all from the get-go and life would be simple for us. A proper invasion, none of this sharing is caring bullshit.”

 
; I shook my head, not knowing what he was trying to say. The Malakus were aliens and they took over, but we would have been much worse off if it hadn’t been for them. They weren’t our friends, per se. But they definitely weren’t the enemy.

  “They’re just playing along until you drop your guard. They’re fattening you up, like in that story you guys love so much.”

  “What story?” I asked.

  “Hansel and Gretel.”

  I gasped. “What do you know of our folk tales?”

  Thane pulled up his shoulders. “We know a lot about what you think is important. It’s the point. The Malakus are making you soft, so that they can take over and enslave you all.”

  “That seems very farfetched,” I said.

  “Does it?”

  Thane threw his container into a chute that sucked it away with a loud hissing sound.

  “Or do all aliens come in peace?”

  I wasn’t sure if I could trust Thane. The guy was an asshole. Why would he tell me the truth about any of this?

  But then… why would he lie?

  I had no idea what to think.

  “Why would they want to hurt us if they’re so nice to us?” I asked.

  “They’re just getting you to do all the work, building up the Earth so that the Malakus don’t have to, when it’s finally time.”

  I shook my head. This didn’t sound right. And yet… did aliens come in peace? When the Malakus had arrived at first, the world had thought it was just another plague, the next thing to go wrong in a string of disasters. But they had offered us help, and we had been so desperate, we’d taken it.

  Had anyone questioned their motives? Probably. The rulers would have questioned it. The right people would have thought it through. They had to have done that.

  “I’m going to asleep,” Thane announced. “You should rest, too.”

  The fact that he commanded me to go to bed irritated me. It made me want to rebel against him. But I was tired. And I had to keep my strength up for whatever followed. I had to get back to Naira. I had to get home.

  I had eaten, and I would sleep. I would stay strong. And I would get back to her.

  I followed Thane to the bunks. He lay down on one, stretching his tall, Malaki body out on the cot. I stared at him for a moment. Lean muscle, and he moved like a fighter. There was something dark about him. And attractive – so attractive, it made me ache.

  When he glanced at me, I quickly looked away. He chuckled, and I shook my head, mortified that he’d caught me staring.

  I crawled onto the other bunk. There were four.

  The cot was enormous, made for Malaki bodies. I pulled a blanket over myself and felt like a child in the oversized bed. I closed my eyes, hoping I would be able to fall asleep.

  But I drifted off in no time.

  “Emori, Naira, dinner time!” my dad shouted from the tent. Naira and I were in the mud at the edge of the lake, digging in it with sticks, squealing when we found bugs, poking at them and jumping away when they scurried in our direction.

  “Now!” my dad called.

  Naira and I jumped up and ran to the tent. We were on holiday at a caravan park. When we stepped into the tent, my mom laughed, shaking her head. “You’re a mess,” she said. “Clean up outside before we eat.”

  Naira and I ran to the faucet a little down the way and squealed and laughed as we rinsed ourselves and splashed cold water on each other.

  By the time we returned to the tent, my parents were already siting down to eat. My dad raised an eyebrow. “You’re wet, but clean, so I guess it counts.”

  My mom laughed again. “Let them be kids. One day, they won’t have time for that anymore.”

  I jerked awake. I could still feel the sun on my skin and hear my mom’s laughter. I rubbed my fingers over my sternum, trying to get rid of the pain in my chest. How long had I slept?

  God, I missed my parents so much sometimes that I couldn’t breathe. I missed our family. I missed what we had been. Living with our tribe in the Reservation, celebrating the holidays with rituals… I missed waking up and not having to worry about what tomorrow would hold.

  “You’re awake,” Thane said in the semi darkness of the room.

  “And?”

  “You miss them, don’t you?”

  I threw myself around on my bunk and glared at him.

  “How the hell would you know that?”

  “I…” he started, and then hesitated. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  I turned my back on him, furious that he would comment at all. He could have just shut up, laid there in the darkness, not letting me know he was awake. But he had to ruin it, didn’t he? Thane was out to make everything worse.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. I wiped them away furiously. Images of my parents, our tribe, days in the sun, flashed through my mind. They bombarded me. Usually, I loved that they did, I loved having reminders. But now, I was scared that Thane would see it, somehow. And I didn’t want to think about my life and my family while we were up here in space, while Thane refused to take me back home. I didn’t want those memories spoiled.

  And what if I lost Naira? What if she died too?

  The thought only made me cry harder. I tried to bite back the sobs, but my body shook as I cried.

  Thane didn’t say anything else and I was glad about it. I just wanted him to leave me alone. I wanted to go back home, so I could help my sister.

  Hell, I wanted to go back to a time where everything was normal, before the Earth had started dying, because we had lost half the population to a deadly virus. Before survival had been the only thing everyone kept worrying about. I wanted to go back to sunshine and happiness and being carefree, being a kid.

  I wanted to go back. But no matter what, even if Thane took me back to Earth, he would never be able to take me back to a place where everything was okay.

  And even if he could, I doubted he would. Thane didn’t care. He had no heart.

  All he thought about was himself.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to go back to sleep. I tried to imagine I was in bed at home, my parents talking softly in the next room, Naira pressed up against me, the smell of the sun and dirt in her hair in my nostrils.

  I didn’t think I would be able to fall asleep again, but eventually, I did.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Thane

  I didn’t sleep well. Usually, I slept like an infant. There was nothing to keep up a man who only cared about himself. I used to have restless nights, worrying about how I could win my father’s approval. Until one day, I realized I never would. Since then, I’d slept without a care in the world.

  Until now. For some reason, I felt… sadness . I didn’t know what it was. The only thing I could think of, was that it had to do with Emori. She’d come into my life and everything was turned on its head. I had some ridiculous attraction to her that made no sense. Since when didn’t I kill someone because a primal part of me wanted to fuck her instead? It wasn’t just about fucking, either. It was more than that… but I wasn’t even going to think about what that meant.

  And now, I had the strangest feeling that I knew what was going on inside her. I knew her emotions. Or something. I wasn’t quite sure what it was. But last night, I had been lying awake, and for some reason, I had known that she was aching for her people. For those that defined her, gave her a purpose.

  What was worse, it made me miss it. It made me feel sorrow for what I had lost. Because I had never had people that defined me. I had been too young when my mother had died. And my father had never been anything other than the person who was obliged to take care of me until I could it myself. Unity, togetherness, family…

  I had told myself for years that it just wasn’t my thing. I hadn’t cared.

  But last night, after Emori had fallen asleep again, I hadn’t been able to shake the incredible feeling that I was completely and utterly alone.

  When Emori woke up, she seemed to be fine. Almost as if her sorr
ow had been wiped away along with fatigue. She was talkative and bright.

  “How did you sleep?” she asked.

  “Fine,” I said.

  She looked expectant, like I should return the question. Like I gave a shit. When I didn’t ask her, she pulled up her shoulders and disappeared into one of the cleaning chambers to freshen up.

  I walked to the controls and sat down. The first thing I did was check the monitors for any activity nearby, including the night’s log. There had been no movement around us, and there was no one nearby. Not even a cargo ship or a tourist vessel from one of the other planets.

  Definitely no ships my father had sent after me.

  Dammit. I needed to take the edge off. I was wired and since I couldn’t take it out on the human that was on the ship with me, I had to take the edge off some other way. I wanted to shoot the fuck out of someone. I needed to feel like myself. Because, dammit, no matter how much I hated it sometimes, I couldn’t be anything else.

  Emori joined me in the cockpit just as I took over manual control.

  She smelled good, like the soap in the chambers. It wafted to me from her side and I took a deep breath, inhaling her scent along with the smell of the soap. My body responded and I had a carnal desperation to take her.

  I tried to shake it off. This was bullshit. She was not a part of the plan and I shouldn’t have thought about her at all.

  “What is your family like?” Emori asked.

  I glanced at her, frowning.

  “You’re asking about my family,” I said.

  “Shouldn’t I?” she asked, looking confused. “Don’t you want to talk about it?”

  Gods, I wasn’t weak or anything.

  “My father is Enach, one of the elders from House Dacoi.”

  Emori’s eyes widened. “Oh, my God. So, you’re like… Malaki Royalty.”

  I snorted. “Don’t call me that. I’m nothing like that my father.”

  “I didn’t say you were,” she said.

  I shook my head and didn’t answer. That fact that I was related to that piece of shit was just a sad coincidence. I didn’t want anything to do with him. A part of me was happy that I had such a serious criminal record, that I was nothing like my dad.