by Maia Starr
“Why would he hurt Amlodesh? She’s the youngest, isn’t she?”
I nodded. “It doesn’t matter. My father disowned Fenris, in a way, after…”
Part of me wanted to continue the story—to tell her my brother was in love with a human, but it felt wrong to me somehow. It felt like I was sharing too much or blaming his involvement with a human for how wicked he turned out.
“After what?” she asked, tilting her head to the side.
“It’s a long story,” I smiled.
She offered me a grin and said, “They usually are.”
Chloe threaded a hand through her thick hair and looked over at me as a sudden sexual chemistry that appeared as if out of nowhere. Like she was waiting for me to make my move—or maybe I was projecting my own desires.
“Have you ever been in love?” I asked, and my heart lilted as her potential response.
“Whoa!” she said, laughing as she pushed herself away from the desk in the wheelie chair. “That’s it? We’re done with the ‘my brother is a murderer’ conversation, just like that?”
I offered a tired shrug. “What else is there to say about it?”
She stammered out a few half-words before insisting, “Well, are you going to do anything about it? Are you going to try and stop him? Are you sure he’s trying to do this and your father isn’t just old? I mean… what happened to your mother? Did he kill her too?”
My eyes went wide at the mass array of questions that spilled from her mouth in such a short amount of time, and I let out a bemused laugh.
“You can ask me five questions, but I can’t ask you one?”
Chloe looked at me seriously and then lamented a sigh. She leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. I could see the outline of her small breasts through her light shirt and felt myself getting hard just looking at them.
“Have I ever been in love?” she mused to herself. “Maybe once, when I was young?”
My stomach went sick. “I wish you’d never been in love.”
She laughed. “Hey, I said maybe. But all you ever hear is how teenagers are in love and then years later when they're married to someone else they rave about how they'd never known love until such and such a love came around.”
I raised a brow. I’d never heard such a thing.
“And you don’t believe that?”
“Who knows?” she shrugged. “Now you answer my questions!”
I tried to remember my mother’s face, but nothing would come up. I knew my siblings looked like her: light and airy, fair-haired with dark eyes. But, I wasn’t sure if I could actually remember that of her or if it was just something told to me that I was mistaking as a memory.
Thinking about it was painful. I sighed. I came here to get away from my reality, not to delve deeper into it.
“My mother died a long time ago,” I simplified. “She was one of the first eniwan to be stricken.”
“So, wait, she was fertile and then wasn’t? She had already had children?”
I drew my brows together, and Chloe began to laugh.
“Right!” she giggled. “Obviously, yes! Otherwise, you wouldn’t be, you know, in existence.”
I nodded.
“Can you tell somebody? Like a security-err-warrior team or something? Doesn’t your brother answer to anyone?” she asked genuinely.
“Nobody would believe me,” I said and then pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “H’sk, I don’t even know what to believe.”
“You have to stop him,” she urged me, setting a hand on my shoulder and giving it a light squeeze. “Or talk to him, at least.”
“We’re not… close,” I said and pulled her chair close to mine, pulling her hand into mine.
“You don’t say?” she mocked. “So, do you have any ambitions to be Dendren?”
“Of course,” I said, tilting my head and leaning into her, pulling her chin close until our lips pressed together.
Chloe let out a small, breathy moan and pulled my hands over her breasts.
I never asked her about her research or what kissed my sister. I didn’t ask if she could help my father.
My movements became animal after that, picking her up and setting her on the edge of the desk, kissing her hungrily and pulling her pants down to her ankles and over her feet.
I pressed fingers against her, probing her wet and warm center.
“The door’s open,” she managed to say, and I looked back at the door before dismissing the statement completely.
She gave me a devilish smile, and I bit her lip, pulling her hair with a free hand and pulling her gently toward me.
“Someone’s going to come in,” she protested through giggles as I knelt down in front of her.
I pushed her legs open and ran my hands up her inner thighs before burying my lips into her skin.
I looked up and watched her writhe against my mouth. She arched her back and played with her breasts through her shirt, prompting me to reach a hand up and grab one for myself.
Adrenaline rushed through me just from being near her. Nothing else seemed real or important. Any loss I felt, any sick twitch in my stomach subsided when she smiled at me or asked me a rushed, excited question.
As long as she was around, I would be alright.
Just like Pash, Chloe had an intense power over me, but with her, it wasn’t painful—it made me stronger.
And now I was addicted.
Chapter Nine
Chloe
I could feel a bulb of unease wading around in my stomach.
The hospitality we’d been shown on Cadir after being released from our minor hold-up was startling, to say the least. The Parduss seemed more than willing to learn from us, to help us gather resources, and showed a deep respect for whatever we shared from our research.
They were nothing like I had expected.
I had learned so much about their world and their biology: a quick ability to heal from wounds, information processing techniques for undercover warriors, and this virus that seemed to be attacking their people from the inside out.
I watched out the windows of the research facility at the massive celebration they were throwing for the breeders and their new mates.
Colors streaked the sky, the Parduss’ own form of fireworks, and I could hear the loud music and chants from all the way to the research facilities.
I forwent going to the ceremony. It wasn’t something I agreed with, even still. Women should choose to go to the Parduss, not be given to them in fear of having the Earth attacked and being stolen anyway.
They’re desperate, sure, but I
“You coming?” Harper asked, setting her hand on the sliding door frame and peeping her head into my lab.
“Nah,” I smiled and spun in my chair, giving her a lazy shrug. “I’ve got work to do.”
Harper was done up in curls and a face full of makeup and berry lips: a low-cut dress clinging to her lean body. She looked so much like a college girl heading on for her first night on the town that it made me laugh.
“Our girls are being celebrated in what is basically the first party or, like, good impression session we’re having with these people, and you’re bailing?” she scoffed.
“Impression session?” I repeated, stifling my laughter through my hand. “All yours!”
“Oh, come on!” she pleaded. “Take the bridge with me so I don’t have to walk alone.”
There was a footbridge from the mainland to Renden that we could take to get back, but it was impossibly long and, while flying didn’t bother me, I wasn’t necessarily a huge fan of heights.
I raised my brows dismissively and turned back to my desk. “No thanks.”
Harper came down and sat in the chair nearest to me, ready to pout.
She rested her chin on her hand and stared out the transparent wall: a blue film filtering the outside world.
“It’s… really beautiful,” she said absent-mindedly.
“Yup,” I said, n
ot looking up.
“Any luck with the female Parduss?” she asked, and I shrugged.
“There’s something there, some foreign cells, but I don’t know enough about the…” I blanched, twirling my finger.
“Area?” Harper offered.
“About the area,” I repeated, snapping my fingers.
She frowned, falling deeper into her hand so that she was now slumping on the countertop. “It’s so strange how they’re human one minute, and then it’s like… bam!”
I snorted. “Bam?”
“Dragon!” she exclaimed.
“I think it’s a little more complex than that,” I teased.
“So, what’s up with you and the prince?” she asked with a broadening smile.
My face flushed and I raised a brow, shaking my head without actually protesting her claim. “Prince?” was all I could repeat.
“Yeah, Scashra, he’s some sort of royalty, right?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess so. I never really thought about it like that, but yeah. What do you mean?”
Harper rolled her eyes and spun a complete circle in her chair. “I mean you’re sleeping with him.”
“Harper!” I yelled and turned to look at her. We had a staring contest for a few moments more before my face contorted into an embarrassed smile and I gestured toward my charts and graphs. “Not in front of the equipment!”
My friend laughed and shook her head. It was the kind of expression where she may as well have said: ‘Somebody’s going to get in trooouble!’
“Oh, come on,” she protested. “We’ve only been sharing an apartment for the last five years. You think I don’t know what your guilty-sex-face looks like?”
My face flushed. “My guilty-sex-face?”
“I told you,” she said with a cocky breath, “I’m like your twenty-seven-year-old mother.” Then she leaned in and goofily whispered, “I see all.”
“Thanks, mom,” I teased.
A crack sounded off in the distance and drew out attention to the floating island where the celebration was happening: a burst of colors lighting up the sky.
“So?” Harper said, cocking her head to the side.
“So?” I mocked. “So, we slept together, but it wasn’t—”
“—Good?” Harper interrupted.
“No, it just wasn’t—”
She bounced, “—Big?”
“No!” I laughed. “The first time just wasn’t… consensual?”
Harper made an audible swallow and wheeled over to me in her chair, gripping my shoulders in her hands and looked decidedly dire. “Are you saying he forced himself on you?”
I thought about it.
Not… really.
“No,” I decided.
“Oh.” Harper dropped her hands and leaned back in her chair, pushing herself back far enough that she could rest her legs on my lap. “Then I’m confused. What mode should I be in? Ass-whoopin’? Sympathetic? Comforting? Help me out.”
“Then I’m just as confused as you,” I breathed. “We just didn’t really talk about it; it just sort of happened.” I paused and then felt the sudden urge to correct myself as I rephrased, “I let it happen.”
“Do you wish you didn’t?”
“I’m… conflicted,” I said.
My stomach sank what felt like over and over again. Sleeping with Scashra was like nothing else I had ever experienced before. His growing affection for me was apparent, and since our initial, unfortunate meeting, he’d been nothing but kind to me.
I hated to admit that I was starting to like him back. I had always been attracted to him, even when I thought he was an asshole, but there was something else there.
He looked at me differently now, which made me look at him differently.
We’d be through something with Amlodesh’s death, and it bonded us somehow.
“Obviously,” she said with a scoff.
I stiffened. “Why do you say that?”
“Because these people took Alecia. They almost killed Jack. They started a war with us. Do I really need to go on?” She said, tapping her chin. “Did I screw up just now? Was the point of this conversation so that I can excuse you and give you a reason to pursue something with Scashra? Cause if that’s what you want, I could totally do that, too.”
I pressed my eyes shut and exhaled, embarrassed. “I don’t know what I want.”
She was right.
I had this sick knot in my stomach that wasn’t going away ever since Scashra first kissed me. If Alecia knew what I was doing here—forgiving those who took her, who killed her crew…
Shit, my whole purpose of coming here was to try and find her or find out what happened to her and I hadn’t done any of that. I hadn’t even bothered to ask Scashra about it.
“Do you like him?” she asked and it suddenly my eyes filled with tears. “Okay,” she said, raising both of her palms to me, signaling me to settle down. “Let’s say you do like him. You feel guilty because you don’t know where Alecia is, right? They took her, and you feel that by pursuing something with him you’d be betraying her and your little mission, right?”
She knew me so well.
“My mission?” I asked.
Harper sighed a knowing, motherly smile. “That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
I blushed but didn’t deny it.
“This is why we are friends,” I said with a sad laugh. “What if it was you they took? Would you want me to give in to one of them?”
“Okay, first of all,” she said, raising a finger to me, “it’s a little too late for that, wouldn’t you say? And second, as far as I’m concerned, they’re trying to make peace with us and that deserves a little cooperation.”
I nodded, my chin quivering, and she came close to me and said, “Hey… Alecia would want you to be happy. That’s the kind of person she was.”
No, I thought. Alecia would feel like a stuck a knife in her back. That’s the kind of person she was.
Chapter Ten
Scashra
“You missed the ceremony,” I said, approaching Chloe in the hall leading down to her room.
The science dorms were simple, but each room had its own office in case they wanted to keep working past the time we allowed them to be on the mainland.
I followed her inside the space and watched as the sliding door locked behind me.
“No, I was tired,” she said half-heartedly and then turned to see I had followed her inside. “Come in,” she teased.
“I thought you might come,” I said with a shrug, studying her small features. Her round nose and oversized lips: thin brows and light brown eyes that were nearly a perfect circle.
“Well, I didn’t,” she said quietly.
I set my jaw, watching her from afar as she stripped off her shirt, turning around to shield my eyes from her breasts as she threw on a long sleeve shirt. She pulled the fabric over her skin and then turned around.
My eyes twitched as the action. A simple move, but enough to let me know something was off.
“Okay,” I said slowly, and she sat on her bed, staring ahead at the wall. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she said, and I knew nothing could be farther from the truth.
I waited to see if she would say more but the room soon flooded with an uncomfortable silence. I walked to her bed and knelt down in front of her. She instinctively squeezed her legs shut and I looked pointedly at her.
With a single movement, I tipped her chin down toward me and kissed her. At first, her lips didn’t move, stiff and rigid against mine. And then she gave in.
Pink, cold skin grabbed and bit mine, pulling me on top of her and spreading her legs to me.
“What is this?” she asked as I moved from her lips down to her neck.
“You are my plaything,” I whispered back.
“I have been trying to... figure out how I feel,” she said tentatively, and I froze, looking up at her.
I moved my face back up to hers so that I
was primed on top of her, our breath mixing together. “Okay,” I said nervously. “You seemed to be feeling pretty great about it two days ago.”
“I'm being serious.”
I smirked, “So am I.”
“I'm feeling…” she exhaled, and I knew something bad was coming. “I'm feeling really guilty about everything that's going on here,” she said, breathing quickly and avoiding my eyes.
I set my jaw and clenched my teeth hard.
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“I just want to find my friend; that's why I came here in the first place,” she said, her words coming out like a storm: heavy and speeding faster and faster. Her face was going hot, her voice going higher as she blurted out, “And I feel like by being with you I've completely given up on her, and that's not who I am!”
“Calm down,” I said.
“No!” she scowled, pushing me away from her. She stood from the bed and stormed to the corner of the room, as though that would get her away from me. “I came here to find her, and all I've been doing is—”
“Relax,” I said firmly as I stood, turning to her but not moving any closer. “What the hell are you talking about?” I sneered out in annoyance, breathing hard through my nose. “Would you care to let me know what you’re talking about so that I don't have to guess my way through this entire conversation?”
For a moment she looked furious, then just confused. It was as though she thought she’d told me her plight a thousand times already.
“My friend was taken, from Yazir,” she began carefully.
“Alright,” I nodded. I knew the planet, but not well.
“It was two years ago, and I know she was taken by the Parduss. They killed her crew, her husband almost died, and he's been looking for her, and,” she exhaled and then inhaled sharply: a wheezing noise escaping her lips with a panic. “I need her!”
I traced my tongue around the inside of my mouth and thought. She went to speak, but I put my hand up in decline.
Yazir?
No one was taken there.
“Two years ago, we were under a ceasefire,” I said smoothly, trying to think whether that information was correct or not.
