by A. G. Wilde
“How? How did you escape?”
“They began moving us to a weapons program. They were training young Vorti to fight for them. I was young enough to brainwash, so they chose me too.” His eyes focused on hers. “I escaped when one of the guards was too idle putting on my neck brace. I shifted into a small animal and ran. I have been hiding ever since. Rokan too. But unlike me, he never went to the arenas. His family managed to escape during the Great War. The few Vorti who managed to abandon our planet have been on the run, hiding out in the open, pretending to be other species. It is the only way to survive.”
Evren blinked.
“You mean...right now...you’re shifted? This isn’t the real you?”
When he shook his head in the negative, he watched her eyes widen and that same uncertainty grow within them once more.
After a few moments, she stood and went to the bathing area. He assumed she was taking the time to sort her thoughts but soon he heard her running the water and then she returned with another piece of wet oofla material.
How could she still tend to him when he just told her that his very image was a lie?
Replacing the oofla on his forehead, she asked, “Why hide now, even here? You’re at the Restitution’s base. Shouldn’t you be safe here?”
“No.”
When he said that, her fingers paused. “What do you mean?”
“The Tasqals are a powerful race. They own almost everything on this side of the galaxy. Their reach goes far. During and after the Great War, they spread stories, rumors...about the Vorti...” He paused. “Beings fear us. We are hated. They see us as dangerous. Vicious. Untrustworthy criminals who can shift into anything we choose.”
“Can you?” Her fingers began fiddling with the oofla she’d just placed over his forehead. “Can you shift into anything you choose?”
“Almost anything...”
“Like...can you shift into a mouse?”
“Mouse?”
“A small, small animal. A tenth the size of a skunkat, maybe.”
“It would be difficult to compress my molecules, but I could try.”
Her eyebrows shot up.
“Could you shift into me?”
Kyro hesitated answering but in her eyes shone genuine interest.
“Yes.”
Her eyebrows shot up farther and she was silent for what felt like whole minutes. “You are...amazing.”
The world stood still at her words.
Never had he expected anything remotely close to what she’d just said.
Her response was just proof enough that she was from a different world.
“Amazing? We are scorned. Hated.” He paused. “Hated for what we are.”
Locking eyes with her, he hoped she could see the sincerity and seriousness in his. “If the Tasqals get word of the presence of any Vorti, it is a death sentence. They will hunt him, and they will not stop until they find him. Then he is a dead Vorti or an enslaved one.”
Evren dropped her hand, her fingers brushing his cheek lightly.
The movement had him stilling beneath her touch.
“Is that why you didn’t tell me? Do your brothers know? Xul and the others I mean.”
“No one knows except for you.”
Evren nodded slowly.
“Now that you know, you are in danger. If they find out the truth, they will come for me. And you are my weakness.”
“What do you mean?”
A breath shuddered from him.
“The Tasqals...if they can’t get to me. They’ll get to the ones I care about the most. That is why nobody knows. That is why what I am is a secret.” He paused as another breath shuddered through him. “My power to bend my molecules to my will is my gift. But it is also my curse.”
Evren blinked and he felt her finger brush over his cheek once more, sending a delightful feeling through his skin that spread all over his chest.
“You didn’t tell me because you care about me?”
Had he said that out loud?
For a moment, he could only look back at her, searching her gaze to determine her thoughts.
“I do care about you... I care about you very much.”
“Is that why you haven’t contacted me in so long?”
“Staying away from you is the best way to protect you.”
“You were trying to push me away?”
“Yes.”
“But you came as the skunkat.”
“Skunnkatt?”
“That gray animal.”
“Ohhh. The canee.”
“Why did you come as that animal? What if someone caught you?”
“The canee are common animals on the base. But do not touch them like you touched me. Some are not as...friendly.”
“But it was you though, at the shuttle yard.” She’d asked that question before, but he guessed she was still processing things.
He might as well let it all out now. He had a feeling she knew it was him anyway. “Yes. It was me.”
“You came every day. I rubbed your back. You purred.” She smiled.
Kyro frowned slightly.
This was not the reaction he had been expecting? “It does not anger you?”
She took a moment to ponder that because her eyes narrowed for a bit before she responded. “No. It makes me feel...good inside.”
“I...do not know how to respond.”
“Then don’t.” She smiled again.
A sound by the door had them both looking up and Rokan stood there, his gaze uncertain. In his hand was a small vial.
“Do you have it?” Kyro asked and Rokan entered the room, giving Evren a wary look.
“The serum. Yes,” Rokan said, stretching the vial to Kyro.
The dark-green fluid inside it swished as he took the vial in his hand.
“I must take this,” Kyro said, popping the sealant from the top of the vial as he spoke.
“What is it?” Evren asked.
“Healing serum,” Rokan answered. “I made it myself.”
“Ah.” It was clear she wanted to ask more but she didn’t. Instead, she just watched as Kyro moved the vial toward his lips.
Pausing there, Kyro met her gaze. “I have to drink this.”
She glanced from him to Rokan.
“Okay...I get it. You need it for your wound.” Her gaze still bounced between them both. “What is it?”
“It will put me to sleep.”
She still looked nonplussed.
“Promise me you will be here when I wake.”
“Of course.” Her hands found his and she squeezed his hand between hers lightly. “I’ll be here.” Her gaze moved from him to Rokan, the confusion replaced with sincerity.
“You two don’t have to worry. Your secret is safe with me.”
25
Evren sat in the chair she’d pulled up beside where Kyro lay.
He was sleeping now, his eyes closed, his breathing steady.
As she stared at him, she couldn’t help but feel a heavy sense of sadness at what he had been through. She couldn’t imagine how deeply she’d have been affected watching her mother get raped by those unforgiving toads, the Tasqals, and to watch her father kill her sibling and then himself...it would have completely broken her.
Getting taken from Earth had almost broken her. She’d only found the will to continue, to adapt, from her sheer need to rediscover her purpose in life.
But Kyro...he had kept on going when everything had been ripped away from him.
Everything.
And he had been just a baby.
As she looked at him, sleeping peacefully, she couldn’t help that her respect for him was growing.
So much made sense now.
The way he always seemed apart from his other brothers...how he hadn’t contacted her...it all made sense.
Taking a fresh piece of wet floofy material, Evren placed it on Kyro’s forehead and patted it lightly, her gaze drifting down to his closed eyes.
To think that this wasn’t even his real face—that idea took some getting used to.
She didn’t care what he really looked like.
It was his soul that mattered, and the more she got to know him, the more she fell in love with what he was inside.
Her hand stilled on his forehead at that thought.
Love?
Was she falling in love with him?
Had she fallen in love with him?
No. She just liked his friendship. His lame jokes that pulled her from her deep, sad thoughts and made her remember to laugh again. His awkwardness that made her giggle. The way he took things she said literally. The way he stared at her when he thought she wasn’t looking...
Oh God...she loved him.
That realization felt like a weight lifted from her shoulders, as if her subconscious had known all along.
She loved him.
God, she was such an idiot.
So much time wasted.
How had she not realized the skunkat that had been with her every day at the shuttle yard had been him?
Thinking about it now, it had been so obvious. The eyes.
Those gray eyes were undoubtedly Kyro’s eyes.
He’d been staring at her just as intently as when he was in his usual form. It was no wonder the animal had reminded her of him.
But she couldn’t have known. Never in a million years would she have imagined such a being like him existed. It had taken enough to believe in Yce’s psychic powers and she knew Crex had some strange powers as well, but Kyro...she never would have guessed.
He was just the strange nerdy one that she liked.
The nerdy one that liked to stare at her, with such deep looks that made her feel special.
It wasn’t like the stares she got from Shive. Even the thought of Shive made her shudder. Thinking about it, Kyro’s stares made her tingle inside. His stares reminded her that she was a woman.
Even now, the thought brought a smile to her lips that made her freeze again, her eyes widening.
Fuck.
She had fallen really deep.
If he could hear her thoughts right now...
Now, that thought made her jerk her gaze to his only to find him staring right back at her.
Shit, can he read thoughts too? Thought he said he wasn’t psychic. Evren stared at him. Can you hear this?
“You really stayed.” Kyro blinked.
What about this? Can you hear this? I am totally freaking out right now.
“Is something the matter?” Kyro’s head tilted as he regarded her.
“Did you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Whew.
“Nothing.”
She wasn’t ready to discuss with him that what she felt for him went way past being platonic. She hadn’t even come to terms with it herself yet.
Kyro grimaced slightly, his hand going to his wound.
Realizing she still had her hand on his forehead, she removed it a bit too hastily. “You should let me take a look at that. I’m no doctor but I’ve had to dress several of my own wounds while on the field.”
She could feel the weight of his gaze but for the life of her, she couldn’t look back at him.
When did she become so shy? Oh, wait, exactly when she realized the reason she’d been so knotted up about not hearing from him was that she freakin’ missed him in a whole lot of ways.
“You’ve been injured many times?” There was a note of concern in his voice that she didn’t miss.
“A lot, yea.” Taking his hand in hers, she tried to ignore the warmth of his skin as she moved his hand from over the wound. “Sometimes I have to...had to go out into the field in forests...jungles...underwater...to gather different samples. That’s the part of my job that I loved the most. But I’m kinda clumsy. My grandma used to say I fell over my own two feet more than a newborn giraffe. I just lacked the cuteness.”
“Falling over one’s own feet...I do not see how this is possible. It would require extreme lack of coordination.”
Evren shot him a look, a smile underneath it. “Yes, Kyro. Meet Evren, the girl with an extreme lack of coordination.”
Kyro opened his mouth to say something and then, seeming to rethink, he closed it.
“Say it.” Evren narrowed her eyes at him playfully.
“You and your jokes have something in common.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say and her brows immediately furrowed in confusion.
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You both fall flat.”
Evren’s mouth fell open. “What?” She laughed out the word before leaning back with a chuckle. “You jerk! I would punch you right now if you weren’t wounded.”
Kyro smiled for a second, his face lighting up in this rarest of occasions, before he sobered.
It was the first time she’d seen him really smile and it caused her to stop and stare at him for a few moments.
“I can see it in your eyes, sweet Evren. Do not be sad for me.”
That was enough to make her sober up as well, and as her smile died on her lips, she averted her gaze from his.
“I’m not sad for you. I’m just...”
“You must forget everything you saw and everything I told you.”
“I—”
“You must forget. It is the only way.”
Her head rose and fell in a nod, but it felt heavy, as if it was bearing the gravity of his words.
“I cannot bear for another person to suffer because of me.”
She understood. That didn’t make it easier though.
Nodding once more, she peeled back his bandages, pausing as she looked at the wound.
“It’s almost healed. How?”
“The serum,” Kyro offered as way of explanation. “I am healed. So you will leave?” There was a note of loss in his voice. “You must leave and put this all behind you.”
“I can’t leave you like this!” She pressed down the edge of the bandage once more, sealing the healing wound.
“Why? You must.”
Evren blinked. There had to be a quick excuse she could come up with. “It’s a human thing,” she lied, her eyes glued to the bandage. “A human custom. I really do have to stay, even if you don’t want me to.”
She could feel that he was searching her face trying to determine if she was telling the truth.
“I read of no such human custom—”
“Well, buddy, your data is wrong.”
When she finally looked at him, he had his eyes narrowed but in those gray pits there was a thin line of uncertainty.
“The more you are around me, the more danger I put you in. The more you know, the more danger you are in. I don’t... It is not my intention to bring you harm in any way.”
“I know that, Kyro. I understand the risks but hey, no one will know I know because I won’t say anything. I can keep a secret.”
“It is not that simple.” His hand covered hers on his side. “This has never happened to us before. We have never had another discover our secret. It is evident to me now that we have become careless.”
“I’m surprised none of your brothers have found out. None of them visit randomly?”
“No. They do not.”
“Ah.”
Raising his upper body off the sleeping area, his gaze became intense and focused.
“Evren...” Her name flowed like molasses from his lips—dark and thick. “If my secret is revealed someday, they will come for the people closest to me.”
“But that means everyone you work with is in danger. Your brothers. The other humans...”
“No.” A sigh left his frame as he rested back on the sleeping area, his gaze focused on the roof above. “You misunderstand. I haven’t been clear.” Even without him focusing on her, she could see the pain in his gaze. He was thinking of times past—times of long ago. His father, mother, and brother. He was thinking about his family.
“They won’t come f
or my brothers. They will come for the person closest to me. The person I care about the most.”
Evren blinked.
“Kyro...”
As she said his name, Kyro turned his head to focus his gaze on hers once more.
“That person is you, Evren.”
It felt like her heart just grew ten sizes and belly-flopped on its fat ass.
“And that is why I can never come close to you. Why I shouldn’t come close to you. I would rather not have you at all than to have you and lose you.”
Kyro watched as she stared at him, her mouth going slack.
Underneath his hand, her fingers trembled a little.
Had he said too much?
He had a tendency of going overboard when it came to Evren, doing things he never usually did. And this might be just another instance to add to the list.
Why in Polvrak’s name had he just admitted the one thing he had fought not to admit to himself.
Steeling himself for her response, he waited. But instead of asking him if he had gone insane, she only smiled, one so soft, he almost missed it.
In those blue eyes of hers was a swirl of emotions that made him afraid—afraid because he saw something in there that he dared not even imagine for himself.
“Evren?”
What was he thinking letting out the thoughts of his life-organ so easily? She didn’t even know him...the real him. She didn’t even know what he looked like. And then there was the fear that if he did reveal himself to her, she wouldn’t like what she saw.
She smiled again, catching him off guard this time, before she stood suddenly. “I’ll go get some more wet cotton—I mean wet...whatever that material is.” She motioned to the oofla on his head before heading to the washing area. His hand fell to his side, missing the presence of hers underneath it.
This was it.
She was going to follow his advice and move as far away from him as possible before it was too late.
It was his advice, so why did it make him ache so deep within? Why did the thought of her leaving make him feel pain worse than the physical wound in his side?
If she left...he would miss everything.
He would miss her smiles...her lame jokes...the way her eyes twinkled when she accomplished something...the way her heart warmed his just by being in her presence alone.
