by Dixon, Ruby
Mathiras taps my shoulder and points, indicating it’s safe to move forward. I head after him, my steps sluggish. I’m feeling a little lightheaded, but I’m sure it’s because I gave my brain a rattle when Mathiras landed on top of me. I tap my helmet again and notice that the others on the Fool are coming to meet us midway.
I swallow hard…and my suit suddenly lets off a siren. Less than one minute of oxygen. “Guys?” I call out, but my words are muffled and I remember that no one can hear me speak.
They hear my suit’s siren, though. In the next moment, six pairs of hands are grabbing me and then I’m hauled bodily toward the nearest ship—the Fool—as everyone rushes to get me to safety before I asphyxiate.
I force myself to breathe slowly, conserving oxygen as they hurry me across the surface of the asteroid and into the Fool. The moments seem to tick past like hours. One. Two. Three. I bend over, leaning against Adiron as I wait for the hatch to close and the life support to stabilize. My lungs hurt and it feels like the air in my suit is getting too thin, but it might just be my panicked imagination.
“Move aside! Move aside,” a sharp, familiar voice calls, and then hands are clawing at my helmet, triggering the release at the neck. It’s pulled off of my head and fresh air rushes in around me even as Mathiras takes a step back and Sentorr pushes his way in front of me.
We see each other for the first time.
I stare at him, silent. Sentorr’s more handsome up close than from far away. His presence is commanding, his posture erect as if he still sees himself as a soldier despite the fact that he’s been out of the service since the war (or so he told me). He’s taller than I recall, his horns so tall and spread that they seem as if they’re touching the stars. His face is as lean and austere as I remember from the pictures. I gaze up at him with my heart in my eyes and watch that full, perfect mouth thin into a line as he looks down at me.
“You’re Zoey, aren’t you?”
“Surprise,” I manage, still breathless. The throbbing in my wounded leg seems to be worse by the moment, but it’s nothing compared to the throbbing of my even more wounded heart.
Sentorr looks me up and down. “This…explains much.”
Before I can speak, Adiron grabs me around the neck and hauls me against him, noogie-ing my head. “I nearly shat my pants out there, Zo. I thought you were a goner.” He runs his knuckles over my head, scraping them in my hair and making me wince and feel like a child.
“Can you not?” I hiss at him, trying to squirm out of his grip.
Others are taking off their helmets around us, and I look into the faces of the other mesakkah from the Fool before turning back to Sentorr. He’s awfully quiet, his expression impossible to read.
Adiron just noogies me again. “This the one you have a crush on, Zoey? I thought he’d be prettier.”
Oh my god, I’m going to die. “Go kef yourself, Adiron!” I elbow him in the ribs and I’m relieved when he wheezes in response. I manage to writhe out of his grasp, stumbling forward as I do. A sharp pain lances up my leg and I yelp.
Strong arms catch me before I pitch to the floor. I’m not entirely surprised to look up and see that I’m in Sentorr’s arms, or that he’s so gorgeous it makes my heart hurt. For some reason, though, he’s fuzzy. I squint at him, trying to sharpen his handsome features.
He says something, but my brain is fuzzy and I can’t make it out. I just shake my head. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. “I’m so sorry.”
Someone bellows something—it might be Kaspar—about blood everywhere. Blood. Huh. Someone’s bleeding? My leg throbs in a silent reminder and I look down. The slag of rock piercing my suit has almost come free, and I’m standing in a pool of blood around my grav boots.
Well, shit. The bleeder’s me.
Sentorr says something again, but my brain won’t focus. Everything’s creeping into darkness when he sweeps me into his arms and surges forward, and I figure if I die now, I can die of happiness.
I’m in his arms, after all.
5
SENTORR
I stare down at the small human in the Fool’s med-bay, my fists clenching and unclenching as I watch Tarekh toggle switches and run diagnostics over Zoey. It seems impossible to think that there are human females out there smaller than Cat, but to me she seems terribly small and far too fragile. Her pale features are tiny, her hands delicate, and her teats are strangely large despite the fragility of her frame. Distracted, I rip my gaze away and focus on Tarekh.
“Quit burning holes into my back with your eyes,” the big ugly brute says, not even looking up from his datapad. “She’s going to live.”
The breath I didn’t know I was holding expels from my chest. “She’s hurt.”
“Yeah, shrapnel pierced her suit in a few places. Nicked a big vein. She’s a little shy on blood, but luckily we don’t have to wait for the machines to synthesize the appropriate blood type for her. Cat’s the same type.”
That explains why Tarekh’s small mate has been hovering around, then. She pushed her way in past Zoey’s three large brothers as if she belonged in the med-bay and no one stopped her.
Brothers. Ha.
I knew their faces long before I knew hers. Mathiras, Adiron, and Kaspar va Sithai, from the va Sithai family back on Homeworld. All three served in the war, and now all three have slid to the wrong side of the law, as so many have after the peace talks were dissatisfying to those that served and gave their blood, sweat, and youth to the harsh mistress of war. They have a sister, I know. I just never looked in the records to see that the sister was mesakkah.
I never thought that they’d have a human on their ship, much less one running the bridge.
As I watch, Cat sits down in a chair next to the bed that Zoey’s slight figure is upon. She extends her arm and Tarekh slides a needle under her skin and caresses her cheek as he hooks the other needle into Zoey’s arm to begin the transfusion.
It’s utterly silent. Her brothers wait nearby, not speaking. I know if I look over, I’ll see their accusing faces. They act like it’s my problem that she’s human.
“So…you look upset,” Cat chimes in when it gets quiet. “You want to talk about it?”
“To you?”
Tarekh gives me a flat look. “Watch it, friend.”
I nod, my mouth settling in a thin line. “That was ill-mannered of me. I’m just…worried.” I scrub a hand down my face. “Tell me again that she’ll be fine, Tarekh.”
“Why do you care?” one of the brothers asks, and I turn to face him. It’s the one that scrubbed his hand over her silky brown hair and held her under his arm like any brother would a mischievous little sister, the one with the big features and smile. Adiron. He’s not smiling now. The look on his face is downright protective.
“I care because I love her,” I tell him flatly.
“She’s human,” the tallest of the brothers says. Mathiras.
“Do you think I care?” I snap at him, turning to look back at Zoey’s face. The moment the words leave my mouth, I know them to be truth.
I was shocked to see that she was human, of course. It wasn’t what I expected. In fact, when the helmet was first pulled off of her, I had a heart-wrenching moment in which I thought we’d somehow rescued the wrong crew off the asteroid and that my Zoey was still out there somewhere in danger.
It took a moment for it to register that Zoey was the pretty young human woman in front of me.
Of course, now that it’s sinking in, it all makes sense. Her self-imposed exile on the Sister, always staying behind when her brothers went out. Her strange name. Her refusal to send me pictures or establish a visual comm, even though we were clearly attracted to one another. She thought I would hate that she was human. She thought I would be upset.
I am upset. I’m upset that she withheld the truth from me.
I’m upset that she’s lying in med-bay with Cat’s blood being transferred into her.
I’m upset that we’ve wasted so much ti
me being apart.
I’m not upset that she’s human. I don’t care. She could be szzt. She could be krakenoid. She could be anything and I would love her because she’s Zoey, and she’s always been mine.
“You dickheads are shouting,” Zoey murmurs from the bed, her voice cracked and raspy with sleep. “Can you not?”
Her brothers rush forward. I do, too, beating them to her bedside so I can loom over her. One elbows me as I put my hands on the edge of the mattress, leaning closer. I ignore him. “How do you feel?”
She licks her lips and gives her head a little shake as if to clear it, her eyes closed. She doesn’t look at me. “I’m alive, and that’s good enough.” She turns away and looks over at her brothers, as if glancing past me, and smiles at them. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” I growl. “What were you doing there?”
Zoey lowers her gaze to the bed, toying with the blankets. “Answering a distress call, of course. I guess you’re wanting a thank you. So…thank you.”
Her tone baffles me, as does the lack of eye contact. It’s like she’s trying to avoid me despite the fact that I’m literally an armspan away from her bed. “Are you…angry? Zoey? Why won’t you look at me?”
“Because I can’t.” She stares stubbornly at the blankets, picking at them.
Adiron gives my shoulder a shove. “Leave our sister alone. If she doesn’t want to look at your ugly face, she doesn’t have to—”
“Adiron,” Zoey says sharply. “You’re not helping.”
I straighten and glare at her three hovering brothers. “Can everyone give us a minute? Zoey and I need to talk.”
I expect them to protest, or for Zoey to say something cutting. It gets quiet in the room and Zoey just picks at the blankets for a long moment, silent. Then, she nods. “It’s okay, guys.”
“You sure?” Mathiras crosses his arms over his chest and glares. “We can go back to our ship at any time and—”
“I’m sure,” she says quickly, trying to sit up in the med-bay bed. Off to the side, Tarekh adjusts the bed with the touch of a button, and then she’s sitting up. With a quick caress of his mate’s hair, he leaves med-bay, grabbing one of Zoey’s brothers and dragging him along. The other two glare at me and slowly leave the room.
It’s quiet, and I look over at the only other person remaining, Cat. She gives me a hint of a smile and holds out the arm still hooked up to Zoey, the blood transfusion still going. “Just pretend like I’m not here.”
I grunt, because I don’t want her in here, but Zoey needs the blood. I turn to my human, hating how small and fragile she looks in the bed. A thousand things bubble up inside me—frustration, anger, fear, joy…more frustration. I think of her brothers, clawing that helmet off of her so she won’t die. I think of the fear I’ve been living with as we rushed to her end of the solar system to intercept the pirates. I think of all the times I imagined her dead in the last few hours and my gut churns.
I think of the way her soft hair curves around her face, and how beautiful she is. How could she think I wouldn’t love her? “You should have said something,” I murmur when I find my voice.
“About the pirates?” She tugs on a bit of the plas-film blanket, worrying it with her nails. “Well, if we would have known they were pirates, we’d have gone in a bit more prepared.”
Her answer both amuses and exasperates me. She still would have gone in, but she’d have prepared more. Typical fearless Zoey. “I wasn’t referring to the pirates. I was referring to you being human.”
Zoey’s gaze flicks up to me, her eyes narrowing and her forehead pleating in a way that’s fully human. “What am I supposed to say about that? Sorry I’m so gross and human?”
Gross? I’m shocked. Does she truly think I’d find her repulsive? When she stares down at the blanket covering her hips again, worrying the minute tear in the plas-film, I realize that’s exactly what she thinks. “Why won’t you look at me, Zoey?”
“Maybe I don’t want to see the disgust on your face,” she says, gaze averted. “You’ve made it quite clear how you feel about humans.”
Cat clears her throat, trying to hide the smirk on her face.
I bare my teeth at her. “What did I say that makes you think I find you ‘gross,’ Zoey?”
“Come on, we both know you don’t like humans. You’ve made it quite clear that you don’t understand the others and their relationships with their mates.” She looks over at Cat. “Sorry.”
“No big. He doesn’t hide it from us, either.” Cat doesn’t look offended, though, just amused. “You should hear his bitching when one of us decides to have a date night—”
“No one asked you, Cat,” I snarl.
“See?” She tilts her head and gives me a smug look.
Zoey just shakes her head, and she looks so sad that my heart aches. “You’re angry. I knew you would be. That’s why I kept it secret for so long.”
My head feels as if it’s exploding. “I am angry,” I manage. “I’m angry because you almost died. You’re here in med-bay, bleeding. You avoided me on the station and you won’t even look at me right now. I hate that you came so close to death when you should have never been there in the first place. You should have been back on 3N, waiting to meet me—”
She looks up at me, shocked. “You think I could meet you? Ever? Looking like I do?”
“Beautiful?” I ask.
Now Zoey’s the one that’s confused. “W…what?”
I take her hand in mine, stopping her from fretting the blanket any longer, and sit on the edge of the bed. I look down at her knuckles. She has four fingers (and a thumb) where I only have three. She’s small and pale where I’m blue, and my hand is nearly twice the size of hers. I run my thumb over her skin. It’s different, but not unpleasant. “I told you that I never cared how you look. Nothing has changed. I feel the same way I do about you right now that I did a week ago, or a month ago.”
She blinks at me, and her eyes are big and green and soft, her lashes thick. Her lower lip—pink and full—wobbles slightly. “And how is it that you feel about me?”
“You know how I feel.”
The fire returns to her, just a little. Her jaw clenches and she looks so adorably stubborn that it makes me want to drag her into my arms and hold her tight. Her hand tugs at my grip. “Yes, well, I want to hear you say it.”
I glance over at Cat, who’s watching us with wide, gleeful eyes. This will be all over the ship in a matter of hours…and I find that I don’t care. Let the entire universe know how I feel about Zoey. I hold her hand tightly and rub her knuckles. “I love you,” I tell her plainly. “I will say it like a human and say I love you. I will say it like a mesakkah male and tell you that you have my heart. Either way, know that nothing has changed and I want you now as much as I ever have.”
Her lower lip trembles, her eyes shiny with emotion. “You should know I’m a virgin,” she blurts. “Like, super virgin.”
I stare at her, unable to process what she’s saying. It takes a moment to sink in, and I wonder if this is another thing she suspects will drive me away? “I do not care, because from this moment forward, you are mine.”
“Wow, so this is getting awkward,” Cat says, reaching over and tapping the “call” button over Zoey’s head. “I’m going to bring the others in before you two start making out in front of me. Unless it’s blood loss that’s making her blurt these things out.”
I just bare my teeth at Cat.
“I need to hear it again,” Zoey says, squeezing my hand. “Before my brothers come back.”
“I love you,” I tell her, pressing my mouth to her skin. I have seen the others kiss and caress their mates without a plas-film protection, and at the time I thought it was vulgar. Now, though, I see the appeal. I don’t want anything keeping me from touching Zoey. “You are my mate.”
She smiles widely, showing square white teeth instead of mesakkah fangs, and I think she’s still the most beautiful thing ever.
“Really?”
“Really,” I say. A split second later, her three brothers pile into the room.
“Break it up, break it up,” Kaspar says, even as Adiron hauls me physically away from her. Mathiras moves to his sister’s side and takes a protective stance, and for the moment I am pleased they are so very protective of her—and frustrated, too.
“It’s okay, guys,” Zoey says, calmly waiting as Tarekh moves to her side and checks the blood transfusion.
“He was touching you,” Adiron growls. “He doesn’t get to do that until we approve.”
Zoey makes an exasperated sound. “Come here, Adi.” When the big guy leans in, she flicks a finger on his plated forehead. “I get to make that call, not you.”
“You are our sister,” Mathiras says, putting a hand between the two of them before Adiron can rub his knuckles over Zoey’s head again. He steps between the siblings and then looks over at me. “If you want to touch Zoey, you have to court her first.”
“In human ways,” Kaspar adds with a scowl.
“Human ways?” I ask, baffled.
“Yes. Like in the Earth vids she always watches.”
Zoey just moans and claps a hand to her forehead. “Guys, for kef’s sake.”
“No, Zoey,” Mathiras says, unyielding. “You’re human. If he wants to be with a human, he needs to confront it. He courts you, human-style. That’s all there is to it.”
“It’s easy,” Adiron says, casting a sly look over at Zoey. “They like dumb shit. We know. We’ve lived with her for ten years.”
She shoots him the finger, an expression I’ve seen Fran do to Kivian many times. It takes everything I have not to bark with laughter. Instead, I manage to keep my lips pinched tight and give them a solemn nod. “Then you’ll let her stay on the Fool for now?”
Because it’s just occurred to me that they could easily snatch her away. They could take her back on the Little Sister and head off and we’d be on separate ends of the galaxy for gods only know how many months. My chest tightens at the thought. I can’t let that happen. I don’t want Zoey out of my sight ever again. The thought’s a painful one.
