Beyond the Next Star

by Melody Johnson

  What was she frightened of? During her first days of being taken—the word “kidnapped” came to mind, and he shuddered—he could imagine that fear had overtaken all reasoning, but she’d learned Lori well enough to communicate her needs and wants.

  She certainly wasn’t incapable of shouting her needs and wants to Torek, in private, at least. She was hungry. She was thirsty. She was full. She wanted to know about how he’d saved her. She wanted to know the details. Rak, now that she’d revealed herself capable of communicating in Lori, she seemed incapable of stopping. She was more persistent than a law enforcer hunting a nugget of guilt! Except in one regard: her silence in public.

  The waitress delivered their food and an extra plate for Reshna, interrupting his spiraling thoughts. He divided a portion of his meal onto her plate and handed it down to her, feeling a twinge of unease. She didn’t sit on the floor at home. Sitting on chairs was better for her joints, after all, but what had once seemed strange—having her join him to dine at the table—now seemed cruel to avoid. If what he suspected was true, it was certainly cruel, if not criminal.

  Torek scooped up a helping of rainol e lokks, took a bite, and before he’d even swallowed, reached down and smacked the plate from Reshna’s hands. It flew across the room and upended, spattering rainol e lokks everywhere.

  Reshna stared up at him, taken aback.

  He fell to his knees before her. “Did you eat any of it?” He took hold of her shoulders and shook her. “Did you?”

  Her eyes darted beyond him, undoubtedly at the dozens of staring diners, but he didn’t care about their audience. He slipped his fingers between her lips to pry her mouth open.

  She bit him—not hard, not like before—but with enough intent for him to pull back and shake out the sting.

  He cupped her jaw and forced her gaze to meet his. “Reshna, you must answer me.” He breathed through the words, striving for calm. “Our food had ukok in it.”

  Her face blanched, and for a horrible, chilling moment, he expected her to drop dead right there. But she shook her head.

  By Lorien’s horn, even now, her lips having been inches from tasting death, she kept her silence!

  Torek stood and fell heavily back into his seat, deeply shaken. Mairok rushed over, beside herself with apologies. She promised another plate, a proper meal that wouldn’t kill his animal companion. She was appalled by the mistake and practically prostrate with remorse, but Torek didn’t hear a word. It didn’t matter. They were leaving. He preferred his own cooking anyway.

  Had he said that aloud?

  Torek inhaled a deep breath and focused. He flipped to the back of Delaney’s care manual, an idea blossoming from near disaster. Pulling rank was one of the few perks of Torek’s position, and, knowing the domestication specialist’s name, Torek had no doubt he could obtain his contact information. Maybe a conversation with her specialist could illuminate whatever wasn’t written in her manual. Maybe some evidence in Reshna’s history or an interaction with her during their training had been deliberately omitted. The list of “maybes” was endless and useless, but maybe whatever it was could be interrogated out of him.

  He’d relish a good interrogation at the moment.

  The author’s signature page projected in front of him, and Torek stared at the name, dumbstruck. That creeping poison from the wound of her silence spread through the rest of his body, infecting his heart: Keil Kore’Weidnar. Reshna’s domestication specialist was the husband of Daerana Weidnar, the lorok who had broken into the Onik estate with her husband’s RG-800. The lorok Torek had murdered to prevent the mass murder of his entire guard following her husband’s suicide, a ruling that Daerana had insisted was false. She’d believed that her husband, Keil Kore’Weidnar, had been murdered.

  Torek looked down into Reshna’s sad, silent gray eyes and thought about what he might do in the attempt to escape his kidnappers.

  Maybe Daerana Weidnar had been right.

  Eighteen

  Something was terribly wrong. Well, more terribly wrong. The entire day had been a nightmare even before someone had tried to poison her, but she of all people knew that no matter the nightmare, it could always take a turn for the worse. Just as suddenly as Torek had saved her, his expression deadened. He stood, calm as could be, and tugged on her tether.

  “Come.”

  That one word had more bite than the nip in the air, and Delaney froze. Their replacement food hadn’t been served yet. Their second waitress hadn’t chatted with Torek for half an hour, and they hadn’t eaten or paid. And they were leaving?

  The tether pulled taut as Torek left the restaurant, and Delaney rushed to catch up before he choked her.

  He didn’t speak to her on the ride home, which was just as well because he knew that she wouldn’t speak back, but he didn’t look at her either. He didn’t touch her or pet her or help her down from the hover vehicle. She’d come three inches from anaphylactic shock, for heaven’s sake, but he didn’t steady her when she inevitably slipped on the snow in the courtyard, and he didn’t pick her up after she cracked a puddle of ice with her ass. He just tugged on her tether, and she trudged along in his wake, knowing that something was very, terribly wrong.

  They rode the elevator up the mountain into the castle, stomped past a line of saluting guards, turned down the back hallway with its floor-to-ceiling windows, and, once they were alone in the privacy of his room, the door firmly shut—and locked—behind them, Torek turned to her, finally meeting her gaze.

  His eyes pinned her in place. The anguish in them took her aback. He didn’t move to unbuckle her collar. He didn’t move at all, and neither could she under the weight of that stare.

  She tried to speak, but between fear and an entire day of disuse, her voice croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again.

  “Torek?”

  He continued to stare at her, his gaze becoming more focused and resolved with each passing second. Resolved to do what, Delaney couldn’t begin to hazard a guess, but the force and intensity of his regard was unnerving.

  “I tell you it not safe,” she murmured.

  “I told you I’d protect you.” His lips compressed to a thin, disapproving line. The tips of both fangs peeked out. “Did I not?”

  “You did.” Delaney took a deep breath. Maybe anger was easier for him to process than fear, something she understood intimately. She reached out and caressed his forearm. “You save me.”

  He recoiled from her touch. “This isn’t about that.”

  “No?” She let her hand fall back to her side, stung. “I not imagine what more pressing than the second attempt on my life,” Delaney said drolly.

  Torek pointed his finger at her. “Don’t start in about the knife. You can’t distract me, not from this.”

  “What ‘this’?”

  Another few seconds ticked by in silence. Torek’s expression was naturally disapproving, but he was being especially enigmatic this afternoon. Delaney reached up to unfasten the collar from around her neck, preparing to get comfortable. This argument would obviously be taking a while.

  Torek strode forward and past her, tugging her after him before her fingers could release the restraints.

  “Wait! Let me—”

  Torek jerked the leash, tightening the collar and cutting off her words. She stumbled toward him, yanked off balance by his strength. He caught her under the arms before she fell and plopped her into one of the chairs in his private dining nook overlooking the city. He kept hold of her leash, one hand gripping the table’s edge and the other gripping the kitchen counter. Between the bars of his arms, the bulk of his body, and the wall behind her, she was trapped in her chair.

  She lifted her hand and rubbed the chafed skin under the abrasive collar.

  Torek’s eyes melted, then suddenly hardened. He swatted her hand away.

  Delaney blinked at him, baffled. “What is your problem?”

  “You, Reshna. You’re my problem,” Torek growled.

&
nbsp; “Just realizing that now?” She reached up to undo her collar again.

  Torek swatted her hand again, a little harder.

  He was not Kane Todd, she reminded herself, but she couldn’t slow the sick, pounding racing of her heart. She held her hand to her chest, her breathing ragged.

  Torek’s breaths were heavy too, but measured.

  “Something is wrong,” Delaney whispered.

  Torek nodded curtly.

  She took a deep breath, trying to calm. “What happen?”

  “I don’t know. But you, little Reshna, you are going to enlighten me.”

  Delaney blinked. “Me?”

  “I want to hear it from your lips.” Torek thrust his face into hers.

  Delaney shrank away from him—his rage, directed at her for once, was terrifying—but she could only lean back so far without tipping the chair. Torek grabbed the back of it and scooted her forward, so his lips, his fangs, his breath were hot on her cheek as he spoke.

  “Before I launch my own investigation and discover the truth for myself, before I begin a hunt to solve questions better left unanswered, you’re going to tell me the truth.”

  Delaney shook her head. “The truth about what?”

  He eased back and met her eyes with a probing look. “Why is your ability to speak a secret?”

  Delaney pursed her lips.

  “Don’t give me that look, you stubborn—” Torek cut himself off midsentence. He closed his eyes and seemed to struggle with something, but whether he was struggling to remain calm and speak rationally or whether he was reining in the urge to slap her silly wasn’t clear.

  “Reshna, please.” He opened his eyes, and this time, they pierced her with his desperation. He wasn’t angry. Well, he was, but his anger was a byproduct of fear. Deep, panic-driven fear.

  Delaney’s heart skipped a beat. “Does it matter? I am yours. I—I am h-happy with you. That is enough.”

  He barked out a mirthless laugh. “Oh, it’s enough, is it? This life here with me as my animal companion is enough?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “Let it be.”

  He pounded the side of his clenched fist into the table. “I can’t,” he bit out. “What do you think will happen if everyone knows you’re more than just an animal?”

  Delaney sealed her lips shut, but the silence somehow spoke for her.

  “Because you’re not just an animal who speaks Lori, are you? You’re not just mimicking speech. You’re creating it. You’re expressing yourself in our language. You’re a person.”

  Delaney glanced at the door. “Someone might overhear you.”

  “Good! They should overhear! Then maybe they won’t strip you naked, ravish your body, and rape you with a thermometer!”

  Delaney flinched. “Stop. Just stop!”

  “Explain to me why I should. Confide in me!” Torek thundered.

  Delaney shook her head.

  Torek searched her eyes for a long moment, flicking back and forth, hunting for the truth. And then he slumped. “Oh, Reshna.” He shook his downturned head on his limp neck. “I already know.”

  Delaney froze, but her heart slammed against her ribs. “No one know,” she insisted.

  He looked up, his eyes anguished. “But I can’t protect you if I don’t know the details.”

  “If they know, I am dead.”

  Torek raised his hand. Delaney braced herself for another slap, but his soft thumb pad smoothed across her cheekbone. “They won’t kill you. Our people don’t give death sentences for self-defense, and once they realize that you’re a person and not an animal, they’ll have no choice but to pardon you for Keil’s murder.”

  Delaney bolted upright. “What?”

  “Shhh,” Torek viurred. “It’s all right. Once you’re pardoned, you’ll be sent home. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll—”

  “I not murder Keil!” Delaney shrieked, then slapped her hands over her mouth. Christ, she was shouting at the top of her lungs!

  Torek’s thumb stilled. “It’ll be all right, little one. I won’t leave you, and you will be pardoned. I can only imagine what you’ve experienced, being kidnapped and dragged from your home, separated from your family, relocated to a whole different planet.” Torek shook his head, his eyes gleaming dangerously. The rage from before returned, but on her behalf this time. “What my people did to you is unforgivable.”

  Delaney opened her mouth and closed it, dumbfounded. Keil had prepared her for almost everything she’d need to survive on Lorien—he’d taught her their language, their customs, he’d attempted to teach her their geography—but he’d never prepared her for this: a loving owner who wanted to expose her secret for her benefit. Granted, he wanted to expose the wrong secret, but still, if she didn’t tell Torek the truth, he’d expose her and get them both killed. But if she confessed, and it got out that he knew, she’d still get them both killed.

  Get them killed now or later? What kind of choice was that?

  “How did it even happen?”

  Delaney blinked herself back to the present. “What?”

  “We have technology in place to prevent this very thing, so we only harvest animal companions from uncivilized planets. It’s supposedly ninety-seven percent effective!”

  “Meaning it three percent not effective.”

  His eyes blazed. “We’ll return to Brinon Kore’Onik, and you’ll speak to him. He’ll revise your classification, like he said. That’ll be the first step. Then—”

  “No.”

  Torek made a hacking noise in the back of his throat. “You don’t understand. I’ll protect you. I—”

  “No, you not understand. I not murder Keil. I love Keil. He like the father I never have.” Delaney took a deep breath and met Torek’s gaze squarely. “I witness his murder.”

  Torek stared at her. His entire body had stilled. His fist wasn’t clenching. His jaw wasn’t flexing. He was barely even breathing.

  “Keil make the same promise you make. He try to revise my—my—”

  “Classification?”

  She nodded. “But he—” She groaned as language failed her. “I not know the words.”

  “Describe them,” Torek said, his gaze unflinching.

  “He meet to present my care manual to the lorienok who finding and stealing animals from their home planets.”

  Torek’s frown deepened, but he nodded. “Keil presented you to the Animal Companion Committee.”

  Delaney shook her head. “He not present me. Just my manual.”

  “It was directly following that meeting that he supposedly killed himself.” Torek’s grip on the chairback tightened. His forearm flexed against her neck, hard as granite. “What happened when he presented your manual?”

  “I not know,” Delaney whispered. “But he know they not like”—she groaned, struggling for the correct inflection in Lori —“enjoy, no, accept, allow…”

  “Approve?” Torek suggested.

  Delaney nodded. “They not approve his chapter on mental acuity without proof. So he perform many trials to demonstrate my correct class—classification. Before the meeting, he is confident with enough proof to send me home.”

  “And after the committee meeting?”

  “After the meeting, she murder him.” Delaney gave him a look. “What is the word for something that is clearly the result. Not a surprise. Not hidden. In clear sight.”

  Torek’s expression flattened. “Keil’s murder is not an obvious result of his committee meeting.”

  “No, but here I am, not home, so obvious his meeting not go well.”

  “Did you see who murdered him?”

  Delaney compressed her lips into a grim line and shook her head.

  Torek narrowed his eyes, dissecting her with a look. “You said ‘she’ murdered him. So you saw enough to know his murderer was a lorok.”

  Delaney stared back, trying to think how she could rewind her words. She could feign a language barrier, but she’d never confused her genders before
. Would he notice? He noticed everything! Something began to rattle. Her trembling had increased enough to vibrate the chair leg against the table.

  “All right. Shhh,” Torek soothed. He released his grip on the chairback and cupped her shoulder, his touch gentler but somehow more dangerous than his slaps. The pads of his fingers grazed her collarbone. Goose bumps spread across her neck and down her chest. Her nipples puckered.

  She shifted, suddenly uncomfortably aware of her body and his proximity.

  “Look at me, Reshna.”

  She gathered the tatters of her resolve as best she could and met his gaze.

  He was magnificent. Even now with all that righteous pursuit aimed at her—the hot gleam in his eyes, the grim set of his mouth, the restrained force of his muscles, his stiletto-sharp mind—his presence made her shiver, and from more than just fear. Much more. His palm cradling her jaw. His breath hot on her cheek. His eyes seeming to see through her lies to her very soul. It should have been terrifying, and it was, but more than that, she desperately wanted to melt against him, into his warmth and strength, to make them her own. That aching heat flared and throbbed between her legs again, as unexpected and unwanted as it had been the first time, but no less devastating.

  “Tell me what happened after Keil returned from the committee meeting.”

  She stiffened her spine and turned away. “I did.”

  The hand gripping her shoulder tightened, not painfully, but his grip was unbreakable all the same. “Where were you at the time?”

  “In my cage.”

  Torek’s eyes narrowed. “He kept you caged? But his manual states that you don’t thrive in captivity. You need your own bed in your own room with climate control and…” Torek’s voice faded. His eyes widened. His mouth opened, but for a moment, no words emerged. And then, “Keil Kore’Weidnar wrote your care manual knowing that you were a person, so your owner would give you privacy and as much freedom as possible.”

  “That work well,” Delaney grumped, glaring around the room they still shared.

  Torek shook his head. “He wrote the manual anticipating that you might still be classified as an animal companion despite his evidence to the contrary.”