Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

CARLA

Words left her. Okay, that was a lie. She had lots of words, but none of them were particularly helpful. She knew he wasn’t squeaky clean. People came to this lawless planet for a reason. Eventually, she settled on, “Did he have it coming?”

Ari sat upright, positioning her to sit on his lap. “My sire was a vain, arrogant male.”

Carla itched to make a snide comment about the apple not falling far from the tree, but she didn’t. Yay, personal growth.

Ari continued. “Lord Solivair is an old title, one of the oldest, and the estate is ancient, but that does not indicate wealth. My mother came from a family with the wealth needed to revitalize the estate. It was not a love match. It was a necessity.”

“That happens plenty of times on Earth.”

“My sire resented her. He was cruel.” Ari paused, as if to gather his thoughts. “To both of us. I believe because she was not his hondassa. Me? Because I simply existed.”

Ouch. That had to be difficult to admit.

“Hondassa. Is that like a fated mate thing?” she asked, partly allowing Ari a chance to shift the conversation if he wanted, and partly out of curiosity.

The universe was a big place. Hormones doing weird shit seemed to be universal, but each alien species had its own unique take on how weird the weird shit got. She heard about a species where their hormones randomly decided on a mate, whether you liked the person or not, and that was final. No takebacks.

Or mating fevers where the need to breed drove a person beyond reason. Or bites. Or psychic connections. Carla wasn’t sure she liked the idea of another person hanging out in her mind. Biology changing to match their partner seemed even worse, like a permanent “I heart you forever” tattoo but your entire body, not just a patch of skin.

Poppy said her people did that. She had a second heart that only kicked on when she bonded, for all the extra energy she’d need for making a baby presumably. Bodies were weird.

“A bonded mate, made by choice, not a biological imperative,” Ari answered. “The bond was never formalized, I believe. Obligation pressured him to take my mother as a mate.”

“That’s heartbreaking,” she said. Forced to marry when your heart belonged to someone else. That situation would turn anyone bitter.

“Do not find sympathy for the fiend. He made my mother’s life a misery.”

She pressed a hand to his arm. If there was one thing she understood, it was bad dads. “I believe you. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“I would like to tell you it was self-defense, but it was not. I saw an opportunity, and I seized it. He slept in his stone form, and I pushed him out of the aerie.” His eyes went hard, glowing a cold violet in the dim light.

“Forgive me if this is an ignorant question, but when you say stone form, do you mean actual stone? Did he die from the impact, or did he, umm, shatter?” Carla pictured a gargoyle tumbling from a roof, breaking on the ground, like a scene from a cheesy mystery show. The image did not match Ari’s serious tone.

“Our stone forms are versatile. We can resist damage, but if we sleep in the form, we can heal our wounds. Elders sometimes choose this as a way to extend their life or slow disease, such as my sire’s case,” Ari said, his voice cold. The charm had vanished, leaving behind anger. “He was already dying. He slept, oblivious to the world and a malicious child.”

Carla shivered. The sleeveless dress was perfect for the crowded, overheated casino but less than ideal for a cool night on the water.

“You are cold,” Ari said. His wings came forward, folding over them both like a blanket.

“Thanks.” She felt warmer already.

She twisted in place, trying to get a closer look at the wing. Leathery membranes stretched between joints, like a bat wing. One hung lower than the other, as if disjointed. He landed pretty hard. Was it broken?

“Remain still,” Ari grumbled.

Her fingers twitched, wanting to reach out and touch the drooping wing, but she restrained herself. Instead, she said, “Your wing doesn’t look too good.”

“It is fine,” he replied, being all stoic even though that had to hurt.

“You don’t sound like it’s fine.” If her shoulder were disjointed like that, she’d be howling.

“It is an old injury. I broke my wing as a child, and it never healed properly.”

“Really? Your people have spaceships. You can’t treat broken bones?”

His body tensed. For a moment, Carla felt as if he would toss her off his lap and into the water below.

“Sorry. None of my business,” she said quickly.

“We can treat broken bones. My father chose not to seek medical care for me because he had already spent a fortune on my mother’s medical treatment.” He spoke in a vulnerable tone.

Warm affection washed over her, touched that he would share a painful piece of his history with her. “He sucks. I’m sorry that happened to you.”

“It was a long time ago. Mostly, I do not notice. Rest will help.”

She had to trust his judgment about his own body. Still: “You’d let me know if you needed a hospital or a doctor, right?”

“Yes. I am not one for suffering.”

With her head on his shoulder and his arms around her, it was easy to forget the particulars of their situation. They weren’t hiding in the shadows, cowering on a narrow walkway that dangled above the cold ocean. They were on a private beach, perfectly alone and listening to the waves crash against the shore.

Now that the heart-pounding thrill of fleeing for her life was over, she had a chance to catch her breath. Rattled and scattered, she didn’t like feeling this way. She needed a minute to think about what she saw in the lounge and what she didn’t see.

“Were those guys looking specifically for you or was this just bad luck?” she asked, even though she believed she knew the answer.

“I believe the Patrol received a tip about my location. I am not important enough to search out,” Ari said.

So just an unhappy accident, then. “The blackmailer, Lady what’s-her-face,” Carla said, picturing the Khargal woman’s face but blanking on her name. Scattered. She didn’t like it. She said, “The silver lining here is that your plan worked.”

“Lady Delandra,” Ari said, supplying the name. “Is a silver lining meant to be good?”

“Yeah, like the sun breaking through the rain. A good thing hidden behind the bad.”

He made a thoughtful, humming noise. “Poetic.”

She wouldn’t go that far.

Something was happening below them. Engine noises grew louder, followed by voices. Carla remained silent, listening as staff chatted and made crude jokes while they unloaded the delivery. Eventually, they finished the job and left.

Ari broke the silence. “You are disturbed by my cowardice. You cannot even speak to me, and all you do is speak.”

He sounded disappointed, which was kind of sweet. They hadn’t actually spent a lot of time talking. Shouting and threatening, yes, but not talking. It took her a second to puzzle out what he meant, though.

“You fought back against a cruel man,” she said.

“He was helpless.”

“And when you were a child, dependent on your father? When you needed him. Was he kind and loving then?” Secondhand anger stirred inside her. Okay, not secondhand, but unresolved emotional baggage. She’d like to claim she was working on it, but she didn’t have therapy money, and psychologists were thin on the ground.

“You couldn’t fight back then,” she continued, going more impassioned. “Who cares how you did it? He had it coming, and you were strategic. Back on Earth, poison is considered a woman’s weapon because we’re smaller and weaker than men. We can’t strangle them or beat them in a fistfight, but we can sure as fuck put arsenic in their tea. Is that cowardly or just being smart? When I was a kid, there was this terrible TV movie, Burning Bed or something, about an abused woman who finally snapped and set the bed on fire to kill her asshole husband. I remember wondering why everyone doesn’t do that because fuck yeah, you have to sleep sometime, ya jerk.”

Silence.

Yeah, maybe she went a little too bloodthirsty too fast. She refused to dial it down, but she could have eased Ari into it before going on a rant about setting beds on fire, though it was very on -brand for her.

Well, this was awkward.

“I’m seventy-five percent certain my mother poisoned my father and buried him in the garden,” she said. There. Now, they traded family secrets.

“Why the twenty-five percent uncertainty? That is a considerable margin of doubt,” Ari said, sounding intrigued.

“My mom is the nicest person you’ll ever meet. Just really sweet, genuinely nice.” It felt weird repeating nice, but she couldn’t think of another word to convey the wholesome Midwestern-ness of her mother. She was every stereotype, right down to the Jell-O marshmallow salads. “And my dad wasn’t. He was mean when he drank, and he was always drinking.”

Carla’s voice wobbled, annoyed that she could get emotional over such an old wound. Two decades should be long enough to form scar tissue or grow numb to the memories, but no. Still hurt.

She cleared her throat, taking the opportunity to organize her thoughts about her messy family. “He was a mean drunk, like I said. Did all his talking with his fists. Didn’t matter who, though it was usually Mom. He turned up for work drunk once and threw a punch at his boss, so he got fired. Jobs aren’t exactly plentiful in a small town, especially when you burn bridges. Was that a wake-up call? Nope. He just carried on drinking all day. Hell, I think his life got easier not having to pretend to be sober from nine to five.”

Her and her mom’s lives got harder, though. Carla remembered shoving her feet into shoes she’d outgrown but couldn’t replace because there was no money. Or the power being cut. Empty cupboards and food boxes from the local church. She remembered her mother covering bruises with heavy makeup and long sleeves, even on the hottest August days.

Mostly, she remembered how the town turned a blind eye. It infuriated her.

“Anyway, one night, Mom and Dad had a big fight.” They fought most nights. Young Carla learned to ignore the angry shouts and somehow managed to sleep with her mother’s quiet sobs as a lullaby. “He was gone in the morning. That wasn’t weird. Sometimes, he went away for a few days to work, and I don’t know what, but nothing good. He always came back in a good mood with cash to splurge. We’d pay the tab at the grocery store or go to the movies.”

Those brief idylls never lasted long. Soon enough, he was back home, drinking and terrorizing his family.

“Only this time, he never came back. He was gone for good,” Carla said.

“I do not see a reason for you to accuse your mother of murder.”

“Yeah, but that night, she made his favorite: biscuits and gravy. I wasn’t allowed any. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.” She remembered being incensed at the injustice of it. “And the day after he left, Mom put in a raised garden bed in the backyard.” Carla hadn’t thought anything of the rusted old stock tank. Recycling stock tanks into garden beds was pretty common. “She planted tomatoes but they never really took. She just let that one fill with weeds.”

She had been twelve when this happened, and it took a decade for her to put together the obvious pieces.

Ari made a thoughtful noise.

“She died when I was twenty. Car accident. I can’t exactly ask,” Carla said. Even if she could ask, she couldn’t picture how that conversation would go. Hey, Mom, did you bump off Dad? I wouldn’t blame you. I would have helped you bury the body.

She would have. She really would have.

ARI

Ari turned over in his mind all that Carla had shared. He saw no purpose for such a disclosure. He needed to explain his warrant to maintain trust between them, but Carla could have kept her family secrets to herself. The only reason he deemed plausible was to build an emotional connection.

This pleased him. Such a connection was completely elective and unnecessary for their agreement.

“This is nice,” Carla said, breaking the silence. “Not the peril. Peril can go fuck itself, but talking. We haven’t really talked. Mostly, we bicker, but talking all civilized is nice.”

“I enjoy the bickering.”

She made an odd strangled noise, like she was trying to hide laughter. Even though it was tepid, it was the first true laughter he heard from her. No mocking. No exasperation. Simply mirth. He liked it.

It was pleasant.

“Do not do that,” he said.

“Do what?”

“If you are amused, laugh. Do not hide it.”

“You are so bossy. Is that an order?”

“It is what I want. Do with that what you will.”

She laughed again, the robust sound filling him with delight.

“Is that all you want?” she asked, her tone teasing.

“We should return to my ship. I do not trust these supports to hold.” The salty sea air caused spots of corrosion on the walkway’s metal frame. He eyed the rust at the connecting joints. The structure wasn’t in immediate danger of collapse, but they should head toward the ship before another delivery arrived.

“Not the hotel room? Are we leaving now?”

Tempting as it was to run, Ari dismissed it. “The Patrol will be monitoring for unexpected departures. We will sit and wait.”

“Sounds good,” she said, moving to her feet. Reluctantly, Ari released her from his hold. Already, he missed the feel of her in his lap and her scent, like summer flowers.

She stretched and shook out the fabric of her gown. It was mesmerizing. With a soft smile, she asked, “Which way?”

“Follow me. Walk quietly.”

As it turned out, she was as quiet as a gentle breeze. Ari was the one who stepped too heavy, causing the metal to clank and groan. His injured wing ached, wanting to be stretched and flexed, but the walkways were too narrow. He’d knock into every pillar and rod.

With the occasional pause to remain hidden from resort staff going about their evening, they made their way down to the water and across to the lights of the guest marina.

Within moments, they were inside the ship. Lights flickered in the airlock. Despite being on land, the ship went through a pressurization cycle. He should learn how to disable that in case he ever needed to make a quick escape. The computer counted down until the inner hatch opened.

Carla paced the room, as if filled with nervous energy. Her hands clenched and flexed. She lifted her chin, as if coming to a decision. She stepped toward him, placing her hand on his chest. “I know what I want.”

Dare he ask? He remained voiceless, as still as stone.

“I want to kiss you.”