Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

THREXIN

H e'd woken up in his own bed with a bad mood and an aching breastbone. His head still throbbed, as if the limiter were issuing phantom signals to his brain from the night before. Threxin wanted nothing more than to stay there and sleep off the pounding in his head. But with three ship days until the jump to the edge of human space, there was work to do. He'd wasted time. Renza assured him everything was on track, but there were final arrangements to be made… and a port to install.

The pain in his chest and skull intensified with each step toward the command center, and it took all of Threxin's efforts to mask his discomfort. Renza lifted his chin when Threxin entered, spikes twitching with displeasure. The humans at their control panels exchanged furtive glances.

Pteron, the guard Threxin had assigned to Orion Halen and his female, approached. "Where have you been?"

Threxin's apertures tightened. "Where I was needed, Pteron."

"It has been many ticks," Pteron pressed.

He was too forward. He took after his parents in that, who had been rebel leaders in the last Apth uprising. Failed rebel leaders, dispatched quickly by Threxin's replacement sire. Threxin had been only a child then and barely remembered a thing, but he remembered being told his parents were dead. He remembered himself and Pteron being taken up from the planet's surface to the Elysian , ushered into the ship's medical wing in a line with the other offspring, Renza—a stranger back then—among them.

"Your human-kin has been looking for you," Pteron grunted, as if Threxin hadn't already known. As if Orion and his red bitch weren't loitering right behind him. Threxin's spikes itched. He found, somewhat unnerved, that feeling the limiter kick in only induced another flare of protest which was as well suppressed.

Threxin shouldered past Pteron and stepped to the platform on which his seat was bare and waiting.

Threxin winced as the sampler buried itself inside his wrist. Everything hurt on this shoqing ship, and Pteron was still hovering, waiting for an explanation he was not owed.

"Go to Lesthin in the medical bay. Tell him I will come to install my port tomorrow," Threxin told him. He could already tell he'd be in no shape to go through a procedure today as he'd hoped.

"Is his communications band broken?" Pteron's brow drew back. He was referring to the devices Threxin had issued to his cohort, somewhat more primitive than the sleeker adhesive strip on his own inner wrist, but they got the job done.

"You will tell him yourself."

"Why?"

"Because I command it." Threxin leaned back, splaying his feet wide on the floor. He eyed Pteran, waiting for another challenge. Renza cocked his head from the copilot's seat. The guard adjusted his weapon on his back and went to do as he was told without further protest.

"How far from jump location?" Threxin asked no one in particular. Either the ship or one of the crew would answer, and he cared not which it was.

"Sixty-seven hours, sir," said a human voice from the panel.

"Renza," Threxin turned to his brother. "Gather seven of my cohort. Have them shadow the humans on shift."

The humans tensed in unison. Threxin had two jumps to get to the destination Orion Halen had in mind. The destination Elysian's trained uhyre technicians were working to decode—something he would need to check on later. There were traitors on board, made clear by his attempted assassination, and Threxin would not rely on the humans to get them the whole way to his new planet. He needed to train his people to replace them, and fast.

The first three hours in the command center were spent reviewing navigation and trajectory data he'd missed, then approving tweaks of the engine and jump drive systems that only his blood could authorize. Alina Argoud had slinked in at some point. She carried a steaming box of something that she foisted onto Kaia Halena, who sat in the command center's observation pit.

"I did not expect to see you today, brother," Renza muttered under his breath in Apthian, eyes tracking Alina casually.

"I was well enough to work."

In truth, Threxin had been feeling worse by the minute since the moment he got out of bed that morning. Now each strand of fabric chafed against his wound.

"Has the female's care been sufficient?" Renza asked instead of calling him out on the lie .

"If you're asking if I need her any longer, the answer is no."

"I will dispose of her tonight then."

Something in Threxin shuttered, his apertures squeezing tight, his spikes flinching. Renza noticed.

"No…?" He cocked his head, brows pulled back.

Threxin looked at the female and found her glancing back as she muttered something to her mistress, coaxing the steaming box into her hands. He averted his eyes.

"Leave her for now," Threxin finally answered. "She is close with the red female."

"I would not say so," Renza snorted, tracking Alina as she scurried back out of the command center, the box refused by its irate-looking intended. "And she is a witness. An alien witness. Best to make this clean."

"Closer than anyone else, save for her mate," Threxin insisted. "She may be useful later."

Threxin felt Renza's attention from the corner of his eye, and he hastened to change the subject.

"Have you found Orion Halen's sire?" he asked.

"I have two leads. I think I am close."

"Good. And the fraternization?"

Renza shifted in his seat, synthleather creaking under his weight, and that was answer enough.

"Everyone out," Threxin said in Apthian, then repeated in Universal. No one hesitated except Orion Halen and his female, because they were born to be shoqing spikes in his apertures.

"Did your ears deteriorate in my absence?" Threxin snarled—a strategic intonation that required no suppression—and Orion pulled his still-hesitating female away.

Threxin held the underside of his left wrist to his mouth, where his comms patch was adhered.

"Silarra." The ship recognized his voice and whom he was addressing, opening a network link .

"Oh," Silarra's voice droned in the bone-conducting earpiece attached behind his ear. "You're back."

"Come to the command center. Now."

When he, Renza, and Silarra were alone, Threxin spoke. "Have you disposed of the body?"

"Which one?" Silarra frowned. It was a reasonable question.

"Your… pet ," he spat. Renza had already caught him up on the thirty dead in the common residence deck riot the night of Threxin's attack, and how their remains had been distributed. Orion Halen had been made aware. He wasn't happy, but accepted begrudgingly that humans had brought their consequences upon themselves, though apparently his female hadn't felt the same way.

"Oh, that. Yes," Silarra said. "Lesthin kept some of the organs for sampling. The rest was vented."

"There have been no further incidents?" Threxin probed.

Silarra scoffed, but snapped her mouth shut quickly, hiding her fangs and bowing her head demurely. The way she lowered it reminded Threxin of how Alina had looked the previous night, her neck bent in submission as she moistened his apertures. He tongued his inner cheek, hard. The gesture helped abate the taste of exorin at the roof of his mouth, if he caught it early enough.

"It is a difficult thing to prevent, brother," Renza offered.

Threxin's limiter hummed before he even had a chance to grow annoyed. "Elaborate."

"It means our cohort are curious."

"And the humans?"

"Some of them are curious too." Renza smiled.

"And you?" Threxin asked quietly of his brother, narrowing his eyes .

"I have acted on nothing," was Renza's diplomatic reply.

Threxin clasped his hand to the back of his neck. "Shoq, Renza, we are supposed to be the addictive ones, not them."

"They can be… persuasive," Silarra chimed in with a low drawl.

"I do not care!" Threxin shot up from his seat. Silarra and Renza exchanged glances, brows raised. Threxin's hand rose instinctively to hover at his chest as his wound protested. "It does. Not. Matter." He breathed, forcing his body to calm even as his mind worried. He had enough of a headache without the limiter. "You have your orders. We are not the animals here. Has our history taught you nothing?"

"Most of us don't even know our history, brother," Renza sighed. "Most of us never cared to learn about humans because we weren't fabled to be of some mythical ruling line."

"Mythical?" Threxin spread his arms, gesturing at the command center around him. "Mythical like this ship in which you sit? Like this shoqing needle under my skin?" He turned his hand, thrusting his blood-crusted wrist toward Renza.

"Well, yes, now we know…"

"Now you know. And do you know if our finding our planet was not contingent on letting these humans live, I would have destroyed them all by now?"

"Perhaps all except one," Renza smirked.

Silarra's apertures widened from her spot in the pit. "Who?"

"No one," Threxin snapped, baring his teeth at Renza. The limiter did churn then, late, dousing him with a chill that stabbed the backs of his eyes.

He sat back down and rubbed a knuckle between his brows. "How many humans are we talking about?"

"Not many," Silarra played coy.

" How many? "

"Two that I know of. One voluntarily, both from this deck."

"And the other?"

"If she is not a volunteer already, she will be soon enough." Renza shrugged.

"And the uhyre?" he asked, turning to Silarra. "You?"

"Oh, no," she bent her neck. "I heed your command."

"Bring them to the rear dock." It was the smallest space Threxin could think of that could accommodate all the humans on the command deck and all the uhyre at once. "Now. And the humans. Bring everyone."

"Of course," Silarra said and made for the exit, exchanging another worried glance with Renza.

"What are you doing, brother?" Renza asked in a low voice when they were alone.

"Teaching."