Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

ALINA

A s soon as Threxin had left the night before, Alina had taken a scalding hot shower and grabbed her remaining stash of his hak. She'd sat bundled in her quilt in bed, staring at her wall as the mineral scraped her throat in the most satisfying way.

He'd done it again, and Alina refused to call it anything other than a kiss this time. And she had gone along with it—not because she was scared, or because she knew he could take whatever he wanted from her. She wanted it. She'd fucking cried with the frustration of having to stop.

It had taken hours for that suicidal lack of fear to wear off, and when it did, she was doubly terrified. There were so many things to fear with Threxin, but the most terrifying part was that, in that moment, she wasn't scared enough.

He said he lied. He'd looked at her with black in the seam of his mouth, his pupils pinpricks, and his apertures wide open as he mirrored her body's betrayal in his own way. And he said he'd lied about this being just a study, or morbid curiosity.

Alina wished it had been all those things. The alternative—developing some sort of fucked-up attraction, or worse, a connection—was much more terrible than simply being used .

But now that it was out there, Alina couldn't just put it back.

She'd fucked up enough by unilaterally deciding to save the invader instead of leaving the choice to the rightful commander and his wife. She had a responsibility to use it now, to turn it into something that could help her people.

All signs pointed to the idea that Threxin, in his own stunted way, on some level cared about her. He'd brought her to the medbay when she was hurt. He came to check on her the night before. He was even intending on compromising on security to ensure she could walk as her physio required.

Alina could use that. She had accidentally positioned herself into some sort of… something with the alien, and now it was her job to use it for her people's benefit. Maybe she could make him gentle his treatment of them, make him see them as more than just pests. Maybe she could make him resume their Uploads.

Alina stashed the hak away and pulled the untouched Harmonapam Dr. Pertin had given her out of her bedside nook, counting out two doses. If she was going to go through with this, she'd need to have her head on straight.

It was just past midnight, and Alina was watching herself sneak out of her cabin into the deserted halls of the ship.

It's my physiotherapy-mandated walk, she'd prepared her excuse. The commander said it was all right.

A guard had still not been installed back in her hallway since Threxin's stay in her cabin, so she got to half-limp toward the command center in relative solitude for a few minutes. The suede soles of her shoes whispered against the floor like she was one of the ghosts haunting this place. Like this, without anyone else around, the soul of the ship permeated the air around her. She felt Colossal 's breath, its pulse, its lifeblood in the walls.

She ran her fingertips along the hull-side wall as she walked, stroking the ship as though it were a gentle beast beneath her touch. As much as she, like everyone on Colossal , dreamed of finding New Earth and making a life there, now that the hope of it seemed entirely dashed Alina realized how little she had appreciated the ship that had been home her whole life. In that moment, she wasn't sure she even wanted to leave it. Perhaps she'd rather haunt its halls forever.

She ran into her first guard just a few minutes later—a pale green glowing male whose grip tightened on his weapon when he spotted her. She hesitated.

"It's my physiotherapy-mandated walk. The commander said it was all right," she said.

The uhyre adjusted his weapon, apertures narrowing. They really were such curious creatures.

His spikes flicked in what appeared to be annoyed recognition as he grunted and jerked his chin toward the hall. She assumed that was a motion for her to keep going, so she did.

A human guard might find her being out so late suspicious, but from what Alina had gathered, the uhyre didn't experience time in the same way. Threxin regularly referred to time spans as "ticks," which seemed largely undefined in their duration.

It took longer than her mandated twenty minutes to reach the rear dock at her pace. By the time she got there, her injured leg was beginning to tire, but she rallied and walked with a purpose as she approached the uhyre guard standing outside the entrance.

Luckily the guard did not question her, perhaps used to seeing her in the dock for her scrubbing shifts. The light was on in the dockmaster's office. Alina wondered if he ever slept, considering they were too short-staffed for a switchover. She padded across the unlit dock toward the utility closet. The black silhouettes of Ariels loomed in the shadows, but it was the floor where Alina's eyes kept gravitating. Though it was black as exorin in the darkness, Alina honed in on exactly the location where the blood had been. She visualized the black and red pool spreading on the tiles and was satisfied when the image did nothing to her. The meds were making her blood and bones cold, but at least they were working.

Alina picked what she needed from the utility closet and gave herself a few minutes to rest her leg in the darkness. It was time for the hard part.

Alina took winding side passages toward the command bay of the ship in hopes of lessening her chances of running into uhyre or people. But there was no avoiding walking past the command center to get to Threxin's quarters, and that would always be guarded.

Her physio excuse wouldn't fly this close to the command areas of the ship and the commander's quarters. Threxin had said the uhyre had evolved past their highly volatile emotional states and now relied on logic alone. Everything, supposedly, was strategic. It didn't seem strategic when Threxin got so mad at her for getting herself hurt after the jump, nor when he kissed her the night before. Had he just been acting? Or had he lied about his kind's evolution?

Either way, an appeal to logic was going to be her best bet. When Alina turned the final corner toward the command center, she pulled out the eject-point nanofilters she'd grabbed from the dock and stashed in her pocket.

"Routine airflow maintenance," she explained to the bored-looking uhyre guard who blocked her way. He'd pushed himself off the wall when he saw her coming, his apertures loose and spikes relaxed for the split second it took him to register her presence.

The uhyre's breath was warm, moist, and pungent as he leaned in close, baring his fangs. He spoke slowly in heavily accented Universal. "Maintenance? "

Alina held the filters out for his inspection. "These nanofilters need to be changed every few months, placed in the air filtration system's eject point. Command area's due for a change, starting with residential. Look."

She dug in her pocket for the air quality meter she'd taken. Blowing a few puffs of hak into the sensor earlier had made it flash orange in warning. The uhyre's apertures narrowed as he cocked his head at the device, parsing the small screen showing all the right things.

"It'll just take five minutes," Alina said. "You can come watch me."

Of course, she was counting on him doing no such thing.

It hadn't been entirely a lie. The nanofilters consisted of millions of nanofibers honed to trap and neutralize viruses, bacteria, and other undesirable air particles through various parts of the ship. The entire ship was coated with layers of the stuff behind the walls and inner circuitry—all of it mostly obsolete, since Colossal had been upgraded over the years to generate and use biological filtering compounds.

Still, the eject-point nanofilters through which clean air would permeate were replaced regularly during expeditions, just in case the biofiltering system became compromised. And though Alina didn't know anything about the system itself, she'd spent enough time around the command areas to remember that those filters were changed approximately twice a year and that it was just about time. If the uhyre decided to check ship records, he'd find her story checked out.

The guard turned the filters over a few times in his hand, spikes flattening slowly to his scalp.

"You think I am an idiot?" When his glowing silver eyes flicked back up to her, Alina's stomach dropped.

"What? No, I?—"

Alina gasped as talons grabbed her throat and jerked her off her feet, slamming her back into the wall. The barrel of the uhyre's gun was cold as he shoved it underneath her jaw, a click ringing in her ears. Alina gasped for breath that barely came.

"What business have you in this part of the ship, pest?" the uhyre hissed, tightening his hold until the air trickled in as if through a straw.

"Let her through." The voice from somewhere in front and to her right was familiar. Over the guard's shoulder, through the fuzzy edges of her pulsing vision, Alina saw Renza standing in the doorway to the command center.

She wheezed, chest jerking as the guard's fist tightened around her neck. What was going to kill her first, Alina wondered, the lack of oxygen or the fact that he was surely about to break her windpipe?

"I said let her go through, Ptolin," Renza said calmly in Apthian she was proud to have understood, even in her current predicament. In Universal, he added, "There is something she needs to see."

Alina wheezed, her lungs on fire as the guard released her without ceremony. She slid to the floor in a coughing heap, wincing when her still-recovering knee issued a twinge of protest.

Was this a trap? Why was Renza letting her through? He must know what had been going on with her and Threxin, that much was clear… But what was it that he wanted her to see?

"Go on," Renza commanded when Alina stumbled back to her feet, attempting to gather her wits through blotchy vision and recalibrate the plan.

"I think I'll just head ba—" Her voice came barely above a hoarse whisper from her abused throat. Something was very off, and now instead of following her own plan, she was stepping right into whatever Renza had in store for her. All she'd wanted was to sneak into Threxin's quarters and use whatever connection they'd built to convince him to restart Uploads. Alina couldn't afford to wait until he came to her again—who knew when that would be? People were dying while she delayed.

But this was all wrong. This was not on her terms, and something told her she was about to walk into a mess she couldn't even begin to imagine.

"You got yourself into this, female." The warning in Renza's voice halted her attempt to retreat. "Go and see."

Alina slinked close to the wall to the door across from Kaia's and Orion's. She shuffled her feet, every little hair on her body standing on alert. Alina rubbed her sore neck. This was a hell of an ordeal to go through just to see the alien commander, possibly wake him up, and try to seduce—or whatever—her way into a massive concession for her people. She considered the situation coolly, wisps of dread rising and puffing out before they triggered a chain reaction in her body.

Alina didn't get a chance to gather herself and gesture a chime before the door opened. She stood and stared as Threxin appeared in the doorway, glowering.

"Hello." The word barely left her mouth before he was dragging her into the cabin. The door closed behind them with a definitive hiss.

"You're bleeding," Alina said numbly, blinking at the crimson stain his hand left on her shirt when he released her. It bloomed into the white fabric.

Maybe that's what Renza wanted me to see. His brother was hurt again, and he meant for her to take care of it.

"Why are you here?" Threxin did not sound happy to see her. His eyes flicked quickly to the room behind her before falling back to her.

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to talk. But are you okay?" Alina's consciousness was detached from her actions. She watched herself reach out to take his hand, examining the injury. The blood looked different from what she remembered of his chest wound. Diluted, almost. How the hell did this man keep hurting himself?

Man.

Was that what he was now?

Threxin jerked out of her grasp, and Alina sighed, registering a dull wisp of disappointment.

"It is not mine."

Alina processed that for a while, her gaze slowly reaching over his shoulder. She noted the way his spikes flattened slightly as she looked at a door to another room behind him. It was the office cabin of his quarters, and through the open door she saw a sliver of swaying shadow. Narrowing her eyes, Alina let her feet take her there.

"Alina." The warning in his voice was curious, but ignored. She kept walking. If he wanted to stop her, he could. He wasn't.

The body hung from a hook driven into the ceiling, strapped up at the elbows. His head was bent forward, hiding his face with a tuft of grayish hair that swayed back and forth. What looked like a dozen apertures lined the bare skin, only that was not what they were. Long crimson scratches bled onto unmarked skin and dripped to the carpet. The man twitched, alive. Recognition flared as he swung clockwise and revealed the profile of his face in shadow.

Alina's gasp was silenced as she backed into a familiar wall behind her. The sound roused the man, a swollen eyelid forcing itself open, the eye gliding to her from the battered shadow of his face.

Threxin curled a forearm around her shoulders and twisted her in one quick motion to face him. He grabbed her face and tilted it forcefully to make her meet his eye.

"That's Orion's father. "

"It is." Threxin nodded in a wholly human expression. Was that for her benefit?

Alina breathed. Her head wanted to freak out and run, as she should. It would be a perfectly normal reaction to seeing the father of your commander… ex-commander—God, whatever he was now—carved up and hanging from the ceiling in the cabin of the alien who just the night before had his tongue shoved in her mouth.

So yes, her head wanted to freak out. Her body though…

Alina simply stared up at Threxin and processed the situation. He was rolling the sleeve of his shirt up one muscled forearm, then the other, revealing intimately familiar blue slits trailing up his wrists and along the striations of muscle.

"Why are you doing this?"

Threxin cocked his head at her. Had he been expecting a different reaction? Alina was sure she'd have plenty of time to work herself up about this later. For now, she needed to know, and then she needed to get out of there.

He scratched the side of his jaw with three talons. "Information."

"About the planet."

This time Threxin lifted his chin in a more uhyrelike acknowledgment, before catching himself and turning it into a short nod.

"And when you find out, you'll kill us." Alina's hands worked, nails digging into flesh in little pulses of muscle. It was tugging at her, the real reaction brimming within her. But her head was cold, and her body simply did not care to indulge it.

Threxin's silence was answer enough for Alina. There was only one option now—she had to walk across that hall and tell Kaia everything.

It hadn't really occurred to Alina that, after witnessing what was going on, Threxin might not be compelled to let her leave this place alive. The thought only appeared when he blocked her retreat. A tendril of fear broke through the ice for the first time.

Well, now she had no choice but to test her favor with the uhyre. Instead of pulling away, Alina took a breath and stepped closer. For a moment she thought he would prevent that too, but after a flash of surprise, he let her close the distance between them, close enough to feel his heat seep through their clothes. Alina put a palm to his chest, fingers gentle as they pressed into a faint puckered line beneath his shirt where his chest scar would remain.

"Threxin," she peered up at him. "Please let him go."

He cocked his head.

"Him? You want him released? Do you not understand what is happening here?" Threxin stepped back, out of her touch, clasping a hand to his spikes. "Shoq, I should have never let you enter."

He turned his back to her and exhaled a string of expletives in Apthian.

"Why do you hate us so much?" Alina spoke softly, approaching again even as his back tensed beneath the collar of his shirt.

He threw his head back to glare at the ceiling with an almost pained expression that she'd witnessed several times, where she'd otherwise expect a show of emotion to be. If this was uhyre evolution, it was odd. Alina glanced back at Per Halen, who had found the strength to tilt his head just enough to observe the scene. Turning back to Threxin, she chanced reaching out to brush her fingers against his shoulder. "Are we that bad? Am I?"

She swallowed hard, something visceral stirring as the spikes at his skull and nape flattened at her words, though the apertures peeking from beneath his neck and at his cheek flashed wide momentarily. He really was a whole other creature. A whole other species . They had learned to speak the same language, but part of him was all beast. That was the part everyone else on the ship saw. Animals come to ruin their lives, and their afterlives. That was what he was doing, after all.

"Not you," Threxin grunted, turning his head just enough for her to see the cut of his jaw and the cyan burn in his right eye. His hand flexed when she hooked her index finger into his thumb. She had never felt the texture of his hand around hers, the warmth of it in the quiet stillness as she was the one who reached out first. The sound of dripping behind her dampened the sensation as she remembered the man bleeding onto the floor.

"I don't think you're bad either," Alina whispered, stepping into his side.

It should've been a lie. She almost wished it were. But there was something in Threxin that no other person on this ship had gotten to see, and she couldn't put her finger on it, but it spoke to something other than the surprisingly logical human-hating killing machine everyone saw him as. He had a history. Something— someone , likely—made him this way.

Alina remembered what he'd told her about his adoptive father, the one he'd killed. Whatever had made Threxin act like this coldblooded killer, it wasn't limited to his feelings for humans. Alina thought back to the nonchalant way he'd ripped his own kind's fangs out back in that dock. She suspected if he weren't concerned with the uhyre's minimal population, he'd have slit their throats just as easily as he had those of the humans they'd associated with.

Great, Alina, so he's just an all-around murderous asshole. That makes it better .

She'd noticed with a sort of detachment that her pulse had increased, spurred by the charge crackling between them. She wanted to step out of it and back to safety. At least the ice of the Harmonapam felt safe. It let her think.

Threxin did not let her think. Threxin froze her in place as he turned to face her, staring her down with a heat that looked physically painful, eyes pinging between hers like he was looking for something. With the full weight of his attention on her, the ozone crackling between them solidified into a bolt of lightning that prickled her skin like a million delicious cuts. Alina couldn't take it. She leaned back, breaking the contact in their fingers, but his hand—previously limp, letting her touch but not reciprocating—tightened around hers.

He craned his neck, bending himself to her ear. "I have seen your history records, female. Both on Elysian and here on my Colossal . You blame my kind for everything that happened to you even as you continue to destroy yourselves. It is an abomination, how you have lived so long."

"And you?" she asked pointedly. "You told me about massacres. Are you any better?"

"I do not blame another species for my problems," Threxin said coolly into her ear.

Alina had to steady herself against the thrum induced by his baritone mutter. She hated the way his proximity alone could make her feel it. As if the words themselves were of no consequence—as if something more carnal took precedence as far as he was concerned. The way his other hand raised to stroke up her bare arm made her wonder if it wasn't the same for him. If maybe she could say anything and he'd still be there too, leaning in and chasing that touch. Maybe they were both fucked up.

A cough behind them broke the link. Alina tried to ignore the pang of disappointment and the sudden cold, empty feeling when Threxin broke contact and stepped around her. She turned just in time to see Per Halen drop to the floor in a scarlet heap. He wasn't that high up—the fall wouldn't hurt him any more than the rest of it already had.

"Come." Threxin grabbed her then and pulled her from the room. She struggled to keep up with his long strides as he traversed to the part of his suite farthest from the torture scene, as if to tuck them away from the reality of it.

For a moment he looked unsure of where to go. Then he settled on his bedroom. Once there, she spun to face him, but he didn't stop. He walked her back with the bulk of himself until they were in the corner, Alina's back trapped against the wall of the cabin behind her and the wall of his chest in front. He flattened both hands on the wall at either side of her neck, framing her in the cage of his body.

She should have felt cornered, should've wanted to make more space to breathe, extract herself. Instead, something in her relaxed into the constriction. It unfurled and settled in for whatever ride this was about to be, and her body buzzed with the hunger to find out. The selfish curiosity drew out an impulse to reach out again and run her palms up his chest, to his shoulders. To hold him there for balance as she rose to her tiptoes, needing to be closer.

Lifting herself high as she could put her at the height of his throat, and she took it, pressing her lips to the aperture pulsing its color and heat with a hammering beat.

The kiss drew a low, shuddering groan. It vibrated through his body, palpable beneath her lips. His exposed forearms clenched in her peripheral as he bent himself lower, into her mouth. His reaction sent a spike of thrill up her spine and a flood of heat to her core. It emboldened her to press the flat of her tongue to the aperture beneath her lips, running it slowly along the burning edge. She'd never felt him like this before—her hands had worked on these sensitive parts of him countless times, but tasting them was a new dimension.

Alina lowered her mouth to his collarbone, reaching up to tug down the collar of his shirt, tugging the clasps free to expose the top of his chest for her perusal. His hand had slid to the back of her waist, the other still bracketing her in at the wall. She paused at the puckered edge of his fresh scar, observing its uneven landscape. His hand at her waist slid lower, tightening at the meat of her hip. When she pressed her lips to the scar, feeling the unnaturally smooth texture of it on her tongue, Threxin rolled forward, jerking her against him.

"Alina…" he exhaled a warning.

A charged iron scent mingled with the musk of him. It invoked a primal fear deep in her chest—an instinct warning her that danger was near. It mingled with the fluttering in her belly to pool between her thighs, twisting the defensive instinct into a perverse, heightened arousal as her confused body reacted to danger with hunger.

Alina trailed one hand beneath the edge of his shirt, running it up the ridge of his abdomen. The other moved lower until fingers tucked beneath the clasp of his belt. She pulled, dragging him toward her as she herself arched back, her shoulder blades hitting the wall. Looking down, the hard bulge of his groin made her pause and bring her eyes up to him. The look on his face was worse. His jaw slack and his eyes a burning, solid blue, Threxin was gone. When his devouring gaze raked up to hers, she fell into it willingly.

She glanced at the black line between his lips, watching him swallow as he held himself back.

"Please kiss me." Her voice was thick with hunger.

Threxin groaned, clenching his claws in her hip until she was sure he broke skin beneath the fabric of her leggings. "The exorin…"

Somewhere deep down, or maybe not even that deep, she knew this was a terrible idea. She was taking this too far, to a place of no return. But when the Harmonapam chill in her brain met the fire of need in her body, they melted together in this weird way that made her just not give much of a shit.

She'd have plenty of time to regret this tomorrow.

"Please," she repeated, bringing her hands up to twine them at the nape of his neck, stroking an index finger carefully along the spike there. "Just this one time. "

That was a lie, if only to herself. There was rarely a "just one time" with exorin. She may never be able to say no to this man again. He may kill her. She was only hoping— betting —that the connection they'd built would be enough to sway him and make him question his cruel ways. First in relation to her… Maybe later in relation to everyone.

Her head was fuzzy and her skin paper-thin, on the verge of splitting with bubbling desire, and Alina wondered just how much worse exorin addiction could possibly be than this pure, heady need. She saw it returned in his eye, his apertures pulsing, his throat working in hitched swallows. She glued her attention to his mouth, then back to the cold blaze of his eyes. Tilting her chin up further, hands firm at his nape, she closed her eyes, leaving herself bare for his decision.