Chapter 42

CHAPTER 42

ALINA

W hen her comms bracelet vibrated in her hand, Alina jolted awake. For a moment, she groggily wondered which of her friends would chime her at 2300, but of course it was him. It could only be him.

It had been days since Threxin had provided medical attention to some of the people from the CRD, and Alina was beginning to think he'd never contact her. She was even beginning to doubt he had done it for her at all. What if Orion Halen had been the one to twist Threxin's arm into helping treat those people? What if that's where it stopped, and Uploads and proper food was still off the table?

She opened the connection with her Neurosync.

Threxin, she subvocalized, knowing his own comms device would translate the signal into audio on his end, considering he had no implant. It was so weird, using that part of her mind again. She'd done it the week before to chime Threxin, but she'd been so angry and distraught, the reality that she was actually using her NS again hadn't really hit her back then. It did hit her now. The communication achieved with an NS was entirely effortless compared to the work of vocalization .

"Yes." Chills puckered her skin when she heard his voice. It had only been a week, but it felt like forever since she heard his guttural timbre. Her NS transmitted his voice straight to her frontal cortex and she could just about cry. Alina hadn't felt anyone that close in her mind in over a month, and only now did she realize how isolated she had been.

She'd grown up subcomming everyone and anyone on the ship. There were times when she wouldn't talk for days except when attending the singing lessons her parents had signed her up for to get some time to themselves. There'd be no need, with the NS providing an entirely more intuitive and intimate form of communication.

And now it was back, and the sudden proximity of his low, guttural voice made her body react with a flush of heat.

Alina clamped her teeth over her bottom lip, refusing to cry in his presence… He may not have an NS to sense her emotions, but her distress would come through in her subvocalization.

" Can we talk?" she asked.

He took a beat, and she held her breath.

Yes.

I mean in person. I… I'd like to see you.

Be in your cabin.

"I am," she blurted out loud.

There was a hesitant pause, no doubt some confusion about the change in vocal quality.

Remain in your cabin.

Okay then . Alina rolled her eyes, biting back a smile as the connection was severed even as tears came unbidden.

Alina jumped off the bed and tried to fix herself in the mirror, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue. She smoothed her hair quickly, then dabbed some peach cream color on her cheeks, nose, and lips. She inspected her fingers, wishing she'd painted them, but at least they were clean and not chipped with old polish anymore .

When Threxin arrived Alina was back in bed, having just finished dabbing her eyes with a tissue and staring at the overhead light in an attempt to dry them faster. Her heart jumped when he entered, the weight of his commanding presence sucking the air from the room of her cabin.

"What is wrong with you?" Threxin frowned, gaze raking over her twice as if looking for injuries.

"Nothing," she said, casting her eyes down and throwing her bangs in her face.

"Your eyes are red."

Alina sniffled. "The Neurosync… I haven't communicated like that since you… since you came. It's… it's just a lot."

Threxin considered her for a long moment, a strange look on his face. Then he strode forward and sat in the middle of her bed, making her scramble to the edge to get out of his way. There was something in his scent, now that he was so close, that filled her with a sense of both comfort and heady excitement. The way his apertures flashed open momentarily.

"I require assistance," he said, extracting a tablet from the inside pocket of his black buckle jacket.

That's it? We're not going to talk about those people?

"What is it? Is it your wound?" Alina began to reach instinctively for his shirt to inspect the area, but drew back when he did.

He shoved his tablet into her hands.

"This is the intended frequency and communication for a resource delivery to Colossal . I require to know if there is a… hidden agenda communicated in Universal that only a human may understand."

Alina frowned, absorbing the transmission outlined on the screen.

"Plasma pallets?" She glanced over at Threxin and, when he did not reply, continued scrolling.

After a few minutes of rereading the intended communication, Alina slid the tablet back over to Threxin. "This looks fine to me… I can't spot anything suspicious."

"Would you tell me if you had?" He asked with no inflection in his voice.

Alina paused, realizing that she once again did not think ahead.

"It hadn't crossed my mind not to," she admitted, her throat suddenly dry. Threxin's gaze burned with its scrutiny. Finally he nodded, stashing the tablet back into his jacket.

"I will tell the rear dockmaster to proceed."

Alina's eyes snapped up. "The rear dockmaster? Not the… procurement manager?"

"The resource procurer is nonessential." Threxin rose but watched her closely and Alina realized he hadn't been intending to stay. He'd only come to get a pair of eyes on the form, and while it did fill her with a kind of satisfaction to know he came to her with this, trusted her with it, there was so much more she'd needed to say.

"Threxin, I think…" She racked her brain for how to say this without giving too much away and resulting in more deaths. "I think you should find someone else."

The uhyre paused. His jaw came into sharp relief as he tilted his head, then turned back slowly to face her.

"Why?" he asked quietly.

"I just… I just hear they really didn't like what you did in the rear dock with the murde— punishment . There are grudges. Hell, I'm sure you know people are terrified and unhappy… There's nothing suspicious about that comms plan!" Alina hastened to add once she saw the sharp look on his face. "But I… I really suggest picking another dock and another person."

Threxin was falling right into the hands of the people plotting against him, allowing comms out and a ship in to the perfect location to stage a coup. A coup that was probably just going to end in bloodshed, with people she cared about dying. There had to be a better way than letting Threxin fall into a potential trap.

"The rear dock is the largest and best equipped for delivery," Threxin said thoughtfully.

Alina didn't have a response to that. She wanted to warn him, and she had… as best she could. Divulging more would be throwing Kaia, Isabelle, and Dockmaster Barton under the bus.

And me. Alina's cheeks grew hot.

Threxin let her steep under his scrutiny for several long seconds before finally lifting his chin at her. "I will arrange another dock and another human."

Don't look too relieved, Alina. She wasn't yet prepared to give him the full gravity of the situation. She gave him a curt nod and willed her face to stop burning.

"I will return in one of your hours," Threxin said, apertures tensing in sync with her shoulders. "Then we will talk."

Was he going to come back and make her tell him everything she knew? Was he going to interrogate her?

"I will not ask questions," he preempted her fears. "Yet."

Threxin brought food with him when he returned. Not even nutrigel, but the real stuff: fresh bread with seed oil butter. Alina had begun to question where he got it or who had to go without, but the look he gave her stopped her. She offered him half. He refused.

Now, he sat on her bed and she on her plastic chair. She dabbed her index finger into the crumbs on her plate, transferring them to her tongue.

"I have arranged delivery to another dock, through another human, on another date," Threxin said. "And disposed of the problem."

"What? Disposed?" Alina's head snapped up, thrusting a hand through her hair. "You killed Barton? But he didn't even do …"

"Was that his name?"

Alina couldn't breathe. Her ribs were like stone, refusing to expand for air. Threxin had walled off the secret passage down to the CRD because of her. And now he'd killed another person because of her. He was still here and able to do all these things—because of her .

"I did not kill him," Threxin said. "You would not like it if I killed him."

He cares what I like?

Something in her loosened. "What did you do?"

"He is isolated."

Alina closed her eyes and shoved her knuckles into them, rubbing until red, blue, and green blotches flared behind her eyelids. "Threxin…"

"He influences part of my Colossal that, as you say, may mean me harm."

"Threxin, the whole ship might mean you harm," Alina sighed even though she knew he was right. Barton was part of an active plot against Threxin's command.

"And you?" Threxin asked coolly.

"Me?"

"Do you mean me harm?"

Alina looked to the ceiling, shaking her head. "After all this, you're still asking me that."

In her periphery, Threxin leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, big hands hanging loose between them. "I said I would not ask questions, and I will not, human. But I need to be sure you do not think treating me was a mistake."

"A mistake…" Alina muttered. "I am doing everything I can to keep a bridge of communication between our species, Threxin. To help so maybe we can… coexist somehow."

Threxin did not speak, tracking her face with an intensity that made her insides clench .

"No, it wasn't a mistake," she sighed. "But you invaded their ship, Threxin, and they're dying. You can't be surprised that they want to resist, can you?"

Threxin rose so suddenly that her eyes snapped back to him, fighting the instinct to flinch from his intimidating size, then the instinct to fall into him. The mass of his presence tugged her in like she was a satellite circling a planet, helpless to the effect of its gravity.

"I see," he said.

Alina shoved her fingers once more through her hair. "God, you don't understand."

"I understand very well, human," Threxin said. "Your loyalty lies with your kind. It always will. You think me an invader, and when you demand I loosen my security or demand I permit your kind to Upload you do not consider whether doing so will endanger me or my cohort."

"I do consider all that." Alina stood up from her seat to get even just a little closer to his height, as laughable as it was. She needed some gravity of her own. "I consider you every damn day while I try to find ways to make this work."

"This."

Alina bit her lip, releasing a frustrated whine. "All of this!" She held out her arms at either side. "Us."

"Us?" Threxin took a step toward her. "Our species, you mean? Forced to cohabit?"

"Yes, and…" She trailed off, backing up as he continued to advance, his icy gaze scalding her skin.

"And?" He was so close, the word came as a sigh that ruffled her bangs.

But Alina was done with this interrogation, her brain incapable of going there just now. She simply shook her head, staring at the dip between his throat and his thick collarbones that shifted as he swallowed.

"You are shaking," he murmured, reaching out to take her bare shoulders .

Alina cleared her throat and edged around him, sitting back down in her chair. The things he was doing to her body were undeniable. She thrummed in his pulsing aura. His apertures were wide open, she realized, blue light swirling within.

I want to taste it.

Alina pushed herself back against the wall, hoping the space would stop the ache building in her lower belly.

Threxin sighed and sat back on her bed, lacing his fingers together between his knees. "Our communication affected you before. When did you receive your… Neurosync?"

Part of her unwound with the change of subject. She rubbed the spot between the thumb and forefinger of one hand with the other, working out the tension.

"When I was born," Alina said. "That's one of the first things they do."

Threxin's eyes snapped to her then, widening. "They drug infants?"

Alina frowned. "What?"

"To prevent rejection. What did they drug you with?"

"Nothing! They just give you a painkiller from what I know. It's… a bit of a process if you're squeamish, but they immobilize your eye and go through the tear trough."

Threxin's brows shot up. "And you accept this?"

"We do it so young that we can't even remember anything. And the NS is more than worth it." Alina paused for a moment, then decided to spill. "Communicating through an NS is special. I never thought of it as that because I've always had it. But when you took that away from us, it's like… a hole. The NS is more intimate. We can understand each other better through it. Did you have anything like it on Apth?"

"Yes," Threxin said flatly, but the bitter tone in his voice did not seem congruent with the technology they were discussing .

"What's it like?"

Threxin hummed low in his chest, considering. Finally he spoke. "It is like being in shackles all your life."

"What? Why?" Alina spun in her seat to face him. There was something pained beneath the twist of his wry smile.

"It is our ‘evolution'," he said.

"Your evolution?" She shook her head, not understanding. But then… "Your rage…"

"Is leashed at all times."

Alina stared at him. "You have an NS that manipulates your emotions."

Threxin did not answer, and that was confirmation enough.

"That's… that's an atrocity , Threxin."

"Do not be dramatic, human."

"I'm not being dramatic —I mean that is literally considered an atrocity according to Universal law. An NS can go as far as to communicate emotions and to an extent enhance appropriate signals. But inducing negative emotions against your will or blocking anything a person feels is a violation of all codes of ethics known to modern man!"

Had all the uhyre been implanted with these things? What else did they suppress? And how ? Suddenly those moments where he flinched back or stopped in his tracks or went far away somehow made sense. The implant in his brain was keeping him on a chain.

"It is the only thing that keeps us alive." Threxin leaned forward and grabbed the edge of her chair. She gripped the seat for balance as he wheeled her toward him, positioning her between his splayed legs. Threxin looked down at her, tapping two talons beneath her chin. "Keeps you alive."

His eyes tracked her throat as she swallowed, and the hunger there infected her, making the heat between her legs blaze .

"Threxin," she began, knowing she needed to get this out of the way before she lost her damn mind. "The Uploads…"

"…Rations first. Then Uploads."

Her eyes flew up to his. "Really? You're going to do it?"

"I will arrange for Uploads to resume. To a holding database," he finally said.

"You will?" God, why didn't he say so earlier? "Wait… a database?"

"You have a holding database, to hold the binary data of Uploaded humans temporarily while on expeditions. Your dying humans can be stored there. I will have Colossal transfer them to your wider network directly before our jump."

Alina pursed her lips, thinking. This could work. It was a compromise, but something the residents of Colossal were already used to from expeditions. They wouldn't like it—they probably wouldn't trust him to go through with the final transfer. But it may be the best they could get, and Alina knew Threxin wouldn't back out. Unless…

"But if I discover two-way communication is possible before we jump," he said pointedly, "I will destroy them. Do you recognize?"

"I recognize," Alina nodded vigorously, her whole body trembling with the ache to launch itself into his arms with gratitude.

A small smirk lifted the corner of his mouth as he observed her failing restraint.

"Come here," he rasped low. "Show me how you recognize."

She lay in her bed hours later with Threxin kneeling on the floor beside her. He dipped the towel in his hand into his bowl of warm water, then brought it to her skin.

"This looks familiar," Alina muttered with a lazy smirk .

He'd finger fucked her to oblivion and back, and her head was still in a haze.

Alina sighed as Threxin wiped every last trace of exorin that had gotten onto her skin over the course of their not-quite lovemaking.

He'd made her come countless times—ripped orgasm after orgasm out of her until she was begging for him to stop, her overly sensitized body unsure what to do with itself. But he hadn't come even once, and when Alina had tried to do what she could with her hands, he'd batted her away only to shove another finger in her pussy.

Alina turned her head to look at him, reaching up to trace a fingertip along the burning blue aperture running down his obliques. He closed his eyes and sank a fang into his lower lip, his body tilting forward into her touch.

Biting her lip, she rose on her elbow and pressed her lips to that blue slit in his hard, unfamiliarly smooth skin. The sound from his chest made her open her eyes and look to his face with her mouth pressed against him. His hand snaked around her to hold her to him, leaving her hands free to come to the apertures on his chest and abs, stroking up gently in slow, gentle arcs.

Threxin shuddered underneath her as she traced his glowing lines, her breath washing over the aperture still beneath her lips. She kept watching his face as she chanced pressing her tongue to the aperture and giving it a tentative upward stroke.

"Shoq," Threxin choked out, his talons prickling at her back.

The aperture tasted like nothing, but it radiated some kind of heady current that shot straight to her head, then her gut. Alina had to pull back and lean her forehead to his skin, taking quick, shallow breaths. Her hands paused their stroking as she caught her bearings, and after a few seconds she leaned forward again, this time pressing her tongue to the aperture running from his shoulder and diagonally down his flat, broad pec. Her breath hitched as the aperture widened under the tip of her tongue, the current hitting her all at once this time. She pressed her tongue tighter against him, flattening it to his skin for more surface area.

"Alina…" he choked out, but she only brought a finger to his mouth, pressing it to his lip. She moaned as a fang nipped affectionately at her fingertip.

At the base of his sternum, two apertures wound on either side of his jagged eight-pack of abs. Saliva pooled in her mouth as she drank them in hungrily, deciding which to follow first. She took the left, tightening her grip on his side with her hand as she adjusted on her knees to lick down the glowing opening. The way it shifted and pulsed under her tongue was odd and felt weirdly primal—it was such an alien part of him, what she was doing wasn't comparable to anything in her world, but it was incredibly intimate nonetheless even if she didn't quite have a comparison for it.

She shifted on her knees to bend lower as she followed the pulsing aperture toward his hip. Already her pulse was up again, her eyes flicking to his belt, trousers slung low on his hips. The aperture beneath her tongue tapered to a point right at the edge of the flat plane beneath his stomach, where his bulging abs ended and the taper of his hips began.

Threxin must have sensed her hesitation, maybe in the way her fingers flexed against his sides, because he clasped his hands to her face and pulled her back up before she could try anything stupid. He held her sitting upright on her knees before him, staring at the line of black seeping through his lips.

"How can this ever be enough for you?" Alina whispered.

How could he possibly be satisfied with these restrained shreds? She wasn't.

Threxin's thumbs swept along her cheekbones, his eyes flicking between hers. He didn't answer and her heart sank, because it wouldn't be enough. Not ever.

Threxin released her and got into the bed, lodging himself against the wall, as if it were already a foregone conclusion that he'd be staying. That was good, right? Was that what she wanted?

The cabin light faded to nothing, as he pulled her down beside him, pulling the cover over her naked body. They lay on their sides facing each other, the cold cyan glow of Threxin's apertures bathing everything in slits of light and shadow—the wall, the ceiling, her skin.

Alina clamped her teeth over her lower lip and cast her eyes down. It was impossible to look at him like this, knowing she would never be able to do this fully with him. She suddenly remembered how other he was. He was big, and glowing, and so alien—why the hell was he here, with her? Was he just keeping himself amused? Did he have a real uhyre girlfriend on the side?

"Are uhyre monogamous?" Alina blurted out before she could think better of it.

"Monogamous?" he said, and damn it, that was not an answer.

"Never mind," Alina huffed and moved to roll over. Having her back to him would make this much less awkward.

"No," Threxin grunted, planting a hand firmly across her shoulder and pulling her back to face him. "Explain."

"It's when you only have sex with one person, okay? Forget it. It was a stupid question."

They hadn't even had sex. Alina stared at the puckered scar on his chest because no way was she capable of meeting his eyes just then.

Threxin sighed, his grip on her loosening but hand remaining in place on her shoulder. "We fuck. Eventually most pick one mate. It is not mandated, but handling multiple females can be… difficult."

Alina snorted a small scoff. As if handling multiple men would be any easier.

She wanted to stop tiptoeing through the asteroid field and know more about what he wanted instead of just speaking in generalities about his kind. Instead, she gave him a curt nod, pulled the blanket up to her chin, and made a very competent show of going to sleep.