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“Don’t worry, that sin will be dealt with when we go to the Hall of Bones.”
“No,” I say. “Not the running away. I’m sorry for this.”
My hand is in the potatoes before anybody knows what’s happening, and the mashed goods are flying. This time, Sullivan is prepared. No sooner have I launched an assault than she flicks a spoonful of something dark and gooey at me. It doesn’t get me, because Avel’s wing curls around me. The sauce splatters up over them and ends up spattered across the floor and wall.
“Enough!” Thorn thunders.
“Enough,” Sona moans softly to himself.
“I will not have my house and my table turned into a free for all!” Thorn’s fist smashes the table with enough force to make the cutlery dance. “Avel, you used to be my most fearsome upholder of the law. Now you disobey me outright, and you allow your human to be a bad influence at my very table.”’
“I allow very little,” Avel says. “That is the problem with humans, and it is also the reason we love them, remember?”
“Discipline and decorum have been slipping across the city,” Thorn says. “It is something that will have to be corrected.”
“Your mate threw food at me too,” I remind him.
“Don’t argue with the alpha,” Avel says.
“Why? Is that your job?”
Thorn groans. “It may as well be. What is it going to take to teach any of you to behave yourselves?”
“I’m behaving myself,” Torin says rather cheerfully.
“You are supposed to be on a work crew doing manual labor to atone for your crimes. You would do well not to draw any attention to yourself,” Avel admonishes him.
“Oh. Right. Well.”
“I am behaving myself,” Sona moans quietly in the corner. “Not that it has ever done me any good.”
“I am sorry, Thorn,” Avel apologizes. “I know this has been a stressful time. I have to assume the food throwing is some kind of human custom we are not familiar with. If it were the act of disrespect and waste it seems to be, it would surely be grounds for severe thrashings.”
As he finishes his sentence, he glowers first at me, and then at Sullivan. Sullivan seems to be feeling the intensity of the displeasure of her mate, for she has sunk well down in her chair.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I just… I didn’t want to be a sitting duck for the woman who mutinied against me, stole my ship, radicalized my crew, and set me adrift.”
“You deserved every single one of those consequences…”
“Why can’t you just be nice!?” The question explodes out of Sullivan. I am ready with an answer.
“I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to make nice with you.”
“Making nice with me might be mandatory,” she says. “I’m the alpha’s mate. I have rank on this planet, just like I had up on the Mare. Maybe it’s time you considered that maybe it’s the natural order.”
“Oh, fuck off extra hard. You were in the right place at the right time, that’s it. That’s the only reason you ever became captain. You say you’ve changed, but I think you’re still reckless. You’re still a danger to others. And you still have a bodycount among your own crew. You’ve gotten more of our girls killed than anyone who was trying to kill us.”
“I had an implant in my brain, Raine.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“It literally is, though,” Sullivan says. “I didn’t have full control of myself. Yeah, some of the choices I made put people in danger. No, I wasn’t always the best captain. But I was captain.”
“So?”
“So you had no right to…”
I don’t want to hear about her precious rights.
