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“So this is where you live?” It seems like a stupid question, but I got the impression Avel is very high ranking, and I’ve seen the alpha’s place. It’s a mansion. In comparison, this is basically a hole in some elevated ground.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you live in the alpha’s place? It’s massive.”
“My kind prefer to be elevated. I cannot sleep well close to the ground. My instincts require height. This is the place I was born, and this is the place I will live until I die.”
“Oh,” I say. “And why… why are there so few things here if you have lived here so long?”
I already know what the answer will probably be, but I want to hear it from his lips.
“Because I need very little,” he says.
Figures. He’s a minimalist. Basically, the opposite of a pirate.
“You’re going to need more than this to keep me here.”
A sharp look is cast in my direction. “You should be caged,” he says in a tone that tells me he has absolutely no intention of doing that to me. “But you were such a good little fuck I am prepared to give you some freedom. If never being out of my sight can be considered any kind of freedom.”
“Obsessed much?” I make the snarky little comment in an attempt to feel a little more in control of things.
“You’re a danger to yourself,” he says. “You need to be supervised. Like a fledgling constantly threatening to try to fly on her own.”
“If you put me back on the ground, proper ground, I mean, I’d stop doing that.”
“Yes, and then you would attempt to rescue Sullivan.”
I let out a little choked laugh.
“I can give you my word I would not. I’d get the hell off this planet, leave Sullivan here, and never look back. I let myself be talked into rescuing her once and look what happened. I’ve ended up at your mercy, ravaged like an animal and kept captive in primitive conditions. My cabin on board the Mare is absolutely loaded with treasure and comforts. I have three different hot beverage machines. Coffee. Tea. Hot Chocolate. And I have a basic replicator that can make any sandwich I like. And that’s before you get into any of the entertainment tools and toys I have, and before…”
“You like to collect things,” he says. “Items.”
“Yes. I do. I’m a pirate. I like the spoils of my crimes.” I grin as I say the words, suspecting I will horrify him. He seems like a very duty-bound guy. The sort of creature to whom loyalty means being poor and honored to be poor.
“You value those things,” he says with a curl of his lip.
“I do.”
“But you do not value loyalty to your captain.”
“She’s not my captain, and I don’t owe her anything.”
I see his lips tighten with disapproval again. We felt so connected while we were fucking, but now we’re talking, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that we are very different kinds of people with very different priorities.
“What do you care? Sullivan’s a nut, you must have worked that out by now.”
“Her character and temperament aside, she was captain. It is important to respect authority.”
I let out a smirking little laugh. “Is it?”
Avel looks at me with a solemnity that sends a heavy sense of cool right through the core of me. If he is serious about anything, he is serious about this.
“Yes.”
2 TAKE A HUMAN TO WORK DAY
Avel
