“No, these are yours,” I protest, trying to push it back in his hands. “I’m fine with the ration bars. I’m used to them.”
He refuses to take it, glowering at me. “Eat it, Lena, or I’m carrying you out of here right now.”
“You’re a bully,” I tell him, grudgingly unwrapping the food while he smirks at me. It smells so good, my mouth waters and my stomach growls. Usually when I open one of the Frathik bars, I have to hold my breath. They taste okay, but they smell like butt.
When I finish devouring the sweet, flaky bun inside the foil, I’m not even mad at him, but I can’t let him think he can get away with this every time. “You can’t threaten me to get what you want for the rest of our lives.”
He raises a brow as if to ask,can’t I?Then he polishes off the last bite of his bun, making eye contact as he licks a drop of the sticky filling from his thumb. My thighs clench and I have to look away. I have a feeling Lyro will always do whatever he wants.
Chapter 16
Lyro
Revived by firstmeal, I watch my mate carry out her duties. I feel like a caged animal, pacing the floor while it waits for a turn in the pits.
My father always said the smaller the cage, the fiercer the fight once you let them out. That was his reasoning for why I would be Emperor over all my brothers. Perhaps he was right, because right now I would tear off my skin to be free of this place, these responsibilities.
An Alara is a heavier burden than any I have borne before. All these weights I must juggle now: her safety, her comfort, her happiness, her affection. It seems I can’t have all of them as long as we are here. The sooner I can get us off this planet, the better. I pretend to sleep, unable to actually do so because I’m so fixated on her. I lie there with lids as cracked as my sanity.
My feigned rest is interrupted when the furs shift as someone sits down beside me. I’m smacked in the face with the scent of Frathik... the one whose scent I just got rid of in the cleansing unit.
“Get off my furs, kvik-breath,” I growl.
Harl moves a few inches so he’s no longer touching my makeshift bed. “How are you both doing?”
“I made her eat something,” I report grudgingly. I know he doesn’t care about me, anyway. “She wouldn’t rest, though.”
“I see you don’t have that problem,” he chuckles.
I don’t bother suppressing my pigment around this dig, so I’m sure he sees the anger gather under my skin as I sit up. “I’d be working on my ship if I weren’t chained to the terrakin by your kind’s ridiculous requirements.”
“Oh, you’d let a Frathik walk freely around the Eye?” he asks dryly.
“You let Oljin walk around freely. He’s as Irran as I am.”
Harl blinks his eight eyes. “He most certainly is not. But you have advocates now, Irran though you may be. Many eyes are upon you in light of what you did during the Turning. You could easily earn your freedom if you can refrain from stabbing anyone for a few more days.” His mouth twists slyly.
He knows about the knife. I hid it under the bed platform, so he’s been back in Lena’s room. “If you touch her furs, you’ll be the first one I stab.”
He tilts his head away from me, baring his neck in a casual gesture of defeat. An Irran gesture I appreciate because I’m sure it doesn’t come naturally to him. “I promise, I won’t use her again.”
Again. That reminds me that he used her before in ways she won’t talk about. I might have to stab him after all. “What did you do to her, Frathik? After you abducted her and held her captive?”
“Nothing.” His eyes are on Lena as she sings, something remorseful playing at corner of his mouth. I make an incredulous noise, and he shrugs. “Nothing she didn’t give freely.”
The rage I have to suppress to speak normally is immense. “She would give anything to anyone who asked, and you know it. If you had a need, she would offer to fulfill it. What. Did. You. Do. To. Her?” He’s slow to answer, and my mind immediately goes to the worst-case scenario. “Did youhurther?”
He jerks his head toward me. “No! I wouldn’t— it doesn’t work like that for us.”
“You did not use her to spend your seed?” I scoff. His absurd denials aren’t soothing my anger, only stoking it.
He grimaces, clearly hesitant to admit the truth. “I never touched her. She helped me in our way, not yours.”
Lena catches my eye, beaming at me across the room as she motions between me and Harl. She thinks we’re making friends, so I can’t frixing kill him right now. Not with her watching.
“You have five minutes to explain ‘your way,’” I tell him.
“We do not touch,” he says hurriedly. “Our females produce an egg each year. If they admire a male, they present it to him in a...ritual, I suppose you would call it. We call it song-bath. They demonstrate their care for the egg, stroking it and singing as though it contains our young already. This is arousing to our kind.”
