Khar stopped working out altogether and sat next to the windows, quiet and unmoving as a statue. At first this annoyed Lily (even more than his prank at letting her win, which she frankly felt as if he was looking down on her), but after a little while she found that this was a serious upgrade to the perpetual grumbling.
Well done, me. Well done, indeed.
Chapter 9
Live and Let Live
Khar
“Among Divani sports champions, perhaps the most remarkable is a young titan who rose from humble beginnings to colossal heights: Khar. Remember the name. We expect great things from him yet.”
Excerpt from the first official interplanetary broadcast about Khar
Seven chrono-cycles later (approximately 8.75 Earth days)
Tired of always setting the example.
Tired of always being strong.
Tired of never being allowed to look up to anyone, because he was required to be the best.
Khar had been defeated.
It took time to accept that the faces he had always believed were his own had been masks. When they finally fell away, everything grew lighter. The hardest part had been waiting for the blow. Then the moment arrived, the thing he had feared all his life, and he discovered that it was not so terrible after all.
Perfection was over. The pressure was gone.
Now he would train not because he was being chased, but because he enjoyed it. He would grow stronger to reach someone he respected, not because a thousand eyes watched him, ready to judge every sign of weakness.
The human female.
The Usurper.
No.
Lily, the Liberator.
Lily sulked for a few chrono-cycles over her imagined grievance, believing that Khar did not respect her enough to consider her a worthy opponent. She forgot all resentment the moment he addressed her by name for the first time.
Had she known that in Divani culture only the victor was granted a name, while the defeated were addressed only by general functions such as Divani male, navigator, or mechanic, she might have reacted very differently.
Now that Khar had moved past his resistance toward her, he found himself deeply amused by the vast gulf between Lily’s self-image and her actual abilities.
Even her appearance did not align with what she was capable of.
Among the Divani, size, strength, and social standing were directly linked, yet Lily barely reached the center of Khar’s chest. Her small head rested there when she stood close, and still she could leap nearly as high as a gerilfi predator pursuing its prey. Her pinkish-yellow skin, so pale that veins often showed through it, was as resilient as an IMPERIUM-standard protective glove.
And Khar knew exactly what those slender arms could do when Lily focused on overpowering him in arm wrestling.
As for her scent, Khar would rather break his own nose than act on impulses he would regret while trapped alone with her.
His nose healed the moment he stepped into Vitro’s medical bay, but the wound to his pride would have lasted forever.
“Cursed human females and their irresistible scent. That should be illegal,” he muttered.
Khar had no doubt that if humanity were ever classified as a Registered Species by the IMPERIUM, they would be placed in a category marked particularly dangerous.
Even sealed away from Lily’s scent, he was still far more aroused than was appropriate for sharing a ship with a coworker.
