The child stirred against his chest, making a small snuffling sound, and he adjusted his hold instinctively. The movement brought him a step closer to her, close enough that his tail finally achieved its goal and brushed against her side.
She flinched, and he froze.
“Sorry.” He pulled back immediately, horror washing through him. “I didn’t—that wasn’t?—”
“Your tail.”
“It has a mind of its own sometimes.” The admission felt like stripping himself naked. “I apologize. It won’t happen again.”
But even as he said it, he could feel the appendage straining towards her, desperate for contact. It was taking all his discipline to keep it curled behind him, away from her.
What is happening to me?
She was watching him with an unreadable expression. “Does it do that often? Try to touch people without your permission?”
“No,” he said roughly. “Never.”
A brief flicker of curiosity crossed her face and he could see her filing the information away, adding it to whatever profile she was building of him.
“Interesting.”
He didn’t trust himself to respond.
For a moment, silence stretched between them, broken only by the infant’s soft breathing. Then she leaned forward, her hands clasped between her knees, and pinned him with a look that made him feel like a specimen under examination.
“I have one more question.”
“Ask it.”
“Why was I brought here?”
He had known this was coming—had known since the moment he walked into this room that eventually she would demand answers. He just hadn’t expected the question to cut so deep.
“You deserve to know.”
“Yes. I do.”
He looked down at the child, still sleeping peacefully against his chest. This child, born of a human mother, growing up in the middle of an experiment that might be their last hope. And the female who had been torn from her home and everything she knew, treated like a vessel rather than a person.
She deserves the truth. All of it.
But where did he even begin? With the Red Death and the empty cities he’d flown over? With the dwindling population and the desperate measures? With Dr. Pagalan’s forbidden research and the Council’s reluctant approval?
His tail lashed restlessly, and then he forced himself to meet her eyes.
“My people are dying.”
CHAPTER FIVE
“Your people are dying?”
Melissa repeated Becsul’s words back to him, letting them hang in the air of her cell. She watched his face and tried to read his expression. Sorrow, but also what appeared to be shame.
Good.Whatever terrible reason had brought her here, at least he had the decency to feel bad about it.
“The Red Death swept through our world twenty years ago.” His voice was quiet, rough. “It killed millions. Most of our females died within the first year. The survivors…” He paused, his jaw tightening. “There were so few. And they kept dying. One by one, until there were none left.”
A chill settled in her stomach. The Vedeckians had referenced the destruction caused by the plague, but they hadn’t mentioned an entire race dying. She understood the mathematics of extinction, and understood what it meant for a species to lose its ability to reproduce. But she also understood what it meant to besitting in a cell with her infant son, while an alien told her why she’d been kidnapped.
