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And that fast, he was reaching for his clothing, pulling on his pants as I scrambled for the sheets and stood.
Neither one of us managed to cover up sufficiently before the door slid open. And there Crux stood, his teeth bared, outside my tiny room.
His full-blue eyes scanned the space. “There are laws against the use of humans,” he snarled at Vorian.
My shoulders tensed up, but—but I knew this wasn’t that. Vorian wasn’t using me. Crux just made it sound wrong and meaningless, because he zapped the good out of everything around him.
“There are laws against harming humans,” Vorian corrected, but his voice had gone cold, all the warmth he showed me shuttered when his father growled at us.
“I’m not hurt,” I whispered to stave off their fighting.
Crux’s glare shot to me, like he had forgotten I could speak, that I wasn’t just a tool for him to harvest or a hole for Vorian to fuck.
Crux stepped closer. Vorian stayed still, his chest a barrier to his larger father. And still, there was something in Vorian that buckled. Crux got around him, and I gathered the sheets against my chest and flinched back, ducking my head, even as his hand lashed out to grip my chin.
He jerked my head up, forcing it back so I had no choice but to stare at him, take in his sharp-toothed sneer as he loomed over me.
“Vorian is the greatest warrior of his generation,” Crux growled. “He is meant for more than a pitiful, useless human. He ismine.”
A shudder worked up my spine. I had every reason in the world to be afraid of Crux.
But not a single reason to doubt Vorian. Everything he had said had been true. Every promise he’d made me, he’d followed through on. For a second, my eyes flashed to meet Vorian’s, and I saw the despair and hopelessness there.
I couldn’t stand it.
“Maybe he is,” I admitted in a soft whisper, staring up at Crux again. I swallowed hard. “But he still chose me.”
Crux made a disgusted sound and shoved me away. My head turned fast, a crick in my neck making me flinch.
By the time I fell onto the bed, catching myself with one hand for balance, the other rubbing the strained muscle, the door was sliding shut behind them. Crux had grabbed Vorian and pulled him away. And weirdly, it didn’t matter. My heart didn’t break. I still felt like I had something here.
A sudden sharp pain in my neck, yeah, but also somebody who cared about me, and that was worth believing in.
CHAPTER12
VORIAN
My father dragged me by the hair out of Beau’s room, and like a small, wounded creature, I let him do it.
Partly because I had little other choice if I wanted to survive living in his house as his son.
Mostly, because at least if he dragged me away, he wasn’t with Beau. Couldn’t hurt Beau anymore. He could beat me, had done so countless times since I was a child, and it mattered not at all. He wasn’t even a warrior, and his blows did not sting the way they once had.
And they had long since stopped hurting anything but my body.
“How do you expect to give me a gamete donation, when you waste cells on that creature?” He spat, halfway down the walkway to the house, as he finally let go of my hair.
“I am still fully capable of producing a donation. Should we go now?” I hesitated, ready to go back to the lab, to prove him wrong. The truth was that I did not know if I had another donation in me at that moment. But if it stopped my father’s ire being aimed at Beau, I would do it.
I would find a way.
Crux only hissed at me and waved a hand in the direction of the residence. “The king refused me the human, again.”
“Is it truly of consequence? He was one of eighteen. There are plenty of others. As well as the humans who were already here and can continue to donate.” I followed him willingly now, more pleased and miserable with each step farther we got from Beau.
He was safe. Beau was safe. I would not let Crux near him.
“I require all of them,” Crux hissed, angry as a cornered animal.
