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“We’re here to free you,” Kaelum told him.
He gave a serene smile, looking past us at where Genevieve stood with someone helping her along. “I’m so glad you’re taking them home if they want. But I’m fine here, thanks.”
He was... what?
Hiroki leaned in and whispered to me, “I think he’s already got a baby in one of those tubes. He might be attached.”
I winced and took half a step into the tiny cell, looking around. “You could come back to the prince’s quarters. Ree’s staying here, and that’s where we’re dropping off anybody who wants to stay on Thorzan. For now.”
I wasn’t going to suggest he go with Jax. Not to say he was weak, but there was something... something fragile about Beau. He was the last person—other than Genevieve—whom I would send into a dangerous situation.
He just gave me a sweet smile and shook his head. “Oh no. You should all go, for sure. It’s small, and Crux is pretty awful, but I’m fine where I am.”
Kaelum, proving that he’d taken my ranting on consent and internalized the concept entirely, nodded. “Then I wish you joy in it. If you require help, do try to find me, and I will endeavor to give it. Anything you need.”
Seemed to me like things would be a fuck of a lot better for Beau, and everybody, if Crux was locked up instead.
He smiled and nodded. “Thank you, Your Highness.”
A few of the others tried to argue, to say he had Stockholm Syndrome and couldn’t be allowed to make that choice, but I didn’t even have time to explain all the ways that was wrong—that Stockholm Syndrome wasn’t even a real thing. What mattered was that Beau made his decision, and he knew what he was asking for.
So we left him there, and we went to find the ships Jax had appropriated for us. Kaelum took five of us up to his quarters, to be protected by his mother and Ree, then Wes and Jax headed for his ship, and Kaelum and I took the other nine Earthlings to the cargo ship, to begin the weeks-long journey home.
CHAPTER26
KAELUM
Jax had brought my crew—Tyber and Lethen and Aldor. All the others. I could not captain a ship of this size on my own. How he would manage with only one small human who did not know the way of things was beyond me, but Jax was bold, and the ship he was taking was much smaller. They only needed to provide a distraction. He would succeed, and when Crux targeted Jax, thinking we had hidden all the humans on my ship, we would take the cargo cruiser and leave our planet, our solar system, and return to Earth.
In some ways, it felt like a betrayal to help these humans escape and return to their homes. The Thorzi needed them.
But it was not right to keep them against their will. And that they had been mistreated—it made no sense for them to trust us, to long to join with our kind and find their homes here.
We would simply have to try again, approach humans with honesty and compassion, make our case. There would be some who agreed to stay and try. There were rich lives for humans on Thorzan. My mother would not leave Thorzan now, given the chance.
And Crux had seen the minds of these humans. Some part of them longed for something more. If only he had not mistreated them, more might have stayed. That any had chosen that path spoke to the depth of human bravery and curiosity. We would have to work hard to keep them safe when they got it in their minds to explore the planet.
“Jax is on radar.” Aldor shifted forward in his seat.
It was a tense moment when we waited to see if that would cause enough chaos for us to take off. If Crux did not take the bait, we would have to go through proper channels, and while my father might want to treat humans with more care than Crux did, I had no faith that he would happily return them to Earth.
Within a few seconds, another ship rose, following the first. Crux.
Slowly, our ship rose above the treetops.
A bulky old cargo vessel? If we could get off planet, no one would think twice about us until we were too far away to catch.
We were all silent as Aldor navigated us through the dense cloud cover above the jungle, though there was no need. It was like every single one of us, Thorzi and human both, worried we’d be heard and stopped and trapped if we dared to speak.
But we weren’t. We crossed through the atmosphere, around the soft trapped light of oxygen and chemicals and into the stars.
“Wait until we’re on the other side of the moon to hyperjump,” I said to Aldor.
He gave me a terse nod and remained quiet.
Silent, until we’d reached the other side and zipped away, blasting past the edge of our solar system and away from Thorzan.
Everyone could breathe again, the humans smiling between each other, even as they shot Aldor with his large blue frame strange, worried looks.
