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She doesn’t fight me. She curls up in my arms and she presses against me, a warm weight that I carry from the medical bay to my own private chambers. Nothing about this human is predictable, but I am glad she has stopped shaking and crying. That feels like a positive development.
“What are you going to do to me? Are you going to put me back into the cage? Put me deep in a cell like you threatened? Are you going to beat me? Are you going to…”
I cut off her incessant questions the only way I know how, by pressing my mouth to hers in a firm kiss. When I feel her soften in my arms, I answer her question.
“I will take care of you.”
She gives me a look of deep concern and fear, but she stops asking questions rapid-fire. I’d like to think that I have comforted her, but it may very well be that I’ve terrified her back into silence.
I sit her down in a soft chair, give her a hot compress, and wrap a blanket around her. These are treatments we use for females of our own kind. External heat is presumably a comfort for creatures of all kinds. My chambers are something of a home within a home. The alpha’s residence has an official staffed kitchen, but I also have my own here so I can cook when I do not feel like troubling an entire staff.
“Does this make you feel better?” I snug the blanket a little tighter around her.
She nods.
“Good. I will get you sustenance. You have not eaten properly since you arrived. I intend to serve you the flesh of a hunted beast.”
“Sounds good, though I am not very hungry.”
“You’re probably starving. And you will eat. I insist.”
She withdraws into the blanket, giving me a baleful look. The grey fuzz of the material provides quite an adorable frame for her quite delicate features. She is a very pretty, soft little thing, and now that she is less of a constant threat to literally everything and the order of my territory itself, I can appreciate just how appealing she is. In fact, when covered with a blanket so entirely only her face is visible, she could actually be a saurian. If you ignore the round pupils, I suppose.
I start to cook what is my favorite meal, and one that is likely to be safe for her to consume. Proteins. Starches. Fiber. Meat and potatoes, all fresh and nutritious.
She watches me until her eyes start to close. She blinks slowly, once, twice, and then her eyes stay shut a little longer a moment or two before she forces them open again, but not for long. They close again seconds later, and then they stay closed.
She’s won. Can’t make her eat when she clearly needs to sleep.
I feel a certain sense of peace and calm that I hadn’t noticed was missing from life before. It doesn’t make sense, really. She’s chaos. She’s an invader. She’s a criminal who should be facing charges and will certainly face consequences. But she’s also adorable.
“You have a visitor, my alpha.”
Sona’s voice drones through the intercom moments before Avel strolls through the door to my chambers, letting himself in without so much as knocking.
“How is it with the human? Do you have her safely caged? I notice she’s not in the city prison. Are you using the alpha cells beneath this place?”
“She’s behind you.”
He turns around and looks at the chair where she is sleeping, then turns around back to me and looks at me with a sort of deep disapproval I know all too well.
“She’s not even handcuffed,” he says. “She’s going to escape.”
“She’s not going anywhere. She’s exhausted, for one, and for two, I’ve broken her.”
A skeptical brow is raised in my direction.
“After all we’ve seen her do, you have her curled up in the kitchen like a pet? Why would you be so reckless, Thorn? That is not like you.”
“She doesn’t have her suit anymore,” I explain as I cut up ingredients for my dinner. “She’s exhausted. And like I said, I broke her. She had some kind of implant in her head. Something that was stopping her from feeling fear. I think it made her reckless and impulsive. But it’s not functioning anymore. She’s very different now.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes. Why?”
Avel’s tone has a certain edge to it. “Because sometime between my walking in here, seeing her, talking to you, and looking back at her again… she’s gone.”
I put the knife down, walk around the cutting board, and go to the chair where she is all curled up. Lifting the blanket, I discover that Avel is correct. She is gone.
