EIGHT
Devix stared out at the vast view of space from his chair in the command center. Except for a gentle hum of the engines, it was completely silent. Dark. Almost peaceful, but he knew better.
It was anything but peace he felt swirling inside him.
He couldn’t get Cara out of his mind. He couldn’t get the image of her, exhausted from their grappling, looking at him like he was the lowest of Quadrant scum when he’d told her the truth. He hadn’t been planning on telling her, not right then anyways. It had slipped out, like tevvax smoke, from his treacherous lips when he’d seen the defeat in her eyes.
He’d wanted the words to motivate her into action. He’d wanted to give her a clear visual of why she’d asked him to help her.
It had worked, he thought grimly. She’d tried to break free from his hold over and over again. Yet, she hadn’t been able to. When Devix finally called an end to the session, he’d made a move to carry her to her quarters, thinking she wouldn’t be able to walk, but she’d pushed him away with the last remnants of her strength and pulled herself to a standing position.
Pride and loss and disgust at himself warred inside him as he watched her walk down the hallway to her quarters. The limp he’d first noticed when he’d retrieved her from the Baquarian was more pronounced and he frowned, wondering if he’d pushed too hard.
He took a strong pull from the goblet of Brew perched on the console. It burned down his throat, but did nothing to calm his mind.
Remembering the rage, followed by the calm acceptance in her gaze when he’d told her her fate, Devix wanted to vomit. It was the acceptance that he’d hated the most. Her choices had been taken from her ever since the Krevorags had captured her from Earth, her home planet. Devix had only reminded her that yet again, her choice was not hers, her life not hers.
His Instinct raged inside, but it was Devix that snuffed the raw emotion that climbed in his throat.
That was his female, his fated mate. And he’d told her those ugly truths, to frighten her, to taunt her, to make her fight him.
What kind of sick fuck did that? He was wrong in the head. Exile had morphed him into an unrecognizable being, a darker being.
He squeezed his eyes shut, a growl in his chest. His fated mate…the one female he was meant to protect, to cherish above all else…
Devix knew that no Luxirian in his species’ history had ever turned their backs on their luxivas.
Yet, he was doing that very thing.
And he was doing it in exchange for his own freedom, his own peace, his own name cleared of wrongdoing so that his blood brother, the only true family he had left, would know he was not the monster Pidixa claimed.
She didn’t even know his name. To her, he was just a nameless mercenary, no better than Sarkon, who had bought her future with a sack of coins.
Devix clutched at his horns, feeling that knowledge rip him apart from the inside. It hurt more than any blade could.
The transport tube whirred and Devix looked behind him only to see his female stepping out into the command center.
She looked freshly bathed, but not rested. She’d limped into her quarters over four telex ago and had not emerged once. She should be sleeping. After that training session, she should’ve fallen into an exhausted stupor.
Yet, there she was. Freshly washed golden hair curling around her shoulders, a fresh tunic she must’ve found in her quarters, bare feet, wide brown eyes that flickered from him, to the view of space, to his goblet of Brew. She had one of the furs from her sleeping platform draped around her shoulders and he wondered if she thought the temperature of the vessel too cold.
He didn’t deserve to be in her presence. He didn’t deserve to look at her, to want her. But his eyes ran over her like a being starved, like a tevvax addict getting his next fix.
She shouldn’t be looking at him like that. She should be looking at him like she had in the training quarters. Like he wasn’t worth anything. Because he wasn’t.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she murmured quietly, as if afraid to break the silence of the command center. Her voice was soft and it floated over his flesh, soothing the beast inside him like a gentle touch.
“Neither could I,” he admitted, wondering if it was the Brew or his guilt that made his tongue loosen.
Devix gaze wandered to her small, bare feet. Her toes curled into the metal floor where she stood and he noticed automatically that she favored her left leg, releasing pressure on the right.
Without breaking his gaze away from her, he fumbled at the console and another chair rose from the ground to his left, the mechanisms whirring quietly. She took his unspoken invitation and settled into it, right next to him, pulling the furs tighter around her shoulders.
He ached to touch her. Luxirians were an affectionate race with their mates or Breeding partners, with their family and offspring. To be so close to his luxiva and not feel her against him…it wrecked him. But he had no right, no claim.
Cara was looking out the viewing window, to the stars that gleamed in the distance and the planet they were currently passing, when she said, “I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I was angry and tired and frustrated with myself.”
“You said nothing that was not true.”
“Perhaps,” she said, looking over at him with a small, hesitant smile. She shouldn’t be smiling at him. He didn’t deserve an apology. Not from her. “But I’m still sorry. I appreciate that you’re trying to help me learn. It’s the most anyone has done for me in a long time.”
Devix’s mood sobered. Her words made him feel worse, that a single training session, where he’d spewed an ugly truth, where he’d made her fight to exhaustion, was something she appreciated.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Devix took another sip of Brew. It was all wrong. Warped, dark, tainted, just like him. His mate should be perched in his lap, being stroked and loved. She shouldn’t have to learn how to fight to protect herself because it was his sole purpose in life to protect her. She shouldn’t have to fear for her future because he would provide everything she’d ever want.
“Is that strong?” she asked, looking at his goblet.
“Very,” he replied.
“Perfect,” she said, taking it from his hands before bringing the rim to her soft, pink lips.
The image made his chest tighten. Sharing food and drink was an intimacy only mates and Breeding partners shared together. It only served to remind him of what he could have.
Cara choked as the Brew sizzled down her throat and handed the goblet back to him, their fingers brushing over the metal.
Devix watched her cheeks bloom in color as the drink began its work in her blood. He suspected that she’d only need that small sip to relax her, to fog her mind just a bit.
He took another lengthy swig, draining the contents, before setting it aside.
“My name is Devix, female,” he told her, his voice nothing more than a rasp in the quiet.
She turned slightly, bringing her knees up to her chest. In doing so, the tunic shifted slightly and there, on her outer right thigh, was a deep, long scar. An old scar, not new, from the looks of it.
“Devix,” she repeated, testing his name on her tongue, where he wanted it to stay.
“Tev,” he said, inclining his head, eyes shifting from her scar.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asked, an odd, light tone floating between them.
It took Devix a moment to realize she was teasing him and suddenly, he wished for more Brew, to numb the warmth that spread through him.
There was a lot that needed to be said but Devix found himself saying, “I have done many tasks for my employer, but I have never delivered a female to him. His harem had long existed before he ever found me.”
He regretted that stark reality once more entered her gaze, but he wanted to be honest.
“What do you get in return?” she asked softly. “For doing these tasks for him.”
“Nothing and everything,” he murmured, rubbing a hand over his horn. He found the words fell surprisingly easily from his tongue, though he’d never spoken them out loud before, “He found me, six rotations ago, on Petrika. I was fighting in the underground then. For Brew mostly. I do not remember much of it. He bought my passage off the colony because he wanted my strength, wanted the fear I could evoke as a Luxirian warrior. He gave me this vessel, gave me the freedom to choose where I went, but with it came my service for six rotations. You are my last charge and then I am free.”
Devix heard her swallow and when he looked over at her, needing to see her, she was looking straight at him. Straight inside him. He could feel her, in his chest, and he wondered how she could stand to sit there, next to him.
“You’re really taking this honesty thing to a whole new level, aren’t you?” she asked softly. She blew out a long breath. “Sometimes I wonder if I’d prefer lies.”
“Is that what you want?” he asked, expression serious.
“No,” she whispered, before clearing her throat. “No, I’d rather have the truth. Always.” She studied him. “A Luxirian? Is that what your people are called?”
“Tev,” he said, throat tight. Not his people. Not anymore.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, flickering over his horns, his face. “I’ve seen one of your kind before. I just remembered.”
Devix straightened. “Where?”
“At the Pit.”
Devix tossed his head. “Impossible.”
“Why?”
He spoke softly as he said, “No honorable Luxirian would fight to claim a pleasure mate, especially if she was unwilling. It goes against everything our species reveres.”
“Well, then maybe he wasn’t so honorable,” Cara argued. “But he looked like you, with long, dark hair. Golden skin, I remember, because the sun was bright that day. And…he wore golden bands around his arms.”
Devix inhaled a sharp breath. “Impossible,” he repeated. “Only the Prime Leader of Luxiria wears those bands.”
“Then it was the Prime Leader of Luxiria. Whatever that means,” she said, waving her hand. The Brew had worked to relax her, but Devix couldn’t believe what was coming from her mouth. “He won, by the way. I’d never seen anything quite like it. It was…indescribable, the way he fought. He only had eyes for this brunette, who was standing next to me. He tossed her over his shoulder like some caveman and left. And she never came back to the cages.”
What she said disturbed him. Had Vaxa’an, the Prime Leader, his blood brother’s friend, the male who had sentenced him to exile instead of death, truly been at the Pit?
There could only be one reason why and Devix sobered. The only reason a Luxirian would fight at the Pit was to claim an eligible Breeding partner. Humans were rumored to be compatible with many species. Had Vaxa’an heard the same?
It meant many things. It meant that the researchers and healers had not found a cure for the Plague’s effects on their surviving females. The females that the Plague had not killed outright had been left completely infertile, threatening the extinction of Luxirians. If Vaxa’an had sought a compatible Breeder, it meant that he was doing the only thing he could to ensure the survival of their race.
“How long ago was this?” Devix questioned.
“I don’t know,” she murmured, voice hesitant. When he looked at her, she looked sad. “I try to remember how long I was there and…I can’t. It just blurs together.”
He wished to comfort her. He wanted to soothe her.
“I wish…” he started, but then his throat closed. Cara was looking at him though, so he continued, “I wish things had been different for you, female.”
She let out a soft laugh, but even Devix knew it wasn’t a happy one.
Many questions haunted him, but only one mattered.
What was he going to do?
“Me too,” she said softly, returning her gaze to the darkness in front of them. “Me too.”