CHAPTER 8
Harry woke up feeling good and happy. He sighed sleepily, burrowing deeper into his amazing-smelling pillow. His amazing pillow moved. Harry pouted and clung to it harder.
“Let go, Haz,” Adam said with a chuckle, kissing him on the temple. “I have to go to work.”
“Don’t go,” Harry murmured, nuzzling into Adam’s chest. He smelled so good. “It’s your birthday. You deserve a day off. I don’t have a shift today. We can celebrate.”
“I can’t,” Adam said, stroking Harry’s cheek with his fingers. “We can celebrate in the evening. Now open your pretty eyes for me.”
Harry forced his eyes open and rubbed at them. When his bleary gaze focused on Adam, his breath caught in his throat. Adam’s dark eyes held so much affection and warmth it melted Harry’s heart.
Then, he realized he was sprawled on Adam’s chest. Adam’s very naked chest. Adam’s very naked everything.
Harry felt himself flush. Last night seemed so surreal now. Had it really happened?
“Hey,” Adam said, his voice still deep and hoarse from sleep.
“Happy Birthday,” Harry said, feeling a little shy and bewildered.
“Thanks, love,” Adam said, gazing at him with hooded eyes. He looked so... good. Harry felt something tug low in his stomach, his lips tingling with the sudden urge to press them against Adam’s jawline. His cock twitched.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Adam said with a soft chuckle. “I really have to go to work, babe.”
Babe. Adam had called him love and babe again. Did that mean they were back to normal? Or had last night changed everything?
Harry rubbed his cheek against Adam’s chest, unsure.
What happened last night… was it wrong? It didn’t feel wrong.
But sex outside a marriage bond was considered wrong back home.
Technically, he wasn’t bonded at the moment.
But he was still promised to Leylen’shni’gul. There was a marriage contract and everything.
It wasn’t his fault the bond had dissolved.
Harry sighed, realizing he was arguing with himself like a madman.
“What’s with that face?” Adam said, tipping Harry’s face up to meet his eyes. His lips pressed together briefly. “Any regrets?”
Harry didn’t feel regret. And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Shouldn’t he feel guilty? Was what he’d done with Adam immoral? He wasn’t sure. A childhood bond was different from the human concept of romantic engagement. Harry didn’t feel like he’d betrayed Leylen’shni’gul. He hadn’t given her any promises—his parents had done it for him years ago. Harry supposed now he could understand why renegades thought that bonding children when they couldn’t give their consent was messed up.
Harry shook his head in response. “I don’t regret it. It’s just…you know about Leyla.”
Adam’s expression darkened. He opened his mouth but then glanced at the clock on the wall and rolled off the bed. “Fuck, I’m really late. We’ll talk when I’m back, okay?”
Harry nodded. He watched Adam get ready for work. Within ten minutes, Adam was ready to go.
“Goodbye hug?” Harry said uncertainly. He wanted more than a goodbye hug, but he felt a bit embarrassed by the wanton thoughts that crossed his mind as he watched Adam dress. He didn’t recognize himself, and it threw him off. Was he a different person without the bond? Did the bond change a person so much?
Instead of responding, Adam walked to the bed and pulled Harry to him.
Harry returned the embrace eagerly, his nipples tingling as they rubbed against the fabric of Adam’s suit. He parted his lips, wanting a kiss.
“How am I supposed to leave this room?” Adam said, sighing into his cheek.
Harry turned his face, and their lips met in a needy, wet kiss that made Harry dizzy.
He’d always found it curious that so many civilizations shared the custom of romantic kissing with lips. Harry had kissed his bondmate once—he’d been curious and she was similarly curious—but they both had found the experience awkward and pointless. It had felt nothing like kissing Adam. Kissing Adam felt as natural and necessary as breathing. He didn’t know how to stop.
By the time Adam stepped away, Harry’s knees felt like jelly and he was painfully hard again.
“I’ll be back soon,” Adam said, his cheekbones flushed and his eyes almost black as he stared at Harry with exhilarating intensity. “As soon as I can.”
As the door closed after Adam, Harry fell back on the mattress and stared unseeingly at the ceiling, feeling out of breath and hot all over his body.
What was this overwhelming feeling that made him want to run after Adam and glue them together? Harry wasn’t sure he liked it. It was the most intense—and scariest— thing he’d ever felt.
* * *
Harry felt pretty pleased with himself.
The dinner was ready, the table was set, and the cake he’d worked so hard on for most of the afternoon looked delicious (it was a little crooked, but Harry hoped that it wasn’t obvious). Hopefully it tasted delicious, too.
Harry looked at it anxiously, wondering not for the first time whether he should have just bought a birthday cake from the bakery around the corner. He did like the idea of baking a homemade cake for Adam, but what if it wasn’t good? What if Adam hated it?
Well, it was too late anyway. Adam should be home soon.
Wiping his hands on his t-shirt, Harry glanced at the table for the last time, making sure everything was perfect—
He felt a familiar tickling sensation.
Frowning, Harry looked at his body and froze, his eyes widening.
A semi-transparent white force field was starting to surround his body, becoming denser with each second. Then, there was a familiar pulling sensation sweeping through him, and Harry barely managed to think, No, when he was yanked through space, the whites of the stars streaking by in a blur.
Humans were wrong in their assumption that aliens would arrive in spaceships. Aliens, at least aliens from Harry’s corner of the galaxy, had all but stopped using spaceships thousands of years ago when that method of transportation had become obsolete with the invention of the transgalactic teleporter. Spaceships were now used only for short distances by touristic companies and by lower classes who couldn’t afford the TNIT—Transgalactic Nearly Instantaneous Teleportation.
“Welcome home, Your Highness.”
Harry gazed blankly at the familiar high ceilings and transparent walls giving the illusion of being outside.
He was home.
“Your Highness?”
If he was home, it meant he wouldn’t find out if the cake he’d baked for Adam’s birthday was any good.
“Your Highness?”
Adam, who was half a galaxy away.
Adam, who would come home to an empty flat.
Adam, whom he was unlikely to ever see again.
Harry swallowed, his throat clogging up and his chest growing tight.
“Your Highness!”
He flinched and looked around. Realizing that the voice belonged to the palace’s AI, he felt silly—silly and strange. He’d gotten too used to being on Earth, to their charmingly outdated technology.
Harry cleared his throat, trying to get rid of the thick lump lodged there. “Yes?”
“Her Majesty and the King-Consort are waiting for you in Her Majesty’s study.”
“Thank you, Borg’gorn.” Harry left the transporter room and headed for his mother’s study, his feet heavy and his heart heavier.
He’d been away for months. He missed the palace, missed his parents, missed his siblings, but he couldn’t quite muster up the excitement and happiness he was probably supposed to be feeling right now. He could feel his familial connections coming back to life in his mind, but now they seemed loud and intrusive instead of comforting.
Harry tightened his mental shields, surrounding his mind as best as he could. He was out of practice; he hadn’t needed to protect his mind from telepaths on Earth.
Earth, which was thousands of light years away.
Forcing the thought out of his mind, Harry pushed the door to his mother’s study open.
His parents turned their heads.
Harry put on a smile and waited for them to acknowledge him first.
Zahef’ngh’chaali was the one to do it. “Harht,” his father said, gazing at him with a warm smile. “Welcome home. You were missed.”
Harry felt his father reach for him telepathically and lowered his mental shields, allowing his father’s mind to embrace his. He sighed as the familiar warmth and comfort of his father’s mind enveloped him. He’d missed this, but he found himself wishing for a physical hug, for strong arms holding him tightly—
His throat closed up again and Harry blinked rapidly, trying to get rid of the sudden moisture in his eyes.
“Harht’ngh’chaali, health and tranquility,” his mother said, her voice a little sterner than his father’s. Queen Tamirs’shni’chaali had always been the stern parent, but Harry supposed that came with the job of being the Queen of the Second Grand Clan of Calluvia. Of course his mother was stern; she had to be when she was responsible for so many people. It didn’t mean she didn’t love her children; Harry knew she did.
“Health and tranquility, Mother,” he said, trying not to sound subdued. The traditional greeting seemed strange after humans’ informal greetings.
His mother’s brows furrowed when her mind touched his. “You’re upset,” she said. “Are you upset because you expected us to recall you home sooner?”
“Can I go back?” Harry blurted out. When his parents stared at him, he added uncertainly, “Just for a little while? I was in the middle of something when I was transported home.”
His parents exchanged a look, communicating telepathically through their bond. The bond he still didn’t have in his mind. Was it broken irrevocably?
“Why do you want to return to Sol III?” his mother said at last.
“Terra,” his father corrected his wife gently.
“Humans call it Earth now, actually,” Harry said, desperately trying to think of a good reason. He was afraid “It’s Adam birthday” wouldn’t be accepted as a good enough reason. Long-distance teleportation to a planet half a galaxy away was very resource-consuming and expensive, even for the direct heirs of grand clans like Harry, but it wasn’t the only reason people couldn’t use it on a whim. Earth was a pre-TNIT planet; any visits to pre-TNIT planets were regulated by the Ministry of Intergalactic Affairs. Generally, only one trip a year was allowed per individual.
“Answer the question, Harht’ngh’chaali,” his mother said.
He suddenly hated the sound of his own name. It sounded so pretentious. Unfortunately, the more highborn one was, the longer their name got. Harry liked human names so much better.
But he wasn’t human. He seemed to have forgotten that.
“I’d like you to call me Harry,” Harry said, looking down.
“Harry,” his mother repeated flatly.
Harry nodded. “I got used to the name while I was on Earth.”
“It’s kind of... barbaric, dear,” Queen Tamirs said.
“I think it’s charming,” Zahef said.
His wife shot him a sour look. Zahef smiled at her innocently. Harry almost laughed. People always said he was a lot like his father, and at times like this, he could see where they were coming from, even though he was the spitting image of his mother.
“Don’t be foolish, Zahef’ngh’chaali,” his mother told his father. “Harry sounds as simple and barbaric as the names of renegades.”
Harry scrunched up his nose.
“It’s not at all like their names,” Harry said, although he had no idea whether it was true or not. He’d never met a renegade before. “There were human kings called Harry!”
His mother heaved a long-suffering sigh, but Harry knew he’d won.
“Very well—Harry,” she said. “Now, will you finally tell us why you want to go back to Sol III?”
Harry shifted from one foot to the other. “I didn’t have the time to say goodbye to my friends.”
“Friends?” his mother said, her eyebrows flying up. “You made human friends?”
“Why are you saying it as if humans are some sort of animals?” Harry said defensively. “It’s not very long before they invent interstellar travel.”
“Darling,” Queen Tamirs started carefully.
Harry hated, hated, hated it when his mother called him “darling”—it always sounded so condescending, even if it wasn’t his mother’s intention.
“Darling, by the latest estimates, humans are at least a thousand years away from developing their equivalent of the TNIT,” his mother said.
“They’ll develop spaceships much sooner than that, though,” his father, bless him, cut in. “Perhaps in five hundred years.”
“Spaceships are an obsolete technology,” Queen Tamirs said with a scoff. “Too slow and ineffective. They don’t count. In any case, I don’t see why you would want to be friends with members of such a… young civilization.”
“Don’t Gul’barshyn’s teachings say that pride is a sin?” Harry said pointedly.
A faint blush appeared on his mother’s cheekbones.
His father started laughing, earning a flat look from his wife.
“Very good, Harry,” his father said, grinning.
Queen Tamirs didn’t look amused in the least. “Harht’ngh’chaali,” she started.
“Harry,” Harry corrected her.
“Harry,” his mother conceded, looking pained. “You were sent to Sol III as punishment for your gross violation of another person’s mental privacy—”
“I was curious and she’s my sister, not just some random person!” Harry said, sulkily. “Sanyash shouldn’t have teased me. She knows I can’t resist secrets.”
“You were sent to Sol III as punishment for your gross violation of another person’s privacy,” his mother repeated, as if he’d said nothing. “It wasn’t a touristic trip. You were meant to learn humility, to learn that your familial links are a privilege, not something to be abused because you’re curious.” His mother gave him a look. “You weren’t sent to Sol III to make friends with humans. Therefore, I see no reason for you to go back. You wish to say goodbye to your... friends? What would you say, in any case? Humans think extraterrestrial life doesn’t exist. You would have to lie to explain your departure.”
Harry’s shoulders sagged. The worst part was, he knew his mother was right. He couldn’t explain to Adam where he was going or why they couldn’t even talk on the phone. But—but—
Harry looked at his father pleadingly.
“Maybe it’s for the best, Son,” his father said gently.
Harry turned around and left the study before he could burst into tears, like the big baby he apparently still was.
He strode toward his rooms, his vision blurring and chest painfully tight as he imagined Adam coming home to an empty flat on his birthday.
How long would Adam wait for him before realizing that Harry was never coming back?