He had battled for so long with the things the other hybrids said of him. That he was a faithless, dangerous creature infiltrating their ranks, one who could never be trusted, one whochipped away at Thalen’s authority with his mere presence. Most of the others thought Thalen a fool for his mercy, but they had served together on theGidalanfor years, and he had insisted that he knew Rentir’s character. That his character, in fact, had been the reason he’d hesitated to join his brothers in rebellion.
All the while, Rentir had told himself that they were short-sighted and narrow-minded. They could not conceive of his motivations, that was all. They did not know his heart.
Now, as he struggled not to fight every male who crossed his path, obsessing every moment over whether one of them might be the male that Cordelia turned to next, he could not help but feel they had the right of it. He had simply been the last to know. At night, he lay awake, staring at the ceiling and battling the urge to climb all seven levels and beat on her door to beg her for attention.
He did not sleep. Try as he did to eat, he was only choking down about half the calories he needed. There was no joy in anything. His energy flagged worse with each passing hour. And yet the aggression never faded; his mind seemed to have an endless reserve of energy for brooding and anger. With no way to direct it constructively, it turned back on him, picking apart at his sense of self. By the end of the week, he expected it would be left in unrecoverable tatters.
He hung his head, scrubbing his face. The weight of his horns, something he’d never even noticed, was ponderous upon his head. He wanted to lie down, close his eyes, and let exhaustion pull him under. But it would not. His mind would only cycle endlessly through his precious few memories of Cordelia, urging him to get up and find her at any cost.
Desperately, he began to purr in a last-ditch effort to soothe his inner turmoil. Haerune sighed, just as miserable and helpless in this situation as Rentir was. His brother had never been able to stand to see him suffer.
“I will sedate you,” Haerune said with defeat. “Wait here. I’ll need to get more from storage. You’ve been burning through my stock.”
Rentir didn’t bother to look up as Haerune left the room. He lay sideways on the rarely used exam table, trying to ignore the soft hum of electricity and the stark lighting that leaked through his eyelids. His tail wound around his middle as he purred, an embarrassing habit from childhood when he’d longed for the comfort of being held. Then, he’d longed for someone that had never existed—a mother. Now, it was Cordelia he imagined.
Shame shattered the illusion, and his tail went slack. She would not like that. Not with the way she had looked at him that day, the way she had pulled away. She would be disgusted that he dreamed of her soothing away his fears. Fears he had earned through his own inadequacies. He purred harder, trying to swallow the lump in his throat that threatened to choke him.
The door hissed open, but he didn’t bother to lift his eyelids. The footsteps that followed were not Haerune’s even, long stride. He sat up so abruptly that his head spun.
For a moment, he could only stare blankly, sure he was hallucinating. Then she spoke, and her voice flowed through him like a current of life-giving energy. His lungs filled with his first full breath in days.
“Are you okay?” she asked, her arms folded over her chest as she leaned against the console of the medbay’s computer.
When he said nothing, lost in drinking in her presence, she cleared her throat and shifted her hips.
“Um… Pandora said you’ve been spending a lot of time here, so… What is it? Are you sick or something?”
“Sick,” he murmured in agreement, his hands shaking from the effort it took not to reach for her.
Her hands fell to her hips, and she looked down at her boots, nudging some invisible dirt on the floor. “I, uh… I just wanted tomake sure that it wasn’t something that would compromise the mission. I think we’re nearly ready to kick off phase one of the plan, so… if you’re not up to it, I’d rather know that now.”
“No,” he blurted, sliding off the table to stand. “No, I’m not compromised. I will be there beside you, at any cost. I will not fail you, Cordelia.”
She looked even more discomforted by his words. His heart squeezed. Why could he not figure out the right thing to say? It was an unforgivable weakness, the same that had put them in this predicament in the first place.
An awkward silence fell between them, and they both tried to break it at once.
“I should have told you—” he said.
“We don’t need to talk?—”
They both fell silent again. Before they could decide who would speak first, the door slid open, and Haerune wandered in as he read something on his comm, a bundle of sedative hypos tucked under his arm. He nearly dropped them all in surprise when he looked up and saw Cordelia standing there.
Rentir’s tail moved of its own accord, whipping hard enough to nearly dent the exam table. An unfathomable fury welled in him at the intrusion, at the challenge of another male approaching his woman.
Hiswoman. She washis. She was?—
No.
He forced himself to turn away, to wrap his tail with numbing tightness around his own thigh before he tried to kill his most beloved friend with it.
“Rentir?” Cordelia called as he paced to the far side of the room.
He pressed his head against the metal wall and sank his claws into it, scratching deep into the surface as he struggled to catch his breath.
“Give him a moment,” Haerune said softly, his voice grating across Rentir’s nerves.
His shoulders bunched as he battled the urges riding him, pressing his head harder into the bitterly cold metal. The chill sting grounded him.
