“He wasn’t one of my men,” I tried to explain. “He tried to take you from me. You have to know I will never allow that. I’m not a good male, but I’m?—”
“I said I need a minute!” she said, jumping to her feet and retreating to the living quarters. The door swooshed closed behind her, and the light came on to tell me it was locked from the inside.
Fuck.
“Boss,” Nerus said behind me. “You’re not gonna like this.”
I rounded on him with a snarl. “What?”
Without flinching, he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the corpse on the dock. “Got an ID on the dead guy. It’s the merc D'vinda hired to off Rava.”
An icy, lethal calm settled over me, quieting every shred of my fear. Cora was my mate.Ibarchose her for me. She might need time to understand, but shewould. Eventually. For now, I had one person to blame.D'vinda.
“I’ll fucking kill her.”
CHAPTER 38
CORA
Yiri moved aroundin the dressing room while I did my makeup, the soft rustling of fabric loud in the silence between us. The dull click of the lid on my favorite glow serum—one of many smuggled surprises from Earth—was unsettling. The sound was too close to the muted, wet snap of that daernir man’s neck.
I paused, gripping the countertop in front of me, grateful I was sitting down as the memory of his lifeless body crumpling to the dock replayed in my head. A fine tremor ran through me. I felt Yiri stop behind me, but I didn’t look up at him in the mirror. I couldn’t look him in the eye yet. Not till I got my head right about this.
It’s not like it was a surprise that he killed the man. We might not have spelled it out in detail, but he never tried to hide who he was from me. The scars, the blood, thecekets. I knew. But… Knowing is one thing.Seeingis another.
He killed that man without a second of hesitation.He didn’t break his stride.The man was dead and discarded before I could blink. Yiri’s expression never faltered. There waszeroremorse written in those features as he lifted me up and sat me upright, checking me over. He kept touching me with the same hands that had taken a life right before my eyes.
We’d barely spoken since.
He’d asked me if I was okay, and I told him yes.
He’d asked if he should sleep somewhere else, and I said, “Don’t you dare.”
This hurdle was bad enough without going back to the weird wait-for-my-invitation thing again. Maybe we already had, though, because he didn’t touch me all night, and even though I put on garters, sheer sellah silk stockings, and a vintage style dress that showcased every curve of my body to perfection, all right in front of my husband, he had yet to bend me over any surface and have his way with me. Part of me was glad. I was still trying to decide if this was a fight or flight situation. But part of me wished he would get me out of my head so I could stop hearing that wet snap.
“Aneah.”
I tilted my head to show I was listening, but I still didn’t look at him in the mirror.
“If you’re not up for this, I can tell Della we can’t make it,” he offered.
I shook my head. “No, I want to go.”
With a nod, he stepped closer and set a small silk bag on the counter beside me. “These are yours. Della made them.” He hesitated like he meant to say something more, or he hoped I would. But eventually he just said, “I’ll make sure Zoddi and Xokat are ready.”
When he was gone, I looked inside the bag. A ring and a set of earrings were nestled within. I recognized the pretty mint pearl Yiri had pulled from the eslu in his lagoon just a few days before. It was beautifully set on an iridescent metal band. Fitting just right on my ring finger, the large pearl made the perfect statement piece to complement my bright pink dress. I slipped the earrings on as well and looked at myself in the mirror. With my hair styled in big curls and pinned away from my face,the satin-like material shimmering, and Yiri’s pearls gleaming, I could have been a Hollywoodingenueof yesteryear. The work it took to pull the look off had kept me sufficiently distracted from working through the mess in my head. I thought that was what I wanted, but now I just wished I were past it. I hated the hurt steeping between us, especially since I wasn’t sure whose fault it was. His for being just what he told me he was? Or mine for holding it against him?
Della’s party was supposed to be more intimate than the gala. Maybe she got carried away? Or maybe there was something lost in translation, and in Eissoi, intimate meant filled to the brim with the most terrifying daernir males in the star system and their mates, daughters, and dozens of unmarried sons. Then again, maybe that was just the Ahlon interpretation.
“If I see you more than five paces from my wife tonight,” Yiri told Xokat as we arrived, “I’ll feed you to my cekets one piece at a time and make you watch.” As furious as Yiri had been with Xokat for leaving me unguarded the day before, there hadn’t been time to replace him before the gala. Xokat flinched, and so did I, even though I didn’t think Yiri meant what he said. Xokat made a mistake. Yiri was exaggerating to make sure it didn’t happen again, right?
“I won’t fail you, sir,” Xokat promised.
Zoddi scowled at him with nearly as much ire as Yiri.
“She won’t be out of my reach until you take her to bed, boss,” he said.
With a scoffing sound, I brushed past the three of them. “What could possibly happen to me in your uncle’s house?”
