But convincing her of that was going to be hard. Perhaps the hardest thing he’d do in his miserable life.And I started by threatening her…Recent history proved that there couldn’t be anything between them. Her kind was born to hate his kind, and vice versa.
“My skin is dangerous,” he said, unsure if she was even listening. “Few people know that about me, though it’s no secret. It’s easier not to talk about it.” Why he was telling her this, he wasn’t sure. As far as he knew, she might already know this about him. She hadn’t questioned it so far which had been odd.
“The reason you ended up like this was because you put the underwear on in my bathroom that night. There were traces of opium and batrachotoxin left on them that hadn’t fully dismantled. It takes hours for the nanocells in my poison to dismantle, and longer still if I’m nearby.
“I can’t get close to people—I can’t touch them—without worrying that I’ll kill them, or have them become addicted…tome. It’s why I cover my mouth. When people touch me, their body heat triggers my glands to open, releasing whatever toxin I so choose, and if I don’t, whatever my systems choose for me. I’m trying to control it.”
Hysterian sighed, kneading his brow.
“Alexa, I’m the captain of this ship because Nightheart offered to find me a cure—a way to remove the codes, to replace them, or perhaps destroy that part of me. To burn it out like cancer. I wouldn’t be here at all if there was another option left. The last hope I had died, and it took parts of me with it.” He forced the words out. “Parts of me I gave away that I never meant to…”
His past clutched his throat and squeezed.
“I’ve done terrible things that go far beyond my time in the military.”
He didn’t want her to make the same mistakes he once made.
Alexa sat upright, clearly listening to him. The wires in his chest thrummed from the simple act. Was he getting through to her?
Would she come to him?
His fingers twitched, glimpsing her through them.
Her lips parted and his world stopped.
“Terrible things?” she asked.
“I went numb.” Hysterian dropped his hand before he clawed the skin of his brow off. “I turned off. I shut out my humanity and every part of me that made me human when I last lost hope. I’ve killed more allies and friends than I care to admit. At first by accident or misfortune, until it was on purpose. I aligned myself with an evil fucking piece of shit who used my numbness to gain power, and I let him, all because he relished my sociopathy. He made me feel like I belonged in this universe even when there was no war left to be fought. That I could do what I wanted, to whoever I wanted, and—”
“Is this what Raul meant by—”
His lips twisted. “Don’t say that name to me. If you say anything at all, tell me how disgusted you are, how I deserve to die, and that you’re here for that reason and that reason alone. But not another man’s fucking name.”
She pushed the blanket she clutched aside. “Why areyouhere?”
The very same question he had of her.
“I’m here so I can someday touch another without worry. I crave it, endlessly. This need for touch, for companionship, to know what it’s like to embrace someone and not worry about killing them. I crave contact. Perhaps because I can’t have it. I’ve never told anyone my reasons before. Despite what you are, or why you’re here, if it has something to do with me…
“I need you to know that I’m sorry.”
He closed his eyes and exhaled.
“What are you?” she whispered.
“A frog. A golden poison dart frog. An amphibious...creature that’s been extinct for centuries. A goddamned fucking frog. And do you know what the worst of it is? I can’t shift. I have thisneedto be what I am, but I can’t. All I can do is endure.”
“A frog?”
“I lied to you before. If you want your thoughts to go away, Alexa”—his soul shriveled—“I can…make that happen.”
“You can’t control it? At all?”
It’s the most she had said to him in days.
“Yes, it’s how I do most of my killing,” he said. “And control it?” He growled. “I can to a point. I spend my night shifts boiling in water, draining my body of all its resources. Only to be forced to replenish and do it all again the next night.”
Her brow furrowed. “Do you remember…”
