This was a statement, not a question, because Afina already knew the answer. She was expressing her displeasure.
“She’s different,” Rychor said, after a pause.
Afina stood up and walked toward him until she was very close. She peered into his eyes and then stepped back. “Is the human different, Rychor? Or are you different? Perhaps you are no longer suited for your work.”
Rychor didn’t answer. In many ways, Afina was right. He was not suited for this work anymore. But it was crucial that Afina not know why.
“I will procure her consent,” he said slowly, when Afina continued to stare at him, her mind probing his. “But I must suggest to you humbly, Afina, that this specimen is distinct from the others and requires a distinct approach as such.”
Afina swept a hand over a wall screen and quickly took in the information displayed. “Rychor, I see no evidence of this human being, as you stated, ‘distinct.’ She responds sexually to humiliation and is hardwired to be a sexual submissive. She appears to have an affinity for you. I fail to understand how you have been unable to secure her consent.”
“As do I,” Rychor said. He had been ready for Afina’s exact words. “This was the intention behind my suggestion. Ordinary techniques have failed.”
Afina was peering deeply into him, her eyes alight with suspicion. Few male Ryvokia could withstand Afina’s intrusions into their minds. Rychor was more capable than most.
It came at tremendous cost, however. Rychor was depleting, and he hoped Afina wouldn’t probe too long, or too far.
When the tentacles of her probing mind retreated, they sucked away almost instantly, and Rychor knew she must have found something.
“I am concerned,” she stated, and Rychor though he saw a trace of a smile on her lips. “I agree that we need a new approach. And so we are going to have one. The female will be turned over to Choarn.”
This was Afina’s final decision, a fact conveyed to him through a forceful blast of emotion through their shared consciousness.
She waited for his response, her eyes predatory and incisive. “You have no objection to this, I take it.”
Rychor had objections—many. Deep-seated, gripping objections. He locked them away from her, though, and that was all he could do. Afina’s plan was not something he would allow to happen, but he needed to separate himself from Afina in order to keep his machinations secret.
And as of now, he didn’t have a solution at all. Especially not if Choarn was taking over the—
He stopped his thoughts violently, raising Afina’s eyebrow. She couldn’t actually read a mind, in detail—no one could do that. But feelings transmitted readily, and almost exactly.
And there was much for Afina to know if she found his emotions about Sonya.
“I have no objections, Afina.”
She smiled, a knowing look in her eye. “You have no objections, Rychor?”
“None.”
“To Choarn training and mating with the human female that you have failed to obtain consent from?”
Hiding in plain sight was the best tactic with Afina; she sensed emotions like an apex predator sensed fear, and the only plan now would be to hide the emotion itself behind a false explanation—one that would hopefully fool Afina, and explain the sentiments she was bound to stumble into before long.
“I am insulted, Afina, that you doubt my abilities,” he growled. “But let Choarn see for himself that the human female will not consent through… these methods.”
“Mymethods, you mean,” Afina said, turning away to look at the screen again. She appeared to have taken the bait. She reflected on whatever she saw there. “We shall see,” she said, quietly.
Rychor bowed as she dismissed him with a burst of annoyance and a wave of her hand. He tried to fill his mind with thoughts of Choarn touching his beautiful Sonya, so that Afina wouldn’t be able to peer inside him and feel the excitement.
He had just realized how he could get Sonya to understand him, to believe him.
After that, though… what would he do? His original plan—hastily made as it was—would be upended by Afina’s decision to turn Sonya over to Choarn. He couldn’t feel Afina’s consciousness as readily as she could feel his, so he had no way of knowing what she was playing at. He had to accept that she was making her decision in a neutral way with the primary objective in mind.
And he needed her to believe that he was also of the same mind; where he had failed with this specimen, another Ryvokia could succeed. And because he had always declined his invitations to mate in the past, it wasn’t impossible that Afina simply thought he had been somehow incompetent, that her decision wasn’t anything more than practical.
But Afina was suspicious by nature. He knew that much. She made decisions that didn’t always make sense, and because of her status as the only female Ryvokia in the system, they were never questioned.
In either case, he knew he had to keep his secret hidden from her, and he hoped that he had.
