Understatement of the century.
Hassa laughed, shaking her head. “I will give you the comfort of knowing that I did not agree with him taking you. He should have sent a courting gift first.”
That wouldn’t have worked either, honestly. If I’d have gotten some random gift sent to my tent on Korsal from a strange admirer I’d have been weirded out. Rathal would have had to explain his surveillance of me, though now that I was thinking about it, he probably would have and he’d have been just as smug about it. I swear he thought it was a compliment that he’d seen me on camera and picked me. I wasn’t sure what the right answer was. I guess he would have had better luck had he waited until the end of the war to introduce himself properly, though I don’t know that that would have worked either.
After the war was over, I wanted to go back to Earth to convince my parents to come with me back to Ara’Ama andonce there, I was planning on helping Jack and her people. I don’t think romance would’ve even been on my mind. Though kidnapping me certainly wasn’t the right way to go about it either.
“Did you know he killed the one who planned to harm you on the ship that brought you here? The blue one,” Rixa explained, her voice sly.
I glanced at her. “What?”
“The blue male that came into your cell with the red one you killed. Rathal killed him for neglecting you on the ship and for what he planned to do to harm you,” Hassa answered.
Rixa shook her head. “Yes. You were supposed to fly in comfort, after medical care. Stupid males. Can’t do anything right. Should have sent us.”
Hassa hummed thoughtfully and then shrugged her massive shoulders. “Couldn’t. No thumbs.”
“True. Good point.”
I know they meant it as a compliment that Rathal had killed for me, but man, that was still a weird as hell response. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Aliens were weird. Though if I thought about it too hard, it did kind of make me feel better that he hadn’t meant to be a total ass. Kidnapping was one thing, but if I’d have been treated well, he could have spun it that he was rescuing me and I might have gone along with it. Maybe. I was loath to admit it, even to myself, but the crazy bastard was pretty charming when he wasn’t being such a smug dickhead.
“Listen, morsel, you are thinking too hard about this. Just let the male pleasure you, mate him, and then rule over him with strict affection. It will work out,” Hassa stated, her tone matter of fact, like this was a simple matter that I was making overly complicated.
Yeah, still didn’t like being called food and this was anything but simple.
“Your advice sucks, Hassa. I am not fucking him. I’ll never be rid of him if I do and wouldn’t that be letting him win? I mean, what kind of person would I be if I jumped into bed with the man who stole me from my friends, from my purpose?”
The twins halted just outside my bedroom door and rounded on me, their dark eyes hard and disapproving.
“He is not a man, Callisto Ramirez.”
“And he need not be your enemy forever.”
I held up my hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. I get it.”
Rixa snapped her terrifying jaws twice at the air, the sound like a gunshot as her teeth met each time had me swallowing hard. “Don’t try to escape again this Darking. We are tired of chasing you,” she grumbled, low and dangerous, her eyes burning holes through me.
I kept my hands raised and backed into my room. “Yep, got it. No escaping.”
The twins started to turn away but then stopped, their ears twitching as they glanced at each other in silent communication. They must have come to some sort of agreement because Rixa sighed long and heavy as if she’d lost an argument before twisting around to face me again.
“You are sad, yes? Come with us. We can take you somewhere… interesting. Somewhere where you can—how do you humans say? Blowing off heat?”
A weird sort of foreboding gathered around me. I didn’t like the giddy look in Hassa’s eyes.
“Blowing off steam. And I wouldn’t say I was sad—”
“Does not matter. Come. You will thank us later,” Hassa said as she darted around me, moving me with her big body out of my room and down the hall.
Oh dear sweet baby Jesus, I was going to regret this with every fiber of my being.
“Uh. Where are we going?”
“No questions. Only following.”
“Yeah sure, just follow the murderous babysitters into unknown shenanigans,” I grumbled to myself but followed along behind them anyways. What else was I supposed to do? Sit around in my room and think? Absolutely not.
They led me out of the palace and deeper into the glittering city. I hadn’t seen the station during the Dark before and the Light truly did not do Erral any favors, but the Dark? It made the slapped together criss cross chaos somehow beautiful. Thousands of draped light strands wove over and under each other to create a spiderweb network of glittering colors over every road and walkway. The lights reflected in the muddy brown of the patchwork metal buildings and made them glow bronze. It was beautiful.
