“How did you come to be here? Like how did a person that was raised in a palace become a pirate?” she asked, her hand stroking back and forth over his arm around her waist.
He had to fight to emerge from his thoughts of fucking her to process her question.
“Ah, um, well,” he cleared his throat and concentrated, “Erral was already here, of a sort. I merely improved upon the original structure. How I came to be here is a long story.”
Callie leaned harder against him and looked up, biting softly at the underside of his jaw. Heat rushed through him at the feel of her teeth on his flesh. His whole body locked in his effort to notflip her against this damn pool wall and fuck into her until she screamed. Again.
“I don’t have anywhere else to be for a few hours,” she murmured and kissed the sting away.
Truly she was sent to test his patience. How was a male supposed to be considerate and gentle when his female tried him so?
He cleared his throat again, shifting under her and tightening his grip so she wouldn't get away even if she tried.
“Once I realized what had happened on Ara’Ama I set about looking for survivors. I bounced from planet to planet that had been under the Empire’s rule, and found mostly dead cities and ash. A few had surrendered to the Unity’s rule and had been absorbed into their burgeoning empire. I couldn’t risk capture so I left the galaxy. I found a nice out planet and settled there for a time, and used my gardening knowledge to help the species there cultivate their farming. It only lasted a few years before the Unity’s ships were spotted entering that section of the universe so I left that galaxy as well. My kind were hunted right alongside the Rijitera, though not as vigorously nor as rigid. Those who capitulated were spared, usually. I could not take that risk, being seen as part of the Imperial family.” He stared at the wall across from them, squeezing Callie a little tighter to him. “There are precious few of us left. At last count, there were three Ahar on Stellios. Fourteen are on Undurn, a long standing Unity planet within the same system as Stellios, and one lone soul on the ice wasteland Nannars, which used to be a prosperous Imperial planet. Nannars once had vast oceans, so green they almost hurt to look at. It was a successful fishing conglomerate that held an important seat on the Rijiteran council during Empress Yenes' reign.”
Rathal felt the ancient ghost of anger rise through him like fog off a deep lake. At the bottom of that lake lay the bones of hispeople and all who stood with them. If he gazed too long into those dark waters he would be lost to the rage and drown in his sorrows. He turned away from it and looked down at Callie in his arms.
He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “The Unity bombed it. They useddirty bombs. Something so toxic, so illegal that even the A’tens supporters were aghast. They set off a nuclear winter. I don’t know what triggered that specific attack or why they didn’t just break the planet with an anti-matter gun but it must have greatly angered A’tens and the Unity because they made an example of Nannars.Behold, we will stoop to any level.”
Callie shifted, turning to straddle him and wrapped her arms around his neck. “So why does one of your people live on Nanners if it’s a wasteland?”
He shrugged after several long tense moments of fighting for control now that she’d pressed that delectable pussy against his cock. She was playing with him now, he could tell. “I have no idea. She has lived there for hundreds of years, alone. We have only 6 females left of my species. The others have tried approaching her to perhaps court her or ask if she would donate her eggs and she stabbed the first two fools and shot the last one. He lived, barely.”
Callie sucked her teeth in mock sympathy. “Sucks to suck. Sometimes you have to know when to just leave someone be.”
He nodded in agreement. “That’s what I thought as well.”
She shook him slightly. “Well, what happened after you fled the farming planet behind?”
He sighed and began tracing little circles on her lower back. “I bounced from planet to planet, barely scraping by and turned to pickpocketing to feed myself. Until I got caught pilfering the pocket of a small male I thought might be an easy mark. He was short, he would have come up only to your hip, and whipcordlean. A Voxias.” He paused, grinning. “You’ve met his daughter, Som’ae.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh! That’s what that weird tree dude was going on about.”
“That’s right. Though Som’ae’s father had dark green fur. He offered me a job and introduced himself as Daxi. The job would be a simple thing, he told me.”
Rathal snorted and laughed wryly. “Simple. What a joke. It was anything but. He threw me on his ship and then promptly robbed a Unity merchant ship carrying the Citadel’s financial depot's supply of dyrathus ore. Dyrathus is the single most valuable metal in the universe. It’s what makes all the ships, the weapons, the cities, all of it uses some element of dyrathus. We were robbing a shipment worth billions of credits.”
Callie whistled. “Did it work out?”
Rathal’s grin was feral. “I have built an empire from my cut of that job. Everything I am today started there. I saved Daxi’s life then. I used all the skills I’d learned under the tutelage of a Rijiteran combat instructor and killed my way through to Daxi just as he was about to be cut down by a Citadel guard and earned my place among the merry pirate crew of theDauntless.”
“Let me guess, and from then on you pillaged and raided your way across the universe until you settled down on a far off space station and made yourself at home,” Callie said, poking him in the chest with her clawed finger.
He chuckled and inclined his head. “That’s close enough to the truth.”
She snuggled against him, pressing her chest to his front and hummed contentedly. “So what happened to Daxi?”
“He lived to the ripe old age of four hundred and forty and died surrounded by his many children and grandchildren who run roughshod over everyone on this station. You’ve met Som’ae.They are all like that. Never try to haggle with a Voxias. They’ll rob you blind and have you thanking them for it.”
She laughed into his skin and Rathal had never been happier than he was in that moment.
thirty-two
Callie
Iwokeupwitha start, confused for a moment on why my bed was moving.
“Sorry. I was trying not to wake you.”
