“Tell me now. Did I escape one master only to be transferred to the hands of another? Does being your Nova guarantee my obedience? I refuse to be led on and told everything will be fine and work out—for me to not worry—only to be caught unprepared to be let down and lied to.”
The room fell silent. They didn’t like it? Too bad. I knew Xylo and Odelm didn’t mean to make me feel the way I did. They had always cared about me as a person, yet they still made the same comments in passing when talking with others. It was tiring. Was I always going to be that female? The female who was a Yaarkin prototype? The female who was able to adapt to any species she was with and capable of producing purebred offspring?
What about Selena? The female who survived growing inside a tube and brought to life only nine years ago? The person who taught herself whatever she could get her hands on? The female who learned to keep her head down and survive? The one who found her own way to escape when the mission to rescue her failed?
I had dreams, needs, and wants too. Emotions and feelings. Opinions.
Ever since we landed, everything revolved around my health or the cubs, not about me as a person.
And the one male who begged me to trust him and let him in, even if it was only as a friend and not a member of my clan, broke down the walls that I had built up. My punishment for foolishly trusting him was that he had been absent ever since my labor. Kaede hadn’t checked on the cubs or me. He hadn’t been around other than leading us to the welcome party, where he refused to acknowledge me at all.
What happened to us being friends? What happened to him being my Head of Security? Not checking, in the flesh, on the one person you were in charge of went against everything he told me.
I knew I was foolish for welcoming him. He would always put his duty in front of what little friendship we formed. Lesson learned. I would keep him an arm's length away and refuse to let him in again.
A cry sounded from where the cubs were sleeping, pulling me from my thoughts.
Odelm released his hold on me, allowing me to move away. I climbed off the lounge chair and walked around the Aldawi males gathered together. I could feel the weight of the room’s occupants gazing on me as I walked to my cubs. Meti had woken up crying while her twin brothers continued to sleep.
Picking her up, I brought her to my shoulder and grabbed a formula bottle from the dispenser. I walked over to the glass wall that faced outside and fed Meti as I watched ships come and go from the space station. Steeling myself, I refused to break down in front of everyone as if I was a fragile female who needed coddling.
“Selena. You know that is not how we feel about you,” Odelm comforted.
“We are sorry for making you feel that way. I admit I get excited about your abilities and studying you, but that has nothing to do with how I feel about you. I want to make sure I can understand as much about you as possible to make sure you are healthy, so that if something happened to you, I could aid you. Everything you do is history in the making, but that doesn’t mean we don’t see you as a person, Selena,” Xylo confirmed.
Grabbing both of their golden bond threads, I replied, “I wasn’t talking about you guys. You both have made me feel like a person and cherished. I understand what I am in your field of study, Xylo. Sometimes, when you are talking among your colleagues about me while I am present, I feel like I did with the Yaarkins. They would talk about me in front of me, as if I wasn’t intelligent enough to understand what they were saying. Sure, I didn’t know all of their medical terms, but after a while, it didn’t take much to figure out what they were.”
“I am sorry for making you feel that way. I didn’t know that was how I made you feel,” Xylo explained.
“Selena?” Zirene asked softly behind me.
Refusing to turn around and face him, I continued to look out into the beautiful darkness of space.
“Did you order Kaede away?”
“What? No. He has his orders, but I didn’t order him away. He is still in charge of protecting you. Why?” Zirene answered, confused.
“So why hasn’t he visited me since I had our cubs? He hasn’t had a conversation with me since I went into labor.”
“Perhaps he believes he needed to distance himself from you and felt as if you both were getting too personal. He likes to keep to himself and remain detached on missions. I believe he said, feelings cause mistakes, and he does not need them… He must have his reasons why he has kept away from you.”
I rolled my eyes. If I was too emotional and somehow distracting to Kaede, that was his problem, not mine. What did everyone expect? I just delivered cubs. Of course, I was still hormonal, but that didn’t mean I was unstable. My crying fits during my whole pregnancy pissed me off, but I didn’t believe I was as bad as everyone made it seem. At least not from what I read about humans and what Xylo told me what to expect during postpartum.
Kaede could go run off and play with his drones for all I cared.
If he had no good reason why he wanted to distance himself from me, then he couldn't tell me what to do. He could spend his time acting like one of the guards hovering around. Someone paid to be security and nothing else. Not someone who tried to get me to trust them and form a friendship. I guessed being friends with his assignment was too much for him.
I had more important things to deal with than to think about some male who wanted nothing to do with me outside his job.
“Selena. Is that how you feel?” Royak’s warm voice asked.
I turned to face the males in the room and noticed they were all watching me with a range of facial expressions that varied from confusion to concern to sadness.
“Yes. Most of my conversations since I woke up on theDestiny—outside of the ones I had with my nestmates—have always been about my body and my cubs, not me as a person.” I replied, meeting his pale lavender eyes.
“I wasn’t aboard theDestiny, but I would like to get to know the female who captured my brother’s heart. Whether or not you know it, being his Nova and Mate has officially made you my sister. We may not be littermates or born to the same parents—or even the same species—but that doesn’t mean you are worth any less as a person.”
“Sadly, you have little time to get to know each other if we are to prepare you for the meeting at the CEG Assembly tomorrow. We have to go over our strategies and the plans for afterward. You asked me for a wish before everyone arrived, and I plan on fulfilling it. To do so, we need to have our meeting.” Zirene walked up and paused in front of me, locking his eyes with mine. They pleaded for me to understand.
