Whatever happened to having a choice? A guy just smells you and boom, you’re stuck together for life?
“You are the only?—"
“I’ll get Klath for you.” She cut him off before he could make another declaration of soul-bonded mateship.
Like he had in the mess the previous morning. Despite Lara being present.
She looked to Klath, who picked up the comm. Aletta tried not to notice how deep Gark’s voice was, and how much she liked listening to him talk.
When Klath had disconnected the comm, he returned to her wrist.
“You know he’s part Gnaggarian?” Klath was moving her fingers back and forth. “Push against my hand.”
She pushed her fingers into his hand, resisting upward. “No, I didn’t know that. And now that I do, I don’t know what that means.”
“You’re all healed. That worked much better than I thought it would.” Klath began tidying up.
“Tell me about Gnaggarians.” She found herself asking, before she’d considered the words.
He stopped. “Oh, yes. The captain.” He sat on a stool, rubbing his chin and looking up toward the ceiling in thought. “His father was Gnaggarian, and his mother is Taurean.”
“Yes, he said that.”
Klath looked at her. “He told you? Interesting. His mother raised him on one of the outer colony planets. It’s really a miracle that he had such success in the military, considering his genetics.”
“His genetics.” That sounded all kinds of wrong.
Klath looked up. “Oh, no. Not like that.”
Aletta frowned. What did genetics have to do with it? “His genetics have nothing to do with his ability.” Ability was learned, built, and grown. It wasn’t something you were born with. That made no sense to link it to genetics.
Klath smiled. “Yes. You and I know that.” He looked back down at her wrist as he inspected it. “The Gnaggarians have an essential biological drive to find a mate. The species is scent-driven, so when they scent their mate, the bond begins to form.”
Aletta’s eyebrows rose. She wondered what all that sniffing had been about. She flushed, remembering Gark’s hands on her, his thick length?—
Down girl. Not the time or the place.
Klath was still talking, and she dragged her attention back to him. “But he has fought against the idea that Gnaggarians are inferior his whole life. And mixed-race children? Some would see him, and those like him, dead simply because they exist.”
Aletta gaped. “That’s horrific.”
Klath shrugged. “Yes, but what can you do, hmm?” He stood, offering Aletta a hand. She took it and stood. Klath wasn’t anywhere as tall as Gark or Vox, or as stocky as Jarden, but he was still Taurean, and so he towered over Aletta.
Something that had been niggling at the back of Aletta’s mind rushed forward. She stilled. “He was kicked out of the military. And he wants to go back.”
But Klath had wandered to the other side of the med bay and didn’t reply.
Gark wanted to rejoin the military. And now he was going to miss the hearing—she remembered the conversation Gark and Vox had had on the bridge all those days ago—to help her.
Deep in thought, Aletta left the med bay and headed to her new cabin to pack her things. She didn’t know what was going to happen in the next day, let alone in a year.
They were so different.
Gark had his life all mapped out. She didn’t know what would happen tomorrow.
If only her heart didn’t feel like it was cracking in two at the thought of never seeing him again.
CHAPTER 17
