He didn’t move away though. His arms were still tight. One of his legs even covered hers, trapping her legs between his. Hiding her under his bulk entirely. His grip was strong and sure.
“I saw my brother.”
Vytln’s voice, from this close, was like the rumble of a mountain – deep and powerful. Even as soft as he spoke, it seemed to vibrate into her bones.
But the words made her eyes open. “Your brother?”
“On the station. I saw my brother.”
“Oh… You meaning the brother who…”
“Yeah. That brother.” His jaw tightened. “I only have the one. More lucky for me. I doubt we’d have all survived if there were more.”
“Why is he being here?”
“He’s hunting me.”
Haven frowned. “Maybe he isn’t? Maybe not…”
“No. He is. I know he is. He commed us a couple days ago. Pretending to care for me. He knows I escaped, now he’s trying to hunt me down.”
“Oh…” Haven couldn’t really argue that he wasn’t, that it was okay, that it wasn’t that bad. She didn’t know enough about the situation to say for sure. “Why?”
Vytln didn’t answer immediately. It was hard for him, she realized. Not the intimacy so much as the vulnerability. The vulnerability of having her in his trap and being subject to the pain of near-mating again. The vulnerability of having someone close enough to make him feel good and the threat of that being taken away. The vulnerability of revealing his past, his pains, to someone in an open and honest way that also opened him to the possibility of more pain.
“On my planet, the two races don’t get to cross paths very often,” he finally said, starting in a place she hadn’t really expected, but she let it happen. Not wanting to interrupt or disrupt when he was finally talking.
“My home planet is tidally locked. One side is always facing the sun, one is always facing away. So, one side of the planet is burning hot, the other is freezing cold. The two races of lvtl can only flourish on their side. But we can interbreed, and the resulting offspring can handle neither the heat nor the cold. They have to stay in the thin habitable zone in the middle of the planet. They’re considered weaker. Their population is smaller. But what they can do is serve as a go between for the two halves of the planet. My race and the north race can still trade and communicate because of them. And they use that to maintain their own power. They strictly control trade to the point that they maintain control over the entire economy.”
A tidally locked planet? Haven got the mental image of a planet without ocean tides, but she quickly realized that’s not what he meant. He meant that the planet didn’t spin around the sun like the Earth, so that it didn’t have traditional days and nights like she would expect. It was fascinating, but she resisted the urge to ask more questions as he continued.
“There are always those who try to smuggle things around the strict trade controls. It’s illegal, of course, so the people who do it are criminals. And when you’re labeled that way, you begin behaving that way, more and more. Pushing the boundaries until what started as just smuggling supplies or necessities expands into more… dangerous territories.”
“Oh. Like prohibition gangs,” Haven said, understanding dawning. Back when her country made alcohol illegal, it just prompted people to trade it illegally. And the people who did that trading eventually morphed and grew into something dangerous and beyond control. She could easily see how it would be repeated on his home planet.
“My family were smugglers,” he confirmed. “My great grandfather started the smuggling, but it’s grown since then. It’s become an empire. My family is powerful. Untouchable. We’re feared. On my planet, it’s not unfair to say that we’re infamous to the point of being a household name. But the kind that you whisper and use to threaten naughty children.
“My father is the one responsible for growing our family into what it is today. He was a merciless and cruel male. I really admired him. I wanted to be like him. I tried to be like him. He had trapped our mother, who was just as calculating and cold as him. She had two sons and she raised us like a competition. She would only give her support to the one of us that was doing better. It started first with primary school, then it was training, then it was working. And it was almost always me. I was better than my brother at what we did. The family business was one where you needed to be ruthless and cunning, but you also had to be smart and calculating. Kldyn was ruthless, sure, but he was emotional and prone to damaging outbursts. Whenever he’d get ahead of me, he’d have another outburst, and he’d fall behind again.
“Everyone knew I was going to take over. I controlled the majority of the trade routes, all but the three main ones that my father maintained control over. I was making us a lot of money. I was expanding our business. Kldyn and I shared the responsibility of taking care of our enemies. I was more efficient at it. He was more merciless. Our father liked both approaches. Our mother didn’t like either of us. We were tools for her to continue to build the empire she’d created with my father.”
Haven was starting to put together what he was describing. They were like a mob family. The father leading the business, themother raising heartless children to continue the legacy, siblings that saw each other as threats, not support.
It was really sad. Haven’s heart hurt for him. But she didn’t speak as he took a moment to gather his thoughts and continue.
“I told you that Yl’ln was raised with us. As much as I admired and emulated my father, she admired and emulated my mother. She pit my brother and I against each other and offered her affection only to the one she saw doing the best. And unlike our father, she appreciated my brother’s cruelty more than my efficiency. She reveled in it. I think that’s why she chose him. And she did it by climbing into my trap and triggering one of his outbursts.
“Everything happened so fast. It was over in a day. He sent his supporters, cousins of ours, to kill my supporters. They were careful, but they weren’t ready for it, and they fell quickly. I found Yl’ln in my trap, and while she had me distracted, Kldyn gained the upper hand. I had nearly mated her when Kldyn came in. He had his supporters. He had Yl’ln, though I didn’t know it. They dragged me out of the trap. Beat me. Subdued me. They made me watch while my brother claimed Yl’ln.”
Haven stilled. The story had taken a hard, dark turn she hadn’t expected. And one she couldn’t imagine. What that must have been like. What Vytln must have felt.
She tilted her head back, getting her first look at his face. His eyes were closed, his jaw was tight, like he was lost back in those memories. Stretching her neck up, she pressed a kiss, gentle and soft, against his lips.
Vytln’s eyes snapped open, the glowing embers burning like a raging wildfire.
Chapter 15
Vytln
