“And your kind…lay eggs,” I say, just to confirm.
“Yes.” Jorusk shakes out his wings, then folds them behind him, adjusts some of the blankets so he’ll have back support, then lies back beside me and looks up at the stars.
“Why do you want a human mate?” I finally ask when the silence feels like too much.
“Our females are…so desperate to protect their hatchlings that they have bred them to be embodied fury. It is how we have survived. But I want to revive the caring tendencies that were once natural. Humans still have them. You clearly do. And you don’t run from us like other species usually will.
“Why is that? I mean, why stay with me? You could be with that Leosantian. Or a Nytheralian. Alustri are much closer in physical appearance to humans than my kind and far less physically dangerous.”
I roll over to study his radiant eyes and the muscled arms that flex as he tucks his hands behind his head. “It’s not about akind.It’s you. You are loyal. Aura told me what you went through in your recent battle.”
“When?”
“I had recently arrived to the Amphiran ship and was confirming inventory for distribution. He is one of the few I trust with my ship while I’m gone. Aura told me about the Talhuskin ship’s power generation explosion and how he saw a winged man fall from the ship to the surface. He was in his Hellion suit and charged to the surface after you.”
I look up at the stars, remembering the pain in Aura’s green eyes. “He thought he’d failed you. He tried so hard to catch you. Redlined his suit. Destroyed it. Burned his feet from the heat. All he could say was that you couldn’t die. Anyone who has a friend willing to risk dying for them, in my mind, has to be someone special.”
“I’m not,” he mutters.
“That’s not what DIA says or Fieri or any of the Draths on you StarEmber. I worked with them all night while you were healing from the poison.”
He tilts his head back and quiets for a moment. After a slow blink, he says, “I don’t care. I don’t want to be different or specialor whatever. I just want to serve and protect and fight and know I have fulfilled my duty to my kind.”
“You have.” I think back to how Sidius spoke of Jorusk risking his life to save Osiris as Talhuskins rained poisoned ice bullets down on them. How Osiris said Jorusk heard a hatchling and abandoned his own chance at safety to save two boys, then ended up saving an entire squadron when he went fullDragonmode.
Dragon…right.I look around for Jorusk’s tail. He’s slipped into a sad mood since our conversation turned to his past, and I’m hoping I can make him feel better.
Where is his tail?
I see the end of it flick lazily on the side of the bed, opposite me.
He darts his red eyes at me, and I wonder if I’ve been caught staring. “I’ve killed a lot of Talhuskins, Denarso, leaderBakkaincluded, and Novarks. Does it bother you that I am a killer?”
He’s got a killer body for sure.I admire the mounds of his pecks stretching the front of his ABR suit. “No. You’re a soldier, defending your people.”
“I tell myself that. But sometimes it feels like it isn’t enough. Why does it have to be this way?”
His tail flicks again, and I watch it, wondering how I can sneak a hand over there and grab it.
“Because some don’t listen to facts and reason. They only operate based on emotion and need. They don’t have concern for higher intellect.” I’m only half paying attention as I watch his tail idly dance under the moonlight like Freckle’s did in the barn window on nights she was mousing.
He jerks and follows something across the sky.
I look up. “Shooting star.”
“Not a missile?” he asks.
I’m familiar with his instinct, his hyper-vigilant state. “No.”
He points to another. “That?”
“Space junk. There’s a lot of it after the Mars war. We have junker crews that salvage around Earth. Anything they miss usually ends up in a farm field. We had a Ginarigon-Nytheralian hybrid superflux motor core land in our spinach field. It’s how we learned to work on starships as kids.”
“Never thought those pieces would work together.”
“I’m certain it was a scavenger design, built from compatible items they adapted to one another.”
An echoing clunk makes Jorusk sit forward and check his wristband. “Be right back.”
