“You were always going to give me to them, weren’t you?” she whispered.
“Nix,” he said.
“Then when did that change?” she cried.
“The night I met with them near the base,” he said. She remembered that night, when he’d come back with the mark of Oxandri on his flesh. “Maybe even before.”
“Why then?”
“I was always conflicted about it, Erin,” he burst out, standing from the chair as his voice rose. “From the moment I saw you in the Golden City, I was never the same. I need you to understand that!”
Erin’s lips parted. For the first time, he saw doubt in her features where there’d only been hurt and anger before. She was eyeing him as he paced the room, but there wasn’t enough room to take more than a few strides, just like in his own quarters in the command center. His cell.
“I told you I left the Mevirax to live on my own when I realized that Tavar intended to supply the Jetutians with Luxirian crystals,” he started, trying to calm the thundering in his chest. “But Tavar sought me out when he learned that Vaxa’an had taken a human female as his queen and that there were rumors of other human females living in the Golden City. He told me that Po’grak wanted them back, so much so that the Jetutians would heal a select number of the Mevirax females in exchange. They’d had the means to cure our females all along.
“Tavar knew I was familiar with the Golden City,” Jaxor continued, “because I grew up here. He tasked me with finding and taking the human females that remained. And then we came up with a plan. To renege on the agreement with Po’grak and to secure the vaccine for ourselves. Tavar planned to use it to secure what he’d always wanted: the position of Prime Leader, to return the Mevirax to their rightful home, the Golden City. But I planned something different. I knew Tavar was dangerous, that he could never be the Prime Leader that Luxiria needs—the leader that Luxiria already has. Tavar would never get close to the Golden City with the vaccine because I planned to give it to Vaxa’an myself.”
Erin watched him, staying silent as these things poured from him. He wondered how much of this she already knew, what Tavar had told her.
“And then,” he continued, swallowing hard, “I saw you. My Instinct awakened and I was suddenly faced with the possibility that in continuing with my plans, your safety could not be guaranteed because sometimes even the best laid plans do not unfold as expected.
“So, tev, when I first brought you to my base, in those first few spans, I was struggling with the decision. I tried to keep you at a distance, thinking that it would make my decision easier.”
“Because it wasn’t just me,” Erin said finally, softly. “It was the vaccine too.”
“Tev. The vaccine,” he said, his voice twisting the word bitterly. “I thought I was being selfish, turning my back on my people, if I chose you. But how could I give you up, knowing what might happen? The very thought of handing you over to the Jetutians filled with me with such disgust and rage, yet I thought of my own people too. That this was our only chance to help our females. And then you…how could I trade your freedom for that? What right did I have to make that choice for you, when you’d already had so many choices ripped away from you?”
Erin looked down into her lap and he hoped that she was beginning to understand why he’d done what he’d done.
“So, tev, I lied to you when you asked of the Mevirax, but when I told you those things, I had already decided to keep you safe from them,” he said softly. The torment of feeling intense relief and shame from that decision still burned in his chest. Erin met his eyes, something like surprise in her expression. “I thought that you did not need to know about the previous plan because it was never going to happen.”
Jaxor couldn’t have won either way. The moment he’d chosen his female, he’d turned his back on his people. But now, his female didn’t trust him because he’d lied about it. He’d lied about so much.
“When you ask me if I ever cared for you,” he said, his voice so ragged that he heard the pain