turned off.
“Yes.”
Raul’s lips twitched, and to Hysterian’s dismay, Raul smirked. “Riiight.”
“Get out of my way,” he ordered.
“If you’re not here for Alexa, are you here for me, Captain?” Raul crossed his arms, mischief in his eyes.
“Get out of my way, or you’ll be spending time in the brig.”
Raul stepped to the side, grinning now. “Yes, Captain.”
Furious, Hysterian stormed past him. Raul followed. Hysterian made it halfway across the room when his twat of a crew hand opened his mouth again. “So, Captain, if you’re not here for Alexa, you don’t mind me pursuing her?”
Hysterian was across the room in an instant with Raul pinned up against the male locust’s habitat. Murder. Hysterian was on the brink of committing murder.
Raul’s eyes bulged as Hysterian slid him up the glass by his neck. Raul grabbed Hysterian’s hand, struggling to get out of his grasp.
He kicked and squirmed, coughing.
Hysterian watched him struggle. Sputter, spittle, saliva, he enjoyed it all. Raul’s face went beet red, and when his kicks slowed, Hysterian dropped him.
Raul fell to the ground, clawing at his neck. Hysterian looked up and came face-to-face with the locust. Its four large arms thumped the glass.
Raul coughed and gasped in equal measure.
“I don’t give a fuck what you do with Dear. You can have her. But if you ever get in my way or question me again, you’re off this ship, and I don’t care if you have a way to get home. Are we clear?”
Raul nodded.
“Good. Now get the fuck up and clean yourself. I can smell your cum all over you. It’s stinking up the entire lab,” Hysterian spat. Without waiting for Raul to rise, Hysterian stormed out of the menagerie.
His tongue pushed at the inside of his lips.
His mouth twisted into a sneer.
What the fuck am I doing? How the hell had he ended up in this situation?
Alexa wasn’t for him. She ticked none of his boxes. And above all, she was his subordinate.
He wiped her from his head and vowed to keep her from it and his fantasies going forward. Because if he didn’t, and he didn’t find a better outlet soon, he was going to lose his mind, and someone was going to die.
Six
Alexa stared down at her coffee. The muddy brown liquid had cooled since she’d gotten it from the food replicator, but she couldn’t make herself get a fresh cup. Tension had sunk into her bones, and it worsened with each day.
Raul had barely looked at her over the last two days. She had emerged from their shared quarters to find him flushed, coughing, and rising from the ground by the locust’s enclosure.
“I think I’m getting sick,” he’d told her.
She had rushed toward him, thinking the locust had hurt him somehow. “You need to get to medical!”
She hadn’t wanted to get sick herself, but she also cared for her coworker’s wellbeing. If he’d been sick, she’d have to pick up the slack, and with all that had happened, she was already bogged down.
She hadn’t made any progress on getting closer to Hysterian. At least in the way that could gain her the information she needed to destroy him.
Twice now, she’d missed her opportunity to explore the bridge. Alexa kicked herself for not taking advantage of Daniels’s snooping and searching Hysterian’s chamber when she had the chance. Nothing had happened to Daniels afterward, so he’d gotten away with it. She felt like a failure.
She’d been in the same space with her enemy for a while now, and nothing had happened. In her mind, she’d always thought finding a way to hurt Hysterian would be easier.
“No,” Raul had grunted his reply. She’d tried to help him, but she could neither convince him to get checked out nor get him to talk to her further. Raul hadn’t looked her way since.
Something must have happened.
Raul being quiet was strange.
Alexa swirled her cup.
She missed the company. She can’t believe why. I don’t even like Raul. But now that she’d spent the last cycle in silence, she missed noise, missed the sound of a human voice, missed conversation. She glanced around the lounge, hating that even here, she was alone.
Pigeon was right. Space takes a toll.
There’s no noise, no life, out in space. The sounds of air pressure and steam vents were all she had to keep her company. Maybe she should play music in the menagerie during the day… Maybe music would help. Alexa thumbed her vitamin D pill before putting it in her mouth, swallowing it down with her cold