Human Pet Prison (Possessive Aliens #7) - Loki Renard Page 0,39

no reason not to tell her the truth. She deserves to know what she’s cost me.

“Ten years ago, you began your career of terror by destroying a ship called…”

“Aphex Predator,” she says.

She remembers. Does that make it better, or worse?

“That ship carried our sister, Saya. She died in the explosion.”

There’s a silence in which she doesn’t know what to say. What is there to say? Nothing. I don’t expect an apology from her. She is not the apologetic kind.

“So… I killed your sister.” She says the words with a contorted face of human horror. This is how people react to their wrongdoings. They never know how to handle what they have done, even when they specifically intended to do it.

“It would appear so.”

Sorry

Silver

Fuck. What the hell do I do now?

We fly on in silence for some time, making good our escape from Warden’s ship while I try to work out what I can say or do to somehow make any of this better. There are no sorry I killed your sister cards. There aren’t even words which cover the sentiment. I open my mouth, hoping that something will come out, but it doesn’t. There’s nothing I can say. I know the pain of losing family.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you.” His words are a flat statement, hardly a question.

“I am. I really…”

“Silver, I don't need you to be sorry. Sorry is useless to a scythkin. We do not operate that way. We don’t think or feel or act that way.”

“No. You choose vengeance. So what are you going to do to me? How are you going to take vengeance on me?”

He doesn’t answer me. I don't know if he knows the answer. He must be torn between killing me and saving me. Though he chose to do the latter under pressure, later on, when he has a chance to think about it, or really feel what it means, he might change his mind and do what his brood wanted him to do.

Scythkin are all about brood. Family, as I would call it. And I just cost him his entire family in one fell swoop. I am not just the one who murdered his sister. I am also the one who broke his brood. There can be no forgiving that, not ever.

If he doesn’t need sorry, then I guess he needs my regret even less. The truth is, I regret everything I have done since Ella was taken. I don’t have the nerve to tell him that, but it is true.

Ironically, he has succeeded in doing what a warden is supposed to do. He has made me sorry for my crimes. He has made me want to atone for them. But there is no atonement. No forgiveness. There is only the cold, hard reality of what has happened, laid out before us both.

“Where are we going? Are we just going to run and hide? Are you going to… are you going to hurt me?”

“I have gone a very long way out of my way not to hurt you,” he says. “But there will be pain, Silver. You deserve that.”

“I do.”

I deserve more than pain and worse than pain. I know what it is to lose family. Truthfully, I knew what I was doing when I attacked those ships. I wanted the whole universe to feel my pain. I had no idea my plan was actually working.

I have been punished many times in my incarceration. I have always rebelled against it, because I felt I didn’t deserve it. But now I know I do. Now I know that what I lost was only eclipsed by what I took.

Warden stands up from the pilot’s chair and releases me from the straps which held me in my own chair. I don’t have to be told to get on my knees. I know my place, and I want to take it. I go to my knees to show him that I am sorry, and that I will be obedient. Obedience is the very least I can give him now.

“You’re a very bad girl,” he says, standing over me. Looking up at him is intimidating. I don’t know what he’s going to do to me, but I know it is going to hurt. “Chaos follows you wherever you go.”

He’s right. It wasn’t always that way, but he’s right.

He reaches down and lets his fingers trail lightly around my neck. His finger blades are partially extended, scratching gently against my skin. It feels good, and tender.

“I love you,” he says,