at him in shock, so he thought it best to continue.
He shouldn’t have opened his mouth, but he’d been doing a lot of things he shouldn’t be doing lately; he’d just add this to the list.
“As a youngling, about six orbits old, I was taken from my homeworld.”
Evren’s large blue eyes widened as her mouth fell open.
Shock.
He’d shocked her.
He’d take that over pity. He never wanted to see her pity him.
“I was eventually rescued by the Restitution. I’ve been here ever since.”
A moment of silence paused as he let her soak in what he just said.
“You. An alien. You were abducted?” She blinked. “No offense. I don’t mean that in a bad way it’s just...whenever I thought about beings being abducted, I only ever imagined humans getting the short end of that stick.”
“That would be impossible.”
“Huh?”
“There would be no way to extract beings on a stick. Unless it was a very small being and they somehow clung to your very large stick. And, outside the atmosphere of their planet, they would surely die without some form of protective equipment. Unless...” He paused. “Unless you put them in protective equipment and attach your stick to your spaceship.” He paused once more as he thought about it. “I retract my statement. It is possible.”
When he finally cast his eyes on her once more, she was doing that thing where she scrunched up her nose and looked at him as if she was trying to figure him out.
With a laugh, she took another sip of her drink.
“Kyro, you are so weird, but I mean it in the nicest way... I like it.”
Never mind that she just insulted him nicely. He could take that and think about it later. But...did she say she liked him?
For a few seconds, he wondered what the strange warmness growing inside him was.
And this thing tugging at his mouth, making his lips want to stretch across his face. Dear Polvrak. He wanted to smile?
When he returned to his quarters, he had to check if he was low on vitamins. Something was wrong with him.
“So, you were abducted...as a child?” She tapped her drink receptacle. “How? By whom? For what reason? How did you escape?”
What should he tell her? He couldn’t tell her everything. He shouldn’t even be telling her anything at all.
“I...was taken by the High Tasqals.” He glanced at her. “My people were invaded...enslaved.”
“Oh my God.” She sat up straight, looking at him, her eyes wide with horror and...anger? Anger? She was angry for him?
When she reached over and placed her small hand over his, the warmth of her skin was so unexpectedly pleasurable that he froze underneath her touch.
He hadn’t been touched by anyone in so long, he had to stop the chromatophores in his skin from memorizing the imprint of her hand.
With the simple contact, he could feel the remnants of the chets along his arms pulse with excitement, almost as if they wanted to regrow and extrude to show that he could be a protective mate.
Qrakking Goddard’s nest. Whatever was happening to him was making him teeter on the edge of control.
“You were a slave? Like for labor or...”
When he looked at her again, the horror in her eyes touched him deep. She cared that much about his past?
Why?
The questions were too many.
“Oh my God, Kyro,” she whispered. “Did they...did those bastards...” She gulped as contempt grew in her eyes. Contempt at his expense. “Were you a sex slave?”
The thought of being a sex slave to the horrible and utterly vile High Tasqals made the corners of his eyes twitch and pulled him from the thoughts he was mulling over. He could feel the hatred boiling within him.
His emotions were beginning to get the best of him.
This was a dangerous conversation. Too many doors closed. Too many secrets.
That was why he needed to end their little discussion.
“It’s okay,” Evren spoke. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
Then she did something he didn’t expect.
In careful movements, she closed the distance between them to nestle against his arm, bringing up her feet towards her chest as her head rested against his shoulder.
“I guess we have something in common then. Were the rest of your team, your brothers, were they also slaves?”
She spoke as if she didn’t know the effect she was having on him, being so close, touching him, sharing this moment that he’d never shared with anyone else before.
Probably she didn’t know...he hardly understood these new feelings himself.
What was this wild increase of his pulse? This