The humor on Drakkal’s face faded, giving way to something more solemn—but his eyes maintained their loving light. “Told you she wasn’t important, and she’s not. Not anymore. But…I won’t lie about who she was to me a long, long time ago. You willing to hear me out before you kill me?”
Sighing, Shay let her head rest on the pillow, keeping face turned toward Drakkal, and stroked his cheek with her thumb. “I’m not going to kill you. You’re too big for me to dispose of the body by myself.” She smirked, but it faded quickly. She drew her hand from him to settle it gently upon her sleeping baby. “Won’t be able to help my mad jealousies, though, considering she was your lover and all.”
His expression darkened. “Loverisn’t the right word. Vanya never loved anything apart from herself. I think… You’ve shared a lot of your past with me, Shay, and I haven’t really told you anything. I need to tell the story from the beginning, so you understand. SoIcan understand…because I don’t think I’ve had the chance to truly put it all behind me until you came along.”
“So, start from the beginning. I want to know, Drakkal. The good, the bad, everything. It’s not going to change how I feel about you now.”
He nodded and lay down, rolling onto his back. His eyes swung up toward the ceiling, but they had a far-off gleam, as though he were looking well beyond the physical. “I was born on Jakora, the azheran homeworld. Big cities everywhere, billions of people…kind like how Sam describes your Earth. And it never sat well with me. My parents were historians, basically, so I spent my youth learning about the culture and traditions of my people, our history, and I felt like we’d strayed so far from what we were. I wanted something different.
“I met Vanya a year before reaching my majority. She seemed to feel the same as me—she wanted a simpler life, a life more in touch with the roots of our people. We wanted to know what it was like to live off the bounties of nature, to hunt and fish and survive, to make things with our own hands. She was…beautiful, confident, strong. A huntress even then. Everything I thought I wanted.
“I fell for her. For a long time”—his brows fell low, and his lips turned down in a deep frown—“I even thought I loved her.”
Shay pressed her lips together and lifted a hand away from Leah, curling it into a tight fist at her side. She turned away from Drakkal to look at the peaceful face of her baby. It calmed some of the violent impulses inside Shay.
Everyone has a past, Shay. Get over it. Drakkal didn’t go bat shit crazy when you mentioned your ex, who you created ababywith.
Not that she was angry with Drakkal—she just wanted to knock a few teeth out of that bitch Vanya’s smug face. Shay was sure Drakkal had to suppress similar thoughts when her ex came up.
“Once we were of age,” Drakkal continued, “we left Jakora. Went to one of the fringe worlds, a frontier planet with abundant wildlife and few people. We stocked up on supplies at one of the few permanent settlements and headed out to find our piece of the wild. Built a house, built a life. And it was good, for what it was. Or at least Itoldmyself it was good. It wasn’t ever easy—we had to work for everything, and there were stretches where we were pretty hungry—but it felt good. Satisfying. At least for me.
“And I was still taken by Vanya. We had sex. Often. But any time I pushed for more, she pulled away. Guess I was blind to the signs. She didn’t want anything official, didn’t want any real commitment beyond what we already had. And I figuredwhat we had should’ve been enough for me, right? She was living with me, sharing a home and a bed. Wasn’t it greedy to want anything more?
“She started taking longer trips away from home. I thought she was pushing to find new animals, new hunting spots, or maybe scouting for valuable resources so she could sell the information in town. That was a good way to bolster our supplies sometimes. I was either too dumb or too naïve to realize the truth of what was going on. Figured she just needed space, and I wanted to give her everything she wanted.
“During the last of hertrips, I was outside chopping wood. I looked up and see this big, ugly ship come over the mountains. It looked like some kind of modified military transport. There were some rough ships—and rougher people—who went to planets like that one to lie low and hide from the authorities, but I’d never seen one like that.”
Drakkal settled his hands over his abdomen, intertwining his fingers. “Thing flies right up to the house, opens a drop ramp, and a dozen slavers hop out with guns and shock staffs. I didn’t give myself time to think. I ran inside, grabbed my rifle, and prepared to defend myself. When they came toward the house, I shot at them.
“My people…we have this old warrior tradition that everyone on my homeworld liked to point to with pride, but few people are willing to follow anymore. The right thing to do, the honorable thing to do, was to fight to the death in defense of my home. Because what if I failed, and they were still there when Vanya came home? I was ready for it. Can’t say that I was some skilled warrior or that I had much experience fighting, but I was ready.”
Tension formed a crease between his brows and made the muscles of his jaw briefly bulge. “Turned into a gunfight right there. They were covering each other, forcingme to duck away so they could advance toward the house, but I know I hit at least a couple of them. I was a decent shot, at least. The whole time, they were yelling at me to come out, to surrender. And then I hear the back door open, and I spin around, ready to shoot…only it was Vanya.
“Stupid me sees her and doesn’t wonder how she managed to show up right at that moment, doesn’t wonder why the slavers hadn’t already surrounded the place…and I guess there was no reason to. I just thought to myselfnow we have a chance. And she looked me right in the eye and nodded like she was there for me,withme, like she was in it until the end, too.
“She strode toward me, and I turned around to shoot back at the slavers, actuallyexcitedabout the fight since she was there. I didn’t hear her activate the stun gun. Didn’t even have a chance to face her again. My whole body seized up, and I fell. Stayed conscious—guess I’m a lot tougher than I am smart—and tried to resist as she pulled out this big set of manacles. She had to hit me with the stun gun twice more before she could get me restrained.
“Then she called to the slavers, and they strolled right up to the house like that had been the plan all along. Because it had been. They dragged me to my feet and pulled a hood over my face, but I heard them talking. Heardhertalking. And even then, even as they were hauling me toward their ship, I just couldn’t fucking believe that she’d done that.”
Pain radiated along Shay’s jaw; only then did she realize that she’d been clenching it for some time. She worked it loose, but tension still gripped the rest of her. “If I’d known about all this before, Drak, I would have shot her in the fucking face the moment she showed it.”
Drakkal’s chest rumbled, and he reached out to brush the backs of his fingers along her arm. He smiled. “My fiercekiraia. You’re a hundred times the warrior she could everhope to be. I was tempted to kill her…but she’s not worth the trouble it would’ve caused. The Eternal Guard wouldn’t care what she did in the past, only that we shot her in the middle of an upper city street.
“But like I said, I heard them. I was the last target on the list Vanya made for them. It was her passage—her price to become part of their crew. Guess she’d had enough of the frontier life. Wanted a change.”
“Dirty, cowardly, bitch,” Shay muttered.
“Yeah,” he growled. “She’s a fuckingzhe’gaash.”
Shay could help it; she laughed. She bit her lip, holding as much of that laughter in as possible to keep from disturbing Leah, and flicked her eyes from the baby to Drakkal. “You totally upgraded. I may have done some bad shit, but least I never backstabbed anyone.”
Drakkal lifted a thick strand of Shay’s hair and curled it around his metal finger. “Shay, there isnocomparison between the two of you. She is nothing. You areeverythingto me.”
Warmth bloomed in Shay’s chest, spreading outward. The high created by Drakkal’s love was better than any drug could provide, and it pushed aside her jealousy; Vanya really was nothing to him anymore.
“What happened after they took you?” she asked.
“They brought me and all the other people they’d captured to Caldorius, capital of the whole damned slaver universe.” He shook his head, and his tongue briefly slipped out to run over his lips. “Guess I have the sort of physique they like to see in the slave arenas, so I was bought by someone who wanted to make me a fighter. And that’s what I did. They trained me hard, and they were mean bastards, but it was a good distraction from my despair.