Page 128 of Command

He had a feeling Alina Argoud would not enjoy knowing his reasoning, however, so when she tried needlessly to gauge Threxin’s reaction to the news of the offspring he simply assured her he did not care without added elaboration.

The jump was days away, and Threxin had bigger thingsto worry about. Preparations. Threxin’s days were growing ever longer. Though he much preferred spending nights in Alina’s smaller cabin, he found himself sometimes requiring the additional sampling capability of his own quarters, for last-minute comms and commands to the ship. His Alina did not seem to mind. She dutifully slept wherever he commanded, usually already deep in slumber by the time he came to bed each night. He tried to let her be most nights. Sometimes he woke her to fuck. Sometimes he didn’t bother—she would wake on her own once he was inside her.

“You can’t justdothat,” Alina had said sleepily one night when she woke up with him behind her, buried in her cunt.

The protest confused him—she had been leaking her arousal juices before he even entered her, and woke up in the middle of thrusting herself deeper onto his cock. He had felt her mind spark with excitement even before she woke. She wanted it, and he knew it.

“Of course I can.”

She scoffed and tried to shimmy out of the way, at which point Threxin firmly clasped his large hand beneath her belly, clamping her tightly to him. “You are mine to mate.”

“Yeah, but you need toask,” she protested even as her cunt clenched more tightly around him and her mind broadcasted its hunger to his own, making his spikes swell and his cock twitch inside her.

Threxin slid his other arm beneath her then, squeezing a plump breast in his large hand as he shoved her flat against his chest completely. His fangs brushed her earlobe, then tugged none-too-gently at the skin before he pressed his mouth to her ear.

“Ineedto do nothing,” he rasped low, shoving himself deeper still in response to the delicious shudder running down her spine. “I know what you want, little human. And you need to shut your small mouth and take it.”

He was done with the conversation, which he made clearby rolling them over, pinning her flat on her stomach with her face shoved firmly in her pillow. She did not need to talk to take his cock, and he fucked her thoroughly, eliciting one thrashing orgasm after the next as explicit proof of her body’s betrayal.

CHAPTER 58

ALINA

She had woken up with her face in his chest and her leg twined with his own. The first sensation was of the still sticky but mostly dried fluids between her thighs. Alina rolled over and opened her eyes, staring at the dark ceiling of the cabin as she remembered the treatment he’d given her the night before.

The first time she had protested Threxin taking her while she slept was genuine. She found it weirdly hot, reminding her of the time he jerked off next to her in her bed. But logically it seemed like a transgression.

The second time she protested, it was a weak attempt at self-assertion that failed miserably.

She couldn’t hide from him the way she could before—not with themselves so intricately linked. Before, with other people, Alina had been able to lock away her transmissions and block emote comms, keeping her privacy.

That wasn’t an option with Threxin. He had become adept at drilling through whatever flimsy barrier she’d tried to put up, prying her mind open until he knew exactly what she wanted, even if she tried to pretend she didn’t.

Every protest after that was more of a way to get a rise out of him. Alina realized she liked egging him on with her feebleattempts at a fight. Eventually he’d get agitated just enough to shove her face in her pillow or clamp a giant hand over her mouth—or better yet, occupy her mouth in other ways. She hadn’t found the guts yet to admit to him that she liked that, but she was pretty sure he knew by now.

After all, he knew everything else.

They had three days until the jump, and Alina was the only human on the ship besides Orion and Kaia who knew about it.

She lay with that weight for a while, somehow complementary to that of Threxin’s arm draped over her hip. The arm was a comforting possession. The knowledge of what was coming was dread and hope and fear squeezed into a little pit in her stomach all at once.

The whine in her ears didn’t take long to register, but by the time it did Threxin was already bolting upright, already on his feet, already shoving himself into his trousers and clasping up. He did not bother with a shirt, his apertures thin as needles as he grabbed his laser rifle from the floor, already halfway out the door as he slung it over his bare shoulder.

“Stay here,” he said without looking at her. And then he left.

Shit, did he lock me in again?

Alina was already scrambling into her clothes.

Threxin hadn’t locked her in, though he gave her a look that said he wished he had when she showed up at the command center amid the commotion.

The radar was projected on the thermaview, and it took Alina several confused seconds to interpret what she was seeing.

Ships. Hundreds of ships surrounding the blinking blob ofColossal.

Renza was in the pit of the command bay next to Threxin. He had one hand encircling Kaia Halena and the other pressing a barrel to her temple.

Orion Halen was in the commander’s seat.

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