Page 41 of Command

Something in Threxin shuttered, his apertures squeezing tight, his spikes flinching. Renza noticed.

“No…?” He cocked his head, brows pulled back.

Threxin looked at the female and found her glancing back as she muttered something to her mistress, coaxing the steaming box into her hands. He averted his eyes.

“Leave her for now,” Threxin finally answered. “She is close with the red female.”

“I would not say so,” Renza snorted, tracking Alina as she scurried back out of the command center, the box refused by its irate-looking intended. “And she is a witness. Analienwitness. Best to make this clean.”

“Closer than anyone else, save for her mate,” Threxin insisted. “She may be useful later.”

Threxin felt Renza’s attention from the corner of his eye, and he hastened to change the subject.

“Have you found Orion Halen’s sire?” he asked.

“I have two leads. I think I am close.”

“Good. And the fraternization?”

Renza shifted in his seat, synthleather creaking under his weight, and that was answer enough.

“Everyone out,” Threxin said in Apthian, then repeated in Universal. No one hesitated except Orion Halen and his female, because they were born to be shoqing spikes in his apertures.

“Did your ears deteriorate in my absence?” Threxin snarled—a strategic intonation that required no suppression—and Orion pulled his still-hesitating female away.

Threxin held the underside of his left wrist to his mouth, where his comms patch was adhered.

“Silarra.” The ship recognized his voice and whom he was addressing, opening a network link.

“Oh,” Silarra’s voice droned in the bone-conducting earpiece attached behind his ear. “You’re back.”

“Come to the command center. Now.”

When he, Renza, and Silarra were alone, Threxin spoke. “Have you disposed of the body?”

“Which one?” Silarra frowned. It was a reasonable question.

“Your…pet,” he spat. Renza had already caught him up on the thirty dead in the common residence deck riot the night of Threxin’s attack, and how their remains had been distributed. Orion Halen had been made aware. He wasn’t happy, but accepted begrudgingly that humans had brought their consequences upon themselves, though apparently his female hadn’t felt the same way.

“Oh, that. Yes,” Silarra said. “Lesthin kept some of the organs for sampling. The rest was vented.”

“There have been no further incidents?” Threxin probed.

Silarra scoffed, but snapped her mouth shut quickly, hiding her fangs and bowing her head demurely. The way she lowered it reminded Threxin of how Alina had looked the previous night, her neck bent in submission as she moistened his apertures. He tongued his inner cheek, hard. The gesture helped abate the taste of exorin at the roof of his mouth, if he caught it early enough.

“It is a difficult thing to prevent, brother,” Renza offered.

Threxin’s limiter hummed before he even had a chance to grow annoyed. “Elaborate.”

“It means our cohort are curious.”

“And the humans?”

“Some of them are curious too.” Renza smiled.

“And you?” Threxin asked quietly of his brother, narrowing his eyes.

“I have acted on nothing,” was Renza’s diplomatic reply.

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