Page 49 of Command

“Regret it yet?” she asked.

“What?”

“This.” Alina spread her arms, indicating everything and looking only slightly apologetic when she bumped his shoulder.

“This ship is mine by blood,” Threxin stated.

“Yeah, but why do you even want it?”

Threxin’s spikes twitched, considering. This was perhaps the time to leave. The female was fine. Calm and growing too bold.

“My father,” he said instead. “My blood father. He told me stories of this ship and my blood right. The other offspring thought it stupid. I thought it stupid also. Even when I was older and we discoveredElysian, and learned that it was very possibly true, I wanted nothing to do with this myth.”

“But?” Alina angled herself toward him.

“But Koruth had other ideas.”

“Korth… Your adoptive father, right?”

“Adoptive?” Threxin searched through his memory of Universal for a definition.

“Like, someone who took you in after your parents… Well, what happened with them anyway?”

Threxin took another pull of hak. This was not how he imagined this conversation going, but it seemed thatindulging her was helping her calm down. “They were killed in the final massacre. Soon after we tookElysian.”

Her eyes widened. “I’m… so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.” Threxin bristled at the pity. He did not need it.

“So, Koruth…”

“Koruth had been a nonbeliever. But afterElysianhe saw in the ship’s records that it was all true. The ship my father’s blood owned existed, and it was namedColossal. Only my father was dead.”

“But you weren’t…”

“I was not.” Threxin lifted his chin in mild agreement. “Koruth saw the records of your Heaven. For him, Heaven was immortality. Our kind’s natural lifespan is only slightly longer than yours.”

“And he wanted his people to live forever…” Alina finished for him.

Threxin scoffed with a staying hand on her knee. “Hewanted to live forever. The rest of us were just… How do you say in your tongue?”

“Along for the ride?”

“Yes.”

Alina looked like she was thinking very hard. “So he wanted to use you… But how did he knowColossalwould ever come to your galaxy?”

“We kept one of your kind fromElysian. We sent it in a scout vessel to transmit a callColossalwould receive.”

“How’d you know he’d do it?”

Threxin processed. Humans utilized a myriad of confusing contractions. Finally he detangled the words.

“A sacrifice,” he said. “One of ours accompanied him.”

“So Koruth groomed you to do all of this. This whole time…” Her leg shifted beneath his hand. “And then you killed him.”

“He did not groom me,” Threxin balked. “Both me andmy brother groomed ourselves. We needed not our father to bathe us.”

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