Page 95 of Command

“I will return in one of your hours,” Threxin said, apertures tensing in sync with her shoulders. “Then we will talk.”

Was he going to come back and make her tell him everything she knew? Was he going to interrogate her?

“I will not ask questions,” he preempted her fears. “Yet.”

Threxin brought food with him when he returned. Not even nutrigel, but the real stuff: fresh bread with seed oil butter. Alina had begun to question where he got it or who had to go without, but the look he gave her stopped her. She offered him half. He refused.

Now, he sat on her bed and she on her plastic chair. She dabbed her index finger into the crumbs on her plate, transferring them to her tongue.

“I have arranged delivery to another dock, through another human, on another date,” Threxin said. “And disposed of the problem.”

“What? Disposed?” Alina’s head snapped up, thrusting ahand through her hair. “You killed Barton? But he didn’t evendo…”

“Was that his name?”

Alina couldn’t breathe. Her ribs were like stone, refusing to expand for air. Threxin had walled off the secret passage down to the CRD because of her. And now he’d killed another person because of her. He was still here and able to do all these things—because ofher.

“I did not kill him,” Threxin said. “You would not like it if I killed him.”

He cares what I like?

Something in her loosened. “What did you do?”

“He is isolated.”

Alina closed her eyes and shoved her knuckles into them, rubbing until red, blue, and green blotches flared behind her eyelids. “Threxin…”

“He influences part of myColossalthat, as you say, may mean me harm.”

“Threxin, the whole ship might mean you harm,” Alina sighed even though she knew he was right. Barton was part of an active plot against Threxin’s command.

“And you?” Threxin asked coolly.

“Me?”

“Do you mean me harm?”

Alina looked to the ceiling, shaking her head. “After all this, you’re still asking me that.”

In her periphery, Threxin leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, big hands hanging loose between them. “I said I would not ask questions, and I will not, human. But I need to be sure you do not think treating me was a mistake.”

“A mistake…” Alina muttered. “I am doing everything I can to keep a bridge of communication between our species, Threxin. Tohelpso maybe we can… coexist somehow.”

Threxin did not speak, tracking her face with an intensity that made her insides clench.

“No, it wasn’t a mistake,” she sighed. “But you invaded their ship, Threxin, and they’re dying. You can’t be surprised that they want to resist, can you?”

Threxin rose so suddenly that her eyes snapped back to him, fighting the instinct to flinch from his intimidating size, then the instinct to fall into him. The mass of his presence tugged her in like she was a satellite circling a planet, helpless to the effect of its gravity.

“I see,” he said.

Alina shoved her fingers once more through her hair. “God, you don’t understand.”

“I understand very well, human,” Threxin said. “Your loyalty lies with your kind. It always will. You think me an invader, and when you demand I loosen my security or demand I permit your kind to Upload you do not consider whether doing so will endanger me or my cohort.”

“I do consider all that.” Alina stood up from her seat to get even just a little closer to his height, as laughable as it was. She needed some gravity of her own. “I consider you every damn day while I try to find ways to make this work.”

“This.”

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