Page 33 of Command

“Please let me go,” the female whispered, eyes sparkling with fear and wetness. “You’re hurting me.”

One of her kind tried to kill him. It shoqing wellshouldhurt.

“How many days has it been?”

Her brows furrowed. “Three. No, four…”

Shoq. The jump.

Threxin released her, eyeing with some disgust the flush of her skin as blood flooded back into the limb. A crimson outline of his fingers was left—his mark. She rubbed the spot.

“Can I please get Renza?” she begged, voice small and pleading.Pouting.The limiter ratcheted before Threxin’s snarl could be vocalized. There was something perverse about hearing his brother’s name from a human’s lips so casually.

“Go,” he grunted, turning away as the female scurried from the room.

When she was gone, Threxin picked up the noisy tablet from the bed.

Alina

Do not run.

Running would draw attention, especially at this time of night. It was 2345, and that meant a shift change. Threxin woke up at an inopportune moment.

Alina had woken hours ago from what had been meant to be a five-minute nap. How she had managed to fall into such a deep sleep with the invader clenching her in a death grip was put down to sheer exhaustion. When she had opened her eyes, Threxin was no longer squeezing the life out of her. Instead, she’d gotten wedged on her side between the wall and the alien, her face squished into his arm.

Her first act had been to check the wound. The synthskin layer was dislodged, but not toobadly, thank God. She then quietly slithered off the edge of the bed and reapplied the dressing.

Finally Alina had checked the time. 2200. She’d been asleep for almost twenty hours.

Shit. She’d missed Kaia’s breakfastanddinner run. Alina had started shoving her feet into her boots in a panic, then hesitated. What was the plan here? Was she gonna find Kaia with two belated meals? Kaia probably hadn’t even noticed Alina’s absence—if anything, she might be relieved tonotbe nagged with a box of food she would likely reject anyway.

Plus there might be questions. Like where had she been or—maybe worse—what did she want. Thinking better of it, Alina had moved instead to her usual spot on a pile of blankets at Threxin’s bedside. She’d slid out her tablet and put onGuy Meets Girlto try to get her mind off this colossal screwup.

And then he woke up. On her way to find Renza, wherever he may be, Alina realized she had no idea what he had told everyone—both the alien occupiers and human crew—about their new commander’s three-day absence.

There was another problem: Alina didn’t knowwhereshe’d find him. Since it was close to midnight, wouldn’t he be in his quarters? Where even was that? How was she going to get there without arousing suspicion?

Alina needn’t have worried, because as she turned the corner from her cabin’s passageway, Renza was right there on the other side of the hall.

“What?” Renza snapped to attention.

He must have seen the answer on her face because he was clearing the distance toward her with long strides before she could even open her mouth to answer.

Alina gave him a curt nod and hastened back to the cabin.

“He’s coming,” she told Threxin, who had sat up and was leaning against the cabin wall with her tablet in hand. “You’re not supposed to move.”

“What ship is Connor Mathews from?” The uhyre glanced up from the screen.

“Who? Oh… That’s not from a colony, that’s from Old Earth. It’s a show,Guy Meets Girl. It’s not real.”

Threxin began to say more, but his gaze shifted behind her. Alina moved out of the way just in time to avoid getting shoved aside as Renza cleared the space to the bed and kneeled on his haunches.

He said something in Apthian, muttering more quietly than was necessary. She did understand some, but the words were too fast and too frequent, blending in strange ways, to grasp more than “brother,” “blood,” and “hunt” from Renza. From Threxin she picked up “female” as his eyes flicked to her. Alina plucked at her already pitiful finger polish and stared at her feet, trying to make herself as inconspicuous as possible. Then, realizing the man had just woken up from a three-day coma, she busied herself with retrieving a shot glass of water from her hydrastation.

“You.” Threxin’s voice stopped her in her tracks. Alina waited, but he simply glared at her with the blazing blue that almost swallowed his pinprick pupils, making his eyes look like solid blotches of ice. Alina looked to Renza for some instruction. Despite their unimaginable differences, she’d developed a tentative thread of reluctant familiarity with the red uhyre out of sheer necessity. He inclined his chin at her, and Alina cleared her throat, stepping forward. She held the glass out to her illicit patient. Threxin ignored it.

“Why did you not kill me?” The question sounded more like an accusation. The uhyre’s rough baritone made the flesh on her arms chill and tighten.

---