Page 78 of Command

Alina somehow wasn’t surprised. Per Halen looked defiant even in his present state, exuding either stubbornness or stupidity. She wondered how much of that had rubbed off on his son.

“Let me talk to him,” Alina suggested. “Alone, just for a few minutes. Maybe we can… I can find another way.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, I won’t tell anyone your little secret.”

Per Halen’s voice was hoarse and broken, like he’d been screaming. It was the first time she’d heard him speak, and both she and Threxin stared as the man adjusted himself against the wall with a pained expression before continuing, “You’re fulfilling your purpose.”

“Purpose?” Alina frowned. “What are you?—”

“He wants me to breed you,” Threxin answered for him. “That’s why thisColossalwas sent to Apth. To find me so I can fuck offspring into you.”

“To save us all,” Per Halen interjected.

Alina had been gawking, but that comment made her scoff. “Because cross-species interaction worked so well for us last time?”

“Your commander will explain it to you,” Per Halen groaned. “I don’t have the strength to rehash this with a traitorous servant bitch.”

Alina hadn’t had a chance to react by the time Threxin wasat Per Halen’s side, slamming his boot into the side of his face. His head snapped sideways, blood bursting from his nose and mouth. He tried to lift a shaking hand to capture it, but it only gushed over his palms. It took several moments for Alina to register the brutality of it and get moving.

“Threxin, stop!” She grabbed his arm and was shoved away as he reared back for another kick. Through the tears welling in her eyes, she could barely see his face, but what she could see appeared entirely without affect. How could someone be so calm while beating a man to a pulp? Alina lurched for him again only to be shrugged off like a rag doll, stumbling back over her feet.

There was no reasoning with this creature. There was only escape. The hard edge of the doorframe at her spine jolted her to her senses. She could feel the fears that had been suppressed in the chilled depths of her head poking their way out, hot pokers melting their way through the ice.

Per Halen was unconscious. Threxin stood over him, neck bent, spikes and apertures rising and falling with his breathing. When his hardened face turned toward her, Alina saw him in his full otherness. This alien monster was just pinning her against the wall not twenty minutes ago. It was marking her with its lips and teeth, scraping at her with its rough tongue. It slathered her with poison all over her skin and she had taken it, even fought the filthy craving to consume it despite the consequences. It had left her on the floor and forced her to pose for it while it used her for its pleasure, and how fucked up was she that her first thought was to taste the result of it all?

Alina’s mouth was dry and her skin on fire with shame.

She numbly watched Threxin lift his inner wrist to his mouth, where she saw the flash of a comms device adhered to the skin. He spoke and she didn’t hear what he was mumbling, but she could tell by the movement of his mouth and throat that he was speaking Apthian. His eyesremained locked on her beneath his hooded brows as he spoke.

When he approached, Alina remained frozen in place. When he took her by the arm in a firm grip and steered her from the room, she followed numbly. When he shoved her back into the bedroom, Alina balked, staring at the wall where he’d used her and the floor where he’d had her kneel. He must have felt her seize because he tightened his hold on her and pulled her back against his chest with force. She dug her nails into the flesh of her palms when she felt his breath at the back of her ear.

“Stay here,” he commanded. When she did not respond, he jerked her against him roughly. “Do you recognize?”

Alina swallowed dry chalk and forced herself to move her head up and down, but it wasn’t enough.

“Say it,” Threxin insisted against her ear.

“I understand.”

His touch disappeared abruptly. Finally alone, a hollowness expanded in her chest, like she had no organs at all. Like there were only a cold, empty cavity beneath her ribs.

Alina turned and stared at the door. The monster had left her alone in its bedroom with the door shut, keeping her from witnessing whatever awful thing he was doing to the man on the other side. In his absence the rest of her senses crept back into her body, until Alina heard the alien voices behind the door. She struggled to make out what they were. It was something about a human, but which one? Her, or Per Halen? She thought she made out the Apthian equivalent to a male pronoun.Take him?

There was shuffling and a distinctly human groan, then some more guttural grunts. Then silence, but she could tell whoever else was there hadn’t left. Alina waited with bated breath, knowing her fate would be sealed when she and Threxin were alone.

“You are in trouble, k’riar.” Alina held her breath at thesudden proximity of the voice, which appeared now to be right outside the door as Renza made his comment in Universal.

“Go,” was Threxin's flat reply in Apthian.

Heavy footsteps retreated. A door hissed open, then clicked shut, and then hissed open again as Threxin reentered the bedroom, shadowing the doorway.

CHAPTER 35

THREXIN

Threxin prowledColossal’sblood passages for endless ticks after leaving Alina in her cabin. Ship hours passed, and still he paced, his limiter humming incessantly in the depths of his skull until he thought he’d never be rid of it again. The feeling of it churning at his brain matter, manipulating his synapses—severing some connections, making new ones—was so constant that it seemed to increase his agitation, only to forcefully shut him back down soon as he began to acknowledge it.

He kept waiting for it to numb him out, help him think clearly.

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