Page 2 of Keeping Sarah

Inside my head, Rex told me, “You’ve got to keep them in line, Sarah. I brought some of my worst mercenaries to take your people out. They won’t hold back their baser instincts around a woman for long. And since we’re sharing your body for the timebeing, I don’t really savor becoming their toy for the rest of the trip. Most of my men enjoy torture in ways that I do not.”

He relinquished control back to me after his spiel and I was surprised he bothered when he could have usurped me. “If you can take control of my body like you just did, Rex, then why give it back?”

He sighed. “There are few things more horrific than having your autonomy taken from you. I don’t fucking appreciate what you did to me, but I’m not going to do it back to you.”

Shock rippled through me.He actually has a sense of fairness?

“Yes, I have a sense of fairness,” he said irritably. “Did you forget I can hear your thoughts, Sarah?”

I sat down in a nearby chair. Whatever his reasoning, Rundown had a good point—what the hell was my plan once I got to Faithless? I didn’t have much of one when I had reverse possessed Rex. In that moment, all I knew was that I had to stop the fight going on around me. Stop the killing and the slaughter of people and conduits. Then Rex had run to attack Deacon while he was down and unable to defend himself. I snapped, acting on instinct. I ran after Rex, grabbed his tail, and held on until I had absorbed him into me.

I’d had no choice but to remove Rex from the fight to stop it from becoming a massacre. I was right about that.

“But what now?” he asked with a certain amount of glee. “You can’t kill me without killing yourself to do it."

“We will negotiate a peace between our parties.”

He laughed too jovially. “There will never be a peace between us, and you are delusional if you think that could ever happen. Just my luck. I get taken by an extra crazy conduit with wild ideas of a truce.”

“Why couldn’t there be a peace between us, Rex?” I asked him. “What are you so afraid of that you wouldn’t try to come to some kind of cease fire?”

“I’m not afraid of anything. I don’t let insults stand. If you want to keep calling yourself Queen, then you shouldn’t either.”

I almost smiled. “Oh? What should I do?”

“Prepare to lose everything you care about.” His voice was sinister.

“Not while you’re stuck inside of me,” I happily reminded him.

He grunted in annoyance.

I asked the nearest mercenary, “How much longer to Faithless?”

“Aw, are you sick of our company already, human?” He snickered.

“How much longer?” I asked, ignoring his snide remark.

“About an hour, give or take.”

I didn’t want to sit around for that long, so I decided to go for a walk. Rex’s ship—Trace, his memory told me—was far bigger than Deacon’s and Jac’s ships. The exterior was a dark blue that looked almost gray, and those colors carried on throughout the inside. The scant windows gave me a view of the forest below as night had begun to fall. Out there, drecks and other animals began to stir, while others bedded down. Everyone preparing for the night ahead.

I smiled at my own reflection in the glass and thought back to when, had I been on Earth and still living my old life, I would have been finishing supper, or maybe washing my face at this time of the evening. Things had been so much simpler then.

I hadn’t known there were aliens. Nor had I known that my biological father was one of them. My mom—God rest her soul—had never told me or my sisters anything about our dad. She always said it was too painful. Now without Deacon or Jac bymy side, I had a taste of that pain, and the bitterness made me understand why she couldn’t speak about our father. Being so far from my companions was like ashes in my mouth.

“Your father is a Ladrian?” Rex asked slowly.

Shit.I did everything I could not to think of his name and started to panic.Marshmallows, puppies, carpets, candles, baskets, notebooks, fuck.

“Maybe if you behave, we can sort out an arrangement for that last one, Sarah,” he said in a lewd tone.

I rolled my eyes, because there was no way I’d ever fuck Rex, and went back to staring out the window.

“You were being sentimental. Made me uncomfortable,” he said in my mind. “So, I thought I’d return the favor.”

I chuckled at him. “Thinking about my family makes you uncomfortable?"

"You seemed bonded to them. It was odd.”

---