Page 41 of The Alien's Private Redemption

"Get some rest, we'll talk when you wake up."

Ae-cha did something that sent Angela deeper into sleep and she was grateful for the comforting darkness that surrounded her.

Chapter 18

Zoric pulled out of Angela's mind to see a very angry lizardwoman staring at him.

"Thank you," he started, hoping she could hear him over the noise of the plane.

"I hate you," she told him. "Not only was that rude, you were so fucking lucky you did it, that I can't even be mad at you for it. Though I really, really want to."

"I didn't intend to-"

"Shut. Up." Ae-cha said. Her eyes flashed with anger, hurt, and a little bit of fear. Whatever she'd seen while she was reading the metaphorical snakes entrails had shaken her.

Zoric nodded, and put his arms more securely around Angela. It was awkward in the harnesses but he couldn't bring himself to break contact with her. More than the ache of unfinishedbusiness, the attack in the deepest part of her mind, while she was at her most vulnerable had shaken him.

"It was a new intruder," she told him. "Though it has several signature marks from some of the others. It's not the same person who made the death triggers but they learned from the same person. And neither of them match the old ones."

"Old triggers?" Zoric asked.

"Did you not catch the ones in her memory? Shecouldn'tbe seen by a doctor until her Uncle got there. Whoever, whatever, he is, he created the first triggers in her brain. I think he was doing it to try and keep her safe but I have no idea what he was protecting her from."

"From discovery, I'd assume," he said.

"Discovery by whom?" she asked. "There's no way to know without asking him. And I get the feeling he's harder to find for anybody who isn't family."

Zoric thought about it and nodded. "What do you want to do?"

"We need to get as many of the triggers out of her as we can. That's going to require being a little less delicate than we've been."

"No," he said immediately. "Yes, I agree that we need to make removing the triggers a priority, but no, we can't be less delicate than we've been."

"Zoric, I understand she-"

"No, you don't," he interrupted. "You think you do, but your people have been torturing my people's mates for centuries to remove them from us. You've treated the Bond like a coercion to the point that I don't think any of your people have actually formed one in those same centuries. I don't know if the determination to remove them came from jealousy that you stopped having them or if the ability to stop having them came from the torture and, quite frankly, I don't care."

"You abducted them," Ae-cha hissed.

"And how else were we supposed to court them?" Zoric demanded. "When we look like this? When your people have hunted us with the humans, trying to destroy us while all we've done is try to keep our families safe from you and the monster we were cursed to protect."

"Contain," Ae-cha said quietly.

"What?" Zoric demanded.

"I've been reading through some of the records Cooper shared and found a mention of the monster your people were serving. A unit of Elite Guards were sent to capture him and bring him back to the capital for trial and execution. The last message received from the guards was that they had captured him and were responding to a distress signal."

Zoric received the information like a body blow.

"What were his crimes?" Zoric asked.

"Genetic experimentation that resulted in a sullying of the Dragor bloodlines. He was one of a dozen conspirators and the first one to be captured."

"What happened to the rest?"

"I don't know," Ae-cha said, softly. "There's no mentions beyond the fact that they were wanted for the same crimes. It's a fairly minor mention and the only reason I found yours is that it was in a list of units that had gone missing."

His heart hurt. His life, his people's lives, had been built on a lie. Somewhere in the distant past, there had been a horrible accident, and a monster that was supposed to be executed had ended up controlling the soldiers who had been sent to bring him to justice.

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