Page 31 of Guardian's Soul

I likedthis side of her. One she hadn't shown yet. It was playful, approachable, and… nice. I checked through the comm to look for a holovid, one I thought she might enjoy. It was not what I usually watched: holo streamers hunting, brawling, battling. No, I decided I needed something funny. All the while, I was watching her from my peripheral vision. She was different right now. Relaxed. Not as combative as usual.

She has been through a lot, I reminded myself. Something I needed reminding of because, honestly, I hadn't given what she had been through much of a thought. I had been pretty self-involved after the damn mating marks showed up.And before. I wished that voice inside me would shut the frygg up. I didn't need the reminder that from the moment I met her, I had been combative, too. The way I had treated her… I wouldn't have treated any other person I had rescued that way.

You had your reasons. Now the voice wanted to be understanding?

I hadn't wanted to take on another human, that was true, but that still didn't excuse my behavior toward a traumatized female.

Well, if she was smiling and relaxing now, I'd take that peace offering. I could be nicer, too. Ah, there, Doro Krelp was funny. As a Mroxy, he could imitate any person in the universe. His impersonation of Emperor Daryus… frygg, what was I thinking? Hannah didn't know anything about the emperor. She wouldn't understand these jokes. Damn, this was harder than I thought it would be.

"Ah, here," I finally settled on Qualp. That should be innocent enough.

This one fell underAliens Behaving Badlyand was titledThe Great Bloom Pods Heist of Varnax-9.It was about Varnax-9's annual Bloom Pods gala—Bloom Pods were sweets that exploded in one's mouth. They were highly sought after and expensive. Somehow, a gang of Trilian Picklings tunneled underneath the vault—making the sensors think they were decorative plants by using pheromone cloaking—and stole billions of credits worth of Bloom Pods. Only to distribute them to the poorest neighborhoods on several planet systems.

"Oh, so those people had never eaten them before?" Hannah asked after the episode was over, during which she had giggled a few times, making my heart leap every time. I liked the sound of her giggles.

I shook my head. "No, this was the first time. A lot of critics said it was cruel, making people crave something they could never afford."

She looked thoughtful. "What do you think?"

What do I think?Funny, I didn't think anybody had ever asked me that before.

"I think if any of those people had any brain in their heads, they wouldn't have eaten the sweets but sold the Bloom Pods. That would have given them enough credits for a new start."

Hannah laughed. "Of course you would."

"Wouldn't you?" I threw back.

She stopped laughing, making me feel like I had donesomething wrong, but she was mulling my words over before she nodded. "Probably."

"Hah, so, there." I couldn't stop myself.

That made her laugh again, and I froze, watching her pretty face turn into something extraordinarily beautiful. Why hadn't I noticed before how her eyes sparkled? Or how enticing her lips were?

She noticed that I was watching her, and for a fraction of a tick, time stood still between us. Her laughter subsided, and our eyes locked. It felt as if the very air around us was electro-charged. Tiny currents pulled us together like magnets.

We broke the spell simultaneously, turning our heads and clearing our throats. I wasn't sure what she was thinking, but I had to stop before the urge to pull her into my arms and kiss her turned into reality. My hands had already reached for her when I broke from my trance.

I wasn't sure where my sudden desire to kiss her came from, but once the thought entered my mind, it was hard to resist or to think of something else.

"Well, that was fun." Hannah laughed nervously, cutting the spell but instantly putting me under another. "We had lots of those, too, and movies." Her smile became wistful, fully pulling me in.

"Movies?"

"Yeah, where people pretend to be other people and play out a story," she elaborated.

"Was it stored on databases?"

Her forehead scrunched up adoringly. "If you count Netflix and stuff a database, then yeah, sure."

I searched through the comm. "If the Pandraxians have taken over Earth, there's a pretty good chance they have uploaded all there is to know about humans… Hold on…" I projected my findings to the wall in the break room. "Is this what you're looking for?"

I wasn't prepared for the sudden change in her. It hit me like a fist in the stomach and captivated me. Her expression turned as if she had seen someone whom she had believed dead. Tears shimmered in her eyes, and she rose so abruptly that her chair toppled over, but she didn't even notice.

She walked forward to the wall, her hand outstretched, trying to touch the images, which seemed silly to me. People kissing, people shooting at each other, some kind of monster chasing a female… I snickered. An alien invasion. Amusingly, the humans had captured the image of a Cryon quite well. All that I only noticed peripherally, though, as my entire attention was on Hannah.

"Can we really watch these?" She pointed at the images.

For her benefit, I called up more. Unexpectedly, she jumped up and down, clapping her hands. "Oh, that one. One of my favorites. Can we watch it?"

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