Page 71 of Star Champion

Their lips almost touching, he held her too close to see her eyes, but he felt her reaction to his statement in the slightest softening of her body.I love you. He yearned to reveal all that he felt in his heart aloud, but it would serve no purpose other than to make the course they had chosen more difficult. “I didn’t share the specifics with you about the reception because I didn’t consider them important. It was not at all meant to offend, or to leave you out. I didn’t see the event as pleasure. It wasn’t pleasure. Once there, I went through the motions and did what was necessary for the team. As you did tonight.” He brushed his thumbs over her cheekbones. “We, too, are a team, you and I—in a different, more meaningful sense. It’s how I see you, and will always see you. I couldn’t have more pride in you, my stubborn little trill rat. I couldn’t possibly think more highly of you than I do already. Ah, my beautiful Baréshti lass, if there were any justice in this galaxy, you’d be able to play openly and be on my arm in public wherever we went.”

She sighed. Her hands slid up his back, over his shoulders, and up the back of his neck and into his hair, generating an outbreak of tingles. “If there’s any justice in this galaxy, your lass is going to make love to you until ya can’t walk anymore.” Then she proceeded to prove the truth of those words, many times over.

CHAPTER22

And so the season began.True to her word, Jemm won her pro matches, and continued to win them. Klark had stopped pacing with fists clenched in suspense while she played. Well, mostly stopped. He had started cheering along with the rest of the fans. No one could defeat her.

The winning was contagious, of course, and the excitement buoyed the entire team, which was his fervent hope from the beginning. Everyone played better than in previous years. Yonson Skeet had his best scores to date. Xirri won against a player for the Dars who had defeated him for years.

“The Kes effect,” Skeet dubbed it, and Team Eireya soon climbed in the rankings to third place of the eight clans. They had work ahead of them before they caught the true powerhouse teams of the B’kahs and the Virs, but that day would come; Klark was certain of it.

“Kes! Kes!” the audience chanted as Jemm appeared ringside to face Tatam Lesok of the Lesok clan’s team, the fifth highest scorer in league history. Not since Tatam finished playing at the university level had he lost a match.

Klark rested his hand on Jemm’s shoulder, standing behind her as she viewed the ring. “You’ve watched the vids. You know how he plays. You’ve got this.”

“I know. I’m ready for him. I hope he’s ready for me,” she said, as she always did, for good luck.

He squeezed her shoulder and left her to pace (he couldn’t help it), allowing his coaches to do their job. Head Coach Kailarrenteyareiliann, known as Coach K, conferred with Kes ringside before sending her into the ring. The arena was the Lesok clan’s home turf. But the fans loved Kes, loved an underdog. Loved a commoner like them. While he expected Eireyan media to cover their fans’ favorites, journalists loyal to other teams wanted a chance to interview Kes Aves, AKA Sea Kestrel—the Champion of Barésh.

As the lights in the arena dimmed, allowing the nanocrylic to better display the match taking place inside within its protective circle of blackness and silence, Klark rehearsed how he planned to assuage Jemm’s spirits after the loss, her first since the long-ago day onCheya’s Resolutewhen Skeet had beaten her. “Tatam Lesok has been at this for many standard years,” he would tell her. “You can take pride in how well you played against him, and perhaps one day you will defeat him, too.”

A roar of cheers dragged his attention back to the ring in time to witness her sens-sword crashing into Tatam’s chest plate.

“Holy craggin’ dome,” he muttered, because he knew Jemm was thinking the same thing. She beat Tatam.

Team Eireya surged toward the ring to congratulate Jemm. Her helmet was off, her hair messy. Her face was flushed and alive with exhilaration, her eyes gleaming with happiness as she found Klark’s. Then well-wishers engulfed her and took her from his sight. His heart squeezed. It reminded him of how she so often looked at him. No, they had not once exchanged the word “love” but he hoped it was what she felt for him, as he certainly did for her.

“Team Eireya’s new young superstar Kes Aves decimated Tatam Lesok tonight,” a reporter announced on live galactic feed reported from the sidelines. “The many-times-over Galactic Cup champ and Lesok team captain, Tatam Lesok, appears stunned by what only can be called a rout.”

Tatam, a tough, compact-sized man, flashed a deadly glower at the reporter thrusting a mic-rod at him. He mumbled something then disappeared with a bevy of coaches and Lesok team staff for their locker room.

In the meantime, Jemm was at the eye of a storm of attention. Skeet and other players joined her for photos. Jemm smiled and waved, a natural at pleasing the fans and the press. But she was also tired; he could tell. They had spent many days on the road. His protective instincts urged him to spirit her away to where he could indulge her a little: a quiet room, a bath, dinner just the two of them instead of with the team, and then he would make sure she got a solid night’s sleep.

When the coaches urged her toward the locker room, Klark joined her. “Well done, Kes! Well done.” He gave her a brisk, brotherly hug, punctuated with a few bangs of his hand on her back. But he wanted to swing her over his arm for a victory kiss to remember.

They walked to the locker room, where no one ever questioned Sea Kestrel’s preference for a private changing area. She wasn’t the only pro on the team with an odd habit, and this was her particular quirk. Klark had seeded it as such in the minds of her teammates, and there had not been any problems.

Then Skeet found him. “Sir, Coach K needs you.” He motioned with his chin over to the locker room entrance, where the head coach wore an unhappy expression in the midst of what appeared to be a heated discussion with a gaggle of officials.

“What’s going on?” Jemm was back at his side.

“No idea. Wait here.” Unease invaded his gut as he walked up to the group.

“They want to test Kes for PET,” Coach growled.

“Performance enhancing tech?” Klark turned his infamous Vedla glare to the men. All of them visibly recoiled. “What is the meaning of this?”

“The Lesoks have lodged a formal complaint, Your Highness,” an official answered. “Mr. Aves will have to give a blood sample.”

Klark sensed Jemm watching and listening from farther back in the locker room. By now all of the team had stopped what they were doing to pay attention. Angry rumbling and muttered swearing simmered amongst them.

“This is an unspeakable insult to be thusly accused—to my team and to my clan.”

The officials had no choice in the matter, however. If the Lesoks raised the protest, it had to be investigated immediately, as PET left the bloodstream within a short time.

Klark and Coach stepped aside to allow a league medical assistant into the locker room. Jemm looked ashen. “What are ya testing for, exactly?” she asked.

Will it reveal I’m female? That was the real question in those words.

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