Page 72 of Tempting Cargo
They couldn’t. I schooled my features and rose to stand. “I skykking hate you both right now, you know that?”
Muzati didn’t flinch, didn’t growl, just drained her mug and set it on the counter with aclink. “We forgive you. Just get in the speeder.”
Halfway through the forest, she must have reached her limit for keeping silence. “It’s not just about them, Cap.” She ignored my warning growl. “So while we’re here… Ask Garrison to stay, Sho. Did you see how miserable he was? The two little humans were all excited, but he looked like a soldier who’d been asked to guard the conveniences after a sick keppli took a massive shit.”
A puff of laughter broke from me, even if I choked the rest down. “Easy to say when you think you can’t bond with a human. It’s bad enough knowing I’ll be mated off to some Orithian I’ll hate for the rest of my life. I can’t risk being soulbound before that happens too.”
Muzati’s mouth dropped open. She stared at me, unblinking.
Kheh, I’d found a way to make her lose her words.
My eyes lingered on my dusty station boots. “He makes my bones tingle, Muzi. I can’t do it. And it’s beside the point because now I have all thisshaa’ithskykkery to confuse matters.” The new word was strange on my tongue and created more questions than it gave answers.
Muzati cleared her throat with a strangled cough. “One thing at a time then, Sho. We’re here.”
At the speeder corral, the three strangers looked as pissed as I felt.
Let’s get this over with.
“I am sorry for staring. It is not what you think.” My voice was little more than a croak, and I took a gulping breath. “I am from Orith, but I am not like them. I have a brother who looks just like you, and I don’t know what it means.”
Once, I did not speak of Airida to anyone. These days, apparently I needed to tell everyone, even surly strangers.
“Your friends say he’s on your planet.” The angry, accusing one was the spokesperson.He had the same kind of eyes, I realised. Airida shared our crystalline orbs, but instead of being solid, his smaller shimmering circles were surrounded by the palest blue, much like Garrison’s brown was surrounded by white. Where Airida’s crystals were purple like mine, the angry one’s eyes glistened in light gold.
“Yes.But he has—” I closed my mouth with aclack. “My parents believe he has a genetic condition,” I said stiffly, still not accepting what my eyes were telling me, what their name was telling me, and not wanting to cause further outrage.
The group burst into sharp-edged laughter.
“You could say that,” muttered one.
“Please forgive my ignorance. You do not appear to have the same health concerns as him, but you look so similar. Like…” I struggled for the right words, but I didn’t have any. “Like kri’ith, but not.”
The leader bristled again, but one of his companions put a hand on his forearm and stepped forward. “We are shaa’ith.” She waited for the implication of the name to hit me, but my brain didn’t want to comprehend, much as when I’d first heard it from Paiata an hour ago.
I urged myself to take in the more orange shade to their chests, their somewhat more slender build, the jutting angle of their noses. Their features so familiar and yet so strange.
Here, away from the setting of my parents’ house, on different faces to my brother’s, the similarities with the shaa were more obvious and the name they gave themselves logical.
“There are not many of us, but enough for us to be our own people,” the female shaa’ith said. “Is he your brother by birth?”
I let the words filter through the confusion and denial, and tilted my head.
“Then welcome, sister,” the spokesperson said, his voice tight. “My name is Tokoran. We have much to talk about, including your brother’s safety. Come with us.”
I let them lead us to a homely cantina just off the marketplace—a taverna, he called it.
My head spun with possibilities.My brother did not have a genetic condition. He was part shaa.How can this be?
Airida was the image of our father in his kri’ith features, so it couldn’t be that our mother had mated with another male—which meant one or both of them must carry shaa genes.
Did they know? It was unthinkable.
While my parents were cruel enough to have lied about a medical condition, I wasn’t sure that was the case. Were they in denial or trying to find an easier, more palatable rationale?
Adrenaline flooded my body, as though knowing there was action I could take—action Ishouldtake—and I thrummed with the need to know everything so I could dosomething.
The female shaa’ith, Daiytak, ordered food for us, and I picked at the spiced, roasted meat as I talked.
