Daahn Rising (20 page)

Well, that probably went without saying. She wasn’t Xxanian. If his suspicions were founded, the Xxan had never created a natural crossbreed like he and his
seir
were.

“How... ? Whoa —” Seaver’s face paled, and he swallowed hard. “You mean, you’ll... ? Uh...”

Aleeks smiled at the captain’s inability or unwillingness to face the fact that one of his officers was a crossbreed with very Xxanian mating habits, that he could — and ultimately would bind a female to him until they were nearly inseparable. Once mated, Aleeks and his mate would crave each other. If he died, she would pine to death. If
she
died, it would send him into a killing rage, and if he survived long past it, it was unlikely he’d mate again.

The captain’s fear of and distaste for the idea of such a commitment was common among humans, and so they pretended it wasn’t a reality in their crossbred associates. It was a mental block many humans suffered from.

Aleeks was aware that Seaver could see the serrated hunting teeth surrounding his very human incisors and canines. Smiling a big, toothy grin wasn’t an expression he indulged in often. Seaver’s shudder of revulsion illustrated why he usually stifled the urge.

“You’ll —” Seaver took a step away from him. “You’ll want to handle her questioning then.”

“I insist.”

The captain waved him away.

Aleeks headed for the primary cell block, anticipating seeing her again. He coded into the block, nodding to the guard on the way past the desk. The door lock clicked open for him, and Aleeks pushed it wide, then stopped in the doorway, horrified.

Mirienne lay curled on the bunk, her eyes squeezed shut and weeping, her cheeks red and ravaged.

Damn you, Jacks.
The lieutenant had taken his glasses back and left her in agony in a fully lit room.

“Fifteen percent,” Aleeks ordered. “The lighting is never to go above twenty percent, but no more than fifteen percent in the next three days.” She’d need at least that long to heal from this assault.

“Yes, sir.” The guard punched Aleeks’s orders into the console before him without question, and the lighting inside the cell dropped to a comfortable level for Xxanian eyes.

Aleeks strode inside, closing the door behind him, noting in annoyance that the lock engaged. She was hardly a threat in this state.

He didn’t waste time. Aleeks wet a cloth with cool water and went to her, pressing it to Mirienne’s swollen face. A half-swallowed sob escaped her lips, and her shivering form jerked in response to the touch.

The effects of tears on her sensitive crossbred skin would be nearly as agonizing as the light was to her fully Xxanian eyes. It was one of the few reasons Aleeks didn’t curse his own inability to tear.

At a loss to comfort her, Aleeks searched out a parent’s soothing rumble in the Xxan language. It was surely something she’d heard before.

“Do not insult me,” she snapped in English.

Startled, he fumbled for words in his primary language. “I didn’t mean to insinuate that you are a child,” he offered by way of apology.

“No. Of course not. Instead, you insult me by assuming I wish to speak Xxan.” There was a note of hurt underlying her anger.

“Would an Earth lullaby be more to your taste?” he asked in exasperation.

Mirienne hesitated, her brow furrowing against his fingertips. “I don’t know what
lullaby
is,” she admitted.

“Then you weren’t —” Aleeks bit off the rest of the retort, aware of how hurtful it was to suggest she hadn’t been raised right. “I’ll refresh the cloth.”

He could hear her moving on the bunk, see wisps of that movement at the corner of the mirror, and he removed his glasses to see better in the semidarkness. It was no surprise to find her upright and leaning against the wall, her lower legs hanging over the edge of the narrow sleeping surface. The fact that her eyes were open, however, was surprising.

Mirienne was in misery. Aleeks went to her, wasting only a moment to take in her red-gold, slitted eyes before he pressed the cloth to them again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

Her jaw tightened. “That I’m Xxan enough to require darkness or that I’m human enough to cry salt tears when the light —”

“I’m sorry that Jacks did this to you.”

For a moment, she was silent. “Why... are you doing this?”

“Caring for you? You’re injured.”

“Do humans always care for their prisoners?”

“I’m not human,” he reminded her.

“More than I am.” She sighed.

“I can’t cry.”

People believed that made Aleeks cold, but he felt as deeply as anyone else did. He simply couldn’t express it the same way they did. He didn’t sweat. He didn’t blush or pale... unless he was ill. He often chose not to smile.

“The Xxan would have loved you.”

Aleeks’s move to question that was cut short.

“I don’t need my eyes to answer the charges against me,” she stated, her spine stiffening.

“Should there be charges against you?” He kept his tone cool and nonjudgmental.

“Would you believe me if I claimed there shouldn’t be?” The bite of cynicism was no surprise.

Yes.
“Maybe. You did kill three of the Grea Elders.”

“That doesn’t make me your ally,” she pointed out. “You have no choice but to assume me part of the plot against you. I know that.”

“And you allowed me to bring you here. What does that tell me?” Aleeks wasn’t certain what it told him, but he wanted to hear what she thought it did.

“Should I have killed you to escape deeper into the tunnels?” she countered.

“You could have
tried
.”
And failed.
Mirienne was good, but she wasn’t that good. She was a much better shot than she was at hand-to-hand combat.

She faltered, something incoherent emerging before words did. “I don’t understand you.”

“You didn’t know what the Grea Elders intended,” he stated confidently.

****

Miri took a calming breath. She didn’t understand why he bothered to play this game, but she’d answer honestly, nonetheless. “No. I knew nothing about the deception.”

She counted the heartbeats, hardly daring to breathe. Commander Daahn had no reason to believe her. No sane warrior would.

That left him with only a few choices. Would he call her a liar? Would he try to prove her a liar? Would he try to beat some other truth from her? Or would he simply kill her?

“You’ve trained extensively,” he noted. “Enough to attempt to escape me without harming me... in at least five different forms, including high Xxan.”

So he wants to prove I’m lying.
Miri chose not to answer him. What would be the point?

“You didn’t even take the lock off your weapon,” he continued.

“I was ready to. I would have, if forced to it.”

“Would you really?” That was a taunt.

She forced down her urge to strike at him.

The cloth left her face, but he didn’t move away to freshen it again. Miri opened her aching eyes, locking on the gold-green of his. The intensity of his gaze unnerved her, and her heart fluttered as if she were his prey.

“What were you trained for, Mirienne?” he asked bluntly.

“To be a negotiator. I believed it, until...”

He tossed the cloth into the sink without looking in that direction. “Until the Xxan started shooting at us.”

“Yes. So... you see, there really is nothing I can tell you.” Miri steeled herself for his decision to kill her... or to torture her for information she didn’t have. Master S’sie would have already done so.

“You can tell me why you were trained for war,” he replied in a voice that announced his patience was wearing thin.

“Sometimes negotiations fail.”
I’ve always been told I would fail. I thought they were just unkind words; I didn’t know I’d been set up to fail.

A smile turned his lush lips upward. “I suppose that’s true enough.”

Miri shivered at the memory of Daahn over her in the corridor on Xxania Hethhh. She stared at those human lips, wondering what they would feel like beneath her sensitive fingers... or on her mating stripe for an extended stay.

As if he knew what she was thinking, his eye slits narrowed and his nostrils flared, his lips parting slightly to bare the tip of his tongue. “Why you?” he asked.

She looked at the closed door, a thousand unkind words ringing in her ears, certain she would be blushing if she were truly human.

“You are weak, Mirienne.”

“If the negotiations were not so important, I would kill you now for your incompetence.”

“You are a hateful thing... weak, unappealing...”

“Mirienne?”

“Do not call me that,” she growled. Miri tensed to fight, wincing at the cut of the shackles into her wrists. She sank back to the wall, forcing her muscles to ease.

Commander Daahn rose, coming face-to-face with her. “Why you?”

“Because I was convenient,” she exploded. “Because, weak as I am, I survived.”

His eye slits widened, then narrowed again. “Weak?”

Tears pricked at her eyes, and Miri blinked them away. Commander Daahn was lucky that he couldn’t cry. “Yes, weak.” She’d always been too weak for Xxanian tastes. Perhaps he was only seen as strong because he was compared to real humans. “Too... human, they said. Not to be trusted.”

Were they wrong about me?
That was a question she didn’t want to examine too closely.

Daahn grasped her by the shoulders, turning Miri toward the head of the bunk. She lowered her chin to her chest, preparing for death.

Miri started trilling the death song under her breath, then abandoned it. Surely, the Xxanian
Seir-God
had forsaken her, and she didn’t know the names of the human gods or how to appease them. Her soul would face the vacuum alone.

One metal cuff unfastened, then the other. She held her position, even when he backed away. Confused, afraid to meet his eyes, her heart pounded so fiercely that her head spun. It was another of her human frailties.

“Are you hungry?” he asked.

Her stomach roiled in warning at the thought of food. “No.” Actually, she was ravenous, but she’d bring up whatever she tried to eat, and it would be far too long before another meal would be forthcoming to waste food when she was certain it wouldn’t stick.

“When you are, let the guard know. I’ll leave orders. You eat a Xxanian diet, of course.”

She nodded. Miri wouldn’t recognize a human diet, if presented with it.

“What should I call you?” he pressed.

What was he asking? “Commander Daahn?”

“That’s
my
name.”

There was a tone in his voice she didn’t recognize. It was akin to a taunt, but different enough that it didn’t stoke the urge to strike back at him. Miri turned to him, uneasily noting his wide smile. She backed into the corner, bracing for attack.

His smile disappeared into an expression of irritation. It was an expression she’d seen often in her life. She’d always found a scowl less threatening than a smile. A scowl meant a simple beating; a smile meant something worse.

“It was a joke,” he snapped at her.

Miri shook her head, at a loss. She’d thought she’d learned English, but there were so many words he used that she didn’t understand:
lullaby
,
joke
... How many more would there be?

His expression softened. “You don’t know what a joke is either?”

She chanced addressing him. “No. I don’t.”

“I’ll try to remember that. In the interim, you protested me using your name. What should I call you? Did they call you Johns?”

“Miri.”

“Mary?”

“If you insist.” What did it matter? She was a prisoner. Soon enough, she’d be dead. What he called her was immaterial, as long as he didn’t call her that hateful name.

“Is it your name?” he asked, seemingly perplexed.

“No. My name is Miri.”

“Then why would you accept Mary?” His irritation spiked so abruptly the ridge plates on his forehead and neck raised.

Miri’s breath went choppy at the warning of a Dominant male. Her abdomen ached, a stark reminder of what happened when a Dominant was angry. She averted her eyes, lowering her head in the submissive show, her hands out and palms up. “It doesn’t matter,” she managed to say. “Call me what you like.” The Xxan had, often enough.

“Then why shouldn’t I call you Mirienne?” It was clearly a challenge. If there was one thing a Dominant enjoyed, it was prevailing in a challenge, and no one could mistake that Daahn was a Dominant.

She glanced at his extended ridge plates, noting the way his hair crested over the top of his head, resuming the submissive immediately. He wasn’t mollified. “Call me whatever you like,” she repeated.
Please, let my capitulation be enough. If it isn’t...
She didn’t know what he’d do, but it wouldn’t be pleasant.

Commander Daahn sighed. She saw his hand rise and peeked up at him. He ran the hand over his forehead, grimacing. His ridge plates eased back slowly, and her breathing eased with them. He was content with her answer. With a Dominant, content was often the best she could hope for.

“It’s been a long day,” he stated. “I believe we both need rest.”

Miri didn’t respond to that. His swinging emotions kept her off balance.
Perhaps that is his plan.

He turned toward the door and pulled out his darkened glasses. “Until tomorrow,” he dismissed her. Then he was gone, with a swift knock, a grunt of a word, and a single shaft of stinging light.

She forced her heart rate and breathing to normalize, sliding down the wall to the lush mattress. Miri curled in on herself, as she had when she was a child.
As I have every night since that last beating.

That wasn’t something she wanted to consider. The realities of her situation were troubling enough. For the first time in years, Miri allowed herself the solace and weakness of real tears.

Chapter Three

Aleeks speared at a chunk of warm, raw beef, his thoughts and emotions in turmoil.