Page 20 of Secretly Mated To My Monster Alien Boss
Kiara smiled before she turned, as the sea of servers parted, as if on instinct. Deryg stepped forward, a curious little package in his arms. Or it might’ve been a huge package, but everything looked small compared to him, especially as he towered over the humans around him.
Her heart stuttered. God, he was gorgeous, especially dressed in that black human suit that curved around his muscles. With so many lights glistening above, his horns shined even more.
“I need to check that one out,” Kiara said with a coy smile that dimpled her cheeks, before turning to the staff. “Is there anything else amiss?”
After a few moments, they all shook their heads–but there was still panic in their eyes.
“It’s going to go great, everyone, you’ll see.” Maybe if she said it enough times, she’d believe it herself. “We’ve been going over everything for weeks.”
“What if–what if the aliens don’t like it?” someone from the back of the crowd asked.
Not the kind of question Kiara wanted or was expecting at this moment. “I’m sure they will.”
“But what if they don’t?”
“Then…we’ll know we’ve done everything so that they would. And that has to count for something.” She knew this was the right way to look at things and, damn it, she wanted to believe it herself. But that snarky voice in her mind, which sounded remarkably like her mother, hissed,That’s what failures say.
Kiara shook her head. This wasnotthe time to be having doubts.
“Don’t worry, the Xirians will tell us if they find something amiss. Loudly,” Deryg said, breaking Kiara’s gray train of thought.
And just like that, the crowd dispersed, satisfied. Kiara smiled gratefully at Deryg. “I wish I could do that.”
“Do what?” was all Deryg said as they began walking toward her office. They didn’t even have to talk about it. It was as if their brains had come to the same conclusion at the same moment–it was closest to the atrium and they didn’t have to travel down a corridor of doom to get there, like in Deryg’s Domain.
“Command a crowd.” She sighed wistfully. “Make people listen.”
“They do listen to you.”
“Those whose job is to listen to me. I don’t…I don’t command the room like you do. I want to make people…I don’t know. Feel safe? Like they can trust me and my decisions. How do you do that?”
Deryg was silent as they entered the corridor leading to her office. Then, just as they neared her nondescript door, he said gravely, “They trust my decisions because I trust them myself. I need to believe I’m making the right choice and they sense that. Do you trust yourself? Truly?”
“No,” Kiara answered, surprising herself. After a lifetime of having each of her decisions questioned, she had to fight each and every single day for a scrap of confidence in her own choices, so that wasn’t surprising.
But how come she’d admitted it to Deryg so quickly?
“You should. You’re very capable, I hope you understand that,” Deryg said softly.
“I try to. But when other people don’t…it’s hard.”
He hummed low in his throat, not sounding convinced.
“What?” Kiara asked.
“I do not understand. Why would other beings’ opinions matter?”
“Because we’re social creatures.”
“I know it doesn’t seem that way most days, but so are Deruzians.”
“You said your brother’s opinion made you doubt your choice of coming to Earth.” Yesterday had been a whirlwind, but she remembered every word he said in front of that weird map of his.
“Nines, it did. But I still came here. I don’t let others’ opinions dictate my existence,” Deryg said. “I’ve seen what that can do to someone. It’s not about never having doubts. It’s about confronting them head-on. And you get used to it over time.”
Kiara sighed. “I hope I’ll get there.”
“As with all things, it takes practice. And I have witnessed you at your job. I have known you as a being. You don’t have to worry. You, as the humans said,got it.” Deryg smiled warmly at her. “I do not know whatitis, but you do.”
