Page 53 of Taken to Nobu
“It’s so good to see you. I can’t believe you’re here,” I exhale into her shoulder. Her braids twine with mine and when I pull back, she looks even more surprised than I feel.
Her mouth works. Finally, she says, “Well, it’s not like they could have kept me away. When Svera announced that a group of us would be allowed to travel to a far and distant planet to visit Kiki, you can bet your bottom dollar that I was the first one in line. Even had to ruffle Mathilda’s feathers since she and Deena thought they should be the first ones on board, but of the twelve of us here, they weren’t even selected. Svera saw to that.”
Svera cuts in, her face turning a brilliant scarlet everywhere except for the silver scar cast high on her cheek — a product of her abduction by the pirate king of Kor. “It’s not that I wanted to exclude them, but the rules state that priority be given to females and families of females who have been through the Hunt. Mathilda and Deena haven’t.”
“Oh honey, we understand the rules,” my mom says, throwing Svera a carnivorous wink that has Miari and I howling — even Jaxal cracks at that. I turn to him next and step forward to hug him, but he jerks away from me awkwardly, his dark cheeks flushing and his gaze flicking back over his shoulder.
“Not allowed to hug you,” he grunts out through gritted teeth before refocusing on me. “But it’s good to see you though. You look…different.”
I feel myself warm, embarrassment making me shift my weight from hip-to-hip. It’s hard to meet his gaze. For too long we’ve fed off of each other’s hatred. Now that mine’s gone, I don’t know what to say. “I feel different,” I try.
“You look healthy.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am.” His tone is flat and bleak. His hair, which falls in locks to his shoulder blades, is tied back from his face with a band. He looks so out of place here wrapped in furs, the white cold they called snow falling so softly around him. So gently. Meanwhile, he looks like he’s ready to lift both fists and shred apart the world around him.Is this what I looked like?My spine prickles. My teeth ache.
I step forward despite what he says — the order he’s been given — and wrap both arms around him. I close my eyes and breathe in his scent.Minted steel, dry wood, arid desert winds promising nothing but thirst.It reminds me of so much pain. His. Mine. The whole damn colony’s.
I squeeze him tight and as his arms tentatively come around my shoulders, I whisper against his chest, “I don’t know who I am anymore. But whoever I am, I like her better than who I was after the Hunt. I just…” I exhale. “Thank you for helping me through the darkness. I wouldn’t be here now if it weren’t for you.”
Behind me, a dark voice calls my name — my title. “Xhea.” It’s a threat, loosely veiled and leveled straight at Jaxal’s heart.
Releasing Jaxal and whatever burden of guilt I felt at him seeing me here, now, like this, without hate coloring my every inch, I turn and smile at the Okkari. His forehead is a blank slate except for a single escaped note of copper. I’ve seen this color a few times before when I spar with some of his soldiers. I know what it means — that acute jealousy — because I’ve felt it too whenever he speaks with the tribe’s females. Even Kuana who tends our home isn’t immune.
I step up to him and take his arm, bringing him forward. “Okkari, I want you to meet my family. My mom, my brother and my sisters.”
“I have made a brief introduction, but I am pleased to be reintroduced.” He steps forward to my mom first and extends his hand.
My mom looks at it, then looks at me, unsure. Her brown eyes are full of questions and hesitation and indecision, but the laughing lines around her mouth and that crease the corners of her eyes remind me that there isn’t a hateful bone in her body — not even the Hunt could change her.
Women on the colony, as a rule, don’t speak of the Hunt, but I wonder now as I watch her watch me standing next to an alien male I’ve claimed in body and devoured in soul, if maybe I shouldn’t have. If I still should. Because I never believed her when she said her time in the Hunt wasn’t bad…that it was evengood.
“Mom, this is Okkari. He’s my man.”
Infectious laughter pours out of her, even though she has tears in her eyes, which she quickly rubs away with her thumbs. “Oh is he now?”
“He is.”
“Well then, I suppose that makes you family now too.” She bats his hand away and hugs Kinan, her short arms hardly fitting all the way around his chest. “If you’re family, then I’ll be calling you son.”
As Kinan smiles down at her, his hand takes mine and brings it to his lips. He kisses the back of my palm and very quietly, so only the three of us can hear, he says, “You may call me son. But you may also call me Kinan. This is my given name.”
The surprise in my mom’s expression lets me know that Svera has clued her into what a big deal this is. I feel shocked too, but more than that, deeply grateful. “You may call me by my given name, Mirella, or you can just call me mom.”
Kinan grins and my mom shines back and for a moment we all just stand there stupidly smiling at one another until Miari laughs. She waddles back over to Raku’s side and he kisses the top of her head in a gesture that surprises me in how human it is.
“The other humans have been called now to join us. We wanted to give you a chance to meet with your family privately before we give them all a tour of the village.”
“Thank you,” I tell her. She just shrugs and waves a hand dismissively. I turn to Kinan. “And I’m guessing you had quite a lot to do with this shindig.”
“I would not be Okkari if I did not.”
I grin. “Cocky brute.”
“Hexa,” is all he says.
I laugh and look up at him and meet his gaze head on and in a way I never ever want to break from. “Thank you.”
