Page 16 of Bound to the Alien King
Just then, the door slammed open.Maxx stood there, his lavender eyes red and swollen, his chest heaving, the very air around him shriveling away in fear of the rage that shook him.His gaze swept over me and lingered for half a heartbeat, a storm of emotions roiling within.All of them broke me down and cut me to pieces, but I held myself upright and empty.
Then he flicked his attention to the alien who’d almost taken his daughter from him.
“Give me the room,” he rasped.
There was no sense in trying to talk him out of questioning an unconscious alien.Not when Maxx was like this.
Without a backward glance, Mosely and I left him alone with his rage and heartache.
Chapter seven
Maxx
“He’sstillalive,”Itold the Killian the next day.
Goddess knows I wanted to tear the bastard assassin limb from limb for unsettling the finest hairs on Roxxanne’s head, let alone trying to murder her.
She’d been behind the castle and beyond the gates when it happened, collecting elixxir poppies for bouquets and for her various recipes.When I wasn’t here, she preferred to be alone much of the time, a fact that had always barbed thorns into my side.She’d become more and more stubborn the older she got, though, and gave guards the slip anyway, so I’d given her extra trainings in self-defense, especially once I knew I would have to leave her.
That was likely what had saved her.
My daughter, my perfect flower.What would I have done if Roxxanne had been killed?What would I have done if I’d lost Nera and Roxxanne in the same week?
“Did he say anything?Admit anything?”The Killian was able to stand for short periods of time, but now he sat with me in the cruise ship’s bar at the same table he’d been laid out on just yesterday.
“No.”I turned my still-full glass of something yellow I couldn’t remember the name of round and round, unable to get past the smell, let alone take a drink.Next to my glass sat a big jar with very hungry caterpillar number one happily crawling across fresh leaves.“But Nera got him to talk.”
“Didshesay anything?Admit anything?”
“She filled Axxel in on what happened in the interrogation room,” I said bitterly.Axxel, but not me.“The would-be assassin was hired by Earth Space Fleet, her ex-husband specifically.He didn’t say why Roxxanne was the target.”
“Nera’s husband doesn’t seem like the jealous type.Of course, we were all in the same underground bunker together for only what, six minutes, so who really knows?”The Killian shrugged as he downed the rest of his Peppermint Sex.
His drink, not a gender, in case that wasn’t clear.
“Her ex didn’t do it out of jealousy, not wholly.”I sighed, already spiraling at just the mention of Nera.
“What are you saying?”The Killian shifted closer, wincing a little as he propped his elbows on the table.“You’re thinking it was Space Fleet who targeted the rest of your family?”
I shrugged.“It’s an awful big coincidence, don’t you think?”
“But why though?Humans and Xenoxx are supposed to be allies.You provide help in hunting down the Faid, and in exchange, Earth provides human females for the Xenoxx to propagate their species.Isn’t that the way of it?”
“Yes.Until it wasn’t.There’s more to this, and I’m just too close to be able to see what that something more is.”
“I’ll help you,” he offered without any hesitation.
“How?There’s no way the other Xenoxx will keep you alive for more than a second if you so much as look out the windows of this ship.They don’t trust you.”
“Do you?Their king?”His green eyebrows climbed up his forehead.
I sat back in my chair, arms crossed, and studied him.He knew I trusted him.That didn’t mean I was going to say it out loud though.
“Okay,” I began slowly, “say I gave you access to my planet and freedom to roam without your life hanging on the line.Then what?”
“You know me.You know I see things differently and can read between the lines.”He carefully set his glass back down again.“You’ve already admitted you’re too close.Maybe I can find the reason Earth Space Fleet has been dead set on erasing Xenoxx from the cosmic map for good.”
“I’m not going to give you an answer now,” I admitted.“But I’ll think on it.”
