“Tisa, you don’t understand,” Ty began but the little chewchie was clearly upset.
“You can’t do this to me!” she stormed inside his head. Ty winced at the strength of her mental voice and saw Ellina wince too. “You can’t! I waited for you for all those months—just for you—the Lan’Glaver. And the Lan’Glaver cannot leave his Potentate! He just can’t!”
“Tisa, please!” he pleaded. “I have another career—I have other commitments I made long before you or Ellina came into my life.”
“None as important as the ones you made to me and Lor and Ellina!” Tisa said accusingly. “There must be some other reason you don’t want to stay—I can tell there is!”
Ty felt her poking at him, like someone with a key, poking around in the dark, trying to find a keyhole. In a moment she would discover his past—the shame of his manipulated DNA and early training which he preferred to keep walled away, even from himself—as much as he could, anyway.
“Stop!” he roared. “Stop this, Tisa—you’re not old enough to understand but you can’t do this. You can’t just…force someone to give up his secrets.”
He felt a sense of agreement and calm coming through the four-way link and realized it was Lor, agreeing with him.
“Lor is telling Tisa that she must respect your privacy,” Ellina said quietly. “He is telling her that you have your own reasons for leaving.”
“You know I have to go,” Ty protested. “We’re different species, Ellina. And even though the Kindred are genetic traders, our genes tend to dominate. At least they do for male Kindred offspring—which is what we mostly have because our genetic profile ensures that ninety-five percent of the children we father will be male. You don’t need a male child—you need a female with Sacred Blue skin to carry on your legacy. You need an heir.”
“I understand.” She looked away. “I never asked you to stay.”
“But I can feel you wanting it—through Tisa and Lor,” Ty said—which was true. He was seeing pictures of Ellina crying by herself from loneliness and grief over missing him. Clearly the image was coming from Lor and being relayed by Tisa.
“I know you don’t think you could give me an heir,” Ellina said in a low voice. “But, well…what if someone else did…did that for me? Some noble who doesn’t care about anything but money? He could…could get me pregnant and then I would pay him off to just show up to state dinners and you could be the true consort and…” She trailed off, looking at him uncertainly. “Ty?”
“Do you really think,” he said slowly, his hands clenching into fists at his sides, “That I could sit by and let some other male impregnate you? Ellina, even the thought of you with another male makes me want to go into Rage! Kindred are extremely possessive—if another male so much as touches you, I’ll want to kill him!”
“Listen to yourself—you want to stay,” Ellina protested. “You don’t want to see me with any other male! You don’t want anyone else to be my consort because you want to be my consort, Ty!”
“But I can’t be!” he roared. “It’s fucking impossible!”
Ellina recoiled from him, her eyes wide with fear at his sudden outburst.
In that moment, Ty hated himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. Gods, how had everything gotten so complicated and messy so damn quickly? “Gods, little one—so sorry! I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“I’m not frightened of you.” Ellina was pulling her dress back on in quick, jerky motions. “Not a bit. But I think maybe it’s better if you left now.”
“Yes—go away. That’s what you want to do, go away and leave us all alone,” Tisa said in his head. There was sorrow in her mental voice—sorrow and anger and hurt.
“Tisa—” he said, reaching for her.
But the little Sacred Blue chewchie was too quick for him. She whisked out of his grasp and ran to sit on the back of a chair. Then she turned, giving him her furry back.
“Go away, Ty,” he heard her say in a tone that would have been filled with sobs if she had been human and speaking aloud. “Go away—I do not regard you.”
And then he felt a kind of barrier come down inside his mind—a wall that Tisa had suddenly placed there between them.
Without his link to the little chewchie, he couldn’t hear or feel what Lor or Ellina were thinking or feeling either. But he didn’t need to—the hurt look on Ellina’s face said everything he needed to know.
“I’ll go,” he said heavily, speaking to Ellina and Tisa both. “But you know I can’t leave Helios Beta until I’m certain the Potentate is safe. I must fulfill my mission.”
“Of course you must.” Ellina looked down at her hands. “Fulfill your mission, Commander Ty’rial. Then you’ll be free to leave.”
Her use of his formal title was like a sharp spike in his heart.
“Ellina—” he began, beseechingly. But just at that moment there was a cursory knock on the door of the apartment and the door swung open.
“What is it?” Ty snapped when one of the Chorkay guards put his head through. Thank goodness he and Ellina had put their clothes back on!
“Forgive the intrusion, oh Goddess in the Flesh,” the guard said excitedly. “But they’ve found him!”
“Found who?” Ellina asked, looking surprised. “Of whom are you speaking, guard?”
“The assassin! Or would-be assassin, anyway!” the guard exclaimed. “The one who planned the attack on Your Majesty at the Grand Promenade! Lord Kikbax is holding him in the dungeon and he would like Your
