His eyes rose to mine.
“Yes. All of it was true.”
I felt the keen sting of anger stab me in the chest, the throbbing pulse that bonded me to him—and only him—after he claimed me.
I reached out to sense the M’rora coming up through the ship’s hallways to our location but couldn’t feel him out there.
He was as invisible to me as everyone else.
Instead, I felt only him.
Kayal.
The guy who had lied to me even worse than all the human assholes combined.
Suddenly, all his hesitation with entering into a relationship with me became crystal clear.
“You let me fall in love with you before you told me the truth.”
That was the real reason he found it difficult to let himself get close to me.
He knew he would betray that love the moment we returned home.
“I’m sorry.”
Those were his words.
It was all the explanation he could give me.
He was sorry.
Sorry for claiming me, sorry for taking me from my life, for plucking me out of obscurity and tossing me into the lion’s den.
I hadn’t been happy back on Earth but at least I had free will.
Kayal looked deep into my eyes.
“You told me of a dream you had of a white knight coming to your rescue. That isn’t me. The Shadow are darkness. The M’rora are born in the light.”
He looked on the verge of saying something more when the elevator door hissed open and the M’rora stepped out.
He carried a large plasma rifle and aimed it at Kayal’s chest.
For a fleeting moment, my body wanted to fling itself in between them, just as I had done back on Earth what felt like a lifetime ago.
But I didn’t move an inch.
The M’rora peered between us and lowered his weapon.
He must have sensed the tension.
“Are you ready to leave?” he said.
I didn’t know.
Am I?
I nodded.
“Yes. I’m ready.”
I marched toward him, floating as if my feet weren’t touching the ground, still in shock from Kayal’s revelations.
I passed within grabbing distance of him, hoping he might grab me and demand I stay with him.
His head turned and followed me as I passed.
But he never reached for me.
I joined the M’rora, and together, we stepped on the elevator.
In a moment, the doors would close, locking me into this capsule with Kayal’s identical twin.
I couldn’t help but look up at him one last time.
My eyes drifted up and caught Kayal just as the doors hissed shut.
In his eyes, I witnessed anger, disgust…
And pain.
Lots and lots of pain.
It was an expression I hadn’t ever seen him wear before.
Fear.
Intense fear that he might be making a terrible mistake.
I knew how he felt.
The doors hissed shut and the elevator shuttled us down.
Kayal
It took me some time to get the engines fully operational again.
Luckily for me, the damage done to the ship was identical to what had been done the first time around.
So much easier when you didn’t have to figure out what the problem was!
I put on a spacesuit and engaged the magnetic boots to keep me fastened to the ship’s hull.
I headed out the airlock and proceeded along the fuselage to the rear of the ship.
The damaged panel from my father’s old ship was as bent and twisted as the original.
So much for repairs.
Never mind spares.
I bent down to begin unfastening it.
The panel was necessary for countering a planet’s gravitational pull but didn’t have much effect out in space.
As I bent down, I paused, peering at the depth of the eternal dark.
I hadn’t left the main bridge until the M’rora had disappeared from view.
I checked the scanners, searching for any sign of life on my ship besides my own, but it came up empty.
I’d been hoping Ava had changed her mind at the last moment.
No such luck.
And why should she?
The only thing awaiting her with me was being shared amongst many other Shadow.
And who would opt for that when they could have their freedom?
Space was quite beautiful, and mind-boggling in its sheer scale.
You grew used to it after a while but the living mind of creatures such as mine could never hope to fully grasp it.
The great majesty of space faded into the background once you’d seen it often enough.
It was the same as falling in love.
Initially overwhelmed by it, it became something you knew would always be there.
Until it wasn’t.
It shook you from your malaise.
I had fallen for Ava, fallen hard.
Releasing her had been the hardest thing I had ever done—harder even than letting my parents go, not only once, but twice.
And now, floating beneath me, my homeworld that’d come under Shadow jurisdiction some twenty years earlier.
The homeworld that was no longer home.
My species had been flung out to the four corners of the cosmos with no hope of ever returning.
Even if they did, they would never again be the same species they had once been.
The Shadow’s dominion over our planet was the deepest scar in our species’ history.
They had destroyed us, even if they had not eradicated us all yet.
It was a slow and agonizing death, but that too came nowhere near to the heart-wrenching ache I experienced when I let Ava go.
No, I didn’t have to let her go.
But did I really want to take the risk of what might happen to her?
Of what I knew would happen to her if we got caught?
There was no doubt in my mind that eventually, the Shadow would hunt us down.
They made it their life’s mission to do so.
Everyone was educated about what happened when their rules were broken.
No shadow graduated from the academy without hearing the horrific tales that befell the perpetrators.
No one thought they could ever sink so low as to do the same, but now I realized they hadn’t sunk low at all.
They had risen high and plucked from the tree of love.
The only tragedy was they had been caught.
I’d lost access to the upper echelons of the Shadow social system when I claimed Ava for my own in that cave.
The mating ritual should have been carried out at the ceremony before
