“Don’t punish them,” I said. “Or my family. They knew nothing about this. It was all me.”
“But it wasn’t all you,” S’lec-Quos said. “It was difficult for us to learn where your true allegiance lay but we finally discovered the truth.”
I glared at Zes.
“He deserves everything he has coming to him,” I said. “He has no honor.”
Zes growled and his grip on his blaster tightened.
“Alas, Zes was not our key to discovering the truth of your loyalty,” S’lec-Quos said.
He motioned to one side.
In Emana’s direction.
Emana growled at the Changeling in disgust.
“I would never betray my blood!” she screamed. “Never! Never! Never!”
Once her screams died down, her fists forming tight white-knuckled balls at her sides, she followed my gaze to the only other person S’lec-Quos could have been referring to.
No…
Sirena managed to raise her eyes a little—just long enough for me to see the fear and, yes, guilt, that resided in them.
My heart shriveled with grief.
“Sirena…” I said. “It’s not true. Please tell me it’s not true.”
For the longest time, she couldn’t even speak.
“I… I wanted to go home,” she said in a barely audible voice. “I thought I had to…”
It was enough.
Sirena had surprised me many times over the past few days. And now she’d struck me with the most powerful blow yet.
She had betrayed me.
Sirena
I clutched the overhead strap with both my hands as the shuttlecraft encountered turbulence on its way out of the moon’s atmosphere. We floated into space and the darkness enveloped us on every side.
I had left.
I was no longer on the moon I’d been imprisoned on this entire time. I had achieved my mission and I was leaving all the people I met behind.
The two Changeling pilots sat in the front seats and flicked a bunch of switches and turned a host of dials. They conversed with Computer about a bunch of different tasks they needed it to carry out.
The pilot leaned back and peered back at me.
“Next stop, Earth,” he said with a grin.
I smiled back but the expression didn’t have the impact on my emotions I hoped it would.
I gazed out the porthole at the infinity of space. Strange, I thought, that I didn’t feel particularly airsick out here. It was a very smooth journey. I might have been on a slick train.
The shuttlecraft arched around and moved past the moon at an angle. I peered down at that small marble. Was it as big as Earth? Maybe. It was hard to tell without something to compare it to. I cupped a C shape with my hand and placed the moon inside it.
He was down there. Somewhere. Maybe he was even looking up at me. I wanted to wave but couldn’t bring myself to do it. It felt too much like I was saying goodbye.
This whole time I’d been searching out Kal’s loyalties when maybe I should have spent a little more time thinking about where mine lay.
With the cruel and twisted Changelings who wanted nothing more than to tighten their grip on a good and honorable people or with the honorable, righteous—and yes, devilishly handsome—Titans who worked so hard to protect his people from them?
Just like that, I was back in his castle, to this morning right after Zes dragged the ragged man from the room.
Kal saw something in those funny little frenetic pictures scribbled on scraps of paper. They meant nothing to me—nor to the translator strip attached to my neck. It scanned the illustrations and attempted to decode them but it was no use. They were random squiggles.
For a moment, I thought it was a message the ragged man had given him before realizing they hadn’t come anywhere near each other.
The images might have meant nothing to me but they did to Kal.
That’s when he turned to me and baldly revealed his true allegiance. He told me what he intended on doing next and the part he needed me to play in it.
He trusted me.
He told me where to go, how to find the secret entrance at the foot of the castle’s outer wall, how to shift the stones aside, and crawl in the narrow space, to keep heading along it until I reached the very end where the prison cells were kept.
I never went anywhere near it.
The moment he left his room and marched around the corner to go light the beacon, I turned in the opposite direction. I headed toward my room and slammed the door shut behind me. I dropped to my knees and reached for the communicator hidden under my mattress.
I switched it on.
I composed my message in three seconds flat:
HE’S GOING TO LIGHT THE BEACON
My thumb perched over the Send button.
I stared dumbly at it.
And then I stared at it some more.
For the past few days, I’d been looking for proof of where Kal’s allegiance truly lied. I had my suspicions since the first moment I met him, but I never had any proof.
I had the key to my—and my friends’—return trip home in my hands.
And now I was hesitating.
I sat on the edge of my bed and ran a hand through my hair. It was still frizzy from the long night of scintillating sex.
Unforgettable.
Dreamy.
And I wanted more.
But I would never get it if I hit that Send button.
I wandered over to the window and looked out on the strange alien world I found myself on.
Strange, I thought, that I should feel more at home here than I ever had back on my home planet.
From here, the local town could have been Kal’s perfectly scaled model. Except it had real living people inside it, innocent people living their lives one day at a time.
What would happen if the Changelings came here? Would they destroy it? Would they wipe it from existence? How would I feel about seeing that? Knowing it was my fault?
The harsh truth was, the Titans couldn’t
