Текст книги "Married to the alien cowboy"

Автор книги: Ursa Dox

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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

28SILAR

It did not take long to secure the property and close the gate that had been left open. I found the dead man’s ship with ease, and there was only one set of tracks from the vessel. The only places with two fresh sets of tracks came from where he’d held my Cherry.

Killing rage uncoiled inside me. Murdering that man was not enough to quench it. Even now the hatred built and built. Every time I thought I had it conquered, I remembered his hand on Cherry’s arm, his weapon aimed at her head. I remembered the fear in her eyes.

But there were no other men to destroy to soothe that rage. Doing everything I could to quell the writhing, murderous need inside me, I brought Tarion back to the shuldu stalls and stalked back to the house.

The door was locked and I had not brought the key. A mirthless ghost of a smile tugged at my lips. My stubborn little wife had actually listened to me.

“Cherry,” I called through the door, speaking loudly, being mindful of her bad hearing. “It’s me.”

A small cry, rapid footsteps, and then the door was yanked open. Cherry stared at me, one hand on the doorknob, the other wrapped around the handle of her heavy dark pan. When she saw my eye snag on the pan, she lifted a shoulder and simply said, “Well, it worked once before.”

“Worked once before?” I asked as I stepped inside the kitchen.

“Yes. On him, in fact.” She brought it up high, like a shield over her chest. “Is there anyone else?”

“No. He came alone.”

She visibly sagged. I would have caught her up in my arms to support her, but when I raised my hands I saw just how filthy with blood they were. This was the first time I’d ever seen human blood, I realized. It reminded me of the colour of my wife’s scarf. Cherry red.

I could not touch her now.

Even once I washed my hands, they would never be clean.

So I said, “You should sit,” instead of reaching for her. But Cherry’s compliance seemed to have begun and ended with my command to go inside the house. Because she didn’t sit. She started pacing the room, clutching the pan so hard that if her hands had been any larger or stronger the thing might have been in danger of cracking.

“I’m so sorry, Silar. I should have told you before. I wasn’t… I wasn’t honest about what drove me here. I was in debt and I was on the run and… Let’s just say that wasn’t my first encounter with that asshole.”

She stopped her pacing, looking stricken.

“But I never thought he’d have the resources to follow me all the way out here. To Elora Station, sure. But not here. He must have had some seriously high-up contacts on the stations. Maybe he got access to the shipping logs if it was recorded that I left on that shuttle.”

She shivered, then put her pan down on the table.

“I’m sorry,” she said again. “I can’t believe I’ve dragged you into this mess. And now you’ve had to kill someone because of me and I-”

“He is not the first man I’ve killed.”

She froze, then slowly dragged her gaze up to mine.

“He’s just the first one I’ve killed here.”

“W…What?”

“This is a penal colony, Cherry. I am a convicted murderer.”

There was no sense in not telling her now. She’d seen me kill that man. I could think of no reason to conceal my past from her any longer.

My wife deserved to know who I was, and I began to hate myself for taking this long to tell her. I had been too selfish. Too caught up in the idea of keeping her when I never could have hoped to deserve her.

I grasped my data tab from my trouser pocket and held it in the air between us.

“Call the warden,” I told her flatly, not letting myself give into the pain of what would happen next. “Tell him what I’ve done.”

She took the data tab with a white and shaking hand.

“Mine’s dead,” she whispered. “I would have called him before, when you were out there…” Her throat worked as she stared at the blank, cracked face of my data tab’s screen. “What’s going to happen? Will you… Will you be in trouble? It was self defense, right?”

“That is not a legally acceptable defense for most castes in Zabrian culture,” I bit out. “I was trying to protect my mother from an intruder in our home on Zabria as a child and yet I was still convicted.”

Not that it had even done my mother any good. She was already dead by the time my tail had unloosed from that man’s throat.

Tasting ash and blood at the memory, I focused on Cherry and continued. “Now that I am an adult, my story will be even less sympathetic.”

“But you were saving me!” she insisted. “Your wife! Not to mention I’m, like, a foreign national, right? There would have been a huge scandal if I’d gotten killed here!”

“All of that is correct,” I admitted. “And none of that changes the fact that I could have simply incapacitated that human male and brought him to the warden. That is what I legally should have done. Technically, I did not need to kill him. But when I saw him with his hands on you…”

Now I was the one who paced the room, fury spiking motion into my limbs.

“There is a part of me that is broken, Cherry,” I said in a hateful, hollow voice. “And it shattered entirely when I thought that he might take you from me. My control was gone and I had to kill him. Even knowing what it would cost me.”

“What will it cost you?”

Everything. Absolutely everything.

I came to a stop in front of the oven. Staring into the glow of the coals, I started making plans. Plans to keep my wife safe and comfortable after I was gone. The words burned me like I’d reached right into the fire but I said them anyway. “You may be permitted to stay here if you agree to marry another man.”

“Absolutely not!” she retorted.

“I will not be allowed to remain here,” I went on as if she had not spoken. “I will likely be sent back to the Empire, to labour in the mines until my death.”

“No!”

“Call the warden, Cherry. What’s done is done.”

“Fuck the warden!” she cried. “Fuck that and just fuck all of this!”

“This is my second offense. I-”

“I don’t care! Whatever happened in your past, you’re still my husband. I’m still your wife. Do you hear me, Silar? It’s you and me. Together. Forever. That’s it. End. Of. Discussion!”

Apparently this was not the end of the discussion, because without even so much as stopping to take a breath she then furiously asked, “Do you have a shovel?”

The unexpectedness of her question finally made me turn to look at her once more.

She no longer seemed pale and shaken, but fiercely determined, two spots of colour burning high in her cheeks, her eyes agleam.

“Why?” I asked.

“Goddamnit, we do not have time for your millions of fucking whys right now!” She stamped her little foot. “Do you have a shovel, Silar? Yes, or no?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” She sighed, then began speaking so rapidly I feared my translator would not keep up. “We’ll dig a grave. You’ve got tons of land. We’ll bury him in some random-ass forgotten corner and no one will ever know.”

I stared at her, astonished that she would do such a thing when my own father had once turned me in. My sweet, beautiful Cherry, was offering to drag the filth of that man’s corpse away from here, to help me hide it, all to protect me. She’d watched me kill him. She’d seen the blood on my hands and yet was still offering her own to me.

A thread of hope wound through me. Hope that, even though I’d killed not just one man, but two men, I’d still somehow get to keep her.

But no. Of course not.

“His ship.”

“Shit!” She paused to think, appearing to barely rein in panic. “OK. His ship can’t be that big. Maybe we could get the shuldu to drag it. Maybe even hook up some bulls, too, if the shuldu aren’t enough. Get it into the treeline, just so it’s covered and out of sight. Then we’ll decide what to do. We don’t need to tell the warden-”

The kitchen door swung open behind us and a deep voice boomed through the air.

“You don’t need to tell me what?”

29WARDEN TENN

“Iwant you to know,” I said tersely, “before you attempt to answer that question, that I’ve already seen the human ship. And the body of its pilot.”

My eyes snapped back and forth between them. I fought to keep my eyes orange, to maintain the cool, disciplined disposition needed for a warden.

Not so easy to do when I’d come here to deliver Silar’s Terratribe II order and had instead found a crime scene. I took note of every detail in the room. The white-knuckled grip Cherry had on Silar’s data tab. Her small hands were clean.

Silar’s were not.

“That man came for my wife,” Silar answered, not even a hint of regret or guilt in his voice. “I killed him.”

I sighed, briefly closing my eyes. This was going to be a very long night. I could already feel it.

“You could have incapacitated him until I got here, Silar.” I opened my eyes and fixed my gaze on him. “You know that is what you should have done.”

“He touched her.”

Curse it all, Silar.

“It wasn’t him!”

I flicked my tail in a questioning gesture as Silar’s tiny human wife shoved herself between us.

“It wasn’t Silar,” she said stoutly, shoving her completely clean and blood-free hands into fists on her hips. “So if you have to blame someone, blame me. I’ve got to be protected by some kind of international immunity. Plus, I killed another human, not a Zabrian.”

Absolutely none of what she’d just said was legally sound. Not to mention the fact that she didn’t even do it.

“Tell me, Cherry,” I inquired in a low voice. “Just how, exactly, did you overpower a man approximately twice your size with nothing but a Zabrian knife, all the while keeping your hands completely clean in the process?”

The round dots of colour in her cheeks vanished as she raised her hands in front of her face. She then took pained note of Silar’s bloodied ones.

“We both know it was not her,” Silar grunted. “Do what you must, Warden.”

“No attempts at denial? You aren’t even trying to argue,” I said with narrowed eyes, frustration rising. I should not have been looking for a way to give Silar an out. The law was clear and so was my role and responsibility. Silar would have to be on the first available transport out of here to face trial on Zabria. But… I had to admit. I did not wish for that.

“You would go to the mines for her, without complaint?” I pressed.

“I would die for her,” Silar snarled with sudden ferocity. “Also without complaint.”

I stood still, feeling my gaze turning briefly white with astonishment. A man who would kill for his wife…

And a wife who was more than willing to take the fall.

Each of them ready to throw everything away for the other.

“You two…” I murmured slowly, realization taking root deep in my chest. “It is not just a marriage bond between you. But a mate bond.:”

“If you mean that I’m in love with him,” Cherry interjected, “then yes. I am.”

Silar’s gaze glowed bright white as he wrenched his head to look at her. I turned away from them both, needing some blasted time to think. I curled my fingers around the edge of the kitchen’s deep sink, leaning forward and staring out the window.

I forced out a tight breath between my fangs, analyzing and tossing aside possible courses of action. The more I thought, the more Silar’s exile to the mines seemed the only possible outcome. There was a dead body on his property and somebody had to pay the price.

The body. Probably should have dealt with that first…

If I left it too much longer there wouldn’t even be a body at all.

I frowned, then tugged pensively on the loose rope of a thought that might just turn into an idea.

“It won’t be long,” I said slowly, “before a genka smells the blood and comes for the corpse.” I spun around, inhaling quickly. “I never saw you kill him.”

“What?” Silar asked. He said it with some suspicion, as if he were now somehow doubting my faculties. I couldn’t say I appreciated his tone considering I was actually trying to help the white-eyed fool.

Not exactly patiently, I repeated, “I never saw you kill the human male.”

“But you saw his body.”

“I never actually checked if he was breathing.” I paused. “I probably should have…”

“Well…” Silar grimaced. “He wasn’t.”

I held up a hand. “I didn’t hear that. And I didn’t see you kill him. Come morning, all that’ll be left is his shuttle, his blood in the dirt, and genka tracks.”

I spoke quicker and quicker as my plan began to come together.

“Of course, I will have to alert the appropriate human and Zabrian authorities. Let them know about this tragic… accident.”

“Accident?” Cherry echoed, looking confused and hopeful in equal measure.

“Yes. Accident,” I confirmed. “The accident of the human who got himself all turned around, landed in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got snatched up by a local predator. I can make arrangements to have his ship collected and sent to Elora Station. And with it, I will also give a pointed warning to the human side. I will make it known that unless a human comes under the specific provisions of the bridal program, we cannot guarantee their safety.”

The newlyweds cast cautious looks at each other. A smile flickered across Cherry’s face. Then she took Silar’s hand in hers and clutched it tight, not caring a whit for the blood.

“If any other human males should ignore the landing embargo and wander onto Silar’s property as that one did,” I went on, “they will likely meet the same grizzly fate. Everyone knows Silar’s ranch is in an area absolutely crawling with genka. This should prevent any more… incidents.”

I cast one last look out the window, flicking my tail with satisfaction before looping it ’round its hook. Things were tying up nicely. Yes, this would work out just fine.

“Well. I think that I’ll be going now,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, I will be expecting a call from you, Silar.”

“A call? What for?”

Empire help me, but the boy could be dense.

“We understand, Warden,” Cherry said, giving Silar’s hand a knowing squeeze. “We’ll call you tomorrow to let you know about what we’re going to, um, discover on the property in the morning. Then you’ll have a record of our communication about it and you can go from there.”

Thank goodness Cherry seemed to have enough brains for the both of them.

“You see this?” I said dryly, aiming my tail at Cherry. “This is exactly why I voted yes to the bride program. It’s a miracle you’ve got her, Silar.”

“I know,” he said quietly.

“I can’t wait until the others are paired off as well,” I grumbled. “I might finally get some blasted peace. Spend less time worrying about you lot. You’re all in desperate need of somebody with some sense to sort you out and the Empire knows it can’t always just be me.” I breathed out noisily, casting one last look around the room, trying to decipher if there was anything else I needed to do before I left. But I did not think so.

Silar was a mess, of course.

But he had Cherry. And I had a feeling that meant he was going to be just fine.

“I’ll go now. I’ll wait for your call tomorrow.”

I opened the door, listening to Cherry’s high, shaky call of, “Goodbye Warden! And thank you! Thank you so, so much!”

Listening to his wife’s words, I did not pay attention to Silar slipping out of the house with me. The door closed with both of us on the outside of it. My shuldu perked up, eyeing us before ambling over.

“I presume you’ve secured the property,” I said. It was a pointless question. Silar may have been a fool in many areas. But this would not have been one of them.

“Yes. The male was alone.”

“Good.”

I closed the last bit of distance between my shuldu and me. My hand froze upon the saddle when Silar’s voice cut through the cool air.

“Why did you do it? Why will you let this go for me?”

His question caught me off guard.

“Does it matter?” I asked, twisting to peer at Silar curiously. It was not like him to ask extra questions or make conversation, even about important subjects. Perhaps most especially about important subjects, actually.

This had to be his wife’s influence.

“I want to know,” he said.

I cast my gaze over Silar’s frame and face. Stony. Serious. Covered in blood. Eyes like white-hot coals.

“Because I know you,” I finally said. “I’ve known you a long time, now. I know that you need her. And even more than that?” I turned and hoisted myself up into the saddle, grasping the reins. “I know that you deserve her.”

Silar did not reply. He simply watched me as I urged my mount into the road.

“Despite it all, you’re a good man, Silar,” I called back at him. “And that in there is a good, good woman. Keep her happy. Oh,” I tugged on the reins, slowing my mount and turning back towards Silar’s house. “I dropped your order there by the door. This was the first chance I could bring it after its arrival. It’s why I came all the way out here tonight.” I jutted my tail at the potted package I’d left on the ground by the door before I’d come into the kitchen.

I guided my mount back into the road, ready to begin the long ride home. From the corner of my eye, I saw Silar move. He bent his big, bloodied body so he could get a better look at what I’d brought him. The order that had just about cleaned out every last credit to his name.

The order he’d placed the very day his wife had arrived.

That was the last glimpse I had of him that night. The image I carried with me all the way back.

The image of Silar bending, then crouching, silently gazing upon his new little sapling of a cherry tree.

30CHERRY

When Silar came back inside after saying goodbye to the warden, he went straight to the kitchen sink and began to scrub his hands in vigorous silence.

“Are you… Are you alright?” I asked warily, edging up to him. He’d killed a person tonight.

And told me that it wasn’t the first time, either.

Silar’s gaze slid to me from the side. A muscle in his jaw twitched, his eyes flashing white.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “There’s blood on you.”

“Oh, God, don’t worry about that!” I cried, glancing down at myself in bewilderment. Who the hell cared if my pyjamas had gotten a little dirty?

Apparently, Silar did. As soon as his hands were clean, he grabbed a spare cloth, soaked it with water, and stroked it with dutiful reverence across my cheek, then my eyebrow, then my ear.

“I didn’t realize there was some on my face,” I murmured, leaning into his touch despite the cold shock of the water.

Silar didn’t speak. He just kept caressing my skin, thorough and tender, until my face, ear, and neck were completely wiped down.

He looked as if he was going to try to dab at the red splatters on my shirt, but I shook my head wearily.

“I’ll soak it,” I told him, already shrugging out of the garment. “Though, even so, I don’t know if the stains are going to come out.”

Silar looked pained by this, his expression contracting. I gave him a wan smile. “It’s alright. I’ll just cut it up and add it to the bandage pile. We’re already going to need some new ones on your tail.” That whole catching the knife out of the air trick had re-opened Silar’s wounds. Black blood seeped through the white strips.

I couldn’t be bothered dealing with the whole laundry tub, so instead I just filled the sink and shoved my pyjama shirt into it, deciding I’d deal with it in the morning.

When Silar finally spoke, it wasn’t to answer my earlier question about if he was alright. It was to murmur, with a raw ache in his voice, “You’re shaking.”

I crossed my arms over my bare chest, shivering violently.

“I’m cold,” I said, voice cracking.

“I’ll build up the fire and-”

“No Silar. Please. Just… Just come to bed with me.” Tears filled my eyes, and I did my best to blink them away. “Tonight… Tonight was so hard. And I just really need my husband with me.”

A fresh batch of tears filled my eyes, and my face collapsed in a soundless sob. With my eyes scrunched shut, I didn’t see Silar coming. Just felt him lift me. Felt the solid support of his arms cradling me. The bone-deep comfort of his body’s warmth.

I turned my head against his chest, weeping in the quiet of our house. This bout of crying didn’t last long, though. By the time Silar laid me carefully on the bed and covered me in the blanket, I felt emptied of tears. Emptied of almost everything, really.

But not emptied of love for the man kneeling at the end of the bed and gently prying my boots from my feet. He placed my boots down, then kicked off his own. After peeling off his trousers, he slid under the blanket with me.

His body was a balm to mine. His presence an antidote to every wound I never knew I had. The violent tremble of my muscles instantly ceased when he wrapped his arms around me and brought me to him. We faced each other, front to front in the embers of the dying kitchen firelight.

“So,” Silar said, brushing a stray, damp hair away from my face. He took a moment to rub it between his fingers and his thumb, as if savouring the sensation. “Now you know.”

“Now I know?”

“About me,” he said. His jaw worked, but his eyes were back to blue and they stayed that way. “About my past.”

“About this whole murder conviction thing?” I blew a raspberry, trying to dispel some of the tension creeping back into my spine. “Yeah. That was a doozy. But you weren’t the only one keeping secrets. I never told you about why I came here. What I was running from.”

“You did not come here because you wanted to get married.”

There was no hurt in his voice, no accusation, but I reacted with a virulent need to deny it.

“That’s not… That’s not exactly true. I mean, the circumstances of my coming here certainly weren’t ideal. I had no money, no family left after Mama died. I had nowhere to go, and I was desperate and in danger, and then I saw the ad for the bride program…”

I paused, closing my eyes for a moment, because everything I was saying wasn’t making any of this sound any better. I opened my eyes once more to find Silar gazing at me steadily, not a hint of anger or betrayal on his face. And that just made me feel even worse.

“I may not have come here with the sole reason of getting married, no. But I need you to know that, from the moment I first saw you, I knew that I was lucky to be marrying you. When I saw you treat Tarion so well through the window when you thought that no one was watching, I thought to myself, ‘That is a good man.’ And I also need you to know,” I added fiercely, cupping his hard jaw with my hands, “that no matter how things started between us, my feelings for you, here and now, are real. Everything I said to you earlier tonight is true. I’m in this for the long haul, Silar. I’m in this forever,” I gulped. “If you’ll have me, that is.”

He was quiet for a heart-battering moment before he answered.

“I do not care why you came here. I do not care if you lied, cheated, or stole your way into this world. I do not care what you were running from.” His eyes grew white slowly, brightening from the aqua veins outward. “All I care about is that, if you are running, I’m the one you run to.”

He brushed his knuckles slowly across my cheek, his voice growing even quieter in the hushed bed. “Run your way down any road you wish to, Cherry. But I’ll always be the one standing there at the end of it.”

My chest grew so tight it nearly felt bruised. I pressed my forehead to Silar’s and buried my fingers in the thick warm silk of his hair. “I love you.”

“I love you,” he replied without hesitation. “I believe that I have loved you from the very first moment that I saw you through the window at the warden’s. I am sorry I did not say so before. I am sorry I did not say so many things.” He breathed out, a hot rush over my face. I revelled in the feel of it on my lips, my skin. “But I will do better,” he promised. “I will haul my heart up into my mouth for you, Cherry. Let you hear it. See it. Hold it in your hand. You’re the one who taught me I still have one.”

I nodded, my forehead rubbing against his with the motion.

“It doesn’t have to be tonight,” I said, “but one day, will you tell me what happened? When you were young…”

“You mean, about the man I killed?”

“Yeah.” I petted my fingers comfortingly against his scalp when he tensed. Slowly, like a wary animal approaching a hand outstretched with food, he relaxed.

“I will tell you now,” he said. “I do not want anything left unsaid between us tonight.”

And so, with my hands in his hair and his forehead against mine, he told me.

He told me about the man who invaded his family home back on Zabria, killing his mother when he was just a child. He told me about how he looped his tail around the man’s neck and squeezed until he died.

He told me how it wasn’t enough to save her.

“My father returned home not long after that,” Silar said. “Even as a child, I was very large and strong. It was the only way I was able to get my tail around the intruder’s neck and kill him. But even so, there was no hope of me moving the body on my own. My father discovered the scene and he immediately alerted the authorities.”

My hands paused their petting motions.

“Alerted the authorities…”

“He turned me in.”

“What?!” I half rose up onto my elbow. Surprisingly, Silar’s eyes didn’t even have a hint of white in them. Meanwhile, I was fuming. “Your own father turned you in?”

“Yes. And he testified as an Imperial witness against me at my trial.”

“I’m going to kill him,” I hissed before I realized I’d said it out loud.

Silar gave me a look that somehow managed to be both sad and amused.

“He died several cycles ago.”

“OK. Well. I didn’t actually mean literally. We don’t both need to be convicted murderers. But still! Jesus! Who does that?”

“A Zabrian,” Silar said, sounding unfazed. “My father did exactly as was expected of him. Exactly what our society and culture dictates. Had he tried to hide me, or protect me, it would have brought great shame upon him. He would have lost everything.”

“He did lose everything!” I exploded. “He lost you!”

Silar’s breath took on a charred, choked quality. His voice was thick when he spoke again.

“I do not think you know,” he rasped, “or that you could ever really know, just what it all meant to me tonight. What it meant when you refused to call the warden to turn me in. When you instead asked me if I had a shovel and then just as quickly said that you would help me use it.”

“Of course I’d help you!” I cried, tears biting in my throat. “I’d bury a body for you any day of the week, Silar. Hell, I’d bury a hundred of them. I love you!”

“I believe that my father loved me, too. At least in some small way. But love does not always equal loyalty.”

“Well, it does in this marriage,” I said, fusing my gaze to his. “And don’t you dare forget it!”

His mouth drifted against my forehead, my eyelid, my ear, the breath of his reply like a kiss.

“I will not.”