Chapter 226: His Devotion
There was the softest of clicks, and all of a sudden, the lights in the bridge came on. I was pretty sure that we all breathed a sigh of relief as the darkness vanished.
I blinked rapidly, waiting for my vision to come back.
"Well, that’s a relief," grunted Midnight.
"Tell me about it," I bitched, more than happy to see the command bridge and the people inside of it. "At least you could still see in the dark."
"Well, it’s fixed now," grunted Da’kea. "Now, we make sure that all three queens and any other inhabitants of this ship are dead before getting the fuck off of this thing."
"I wouldn’t be so sure," said Jun Li, coming over the comms. "I am still not getting any readings on the lower three levels of the ship, so I can’t be certain that the lights are on there."
Da’kea spun around before finding the speakers, "What do you mean? The lights are one. According to human myths, the Istar creatures should be killed by now."
"Yes," said Jun Li, and I could hear the amusement in his voice. There seemed to be nothing more that he liked more than knowing something that the rest of us do not. "But if there is still no light in the lower levels, then nothing is dead down there, and we are still back to square one."
"Look," I grumbled, not at all interested in listening to the brewing fight between him and Da’kea. "You are still heading toward the sun, right?"
"Yes, we should be there in 30 of your Earth minutes," answered Jun Li.
"Fine. Keep going toward the sun. We will hang out here until we get there, and then, once we have some form of light in those levels, we will go and kill what we can," I said, trying to come up with the best possible plan, given our current circumstances.
Da’kea spun around to look at me, and whatever the guys were picking up that I wasn’t, they were not impressed with him. Tha’juen, GA, and Ye’tab formed a line between me and Da’kea.
I can’t say that I was impressed, let me tell you.
"Do you have a problem with that plan, Elder Da’kea?" I asked, raising my chin. I was not going to back down. I truly believed that this was the best possible plan. If he didn’t, then he could be a big boy and use his words.
"We hunt now," he hissed at me. I was not the only one to stiffen at his tone, but until the other guys, I had confidence that my mate would not actually be willing to hurt me.
"We cannot," I argued back, stepping forward to stand between Ye’tab and GA. "To do so would be to invite death, and I am not willing to take that chance for a mere 30 minutes."
"27 now," pipped in Jun Li, completely unhelpfully. I rolled my eyes for a second before turning my attention back to the enraged Saalistaja in front of me.
"We do not turn tail and run away from a hunt. Death is welcome if the prey is stronger than I am," answered Da’kea, coming to his full and impressive height, his chin tilted up. If he wasn’t pushing every last button I had, I would say that he was extremely attractive like that.
Too bad for him that he was.
He wouldn’t need the queen to kill him; I would save her the effort myself.
"So, it is okay for me to die, is what you are saying," I said, raising my eyebrow in challenge. The four males around me stiffened at that idea, clearly not liking it.
"No!" shouted Da’kea so loud that I could have sworn the screen in front of us shook with his rage. "You will not die because my female offspring broke our laws! I will not allow it! I would rather die than let you get hurt again!" He pounded on his chest, his worry and heartbreak coming out in full force.
"But I wasn’t hurt," I said softly, approaching the Elder, who just had his entire world destroyed. But that was fine. I would help him rebuild it with all of us at the center.
"You almost were. If we were clicks later, you would have fallen into the nest and been eaten!" replied Da’kea. He started out almost yelling, but by the end of his sentence, he was speaking softly. Pulling me into his arms, he rested his head on top of mine. "I wouldn’t be able to live if something happened to you because of something that I started."
"I don’t know if you have noticed it or not, but apparently, I am more than a little hard to kill," I chuckled, wrapping my arms around him.
I might not know what love was or how it felt. But I do know that I have never felt this type of devotion toward me in my life. And I ... cherished it.
"Even without my armor," I continued, looking up at him with a smile on my face. But I could feel him stiffen.
"Why did you remove your armor?" he asked for the first time since I had been abducted. "And why haven’t you activated it again?"
"It wasn’t by choice," I assured him. But I guess that was the wrong thing to say.
"Not by choice?"
"No," I said with a shake of my head. "Remember how the nightmares managed to kill those three Saalistaja by injecting a toxin into their system? I think the queen did something similar."
"But the Istar creatures don’t have a toxin," interjected Ye’tab, cocking his head to the side.
I let out a very tired sigh. "I think we should just disregard everything that you know about the Istars and start over from scratch. So far, I haven’t found your information at all helpful."
Ye’tab’s shoulders dropped at my flippant remark, and I wanted to smack myself in the head. He prided himself on his information, and yet I just brushed it aside. Fuck.
"I am not saying that your information is wrong," I said, leaving Da’kea’s arms and going over to Ye’tab’s. "You are working very hard on correcting the records. I just meant that the records were clearly wrong. Not you."
