Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“I seem to remember you saying something about other partners,” I say as I crowd her until her back thuds against the panel door.
She smiles up at me. “Maybe you should remind me why I will only ever need you.”
I lift one thigh. “I’ll show you all of the sounds only I can get from you.” The other thigh lifts, too. “The way only I can make your body feel.” Her arms wrap around my neck. “The love only you and I can ever share.”
“Show me,” she breathes.
FOURTEEN
“Good news, Bothaki,” Kaul, the captain, tells me as I enter the main brain. Heading the ship, Kaul gives me a smile over his shoulder, but his attention quickly returns to the screens and star-speckled universe ahead of us. There is but a short time in the waking hours when he leaves his post to eat, clean, and rest before returning to take the controls from whoever was lucky enough to handle the responsibility. “Which do you want first?”
“Tell me it all,” I say, not even concerned that he didn’t call me a prince. This late, the rest of his main crew has already taken their leave so it’s just him and I, and I don’t mind that he treats me with a friendly respect.
“We’re through the worst of the last meteor storm, and Hallalah is within contact distance again. The king sent through a message.”
I’m equally pleased that the meteors we spent a significant time flying through are beyond us, and that my father left a message for me now that we can do so. I had put one through to him shortly after departing earth, confirming I was okay and requesting to return to help Halun—although I wasn’t entirely honest about why—but when it would reach him, and a return contact could be made was anyone’s guess. Communication between many galaxies takes patience, and things moving or in the way causes delays we can’t foresee until after they happen.
Not only messing with our communications, but the meteor storm also left my mate feeling unwell for long enough that we haven’t taken a single meal outside of our rooms since it began. Selina, too, will be happy to see the flying rocks are out of our path for the last part of our journey home.
Kaul points at a small orange-yellow dot on one of the screens tracking the ship’s movements across the galaxy. “There—that’s our sun, finally. You’re the first to see it with me.”
Yes, finally.
It doesn’t look like much on the screen, but I know soon enough the long days of its warm rays are on the horizon. The knowledge is enough to make me smile because the hardest part of everything is nearly over.
Or so I hope.
“You don’t mind me calling you all the way up here this late, hmm?” the captain asks.
I shake my head. “Never. Not for my father.”
I don’t mention that his call made me leave my mate alone in our sleeping bunk without me, and that it took me a few extra minutes to leave her behind because missing even her restful periods isn’t acceptable to me. Selina’s waking and sleeping hours aren’t exactly the same as mine, with her resting more frequently and for less time, but I find myself trying to sleep when she does.
Eventually, I’ll adjust to her rhythm.
Besides, with how she’s feeling, it’s better she does get more rest than I do. I can take care of everything else for the both of us in the midterm.
“Ah, here it is,” Kaul mutters, finding his way through the mess on the screen to select the option that brings up a recording. “I understand what without the Tall Whites, we wouldn’t have our ships and the technological things,” he says, not hiding his irritation in the slightest, “but I could do without all the unneeded writing and clicks, clicks, clicks. So many clicks to get to one thing.”
“Just keep thinking we wouldn’t have the ships,” I tell him. “Otherwise, the voice commands work perfectly fine.”
“I don’t tell you how to fly your ship, prince, and you don’t tell me how to fly mine.”
Oh, now I’m a prince, huh?
“Is that how it is?”
A sigh answers that question. “Right. Well, here’s the message. Your father, Bothaki. The king.”
We both turn our attention on the most important thing in the room at that moment. My father’s voice fills the space, our language crawling from the speakers as he immediately directs his message to me.
“Bothaki, you’re late,” he says, and I know he means my lack of arrival from the mission. My smile grows instantly when he adds, “But you always were, Ralo.”
He doesn’t say that I’m late with a negative inflection, quite the opposite. The fondness in his tone when he calls me son—his ralo—even makes Kaul glance sideways at me when he thinks I don’t notice, but he’s quick to affix his focus back on manning the ship. He’s had a long, otherworldly life exploring and making communications with other planets on behalf of the High Royals; he even trained me to fly. He doesn’t have a mate, or family, though. Just a long line of kin with only a handful having found mates. Knowing what I do about Earth and the women we left back there, I dare to hope Kaul’s circumstances will soon change.