Aurora Rising (The Aurora Cycle #1)(91)

My arm is still slightly numb from his nerve-strike, but there is no pain. I can only see concern in his eyes as I glance back at him. But that concern melts into relief as Aurora slowly stirs, raising one hand to her brow and moaning. I am forgotten as Kal takes a step forward, lips parted slightly, eyes on her.

“Wh-what hit me?” Aurora whispers.

“I will leave you alone,” I hear myself say.

“Zila … ,” Kal says as I turn toward the door. “I truly am sorry. I sought only to take the weapon from you.”

“I understand,” I lie.

My Alpha’s words are ringing in my ears as the door slides shut behind me.

“Your problem is that you know how everything works except other people.”

It’s true, and it’s not.

I learned too much about how humans work when I was six years old.

I know everything I need to.

But I still can’t say I understand them.





28


    Kal




I should have seen this coming.

Aurora opens her eyes, and the light catches her iris and turns it to glittering pearl, and the flood of relief in my chest escapes my lips as a soft sigh.

“Be’shmai …”

I help her to sit up on the bio-cot, watch her blink away the grogginess from Zila’s disruptor blast. The thought that she is safe is a balm on the fire that consumed me on the bridge. The mere sight of her is water in an endless desert, if I must speak the truth. But I have never felt so torn in all of my life. Because this cannot go on.

“What do you remember?” I ask her.

I watch, almost hypnotized as a small frown creased her brow.

“Zila … shot me.”

“She intended no harm,” I say. “She wished only to awake that which is within you.”

Aurora looks up at me, and my heart beats a touch quicker as our eyes meet.

“Eshvaren,” she whispers.

“The Ancients.” I nod. “Somehow they are involved in all of this. And you are part of it, Aurora.”

“This is insane.” She closes her eyes, rubs her temples as if pained. “I could see the whole thing. Even though I was out cold. It was like … like I was outside my body. Watching it on a vidscreen. Zila blasting me, and you …”

Our eyes meet again, and my heart sinks. I expect a rebuke. A righteous admonishment for the violence I set free among my squadmates. I can feel the Enemy Within, coiled inside my chest. The shadow of my father at my back.

“… You defended me,” she says.

I blink. Shake my head. “No. I shamed myself.”

She looks at me, then. Up and down, from my boots to my eyes.

“I don’t get you, Legolas,” she sighs. “I don’t understand you at all. One minute you’re calling me a liability or ignoring me entirely. The next you’re blasting your way through a TDF destroyer to break me out of prison or punching face with your own squad to protect me.”

She sighs and shakes her head.

“What is your deal?”

I draw a deep breath, hesitating before I let myself fall. I know once I speak these words, there can be no taking them back. But I should never have let it get this far. And I cannot do this anymore.

“It is past time I spoke to you of this. Why I behave the way I do around you.”

“You mean why you act like a total jackass?” she asks.

Despite the pain in my chest, I feel a small smile curling my lips. I shake my head as I search for the right words. For a way to make any part of this make any sort of sense.

“There is a gravity to everything, Aurora,” I finally say. “Not just planets. Not just stars. Every cell in our bodies, every cell in creation exerts a gravity on the objects and people around it. And … that is what I am feeling. For you.”

She frowns slightly, eyes glittering under the warm lights. For a second, she looks so beautiful, my breath is stolen clean away. But still, I lunge to catch it. Because if I do not say this now, I fear I never will.

“Syldrathi call it the Pull,” I say. “It is an instinctual … attraction we feel. A bond that is elemental. Primal. Just like gravity. I have never heard of one of my people being Pulled to a human before. But … I feel it for you, Aurora.”

She opens her mouth as if to speak, but my words are a flood now.

“I did not wish the others to know. And you had troubles enough without me compounding them. I thought that because you had seen me before you met me … we might be … fated, or some such.” I shake my head, feeling a fool in every cell of my body. “And so I tried to keep you out of danger without letting you know what was happening. I did not wish to place you under some sense of obligation.”

“What … what obligation might it place? If I were Syldrathi?”

A long silence falls between us.

“The Pull is the bond between lifeloves,” I finally say. “Mates.”

She swallows. Clearly lost for words.

“I should not have let it come to this,” I sigh. “I should never have put a human in this position. It is not fair to you, nor the others. And you should not have to make this choice.”

I breathe deep again, nod to myself. Fighting off the rush of anguish. Feeling the rip widening inside my chest until it is so dark and deep I know I might never find my way out again.