Stoan

Chapter One-2

WAS THIS WHAT A BLASTER shot felt like?

It resonated through the hollow core of her chest and around that strange, insistent buzzing that had been growing within her since she walked into the room. Since she set eyes on the attractive blue alien. Though alien was the wrong word, Reina supposed. Humans were just as alien as his species, whatever it was. There was nothing indigenous to Tarni.

Commander Nina’s office was huge, easily as big as a hintrot court, the type of field where a popular ball game was played. Ten men could lay head to toe down on the floor and still not reach from one wall to the next. Despite the size of the office, the alien, Stoan, she reminded herself, was huge. His broad shoulders commanded the space of the bench opposite the commander and if he stood, she feared that he’d dwarf her. She was no petite girl, but Stoan exuded masculinity and power with his every breath.

He wore a long sleeved light brown robe and loose fitting, dark pants. Peeking out from the collar of his robe were strange geometric markings dark against his skin. They were mostly square and nearly black like a tattoo.

Reina forced herself to look back at Nina. Just like he took something from you. She made it sound like she’d been deprived of an heirloom or her lunch. Not that the rival general had killed her husband and kidnapped her brother. Not that his men had beaten her bloody and nearly taken her as well.

And all for what? A few pretty rocks?

Oh, Lex, she thought for the hundredth time, why did you drag me into this?

Seating herself beside Stoan, Reina could feel the heat radiating off his body. It was strong enough that she could practically feel a wall of it between them. But instead of keeping her out, she was invited in, connected to him in a way she didn’t quite understand.

It had happened in that moment before their eyes met. The strangest feeling had come over her. It was like she knew him. Not in the sense of his thoughts, fears, likes, and desires. No, it was something deeper than that, something molecular.

And if Reina didn’t know how to suppress her desires, how to hold everything that mattered in, she feared that she might climb right on top of him and find out if his mouth tasted just as good as those kissable lips looked.

She was going crazy. This was a weird manifestation of grief for a man she felt little loss for. Lex had claimed that he’d always be by her side, but in their marriage, he’d been off on jobs half the time and every minute he was home might as well have been a battle.

Reina hadn’t expected the call from Commander Nina. Not when things were finally beginning to settle into something like normalcy. One week before Reina’s life had tumbled into chaos after she received news of her husband’s mysterious death.

Just before he’d been murdered he’d sent her a transmission with evidence that implicated General Droscus, a man who ruled a large portion of her home planet of Tarni, in a scheme to steal from Commander Nina, the other planetary power and ruler of Reina’s home territory. In an attempt to cover up the scheme, she and her brother had been attacked and her brother kidnapped.

After that, Nina had graciously offered to house Reina until things settled down. As far as prisons went, the fortress was very nice.

Reina had a hundred questions and more, but she’d been left alone with no one but a floor maiden who saw to her needs and refused to speak about anything important. Reina knew her brother was now safe, though still recovering from his injuries. She knew Dorsey and that alien of hers—that alien of hers who looked a lot like Stoan—were nowhere to be found.

“I’m just an accountant,” Reina told Nina. Before everything she would have never spoken so plainly, with so much confidence. But now it felt like there was nothing to lose. What was the point in couching her language when everything was falling apart?

“You’ll do this because I said so,” said Nina, her patience clearly exhausted. “Though I cannot say when you will be needed. Trust Stoan and anyone he tells you to. Go with him when he calls, and all of your problems will be dealt with.”

“And if I don’t?” It was suicide to take this tone, but Reina had already survived enough deaths. She was immune.

Strangely, Nina smiled, but the expression disappeared as quickly as it came. “For some reason, you caught the general’s eye. It wouldn’t do for you to end up in the Citadel without a protector.”

Ah, there was the threat. She should have known. There was never such a thing as a real choice.