“Fuck me...” I exclaimed.
“I just did.”
“And now we have to stay like this?” I’d had knotting explained to me on the ship before I got sent here, but I was a little hazy on the finer details.
“Yeah. For about ten minutes. Every alpha is different. Some are glued together for a half-hour. Some don’t last more than a minute.”
“Weird.” My eyes caught the bite mark I’d left on his neck. My face flushed in embarrassment. “I’m sorry about biting you.”
“It’s okay. That’s your body trying to bond with an alpha. I wanted to bite you, too. But I held back.”
He made it sound as if it was an urge I could have fought if I had more self-control. Maybe it was. I’d never been known for stopping myself from doing things.
“I know that vaporizer is going to be used to kill people. And I wish I’d been brave enough to destroy it, or hide it somewhere good.” I hated knowing I’d handed it over so easily.
“If you’re going to survive this, you have to stop looking at the bigger picture. Compartmentalize. You just took an object from Point A to Point B and handed it over. You are not responsible for what someone else chooses to do with it.”
“Is that how you live with yourself?” I knew I was pushing a boundary, but I had to ask. We’d just had sex and he was still a space mafia enforcer or some sort of shit.
“No. I survive by only killing evil people. It’s not my job to figure out who lives or dies. But if I didn’t do what I do, those people would get killed anyway. Whatever we do, there are ten people behind us ready to take our places, and they’re not working for Imperial Command.”
I understood, or so I thought.
“Does that mean it would be wrong for us to quit, though?”
He shook his head. “Not our circus. Not our primates.”
We fell into silence for a moment as I digested all this. It kind of made sense, but I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I’d handed over that vaporizer.
“How did you level it with yourself when you stole stuff?” His question took me by surprise.
“I suppose I just knew you can’t ever truly hurt someone by taking an object. It’s all just stuff. I’m not very materialistic.”
He chuckled. “Of course you can hurt someone by taking something that’s theirs. If you take someone’s medication and they die, that’s on you. If the pharmacy has to close because they can’t afford to pay their suppliers for the missing medication, and as a result, people can’t get their prescriptions, that’s on you.”
I don’t know how much he knew about my past or the fact I’d been picked up while I was robbing a pharmacy, but his comment hit hard. I realized I had been naive in thinking stealing didn’t harm anyone. I had been harming people for years and justifying it with every reason under the sun to make me feel like I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Do you ever look at the path you’ve taken and wonder if you could have done it differently?” The comedown was making all my thoughts and fears come back.
“Sometimes. But my life went wrong a very long time ago.”
I shook my head. “I think mine did, too. And now there’s no way out.” I couldn’t put it into strong enough words to explain how trapped I felt.
Ryon gazed into my eyes with a penetrating look.
“There is. And I’m going to get you out of this. I promise.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, yet, but I’ll figure something out.”
For some reason, I believed him, even though he had no real plan or idea about how to go through with his promise.
My eyes were too heavy to keep open, and I started drifting into half-dreams and weird trains of thought that were nothing to do with anything. I felt protected and safe. Ryon was here, and he wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. I don’t know how, but I just knew that. It was a fact as obvious as my own name.
He held me tight. I knew there was no danger here. Eventually, I succumbed and let myself tumble into slumber.
***