“Never.” The look on his face is grim. “I hate slavers.”
“Then we’ll save the ass-kicking for tomorrow. Zebah put a tracker on them so we’ll find them soon. This will give us a chance to regroup and figure out a new plan. It’ll give us a chance to get a good night’s sleep. And,” I add, giving an excited little wiggle, “it’ll give us a chance to shower.”
Mathiras smiles, the first real one I’ve seen on him since we got back to the ship. “Helen, you know we can touch each other outside of the shower, right?”
“Then let’s do that,” I tell him eagerly. “I—ow!” A hot burning sensation trails over my stomach. “I don’t like that!”
“Please hold still,” the med-bay computer intones. “Antiseptic sealant being applied.”
I whimper, because this hurts worse than the actual wound. I try to slide off the side of the table, but Mathiras puts his hip there, preventing me from escaping. “I would like for this to stop now,” I say to him, miserable. “Please.”
“It’ll be done soon,” he promises me, rubbing my knuckles. “And then I’ll kiss you better. Deal?”
Damn it. “Deal.”
CHAPTER 73
MATHIRAS
Now that I’ve been reassured that Helen’s wound is no more than a graze, I can relax.
Well, relax as much as I can considering we still have so many humans counting on us to save them. But for now, I need to focus on my mate. She’s beaming in my arms, her expression full of happiness as I carry her into our room. “Do we need to talk about what happened today, love?”
Helen gives me a curious look. “Why?”
“You killed six men and went into great detail about how you’d torture the other. That’s a lot for most people to absorb.” I bite back my frown. “Exactly how did you know all that torture stuff?”
“Oh! You mean about noses or about breaking bones?” She blinks up at me. “Because the nose thing—Alice tripped and fell on her face once back on the Star and blood went everywhere. Her face swelled up, too, and I was so upset that she was hurt that everyone spent the day comforting me instead of her. They told me all about noses and how they’re made of cartilage and not bone and I just remembered that.” She shrugs, as if this is all perfectly logical. “And the bone-breaking stuff is nothing the others haven’t said when one of the bad guys would pinch us.”
Ah. I forget that Helen’s world has been a polarizing combination of sheltered innocence and the occasional burst of violence.
“Should I not have said that stuff?” she asks me, worried. “I thought we were trying to scare him. I thought he was a bad guy.” Her voice gets small, as if she’s done something wrong and doesn’t know how to handle it.
I set her gently down on the bed and when she sits up, I sit next to her and wrap my arms around her into an enormous hug. “No, no. You were perfect. You were amazing. I just don’t want you to feel regret over your actions. You don’t have to be a killer all the time, Helen. You know that, right? I like you when you’re soft just as much as when you’re ruthless.”
She blinks at me again, as if my words aren’t registering. “I’m okay.”
“If you’re okay with it, then I’m okay.” I worry it’s going to catch up to her at some point. That she’ll be snapping a neck and then it’ll really, truly hit her and shatter her inside. Maybe I’m projecting, but I just want to protect her from bad feelings. I never want Helen to feel regret or to cry…and part of me wants to keffing destroy everyone that stole enough innocence from her that murder seems like the logical course of action. I take her hand in mine and kiss her fingertips, because she’s gazing up at me with a mixture of concern and hesitation, like she’s a problem. I don’t want her to ever think she’s a problem. “I just have to ask these things because I worry about you, far too much.”
Her smile blossoms again, and she slides a little closer to me. “You still love me, right? I’m still your mate?”
My heart aches. I kiss her fingertips again. “Nothing and no one in the universe could make me stop loving you, Helen. And you’ll always be my mate.”
She flings her arms around my neck and pulls me in close to her face. “You said you’d kiss me when we got back to our room. Can I have some kisses now?”
I chuckle, my heart lightening a little. Gods, I’m making her panic. Just because I stress and overthink everything doesn’t mean she needs to bear the brunt of it. If Helen has no problem with dispatching “bad guys” in bloody ways, then I need to let it go. “I promised you all kinds of kisses, didn’t I?”