Page 42 of Border Control

I know the black and white: any exile who returns will be put to death. I’d be hard pressed to keep from strangling him myself if we’d gone with him, because the laws are clear and simple. Not easy, but simple.

I raise my eyes to the farmhouse, dim and shadowed in the nighttime. Law-rah has only come out to get into her vehicle and leave with a roar up the track, returning long after the sun sets. The urge to approach her keeps growing, but will that cross one of her boundaries?

“Where is she?” I mutter. “Is she late?”

‘The stars wheel overhead. Some that weren’t close to the horizon when she returned before have disappeared behind it,’Nevare observes.

So she’s getting later and later. Perhaps it’s the work she does demanding more and more of her, but I suspect somethingelse instead. Whatever it is drives her, gives her purpose. I want to know what it is, so I can assist her with it, even though she laughed at me when I suggested it.

I will be useful to her.

“Well?” I ask Nevare again, startling Arture.

With a scowl, he rolls back to resting on his new pallet. El-len gave us access to materials to make our temporary living quarters more comfortable, but I didn’t take anything. I can sleep on plascrete in any weather, the discomfort sinking needles to tether me in reality.

A spark of light flashes up the track. “There!” I cry.

Law-rah’s vehicle grumbles across the yard, the glare of headlights strobing over me, and I wait for the reward for my patience.

When she cuts the engine, she’s briefly illuminated in the pilot’s seat, revealing her long blonde ringlets tumbling down her shoulders, her blood red lips, and her puffy eyes.

My fists ball until the tendons creak, the stab of pain adding to the fire building inside. I don’t know what puffy eyes means in humans, but whatever it is spears me with a sharp shard of despair. It isn’t right.

I press myself to the edge of the lean to get a better view.

‘Spikes. Spikes everywhere,”Nevare muses. Shade crawls over his fingers, feeding on the waves of strong emotion and leaning toward their source: Law-rah.

‘Just outward?’I ask him. Nevare speaks in abstract terms but Arik and I have learned to read his intent. If Law-rah is ‘spiky,’ that means she’s afraid. When I was very close to her with heightened emotions, I could sense that much with my paltry psychic ability.

‘All over. Especially inward,’he reports.

I suck in a breath.Drok na,she’s hurting.

The very idea causes my chest to cramp, hearts aching, and drives me to do something I hardly ever do.

I close my eyes, flow down the connection to Nevare, and ride his power.

It’s like holding onto the outside of a spaceship as it takes off. If Nevare doesn’t take me with him, I’m exposed to all the mental and aura energies swirling around us all, invisible to dulled senses but not to Nevare’s. I’m not the apex, I can’t survive seeing the way Nevare does without going completely mad.

I hold on as much as I can, peering through the roar and bright lights to try to see Law-rah’s energy.

Nevare scoops me up and the overwhelming attack on my senses eases.‘Dom, you can’t be out here,’he chides me gently. ‘Stay centered.’

‘But I want to know how she’s feeling, how I can help.’

‘Can’t help her if you’re dead,’he points out.

He’s right, of course. If I’d been the winner of the genetic lottery and been our apex, I’d need strong bases to keep me grounded. A base can’t be an apex, or be a good mate. I shouldn’t want this.

Then he says,‘Go to her. Arik is with me, I won’t get into much trouble in a few human hours.’

‘Are you sure?’ I would leap at the chance, but Nevare has to come first.

He mentally scowls at me.‘I don’t have to be first. We’re all equals. Go to her,’he says, with the ring of an order as he shoves me back into my body.

I take a gasp of air, tingling unpleasantly all over, as if all my veins had become restricted while my mind rode with Nevare’s.

Law-rah’s door opens, her dangerous umbrella thrusting out and flaring into a wide shield as the rain starts, obscuring herface from us. I roll to standing and jog out to her car, taking the stalk of the weapon to hold it up for her.