Page 3 of Dax: Gratefully Bonded (Rogue Bonds #2)
Zeke
B y some miracle, I was already up and dressed when the knock at the door came the following morning. It was one of the rare days when I’d woken up without a headache, so I’d brushed my teeth, and wonder of wonders, I’d actually had a shower. Dressed and with my hair still wet, I opened the door, not sure whether or not I should be surprised that Aiden had come back.
He was standing there on the doorstep, Kade a shadow behind him, exactly as he had been the day before. Both of them were once more in uniform, neatly groomed and ready to face the day. The only difference was the expression on Aiden’s face. Yesterday, it had been all official and diplomatic. Today, he looked pensive.
“I owe you an apology,” was the first thing out of his mouth. God, he sounded so sincere. “Colonel Henderson let me look at your service record. And I realise now that what I said to you yesterday was completely out of line. I’m sorry.”
I very briefly considered my options – those being to either let him in, or slam the door in his face. I certainly didn’t want him loitering on my doorstep where any of my neighbours could see him. I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Save the apologies,” I said, opening the door wider. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
He stepped into my living room, noting that Dax was once again standing in the corner, waiting for god knows what. I’d long since given up attempting to understand him.
“Captain Rhodes,” Aiden began, but I cut him off.
“Call me Zeke. I’m long past the point where I can claim to be a Captain. Mind if I call you Aiden?” I asked, not really caring what the answer was. “Coffee?”
“If you have a clean cup,” he said, in a way that was more matter-of-fact than judgemental. And that was a fair call.
“Pretty sure I can scrounge something up,” I said. I meandered into the kitchen and checked the cupboard. And sure enough, there were three clean cups on the top shelf. I glanced over at Dax. Apparently someone had been cleaning the dishes again, no matter how many times I told him not to bother.
“Coffee?” I asked, raising an eyebrow at Kade.
But before he could answer, Aiden jumped in. “Caffeine makes Vangravians very sick. Do you have a herbal tea, maybe?”
“I think I’ve got some peppermint somewhere.” I rummaged around behind the cups and came up with some ground coffee and some peppermint tea bags. Dax was now loitering near the kitchen counter.
“Would you like me to make that for you, Master?” he asked, his face and his voice both showing a marked apprehension.
“Nah, I’ve got it,” I said, and I caught the wince on Aiden’s face.
“What?” I snapped. “I know how to make a fucking cup of coffee.”
“Perhaps you should let Dax do it,” he said. “While we talk. It’s got nothing to do with whether or not I trust you to do it yourself,” he added, at my dubious look. Then he looked me over more critically. “Have you had breakfast?”
“Why?” I asked. “You going to cook it for me?” He rolled his eyes. “Dax, have you had breakfast?” I asked, simply because we were on the topic. If I didn’t remind him to eat – or order him to, in some cases – he tended to skip meals. Remembering to check if he’d eaten was something of a full time job.
“No, Master,” Dax said, looking at the floor. And now that I was paying attention, he looked noticeably underweight. I hadn’t had a whole lot of time or energy to notice, when I’d first met him, but surely he hadn’t been this skinny?
“Then make yourself something. And maybe make me some toast, while you’re at it?” I felt a lurch in my gut as I said it. I felt like a right asshole ordering him around, but I’d learned from experience that he was more likely to eat something if I ate as well. I didn’t bother offering Aiden anything. I assumed he’d already had breakfast, but even if he hadn’t, he’d likely baulk at the idea of eating anything out of my filthy kitchen.
Dax hesitated, then looked around at the walls, his lower lip quivering. “There is no food in the pantry, Master.”
Before I could get around to feeling any kind of shame at that announcement, Aiden’s head snapped up. He marched over to the pantry and wrenched the door open. It wasn’t completely empty. There was a half-full box of plain flour. Three potatoes that had been there long enough to start growing shoots. And a packet of expired instant gravy.
“Jesus Christ, man…” Aiden bit out. He turned to the fridge next, but it was no better; some milk that had no doubt curdled by now and a lump of cheese that had dried out so that it resembled rubber. And a small bottle of lemon juice, for some reason.
Aiden nodded slowly, then closed the fridge. He looked Dax up and down, and I would have killed to know what was going through his head. Was he trying to come up with appropriate ways to scold me? Planning to kidnap Dax so that he didn’t have to put up with any more of my bullshit? Or wondering whether he should just cut and run, since I was clearly a lost cause?
“We’re going out for breakfast,” he announced, a moment later. “We passed a row of shops on the way here, and I’m guessing there’s got to be at least one café there.”
There was, though I didn’t bother confirming Aiden’s suspicions. I looked down at my stained t-shirt and sweatpants. “A café? Fuck me, I’m going to have to put on some real clothes, aren’t I?”
Aiden frowned. “When was the last time you left this apartment?”
“I go to the pub most nights,” I answered him, blithely ignoring whatever his reaction might have been.
I turned to head for my bedroom, expecting that to be the end of the conversation. For now, at least. But to my surprise, I heard Kade speak.
“When was the last time you left the apartment?” he asked, in a surprisingly soothing voice. And from his tone alone, I knew he was talking to Dax. I often addressed him in that same tone, hopeful that somehow, I wouldn’t discourage him even more. I paused, suddenly curious about the answer. It wasn’t something I had thought about in... well, ever, really.
Dax’s reply came soft and tremulous. “I haven’t left since my master brought me home.”
Aiden’s muted gasp said more than the most thunderous curses ever could. I felt that soft sound cut straight through me. Never? In a whole year, Dax had never left the apartment? He hadn’t spoken to another person in a whole fucking year?
I half turned back, and something on my face must have got Aiden’s attention, because whatever rage was boiling inside him was forestalled as he met my eyes.
“Fuck,” I muttered. Jesus, I was an even worse human being than I’d thought I was. I’d been trying to look after Dax? Bullshit. I’d been pretending he didn’t exist and now I thought I had the right to be surprised about how depressed he was?
“I’m going to get dressed,” I said, striding quickly out of the room. Running from my own mistakes. The same way I had been for the last year.
Two minutes later, I was back, dressed in faded jeans and a clean t-shirt – nothing fancy, but at least no one was going to think I was a homeless bum when we got to the café. “Are you paying for breakfast?” I asked Aiden, just to see if I could get a reaction out of him.
“Yes,” he said, without hesitation. Then, in the oddest segue I’d ever heard, he asked, “Have you heard much about the Culrads’ intentions to join the Alliance?”
I shrugged. “Bits and pieces. I haven’t been paying a huge amount of attention to it.” Or to anything, really, but I wasn’t going to say that. I glanced around the kitchen, wondering if I had anything left to drink. Not that Aiden would be impressed if I pulled anything out in front of him.
“Hmm. Well, long story short, about six months ago, the Alliance Parliament was looking at inviting the Nwandu into the Alliance. Except it turns out that the Nwandu weren’t planning on peacefully joining us; they were intent on enslaving us instead. The Culrads intervened and saved our collective asses, and now the Alliance is looking at making a deal with the Culrads instead. But one of the conditions the Culrads have set in order to consider joining us is that we start taking better care of our dimari.” He glanced over at Dax, still waiting dejectedly by the wall. “So any expenses I incur in the process of teaching people how to look after them are paid for by the Alliance.”
I scoffed. “Must be nice having the… Wait, hang on,” I said, pulling myself up as his words hit home. “You said it’s paid for by the Alliance . Not the Rendol Parliament?”
“Nope. The Alliance itself.” The Alliance Parliament, based out of the Drazig system, was the powerhouse of the local galactic sector. The Alliance had collectively colonised over forty planets and laid claim to about three hundred star systems. Meanwhile, Rendol 4 was one lonely planet on the fringe of Alliance space, with only about one hundred million people, and just over forty per cent of the land area terraformed into habitable territory. We were a speck of dust on the Alliance’s collective radar. And somehow, Aiden had personally got their attention?
“Wait, you don’t mean that… If I fuck this up, does that mean that an entire interspecies treaty negotiation is going to go to shit?”
“No,” Aiden said, with a laugh. But then he sobered. “But at the same time… yeah, it kind of does. The Culrads are very aware of the cultural differences between us and the dimari, so they understand the difficulties we have in assimilating them into our culture. But at the same time, they’re of the opinion that the Alliance needs to start standing up and taking responsibility for our own failings. Which, for what it’s worth, I agree with. So they’ll be sympathetic to genuine difficulties, but intolerant of bullshit excuses.”
“Then you may as well give up now,” I told him flatly. “I’m not capable of-”
“You are going to hear me out in a sensible frame of mind,” he interrupted me sharply. “And you are going to think about what you say in front of your dimari before you say it.”
Fuck. That hit home. I’d got so used to Dax blending into the background that I was starting to genuinely forget he was there. And I’d been about to denounce the idea that either of us had a viable future.
“Now would you please help your dimari get ready to go out?” Aiden prompted me. I glanced at Dax and realised he didn’t have any shoes, and his thin shirt would leave him prone to getting a chill, in the early spring weather.
Fucking hell, was that the same grey shirt he’d been wearing when he’d arrived? He’d come with a couple of changes of clothes, but I honestly couldn’t remember if I’d bought him anything new to wear. Had he been rotating the same three sorry outfits for the entire year?
Well, I could stand here wallowing in my own failings, or I could start trying to fix some of this mess. I went into Dax’s bedroom and fetched his shoes. When was the last time he’d had cause to wear them? The thought filled me with shame. Then I got one of my own jackets out of my closet and brought both items back to the living room. “Put these on,” I told Dax, handing them to him. “We’re going out for breakfast.” If he was anyone else, I would have assumed he’d already have picked up on that from listening to the conversation. But Dax rarely did anything these days without being specifically prompted to do it, and for the first time, it occurred to me that perhaps that was my fault. Though how we’d ended up in this bizarre stalemate was beyond me.
Dax took the jacket and shoes, staring at them as if he’d never seen clothes before. “You… want me to come with you?” he asked, sounding entirely confused.
I felt a twinge of pain in my chest at his stark disbelief. “Yes, I do,” I said, attempting to be both gentle and decisive. “And I’m sorry I didn’t get around to getting any food-”
“As harsh as this might sound,” Aiden interrupted me again, “don’t bother apologising to him. It won’t make any sense to him. I’ll explain more about that later. Right now, we just need to go get everyone something to eat.”
Don’t apologise? But I had so much I needed to apologise for. I scowled at Aiden, but got my own feet into a pair of shoes, then grabbed my keys off the table by the door.
It was a short walk down the hill to the nearest café. Sunrise Chorus was a quaint place, owned by a Solof couple, which was far bigger on the inside than it looked from the street. I recognised the purple-skinned woman behind the counter, though I didn’t know her name. I’d been here for coffee often enough, on the days when I decided not to start drinking at the crack of dawn, and she greeted me warmly.
“Hello, Zeke. You brought friends today. That’s wonderful. Do you need a table, or are you getting something to take away?”
“We’ll need a table, please,” I muttered, wondering just how much of my life she’d observed over the past year. Had she smelled the alcohol on my breath? Taken note of the stained and scruffy clothes I so often wore? Had she noticed all the times I hadn’t bothered to shave, or worse, to shower? I’d never really thought about it before, the impact I had on the few locals I saw on a regular basis.
“How about you take number three, up in the corner,” the woman suggested. “Here’s some menus for you.”
I took them and was about to lead Aiden and our dimari to the table… but then I hesitated. “I’m sorry, I’ve never actually asked you before,” I said, turning back to the woman. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Til,” she said with a smile. She seemed to be about to say something else… but apparently, she thought better of it. “You can come and order at the counter, or you can put it through via your comm. Just scan the sticker on the corner of the table.”
“Thank you,” I said, feeling my face heat. She was either incredibly nice, or incredibly discreet. Either way, I appreciated the fact that she hadn’t made any inappropriate comments in front of Aiden.
We wove our way through the tables to the corner, but before he sat down, Aiden stopped and tugged on Kade’s arm. “Take Dax and go find a table over there,” he said, gesturing to the far side of the room. “Order a decent meal for him and a drink for yourself. And then run him through the basics of what we’re doing here. I need to talk to Zeke for a bit.”
Kade said an amiable, “Yes, sir,” looking entirely unsurprised by Aiden’s commands, and not the least bit put out about being ordered around. He steered Dax gently away and the pair of them sat down at a table that was far enough away to be out of earshot, assuming we kept our voices down.
“That’s a fairly vague command for a dimari,” I observed. “Does Kade not need to be told anything more specific than that? Dax is very willing to follow instructions, but incredibly bad at making decisions. If I put something in front of him and tell him to eat it, he will, but if I ask him what he wants to eat, he never knows what to say.”
“And that’s one of the things we’re going to talk about,” Aiden said, unfazed by my confusion. “But first, you need some food and I need some coffee.” He activated his comm and scanned the sticker on the table, then gave the menu a cursory glance. “I’m ordering you a bowl of yoghurt and fruit and some scrambled eggs on toast. God knows what you’ve been eating lately, but I’m guessing you’re in dire need of protein and vitamins. Are you allergic to anything?”
“No,” I said, because I wasn’t, and let’s face it, the breakfast he’d chosen for me actually sounded pretty good. “Do I get some coffee as well?”
He smiled. “Yes, you do.” Well, at least I hadn’t pissed him off too much already. But then he added, “You’re going to need it,” and my assessment of the morning dimmed.
He placed the order, then folded his arms on the table in front of him. “Let’s start at the beginning. I meant it when I said I owed you an apology. And before you go getting up in arms about it, I’m not going to force you to talk about it,” he added, forestalling the objection that was already on my tongue. “I simply want to say that I understand why you’re in the state you’re in, and I was wrong to judge you for it.”
He was trying to apologise, I reminded myself. But nonetheless, I felt a surge of rage at the reminder of where I was – philosophically speaking – and how I’d got here. “You don’t know fuck about my situation,” I snarled at him. “You’ve got no fucking clue what I went through.”
Aiden nodded, surprisingly calm in the face of my anger. “In terms of first-hand experience, no, I don’t,” he agreed. “But what I do have is a wealth of experience at seeing the long-term effects of PTSD on thoroughly capable soldiers, and I spent the vast majority of yesterday afternoon reading everything I could find in the Alliance Military library about the Ixralian wormhole. I’m going to be having nightmares for a week, and that’s just from reading about it. But for what it’s worth, the Alliance has now posted warning buoys around the wormhole, to deter anyone else from traveling through it.”
“About fucking time,” I said, feeling my lower lip quiver.
Aiden nodded, then ploughed right on. “I’m not here to talk about the wormhole. Since I’m sure you don’t want to talk about it anyway. I’m here to talk about Dax.”
“I can’t look after Dax,” I interrupted him. “I’m not an idiot. I am a drunk, I’ll admit that much. But I’m aware that Dax is miserable. I did some research after he first bonded with me. I didn’t have a clue what to do with him, but I wanted to learn. But what I found is that everyone on Rendol 4 says the same thing; their dimari are hopelessly depressed and nothing we do seems to change that. And even if I wanted to do better for him, I can barely look after myself most days. I try to make sure he has food to eat – I know the kitchen’s empty right now,” I cut off Aiden’s inevitable objection. “But I’ve set up a regular delivery service which covers all the basics, at least. I try to make sure he eats. When he first got here, I tried to talk to him, to find out what he wanted, what he liked to eat, what he liked to do. But he refused to indicate any kind of preference for anything . He doesn’t ask for things. He doesn’t watch the entertainment channels with me. I’ve given him a comm so he can read books, but he doesn’t read anything. I don’t want to use him as a fucking slave, making him clean the house and shit, but he doesn’t actually do anything else! What the fuck am I supposed to do with him?”
Before Aiden could answer, our coffee arrived, and I wasted some time stirring sugar into the cup while we waited for the server to finish wiping off a couple of nearby tables and retreat back to the kitchen.
When the silence stretched on a bit too long, I looked up from my cup and caught Aiden staring across the room at Kade. His dimari was talking to mine, a concerned look on his face, while Dax stared morosely at the table. I could scarcely imagine what they were talking about. Consoling each other about being sold into slavery, perhaps? Was Dax jealous that Kade had a master who was so much more together than I was?
“Do you know what the expected lifespan of a dimari is once they reach Alliance space?” Aiden asked me, his eyes still on Kade.
“No idea,” I said.
Aiden’s gaze drifted back to me. “One year,” he said flatly. “One fucking year. And then they’re all so fucking depressed they commit suicide. The longest any of them have survived is two years. And we currently have about a hundred of them on the planet who are marching swiftly towards that deadline. Is that what you want for Dax?”
“Of course it’s fucking not!” I snapped at him. “I want him to be happy. I just don’t have a fucking clue how to make that happen.”
“So let’s suppose for a moment that I could hand you a magical instruction manual of how to make a dimari happy. I mean a detailed list of tasks to give him, things to say to him, things not to say to him, and a blow-by-blow explanation of his expectations of you as his master. If I gave you that, would you be willing to follow it?”
“Yes,” I answered without hesitation. “Watching him shrivel up and die in front of my eyes is… Seriously, Aiden, if he kills himself, I’m only going to be a day or two behind him. Right now, he is the only reason I still bother getting out of bed in the morning.”
Aiden nodded slowly. “In a weird kind of way, it’s reassuring to hear you say that. Not the bit about wanting to kill yourself, but the fact that he’s currently preventing you from doing it. That gives us something to work with.”
“That’s fascinating,” I drawled. “But the question is, do you actually have this magical instruction manual?”
“Yes, I do,” Aiden said, sounding perturbed, despite the confidence with which he made the declaration. He glanced over at Kade again. “I’ve had Kade for about six months. And he’s taught me an incredible amount about how dimari think and what they want. You could argue that I haven’t had him long enough to claim any definitive success – we’re well short of the one year mark where everyone else seems to fall off a cliff. But everyone I speak to about him agrees that he seems very happy. And we’ve worked with a dozen or so other master-dimari couples so far, and all of them have made significant improvement. The dimari are a lot happier, their masters are far less confused, and everyone’s learning to communicate with each other in ways that will go a long way towards resolving any future problems. In your case, though, there is one significant catch.”
“Why am I not surprised?” I muttered. “What is it?”
Aiden looked me dead in the eye. “You’re going to have to get sober. And stay that way. And knowing what I do about PTSD, that means dealing with your shit from Ixralia.”
I felt all the blood in my veins turn to pure ice. He may as well have told me I had to go swimming with sharks while bearing a gaping leg wound. But he didn’t give me time to answer. Instead, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a bottle of pills, setting it on the table in front of me.
“The first thing that’s going to happen is you’re going to go into alcohol withdrawal. Take one tablet three times a day for two weeks, then twice a day for two weeks, then once a day for two weeks. By the time you’re done with that, your body should have adjusted to living without alcohol. Assuming you actually stop drinking the stuff.”
I picked up the bottle, scanning the label. It was a distraction to delay having to come up with an answer to his demand. Committing to laying off alcohol felt a lot like committing to rowing across the Advian Ocean. In a boat with a hole in the bottom. “Where did you get these?”
“From Doctor Green, at the military base. He spoke to your psychologist, who confirmed that you’re still drinking heavily.”
Aiden had been busy, hadn’t he? Yes, I was still having weekly sessions with a military-appointed psychologist. Not that they did much good. They never had. “So the Doc is just handing out medication to anyone? Why would he give this to you ?” I was fairly sure it was against regulations to give prescription medication to anyone other than the patient. Then again, I had allowed Aiden to have access to my service record, so maybe that created some kind of loophole?
A faint smirk crossed Aiden’s face. “Well, first of all, these are entirely useless to anyone who isn’t an alcoholic. The withdrawal symptoms are caused by hyperactivity in the nervous system, as a result of removing the sedative effect of the alcohol. If I took one of those, the only thing that would happen is I’d feel a bit sleepy. And secondly, Doctor Green is going to be calling you tomorrow to confirm that you got them. And just in case you’re thinking about causing trouble on that front, if you don’t decide to get clean willingly, you’re going to rehab. That means an automatic discharge from the military and the removal of any accolades from your service record. Including that Green Star you got for saving the lives of three of your crewmates. Is that what you want? Because if you want to make life difficult, then I’m more than willing to meet you halfway.”