Page 16 of Needed in the Night (The Fortusian Mates, #2)
ISLA
“I think we should leave Onat’ras,” Brae said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said so—only the first time tonight.
My shadowbat had returned from his nightly feeding just after I got back from the market. Safely inside my apartment, which he accessed through a window I left partially open for fresh air, he shifted out of his shadow form.
In his solid form, his furry body was bright blue with dark blue wings, purple ears, and a purple tail with a fluffy tuft of gray fur with colorful tips on its end.
His little horns and fangs were more decorative than functional, since he preferred insects over larger prey, but his fangs produced a paralytic venom and his claws were razor sharp.
A year ago, on Valodia, he’d asked me to put two small hoop earrings in his ear after seeing similar piercings on a frilled bat belonging to a local gamekeeper. I didn’t dare tell him I thought they made him look more adorable than threatening.
He settled into a nest made of my clothing at the foot of my bed.
When he needed more of my scent, or had nightmares, he slept on my pillow, curled up against the back of my head.
I grumbled about it, especially when his claws or fangs got caught in my long hair, but we both knew I didn’t mind. We comforted each other.
“Nubo has you followed everywhere.” Brae rubbed his pot belly with his wings. “As if it’s not bad enough to live under surveillance in this building. You don’t need to live like this. We don’t need to live like this.”
“I know.” I sat cross-legged on my bed in my pajamas with a glass of wine in my hand. It was my second glass. “I hate it—you know I do. I don’t want to be watched like I’m somebody’s possession. It reminds me of…” I swallowed hard. “Before.”
“And yet,” he said with a sigh, “we’re still here.”
Brae groomed his belly fur while I sipped my wine.
Despite working in a bar and frequently enjoying a glass of brandy after I finished my set, I didn’t drink much off the clock.
Everything about the night’s events had driven me to open a bottle of Tocanian wine.
It was sweeter than I usually liked, but full-bodied and velvety enough to enjoy.
“I love singing at Zaa’ga,” I said, my shoulders sagging.
“I love making enough money to feel secure for the first time in my life. Nubo aside, I feel safe in this building. I’m lucky to have this job and an apartment when it’s so difficult to get them in this city.
I love Fortusia. It’s the first truly beautiful place I’ve ever lived, and the first place that ever felt like it could be our home.
Ycari is watching over me. And it’s not like there’s any place in the galaxy that’s completely safe. ”
“All that is true.” Brae curled his tufted tail around his body. “But you and I both know Nubo wants you as more than his singer. Sooner or later he’ll act on that.”
“Ycari says he’s got people digging into my identity.
” My stomach, already uneasy, began churning, so I set my wine glass on my bedside table.
“He wants to know who I am before he does anything. You know how people like him operate. He’s greedy and possessive and a thug, but he’s not dumb or reckless.
If he was, he wouldn’t be where he is. He’d be dead. ”
“So you’re living on borrowed time and you know it.” He nailed me with a glowing, angry stare. “Isla, there are other cities, other bars. Other places you can sing. Nubo might think you belong to him and that you owe him for giving you a job, but you don’t. You aren’t obligated to stay here.”
My temper, already shorter than normal, flared. “I know I’m not,” I snapped. Not because he deserved my ire, but because he was right and I didn’t want him to be. “I’m tired of running. Just once I don’t want to be the one running. I don’t want to be the victim anymore.”
Those words all but hung in the air in the long silence that followed. My chest rose and fell with ragged breaths.
“I’m sorry,” Brae said quietly. “I should have understood that without you needing to say it.”
He went back to grooming his belly as I curled up with my back to the headboard, my arms around my knees.
Should I tell him the thought of leaving Mikas behind made my stomach hurt? I wasn’t sure I could explain why in a way even I could understand.
“Mikas thinks we should go, though,” I said, my voice quiet. “Both of us. All three of us.”
His wings fluttered. “You told him about me?”
I pictured the earnestness in Mikas’s expression when he’d sworn my secrets were safe with him and smiled. “He already knew.”
I told him what Mikas had confided in the privacy of Ycari’s sampling room, what else we’d talked about, and how much I’d enjoyed our trip to the market despite its abrupt end and Mikas’s dark mood on the walk back. Brae licked his belly and listened quietly.
“So Mikas thinks he can get you both away from Nubo?” Brae asked when I finished .
“He said he wanted to.” I gazed absently out my window at the grassy rooftop of the building next to ours. “No definite plans, but goals and dreams. His words.”
“Goals and dreams, you say,” he mused. “He dreams of escaping Nubo with you?”
“Not like that,” I said with a chuckle. “As a friend. He’s so kind beneath that grumpy exterior. He worries about me.”
He made a snuffly chuffing sound—the shadowbat equivalent of a snort. “That makes two of us.”
Talking about Mikas made my chest hurt, but for an entirely different reason than talking about leaving Onat’ras. It was more of a heartache.
“He’s so unhappy,” I said, “but he doesn’t want to say why. Tonight he was more grim than I’ve ever seen him and it wasn’t just because of that Atolani female who showed up at the bar. He seems miserable.”
“I think your friend needs someone to talk to, if he could bring himself to open up,” Brae observed. “The man’s sealed up tighter than an airlock.”
I sighed. “I tried at the perfume shop, but before we could say much, Nubo demanded he come back and that was the end of that. Even if we hadn’t been interrupted, though, I’m not sure how far I would have gotten. He doesn’t trust anyone.”
“Sounds familiar.”
I bit my lip. “I think I could trust him, though.”
Brae paused mid-lick and eyed me. “Enough to tell him how we ended up here?”
“Maybe.” I rubbed my knee. “Not the details I’m bound to keep secret, of course, but the story in general terms, and the identity of the Erotovo who might be hunting for me.
I know to you it probably seems like a bad idea, but I really do feel like Mikas is trustworthy.
He’s already been keeping some of my secrets without me knowing. ”
“You have good instincts, for a human.” He licked his belly for a bit, then added, “I feel the same about him, for what it’s worth. I didn’t say so because I wanted you to come to your own conclusions. I haven’t spent as much time around him as you have, obviously, but he seems honorable.”
Honorable was high praise coming from Brae.
As much as I didn’t want to feel like a victim anymore, when I thought about leaving Onat’ras with Mikas, the knot in my stomach eased. The galaxy seemed full of possibilities rather than simply loneliness and the misery of yet another relocation.
When had he become so important to me? It had happened so gradually that I hadn’t noticed until he’d squeezed my hand tonight and it felt like all my fears washed away as if by magic.
Thinking about that moment eased the tension in my shoulders that never seemed to go away, even while I was singing.
Happiness and the warmth of not being lonely were new feelings.
Brae had been my one and only true, trusted friend until now, and we’d only been together two years.
I’d had intimate moments with people like Novee, and now I counted Ycari among my trusted friends, but my feelings about Mikas were different. His friendship warmed my soul.
I worried Brae might feel jealous or resentful of Mikas’s new place in my heart, but my shadowbat closed his eyes and settled deeper into his nest with a rumbly purr I seldom got to hear because it meant he was content—and he was rarely content unless I was.
“How soon can you go back to the perfume shop with Mikas without it seeming too suspicious?” Brae murmured sleepily.
“Ycari is going to send me a message when my perfume is ready,” I said.
He opened one eye. “I thought you didn’t actually sample any scents?”
“I didn’t. As we were leaving, she said she knew what would be perfect for me and we’d have to come back for it in a few days. ”
“Hmm.” He closed his eye again and folded his wings over his belly.
First Ycari had hmm ’d at me when I said Mikas and I weren’t a couple, and now another hmm that implied Brae was very uncharacteristically keeping an opinion to himself.
I scowled. “What do you mean, hmm? ”
He let out an exaggerated snore.
With a sigh, I used my wristcomm to shut my bedroom window and turn them all opaque. I hated to block my view of the city, but dawn was only a few hours away and the suns’ light would pour straight into my room. I had to at least try to get some sleep.
Under the covers, I curled up on my side and tucked my arm under my pillow. My apartment wasn’t cold and my bed had radiant warmth—a common amenity on Fortusia—but I still felt chilly.
Very unsurprisingly, a few minutes later, the bedding rustled as Brae made his way on foot from his nest at my feet to my pillow. He settled in with his back against the crown of my head, moving carefully so he didn’t pull my hair.
“If Nubo tries to touch me,” I murmured, “I won’t hesitate to do whatever I need to do to protect myself. Nobody will touch me without my permission ever again.”
His reply was equally quiet. “I know.”
Much later, around 0500 hours, as Brae snored but sleep still eluded me, I thought of Mikas. Hopefully long before now he’d finished his shift and returned to his apartment for some much-needed rest. I pictured him in bed, comfortable and asleep, and willed him pleasant dreams.
That vision vanished, replaced by the memory of the hollowness in his eyes I’d glimpsed during the walk back from the market and the almost lifeless way he’d wished me good night at my door. My own eyes filled with tears.
How could I get him to tell me what was bothering him ?
The only thing I could think of was to get him back to Ycari’s shop and find a way to prevent Nubo from interfering a second time. There, in private, I could trust him with my own big secret, and maybe he would open his heart and do the same.
Again, I pictured Mikas in bed, but this time he was curled up next to me instead of alone. Not like a lover, but close enough that I could feel his warmth and he could feel mine. What a lovely thought that was.
Brae snorted in his sleep, wiggled closer, and resumed snoring. What did shadowbats dream of? I wondered. Tasty insects and warm breezes? Comfortable nests?
I counted shadowbats until sleep finally came.