Her words make me feel better, but I’m still worried. “I just feel like…I killed her, and what scared me the most was that I only regretted it because she had your face.”
“They tampered with your brain,” Ruth says, her voice hard. “Who knows what they did to me and Ruthie? Who knows what they did to those other people? You’re a good person, Helen.”
“What if I’m not?” I whisper, clutching at their hands. “What if I’m a bad guy, too? I’m a killer that they created with a brain that’s been tampered with. What does that make me?”
“My mate,” Mathiras says, speaking up. “And don’t you forget it.”
Our eyes meet and Matty gives me a fierce look. Okay, that does make me feel better. He’s seen me kill. He still loves me and claims me as his.
If nothing else, I’ll always be Mathiras’s Helen.
CHAPTER 102
MATHIRAS
I watch as Ruth and Ruthie hug Helen and comfort her, talking in low voices and cuddling. Helen looks content, the pinched, worried look receding off of her face. This is good. This is what I can’t give her. She loves me, but I’m a different kind of family than what she needs when it comes to this. She needs the reassurance from her sister that everything is all right, that she’s still their adored family.
“Come on,” Ruth says, getting to her feet. “You can see the baby’s heartbeat in med-bay. Want to watch?”
Helen gasps with excitement. “Oh, yes!” She looks over at me. “Want to see, Matty?”
I smile at her happiness. “I should hunt down Kaspar, love. Will you be all right without me for a bit?”
“You won’t leave the ship?” When I shake my head, she looks relieved. “All right, but come get me before you do anything else.”
Bossy again. I like it. “I’m just heading down to Kas’s quarters, I promise.”
“Love?” Ruth scowls in my direction. “Did you just call our little Helen ‘love’?”
“Long story,” I say, because…well, it is.
“We’re having lots of orgasms,” Helen tells her sister. “But no penetration yet because I wasn’t ready.”
Oof.
The females - both Ruth and Ruthie shooting daggers at me with their eyes - head for med-bay. Helen keeps her hand on Ruth’s belly, as if she can feel the baby inside her. They talk and laugh, disappearing down the hall, and my heart squeezes with affection for Helen. She looks so keffing happy here on the Scarlet Gaze. I need to ask her if she wants to stay. I can’t—I’m needed on my ship—but maybe she needs sisterly family more than a lover. It’d kill me to give her up, but if it’s what she needs, I’d do it.
For now, though, I need to find Kaspar.
I head to the bridge, and when Kas isn’t there, Dopekh lets me know that he’s in the training room with Alice and their carinoux, Sterre. I make my way there, impressed yet again at the sheer size of the sleek Scarlet Gaze. She’s three times bigger than the Little Sister, easily, and so perfectly maintained that her engine is a low, pleasant hum. None of the occasional cranking or loud droning the Little Sister has when she slips a belt, or the weird smell that comes out of the vents when a gear gets stuck in the environmental. This is what credits and influence can buy. It’s a better ship for Helen, and the realization makes my stomach tighten. Maybe I’m being selfish, wanting her with me. This ship is full of clones, where she’d be comfortable. It’s a bigger crew that can protect her easily, whereas the Sister is my two brothers and myself only.
Kef, at this rate I’m going to talk myself out of being with her, and that’s depressing. It’s just that…she can do better than a middling corsair on a middling ship. She’s a gorgeous, talented, deadly qura’aki. The universe is hers for the taking. All she has to do is extend her hand.
I enter the training room, and immediately Kaspar races past me on the track that encircles room. He laughs, his tail flicking, and speeds away. Blinking at him, I watch as he runs—and I’m nearly knocked to the ground by the excited carinoux that bounds after him, chasing. He laughs again, running harder.
“You gotta go faster or she’s gonna catch you,” Alice calls from her perch on a piece of gym equipment in the center of the room. “She’s gaining on you!”
“I thought she was pregnant,” Kaspar calls, running faster. “Aren’t pregnant creatures supposed to be slow?”
“Fuck you,” Alice yells back. “I’m pregnant!”
“Exactly!”
“Fuck you harder!” She grins, and then waves at me. “Don’t mind them. They’re getting their morning workout. Sterre will catch him soon enough.”
I move to her side, avoiding the track as Kas (and the carinoux) pass by again. “Do they do this every morning, then?”