“My command unit was known for achieving very tricky missions. And we were willing to go anywhere. We were one of five vessel deployments to an Azza-controlled mining planet that intelligence told us was manufacturing and shipping weapons in an abandoned mine shaft network. The plan was to attack their base, making it appear to be a grab for control of the planet. Meanwhile, my smaller command unit would infiltrate the weapons manufacturer, steal what they had, and destroy the equipment. We were the only soldiers to be dropped for a ground mission. We were meant to have departed on a shipping vessel arranged by our planet contact, one that wouldn’t even leave until a week after the false attack ‘failed’.”

While she listens intently, she lays her hand against my chest and circles her fingers in a soothing manner.

“As soon as we arrived, it became clear that the intelligence was a lie, and our contact had been caught by a ruse the Azza fabricated to suss out their betrayer. The Kar’Kali generals decided that the atmosphere attack on the base was pointless without the acquisition of new weapons and destruction of the equipment they were told would be there. They ordered a retreat, but we had already been dropped. So they left us behind, with no shipping vessel to smuggle us as promised, and a dead spy.”

Ella looks horrified. “What happened?”

“We tried to hide out in the city until we could find a way out. But the Azza discovered us. They tortured and killed every single soldier, one by one. I just happened to be their final victim. I was the youngest in our unit, at the time. I believe they thought the watching alone would break me. I was eighteen passings old.”

She sucks in breath and grasps my arm. “Kila,” she whispers.

“They were right. I told them everything they wanted to know. When the others were gone, and I didn’t immediately speak… They dragged it out for months. They kept me alone in a room too small to lay or sit up or do anything but curl up on my side. They only removed me to question and torture me with beatings. I was afraid and weak. I wanted to die. And then I broke. I betrayed every contact I knew of. Betrayed my planet, my home. Then, they left me to die in the desert. They laughed at me for my weakness, which I deserved, and then left me in the middle of their desert. But I did not die. There was a storm of bugs, which I ate. I crawled when I could not walk. I passed out and thought I went mad. For some reason, the universe did not wish me dead. On the other side of the desert, I found a city less crowded with the Azza troops. I was so caked in dirt, so thin like a skeleton, that I did not look like a Kar’Kali warrior to the villagers that saw me. I stole a freighter, outfitted it with bombs and an escape pod, and set the freighter to crash on the Azza fort where we had been tortured. I returned to Kar’Kal. And I lied. I told them I managed to escape with my life. I did not tell them the others were tortured or that I gave up our secrets. I lied like coward, and they treated me like a hero.”

Her grip on my forearm is tight enough to dig in marks. Her eyes are leaking water, and she sniffles as though she is sick. “Kila, that is horrible. I am so sorry you’ve been through this. I wish I could take away your pain.”

“I did not tell you to make you sad,” I say, pulling her against me in the hope that it will ease her.

“Why did you tell me?” she asks, muffled from pressing against my bare chest. She lifts her head. “Did you really think that that story would make me hate you? You need to forgive yourself. More than ever, I believe that you deserve some happiness, some emotional closure.”

“Every moment I spend with you is because I want it badly, and life has proven me to be a selfish male,” I confess to her. “I am selfish enough to reveal secrets, lie to my superiors, crawl across a desert even though I had convinced myself I wanted to die. I fueled myself on the anger, and the need for retribution. If I turn away from you, it is only because I am trying to do the honorable thing, for the first time in my pitiful passings.”

“You survived, Kila. You did what you could to survive. How can you punish yourself for that?”

“Why are your eyes wet? Because you are sad? Please don’t be,” I beg her. “You confuse me… I am telling you I am shamefully selfish and dishonorable. I have been known to allow anger to overcome me. Are these not undesirable traits for a human mate to have? Do you not see that to combine my traits with the power of a mating bond would only breed destruction?”

“No,” she protests, rubbing at her leaking eyes. “I want you to be selfish because I am too. And I want you. I care for you, and I want your body… I need to know what it would be like for us to be together fully. And now more than ever, I want to make you happy, to make you feel good. You’ve been through so much hurt and you deser—”

“Ella,” I groan at her tempting words. “You don’t understand—”

“Don’t tell me what I do and don’t understand!” she shouts, picking her head up and thrusting her chin at me defiantly. She holds herself like a mountain feline ready to strike. “You’re telling me these stories because you’re guilty, and you think they’ll show me just how terrible it would be to give your mind and your body the happiness it is so clearly craving. Well, I’m not at work right now, and I don’t have to be respectful of your culture, so I won’t feel bad saying that what you’ve been taught is bullshit. It’s bullshit! You’ve been manipulated to be a soldier without feelings. They’ve told you that Makiva was a slave to passion, but the truth is that you are the slave, Kila. Makiva was a free man, and with freedom comes the ability to make selfish decisions that may hurt others. It sounds to me like you were made to be a slave to your generals because they’re still afraid of what people like Makiva will do when they are free.”

Her words frighten me, like no fleet and no invading army ever could. She prods at every fact my world has been built on, pushing it into a precarious state of unrest.

“When have you ever had a choice, Kila?” she demands. “Tell me what choice you’ve made for yourself.”

“I don’t have that luxury,” I argue. “There is a war that needs to be fought.”

“You said anger or emotion or whatever won’t kill enemies or win a war. Well, I’m here to tell you that sacrificing your own happiness will not kill your enemies either.” Her eyes plead with me. At least they have stopped dripping with liquid from her sadness. The way they reddened at the edges has her blue eyes brightening to the color of Earth’s midday skies.

“What do you want?” she asks me. “What do you really want?”

She is too clever, too good-hearted, too perfect. I know she is right. Theoretically, we are not a free people. Certainly not when I compare Kar’Kal to Earth and most every planet the Alliance has colonized. Oh, they scrabble over that fancy word ‘sovereignty’, but people can do what they wish. Ella is accustomed to going to ‘watch movies,’ having the day to oneself, and other ‘leisure time’ activities (whatever that means). But I have never considered the things I do not have, not until Ella.

Her small hands reach to frame my face, a gesture so intimate that it makes my chest tighten.

“What do you want, Kila? Tell me you want to do your duty to your people and I will leave right now, I prom—”

I pull her atop me and shake my head vigorously.

“What I want is you,” I say, running my hands over her body. “You are the only good thing I have every wanted for myself. The only thing I’ve sought on my own without anger as my drive…”

We wrap ourselves up in each other and begin to kiss ravenously, pressing our bodies together as if we could never be close enough. I don’t know what is right and what is wrong, anymore. I don’t know if I am a slave to her or made free by her, but I can only feel joy the moment I decide not to care about any of it.