Free Surrender by Sue Lyndon Page B

worry about the details.” Merokk began to pace the floor as his anger rose.
    “What happens now?” She peered up at him through her thick lashes.
    “I should take you back to that room,” he responded, halting to loom over her on the bed. He shouldn’t have been tender with her when he’d retrieved her from the locked room. He cursed himself for showing weakness. She was a female—a human female, the spoils of a bloody war. To his shock, she rose to her feet, craning her head up to meet his eyes.
    “There was a Kall in my settlement who carried a hatchet around and lopped off the head of anyone who caused the slightest problem. My mother wasn’t well. She saw things, she talked to herself, and sometimes she screamed for no reason. I lived in fear every day that she’d have a mental lapse at the wrong place and time and her head would be added to the pile. I agreed to marry a stranger—a Kall—to see her safe. I was warned her life would be endangered if I revealed my true identity, so I lied. I lied to you for months, but only about my name. All the happiness we found together—that was real. At first I hated myself for loving you, but I finally accepted it. If you can’t understand the position I was in, then go ahead and lock me up again.” Her eyebrows had drawn together, and her face was flushed. Taken aback by her boldness, Merokk glared into her defiant eyes as he processed her words. One problem remained and bothered him to no end, a problem that made him feel weak with need for a woman.
    “All these weeks, all these months, and you didn’t feel you could trust me enough to share your secret? Did you really think I would see you or your mother harmed?” His voice was clipped, anger masking the wounds he nursed over her mistrust.
    “It was a chance I couldn’t take.”
    He turned and headed for the door. Craning his neck around just before leaving, he said, “You are not to set foot outside this house.” Merokk rushed to his office, where he reset the codes for outgoing messages. Fiona wouldn’t be talking to anyone without his knowledge.
    He ran a hand through his cropped black hair and cursed. Damn her for deceiving him. Damn her for loving him. Yes, she’d said the words humans like to say—sort of. At first I hated myself for loving you, but I finally accepted it . Her confession echoed through his mind, tearing up his world anew. It would be so much simpler if she hated him, and likewise if he hated her. Merokk could be cruel. It was easy to be cruel.
    Days passed and nothing changed. Fiona kept her distance from him as much as possible, but he required her presence for meals and demanded she share his bed. Merokk felt as if he was slowly dying from the inside out, but he didn’t know how to stop it. Trapped in a downward spiral, he lost himself in his menial ambassador duties, trained extra hours on the Kall military base, consumed far too much wine, and used his wife for his pleasure only. Anger had poisoned him, and he tried to move past it. He’d observed her kind long enough to know humans forgave more easily than Kall. His kind was more likely to seek revenge and find a perverse sort of peace in the suffering or death of an offender. He was smart enough to understand her side of the story—he only wished the fucking anger would evaporate as easily as mist under the rising sun.
    Forgive and forget. He’d heard a human say this during a speech once. It was a beautiful concept, but it couldn’t be forced no matter how much he tried. Something held him back, some fleeting emotion he couldn’t put his finger on. He’d forgiven her for little things before, but the size of this particular transgression blocked out all rational thought.
    Fiona shocked him one night by kneeling naked at his feet in the bedroom, holding the strap in her upturned palms like a sacred offering. “Please. Punish me. Punish me so we can move on. I just want you to forgive me.”
    He noticed the trembling