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“I never stayed in the main colony long enough to call us close—but Roult was family, and that’s important in Zunatorian practice,” he mentioned, staring abstractly at the floor.

“What about your parents?” I asked gently. “Are they around?”

Xaixek’s jaw tightened and he swallowed hard. “My father died a warrior’s death when I was only a few months old. My mother…she died only minutes after I was born.”

My heart ached for him, but I understood all too well the terrible magnitude of grief that came from losing one or both of your parents.

“My…my parents are no longer alive either,” I confessed.

His eyes landed on me for the first time since we’d entered the hut. “Really?”

I nodded. “I was immediately separated from them after they’d tested positive for a virus at a mass testing event back on Earth. I was told that once they were cured, I would be able to reunite with them.”

I hung my head as the sorrowful memories came flooding back into my brain like a whirlwind of pain.

“And?” Xaixek asked.

I lifted my head and looked at him. “And…I never saw them again. They were exiled from the settlement. I never found out what happened to them after that. I was ten when it happened. That was seven years ago.”

“And did you have a guardian after that being that you were still a babe then?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nope. They have group homes for homeless kids on the settlement and there are a lot of us. A whole lot of us. It was the norm.”

“I see.”

My stomach hurt. I longed to hold a connection to Xaixek…to anyone at this point. We shared a common ground. Maybe it was a bond we could establish because it was something that we could relate to with each other. I needed to find a way to crack through his surface.

It was then that I decided to be brave and impulsive in the moment. I stood up and began to slowly drift toward Xaixek. He remained seated by the hearth, observing me curiously as I approached him, but he didn’t try to stop me.

When we were only an inch apart, I crouched down beside him. He looked confused at first, but then his features softened. I couldn’t explain why I did what I did next—I just knew that it was something rooted deep within myself that coaxed me, spoke to me, persuaded me.

I extended my arm and reached my hand across to touch his chest. An electric jolt shot through me like a firework, crackling in my veins and searing my soul with an intense flame. I gasped as soon as it cut through me like a power surge.

The current must have rippled through him too, because as soon as our skin to skin contact breached, Xaixek flinched and reeled back with a stunned look on his face, staring at me through wide eyes, mouth agape.

He muttered something inaudible under his breath and shook his head.

I didn’t move a single muscle, nor did I ask him what words he had uttered. I recognized the tongue. Something had surprised him.

When I touched him, I felt something, saw something…heard something. There was no denying it. The thoughts were muted. They were fragments, not noisy, but muffled. It took me a moment or two to realize that these thoughts weren’t coming from my own head—but Xaixek’s instead.

Completely stupefied by the revelation, I shot up like a bolt of lightening and stared at him, fully coerced to answer his thoughts for him.

“What is this?” I gasped. “I can hear you thinking. Is this your aura doing this to me?”

His eyes widened.

“You’ve had a hunch all along that I didn’t kill your uncle and you were going to let me go back in the cave. You were going to get up and walk out. You thought about it while I was sleeping. And you…” I paused and stared at him, but he refused to make eye contact with me. “You…want me for yourself.”

Xaixek abruptly went into a standing position and brushed past me, out of the hut—leaving me derailed and confused—all alone to try and digest exactly what just occurred.

It unnerved me, but I had a probing suspicion that in my sincere effort to try and get to know him—he must have been wearing an invisible shield to try and hide his true emotions and to protect him from something else—something that was hurting him deep inside.