“Exactly,” Sharp repeats.
“How would that even work? How could I run off and get myself brain wiped on purpose? I don’t even know who to go to in order to have that happen. It would be luck, if it was even possible at all.”
“Someone is watching you. Someone knows where you are. And someone is doing this to you,” Sharp says.
“We have to take her back to Earth and watch her. We need to surveil what happens once she gets down there. Someone is aware of her. Someone is fucking with her brain,” Boss adds. “It’s time we found out who.”
“Besides, the only way to stop them catching wild humans is to go down and guard the wild humans,” Kronos says. “We need to protect these people, and we need to kill any human official who deals with any trader.”
“It’s simple now you say it,” I say. “Everybody’s happy.”
CHAPTER 10
Everybody’s happy.
Kinda.
Sorta.
We end up living in a remote Earthbound village with dozens of rescued ladies from an alien trafficking operation, and three aliens who keep a very close, very stern eye on me.
It’s weird. They’re obviously happy to have me, but there’s an air of distrust that can only be cultivated when you repeatedly abandon your loved ones for a mission that feels greater than any or all of you.
I am keeping my eyes out day and night for any signs of tentacled alien faces. I even do little patrols, though I have to pretend they are not patrols, because that also upsets my mates.
Seeker and the others try to go back to normal, but I can tell that they’re never really going to trust the world the same way again. That makes me angrier than I can say.
My mates live inside their ship, which is landed in the shadow of the flying city. They insist I live there too, though they are not so controlling I can’t go out and about in the day when I want to.
We are all taking things slowly, I think. Trust has been damaged on all sides. Not mine, so much, because I don’t remember.
“We’ll stay here as long as she needs us to,” Sharp is saying while I lurk just out of sight. “We’ve always wanted to stop the human trade.”
“Have we? Or have we just ended up repeatedly caught up in it?” Kronos says. “I remember Boss having a vendetta or two of his own. I remember having a purpose that drove me. Now we’re babysitting human females day and night.”
“You can leave if you want,” Sharp says.
“I can’t,” Kronos growls. “I love her.”
This feels like a good time to swing out of the shadows.
“Why are you so much more angry at me than the other two are?”
It’s a brave question to ask Kronos, but it’s been on my mind since we met again. Kronos seems absolutely infuriated.
“I expect better from you than they do. A human can be seen as an intelligent little creature full of seduction and mischief, or she can be seen as a mindless animal to be fucked. I have always hoped you’d live up to the first ideal, but you insist on running headlong into the same traps over and over.”
“You don’t have to put up with me. There are other women in the world…”
I am snatched up off my feet, and find my nose less than an inch from his flashing sharp teeth.
“Listen to me,” he says. “You are mine, and I am yours, and when your silly little brain begins to function again, you’ll understand why. For now, I’m going to act as guardian to this particularly mindless version of you.”
“Then you should stop being mean for no reason. I don’t think I would ever have tried to hurt you.”
“No,” he admits. “You don’t try to hurt me. You just don’t think about the pain your absence inflicts. We love you. I love you. When you run from us, you tear something in us away as well.”
I want so badly to be able to reciprocate the emotion, but all I can feel right now is a sort of animal attraction. My body responds to him as if it knows him, but my mind produces nothing but blankness.
