“Of course I would,” Nayli huffed.
A quiet knock at the door. Nayli opened it and Darren stood there, an ominous look on his face.
Aelanna sprung off the bed. “Darren! I wasn’t sure if we’d see you.” She could have hugged him, but she stopped herself. His attitude had changed. Though he looked at her as if she was the answer to the missing piece in his life, and she returned, it; from then on, he was distant. He refused to meet her eye after that first scorching look, and his body language said don’t come near. So, she didn’t. Besides, it’d make things harder to say goodbye.
He stared at a spot over her shoulder and held out a canvas shopping bag.
“I brought you these. I guessed you didn’t have any,” he said.
She took the bag silently and looked inside at the bottles of luxury toiletries and then handed them to Nayli, who brightened. “Thank you, Darren. You’re a star.”
His handsome cherry-tinted face darkened a little. “They’re Dheltan. I’ll have more to give you on Drypso, whenwe get there.”
Aelanna didn’t want to think about it.
“Will we see the others?” asked Kora. She meant Lero and Blayze.
“They’ll be along later. Our orders are to guard all the females.”
But he was cold, far away, and it broke Aelanna’s heart.
What had she done wrong?
“Is it possible to have our big cases brought?” asked Nayli. “I’ve run out of clothes. The carry-ons don’t hold much.”
Darren frowned. “What big cases?”
Nayli and Aelanna looked shocked, Kora looked annoyed. “You know, our heavy cases.”
Darren stiffened. “We collected all bags from outside the ship and we saw no other than those three suitcases. We thoroughly checked the area that you crossed up to the runway of the local flying device.”
“I’ll bet that idiot in the truck didn’t unload them, if he brought them off the plane at all,” Kora snapped.
Aelanna turned her face away from the warrior, so that he couldn’t see her devastation. Everything she owned was in that suitcase. She trusted that Darren was telling the truth. Dheltans were honorable: if he said there were no more cases, there hadn’t been. She feared Kora was right.
“I’ll check on it,” he said tightly, gave a stiff bow and strode out, quietly closing the door behind him.
Aelanna wanted to cry. She turned her back to the other two, in case they should see the heartbreak on her face. It only took a small, insignificant thing to shatter one’s self-control.
“What’s up with him?” Kora asked, staring at the door.
Aelanna didn’t want to say anything, but eventually she whispered, “He seems different since we landed on Ohiri.” She didn’t want to figure out what had caused his change of attitude; her heart was already broken. Aelanna had returned to her spot on the bed, and Nayli put her arm round her.
“It happened after we arrived here.” She squeezedAelanna and leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It wasn’t to be, honey. We’ll find our mates — husbands — on Drypso. Maybe they will be just as hot as our Dheltan bodyguards.”
Aelanna glanced at Kora who nodded, and forced herself to give Nayli a grateful smile.
“If it makes you feel better, Lero and Blayze have backed off, too,” Kora said.
Aelanna didn’t feel reassured, and she didn’t want her friends to catch her deep dread but in spite of herself, she blurted out, “I hope they’re not going to be reptile people.”
Nayli’s face fell. “Who?”
“Our husbands. I’ve got a thing about reptiles.”
“Well, Miss Dapkey assured me that we wouldn’t be hooked up with reptiles or anything with tentacles,” Nayli replied, but Aelanna heard the doubt in her voice. Kora had picked up on it too.
“You believed her?”
