“Are you sure? After what you’ve been through, I didn’t?—”
“Gark.” She tugged him into the room and swiped the panel to shut the door behind him. “I just killed someone who tried to rape me. I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.”
If her attacker hadn’t already been dead, Gark would have dismembered him.
Aletta looked to one side, her eyes unfocused. Her breath hitched, and her bottom lip wobbled. A tear slid down her cheek, and she swiped at it with the back of her hand. “There’s more, Gark. There was a woman?—”
He couldn’t stand seeing her in pain. “You don’t have to talk about it?—”
“Yes, I do.” She scowled up at him. “In the bar that A’Kar took me to, there was a woman. A human woman. We have to do something. We can’t just ignore what’s happening.”
She was right. Gark pressed his lips together and nodded, even as his heart leaped at the use of the word we.
“What do you think we should do?”
She took a deep breath and straightened, lifting her chin. “We need to go back to the Irith’s Moons and get her out. That’s a start.”
Gark nodded, pleased to see more of the determined and fierce side of his mate.
She looked down at herself with a grimace. “Oh gross. I need to shower,” she said. “Will you be here when I finish?”
He nodded. “Of course.”
While Aletta closed herself in the bathroom, Gark busied himself with picking up clothes she’d discarded on the floor. The cabin was a mess. Clothes strewn over chairs, an abandoned towel on the floor, something she’d been reading tossed haphazardly on the messed covers of the bed.
He hadn’t been in here since she had been taken. He didn’t want to see the evidence of when he couldn’t keep her safe. Now he never wanted to let her out of his sight.
She emerged from the bathroom, hair wrapped in a towel and wearing another one of his shirts. It was so big it hung to her knees, swallowing her in the fabric. She looked so small and vulnerable.
“Aletta…” he cleared his throat, looking away. It was too raw, this pull he had that drew him to her. Too primal.
Is this what drove his father to court his mother? The sense that there was only one person in the whole universe for him, and he’d found her? Because that’s what he felt for Aletta.
Her small hand covered his, and he jerked from his thoughts. She held his hand in both of hers, the splint on her wrist a reminder of the hurts she’d suffered.
“Will you stay with me?” She looked toward the bed, her cheeks turning pink. “Just until I go to sleep. Nothing else.”
“Always.” He looked down at his blood-streaked clothes. “Though I should clean up.”
He had a shower that was so quick he may have broken a record, dressed in loose sweats, and climbed onto the bed next to where Aletta had burrowed herself under the covers.
He lay back on top of the covers and laced his fingers, hands over his stomach.
Aletta turned onto her side and slid an arm over his chest, letting out a small sigh and relaxing against him. He tensed, not sure what to do, and stared, unblinking, at the ceiling.
“Relax, Gark. I’m not going to break.”
He turned his head on the pillow. She was looking at him with a raised eyebrow and smirk.
“Just hold me, please.” She closed her eyes.
He gathered her close, watching as her eyes closed and she drifted into sleep. He brushed a hand over her hair, stroking the soft strands and wishing he could hold her like this forever.
But forever was a long time, and tomorrow was closer. Tomorrow they’d arrive back at Irith’s Moons and hand over their captives to Oren. And then they’d free the woman Aletta had seen.
Maybe, if luck were on their side, she’d know something about Dylan’s whereabouts.
CHAPTER 13
