“I need to sit down.”
Strong arms guide me over to the dip in the floor, which turns out to be a cushioned area. It’s comfortable, and now I’m off my feet, I feel a little better.
“I should take you back to the healing pod,” Dalox says, sitting across from me.
“I’ll be fine. I just need to rest.”
He growls under his breath, an honest to goodness growl.
“I’m really not on Earth anymore, am I?” I wince. “I keep hoping this is all some terrible vivid dream brought on by eating cheese. But cheese doesn’t really cause bad dreams, and I haven’t woken up.”
“I do not know thisheezz,” Dalox says. “But it sounds like paraxio, and I forbid my warriors from taking it.”
“I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, closing my eyes. “I just want to go home, be close to my mum, do what she asked me to do.”
“What did she ask you to do?” Dalox is, again, a long way away.
“She asked me to continue her work.” I hiccup a sob. “But how can I do that if I’m here instead?”
I feel the tears slip from under my eyelids, even if I didn’t want them. Even if I decided I wouldn’t cry, not until I had to.
This isn’t the time or the place. But it’s happening anyway. Right in front of the massive alien I’d rather not be showing any emotion to.
For a long time there is silence. I think I like it, but also I think I might be dead, and that wasn’t my intention.
“Hey.” A soft voice breaks into my silence.
There’s something cool on my forehead.
“Hey,” I reply, opening my eyes.
Lydia lifts the cloth away and smiles at me. I’m still in the cave, but she is there too.
“Dalox came and got me.” She looks away from me and with some effort I follow her gaze.
Dalox sits opposite, leaning forward, resting his head on his fingers, watching me intently. Or rather watching us. His eyes track every move Lydia makes.
I’m not sure what to think, save for my head still hurts.
“Why?”
“Like all of the Sarkarnii, he hasn’t been around females of any kind for a long time,” Lydia says, putting the cloth back on my forehead. “I doubt he knew what to do if you weren’t feeling well.”
“No females?”
“They all died,” Lydia says quietly. “When they came to this galaxy. The Sarkarnii males have been on their own ever since.”
“I guess that’s what all the breeding stuff was about.”
Lydia puts her hand over her mouth with a gasp.
“He’s inrutfor you.” She glances half fearfully and half salaciously at Dalox.
My brain has absolutely had it with this place.
“What on…earth…does that mean?” I sigh.
“It means he really,reallywants to bone you, and he is not going to leave your side until it happens,” Lydia says, with a huge grin on her face.
