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My gaze flicked toward a pile of bags shoved against the wall and remained fixed there. Those aren’t my things.
“You can’t stay here.” I wouldn’t be able to function with Ginger in my space. I opened her suitcase and threw some clothes in her direction. “It’s too…” Distracting. “It’s not safe.”
Ginger huffed, blowing the black section of hair above her eyes toward the domed roof of the cave. “Look, King Kong”—her eyes sparked—“believe me when I say, if my life didn’t depend on it, there’s no way in hell I’d be here.”
“What the blant do you mean?”
She side-eyed me while she wrapped some type of twisty green tunic around her and removed her tank top from beneath it in a talented flurry of hands weaving in and out of arm holes. Then she sheathed her legs in a sleek, stretchy substance I’d never seen before and slicked bloodroot-fungus red cream across her lips. All this in the time it took me to gulp down one lungful of air.
Dressed, she stormed from my room toward the kitchen. I staggered at the stabbing pain in my leg, but soon my longer stride caught hers, and I took the lead.
“Your life is at risk? From the hellsna?” I asked her mirror-bright lips.
“I can’t believe Geo did this to me.” Her hostile gaze burned a hole in my untied boots before scanning up my body and landing between my eyes. “I thought he worked it out with you.”
“You need protection from Geo?” That didn’t seem right. “I’ll have you know you’re safe with me, even from Geo. My reaction time is renowned on Yagras.” I inhaled, and pain shot through my rib cage, but I kept it off my face.I’ve just been a little off my game lately.The elephants on my wrists chimed as I clamped my arm to my side.
A group of enforcers eating their lunch looked toward us as our argument carried into the kitchen. Makir’s head turned, his blue mane braided neatly to his scalp. Extra lighting, strung through the dangling vines, lit the lush cavern and the tables below.
One moment she was tending my wounds and admiring my body, the next she’d extended her jungle cat claws. What had I said? “So you’re here because you need protection from Geo?”
Ginger and Makir shared looks, his confused, hers irate. She placed three large tinga on her tray and nothing else and marched to the farthest empty table. Makir excused himself from the Nacer across from him and hurried to join her, nodding at me to sit with them. After placing a much more sensible assortment of food on my tray and saying a brisk good morning to everyone who dared make eye contact, I plunked down on the bench across from Ginger.
Makir’s blue tail whipped about. Ginger’s deliberate eye contact with the wall screamed, ‘Do not speak to me.’
“You’re acting like a youngling.” Makir looked from Ginger to the string of lights above, as if he were wishing on a star.
My fists clenched at my sides, and I jumped to Ginger’s defense. “I don’t know how younglings behave on Lorne, Makir, but I assume you are aware of whatever your mate has done to send Ginger here and that you’re responsible for delivering a female to the front line and putting her at risk.”
Ginger sighed and flung her long hair over her shoulder.
Both Makir and I ignored Ginger’s antics.
“Blant, and I thought Geo was stubborn,” Makir mumbled. “Ginger, you need to tell him. He has it all wrong.” Makir’s words coaxed and calmed, his omega sensibilities hard at work, and the soft fluff of his tail brushed down her arm.
I bit into a strip of mantu and placed two on Ginger’s tray, then tapped some hiti mushroom I’d dried and crushed to a powder into her water. She needed protein and fat. “Yes, somebody, please tell me what in the name of Sola is going on.”
“Fine.” Ginger’s hesitant gaze captured mine for half a breath before it darted away. “My disease has progressed to the point that I can no longer return to Earth.”
The tinga I held slipped from my fingers. “What?!”
She took a long drink of hiti dusted water, blinking before a reassuring squeeze from Makir’s tail encouraged her to continue. “Dr. Ten has found a case similar to mine where a Rock Dweller’s bodily fluids increased red blood cell production.”
“Bodily fluids?” I balked.
“Semen,” Makir stated simply, but his eyes urged me to understand.
A chorus of throat-clearing coughs and shuffling trays sounded behind me, yet no one left the eating area. Lucky for me, banishment had stripped me of my pride over an annum ago.
“You need Rock Dweller semen?” My voice wavered, unrecognizable.
Ginger’s shoulders slumped and her claws retracted. I preferred my spitting-mad jungle cat over this defeated female. Whatever she was about to say caused her so much stress. I itched to wrap her in my arms. She clutched the tray in front of her with a white-knuckled grip.
With a cautious finger, I traced over one tight knuckle.
Her swamp-colored eyes lifted. “It has to be done the old-fashioned way so the hormone can penetrate and allow the amino acid in.”
My fingers drummed my pants, and my right leg shook like I was a youngling who needed to relieve his bladder. I thanked Sola for the table, hiding my nerves. What language is she speaking?
