Jhan smiled a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I look forward to it, Rokai.” Jhan turned his back on Rokai and started to walk away — the ultimate insult to a warrior. One never turned their back to a worthy opponent. Jhan knew it and so did Rokai. Jhan had made it almost to the metal stairs that led to the cat walk above them and out of the docking bay. “Are you coming? Or shall I have someone assist you?”
Rokai snarled softly at Jhan’s insolence, but fell into step following his path, and Gaishon followed along behind Rokai. Just before they made it to the catwalk, Jhan heard Rokai’s friend whisper to him. “I didn’t know you were Commander Zha Quin Tha Tel Mo’ Kok’s brother! All this time and I had no idea you were royalty!”
“I am NOT royalty! I am nothing like them, never have been. Do not allow the fact that we share a little blood cloud your mind to the fact that I am only, and will ever be, Rokai ahl of Quarin.”
Jhan wanted to just shake his head in dismay. It was clear to any who knew Zha Quin personally, that he went above and beyond for his brother. It was even clearer to Jhan as they’d grown up together that Zha Quin had always wanted a relationship with his brother. But, obviously the bitterness Rokai felt for the Cruestaci people, and especially their nobility, had only grown over time.
<<<<<<<>>>>>>>
Kol hurried, he practically burst out of the lift before the doors had even finished opening on the level of the ship that housed the medical clinic. He went straight to medical and attempted to go directly to his female’s room, but the new healer stopped him.
“Elite Commander! Elite Commander! Please! A moment!”
Kol smothered a groan and turned to face the male who chased after him after he entered medical. “What is it?” he asked irritatedly, in a rush to get to his female.
“I was instructed to defer to you on all things regarding the sleeping human.”
“Yes,” Kol answered.
“I’ve been waiting for you to return. This is just unacceptable! I cannot be expected to perform to my best ability under these circumstances.”
“I have nothing to do with your working atmosphere. I am concerned only with treatment of my Ehlealah,” Kol answered.
“Which is exactly the situation I speak of!” the healer announced, his voice rising.
“What exactly do you mean?” Kol asked again, beginning to pay more attention to the healer.
“This… this constant parade of males in and out of her room, arms full of offerings. Wild beasts snarling at me!” the healer started.
Kol turned without pause and ran straight to his woman’s room. There should be no male but him in her presence; he would kill any who violated her privacy! He came to a sudden halt as soon as he entered the room. He stood there taking in all that had changed since the last time he’d been there, only hours before. He shook his head and smiled at the small, dark-haired female who’d made herself at home at the foot of his woman’s bed and the shraler spread out sleeping, snoring below her on the floor.
“Vivi,” Kol said.
Vivi turned at his voice, looking at him over her shoulder. “Blue-Dude!”
“What have you done here, Vivi?” Kol asked, stepping over Kitty to pull a chair closer to his woman’s bedside.
“I’ve made it like home!” she said excitedly.
“Home?” Kol asked as he pulled the sheets up a bit higher and tucked them in before smoothing his hands over his Ehlelah’s arm where it lay atop the covers.
“Yep. When she wakes up, she’ll see what looks like a bedroom home on Earth, rather than a hospital room with beeping machines and scary aliens. No offense,” she said, looking at Kol.
“Do you think this will help?” he asked.
“You know… it can’t hurt. She wakes up fighting because of all the medical looking stuff and the beeping and the IV lines, and sounds and smells. It reminds her of waking up after being in the tubes.” Vivian grew quiet for a moment, as though she were looking inside herself. “You only had moments before someone grabbed you when you awoke from that.”
“I’m sorry, Vivi,” Kol said, reaching out a hand and patting her hand where it lay on top of her knee where her legs were folded beneath her.
Vivian shook her head “It’s okay. You need to know, so you can know how to help her. Hopefully, when she wakes again, I’ll be here. But if not, just start telling her that Malm is dead, no one will hurt her again. Do not try to touch her, just stand back and hold your hands out where she can see them, and allow her her space and the time to see that no one is trying to touch her. Keep the damn healer out of here. I already told him it’d be a shame if Kitty got hungry while he was bothering me,” she said, giggling.
Kol smiled sadly. “You won’t let Kitty eat the healer,” he chided her.
“Depends. If he tries to put her back to sleep, I might.”
Kol nodded. “And I might help Kitty catch him if he does.”
“See? You get it!” Vivi said excitedly.
Kol looked around the room. “Where did you get all these things? It is more than even in my own collection.”
“Bart sends them to me. It makes me feel more like I’m home,” she confided.
“This is your home,” Kol assured her.
“I know. But I missed so much from back home, from my own time, that sometimes I just feel like I’m bouncing around with no real center, you know?” Vivian asked.
“I’m trying to understand,” Kol answered.
“Bart finds things here and there from before I was…” she stopped looking for the words that didn’t hurt her so much to say.
“Before you came here?” Kol offered.
“Yes! Yes, before I came here. And he buys them, then sends them to me when he gets a few of them together.” Vivian raised her eyes to Kol’s. “It really helps me feel grounded sometimes. And Quin doesn’t seem to mind.”
“He would give you anything you wished for if it made you smile,” Kol said.
Vivian nodded, looking around the room at all she’d brought into it and had her security team help her assemble. “I think she needs these things a little more than I do right now.”
“Thank you, Vivi. I am very appreciative of your generosity,” Kol said sincerely.
“You’re more than welcome. Now, what will we do until she wakes up?”
Kol turned and ran his fingers through his female’s long, straight, blonde hair. “Just watch her, I suppose.”
Vivian watched Kol, gently touching and soothing the sleeping woman. “I wonder where she’s from. What she was doing last before she…” Vivian paused and her brow furrowed. Then she smiled a bit and met Kol’s eyes. “Before she came to be here.”
“I wonder these things, too. I wonder if she will love me as you do Quin. I wonder if she will find me attractive or if she will run from me in fear,” he said, looking down at his clawed hands. They were completely normal hands to him. But to her, they may not seem so.
“Just be patient, Kol. It will all be new to her. She won’t care who you are, or what you are, as soon as she figures out that you protect her, keep her safe and fed, and will allow no other to harm her in any way, she’ll stick close to you. But you have to allow her time to figure it all out.”
“I will try to remember, Vivi.”
“You have something Quin didn’t have when he was trying to make me see that we belonged together.”
“And what is that?” Kol asked.
“Me! I’m here to help make her at ease and to explain things to her.”
Kol nodded. “Thank you, Vivi. I hope to win her trust soon. I cannot bear to see her terror when she awakens each time. It tears at my soul.”
“It’ll be okay. I promise. Just be patient and it’ll all work out,” Vivian promised, as they both watched the sleeping woman twitch her fingers and clutch the blankets covering her.
“Shh,” Kol soothed. “You are safe, my Ehlealah. Rest easy,” he said softly, trying to chase away her bad dreams.
&nbs
p; “Does she dream often?” Vivian asked.
“Yes. She cries out and fights the horrors in her dreams without ever waking. I try to soothe her when it happens.”
“Does it help?” Vivian asked.
“Sometimes, yes.”
“You’re already making her feel safer, she just doesn’t know it yet,” Vivian said, smiling at Kol.
Chapter 5
“I will cut your ass! Go ahead, try to get closer, you’ll see!” a female voice shouted angrily.
Vivian sat up straight and looked toward the closed door of Kol’s Ehlealah’s room.
“Did you hear that?” Vivian asked Kol.
“Yes, I did. It seems our healer has managed to anger another of the females we seek to protect.”
“Maybe I should go help,” Vivian said, swinging her legs to the side of the bed she perched on the foot of.
“Perhaps you should,” Kol agreed. “We will be fine here. Go on and help her,” Kol encouraged.
Vivi jumped down and headed toward the still yelling female voice, with Kitty right behind her.
Vivian hurried down the hallway of medical with Kitty trotting ahead of her. Almost at the end of the hall, she found the source of all the noise. She didn’t knock, she just opened the door and barged right in. “Hi! I’m Vivian. How can I help?”
The healer just huffed and shook his head.
The female arguing with him looked at her as though she’d lost her mind, but she recovered quickly. “You can tell this freak of nature that we do not need a thorough examination by him or anybody else! Only reason we even came in here is because the intercom told us to report to medical so that we could be out processed. I figured that meant we could go home, but, no, what do we find? Another alien just itching to get our clothes off!” The woman spun on her heel, refocusing her attention on the healer. “What? You want to see how much pain we can stand before we pass out? Or maybe you want to see how long you can heat our skin before we start to blister? Or maybe you just like causing pain.”
“I can assure you, female, no one here wishes to cause you more pain. We simply wish to catalog your injuries, treat you for them, and begin a database that we add all alien life forms to for future knowledge in treating any we may inadvertently encounter. I wish you no harm. The examinations are purely in the name of science.”
The woman laughed a cynical chuckle. “Honestly… I don’t give a damn what your intentions are, we been through enough. You ain't touching, prodding, examining, or otherwise getting close to any of us. We’ve all been treated for physical injuries before we ever woke up. The kind we have now,” she said, pointing to her head, “you can’t treat. Unless you’re going to send us home, leave us the hell alone.”
The healer shook his head. “You simply don’t understand. We must keep all the data on you we can so that we can learn to treat your kind properly. Vital statistics are just one small part of…”
The healer didn’t finish his sentence. He’d made the mistake of moving closer to the golden-skinned female who was obviously Hispanic, and had threatened to cut him. He raised a scanner to run over her as he spoke to her.
At first she backed up a step or two, holding her arms out to keep four other women behind her, shielding them from this delusional male. But when the healer got too close, she decided enough was enough. She advanced on him, raising her forearm to deflect any blow he may rain down on her, then used her other hand to snatch whatever the metal thing he was holding out toward her was and beginning to beat him about the head with it. “I told you not to come closer! I told you you weren’t going to touch any of us. What part of no don’t you get, you arrogant fuck? We’ve had enough! Do you know what enough is?” she screamed at him as he lifted his arms above his head and retreated to the other side of the exam room.
One of the other women came forward to stand with her, and in an effort to show solidarity, lifted a hand to place it at the Hispanic woman’s back. The action had her hissing between her teeth and arching her back away from the woman’s touch. “Oh! I’m so sorry, Rosie. I forgot.”
“It’s okay,” Rosie answered, her eyes never leaving the healer now standing across the room from her.
Before anything could happen, or the women could even think to say a another word — a small, dark-haired female wearing a long, deep-emerald-green cloak, a chain, and military boots, and a huge, fanged, barb-tailed alien snow leopard were standing in front of them.
“They don’t wish to be examined, healer!” Vivi said forcefully, but calmly.
“It’s merely in the interest of science…” he started.
Three very large, very intimidating males entered the room and rushed the healer, crowding him into the corner across the room.
“I told ya’ll I had this,” Vivian said with snark. “You just can’t let me handle things, can you?”
“You may handle whatever you wish, Sirena, with our assistance.”
“You obviously didn’t let me handle the healer!” Vivian said.
“We could not witness the distress of the other females any longer, Sirena. He is now contained. You may proceed.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt anyone. I just need to log in blood samples and types. Hair color, eye color, etc.,” the healer tried to explain.
“On whose orders?” Vivian demanded.
“No one ordered any such information. It is apparent that our records on your species are lacking. I have decided to take it upon myself to use our technology to advance our capabilities of treating your kind.”
“Yeah? Well, take it upon yourself to take a step back and chill. They aren’t test subjects. They’re people. Human beings just like me. And she’s not playing with you. Didn’t you hear her? She will cut you! Back off. They don’t want to be examined.”
The healer rolled his eyes and looked at Vivian as though she was no more than a nuisance. All three of the males crowding him in the corner snarled and growled at him, demanding he give their Sirena the respect she deserved.
“Why is it that no one aboard this ship wishes to allow me to do my job properly?!” He shouted at the males holding him in place.
Vivian offered him a strained smile and began to advance slowly on him. “Allow me to enlighten you. These women have all suffered more than any terror you can imagine in that little medical, logical mind of yours,” she said, pointing at his head. “These women are survivors. They’ve been through hell. They don’t give a damn if you have records on them or not. They will not ever trust you, or most likely any male. They simply want to be safe, warm and have their bellies filled. If you can’t understand that, put your personal bid for career advancement aside — and make no mistake, I know exactly what you were thinking, ‘I’ll be celebrated and none will be as highly regarded as I am,’ — and treat these females with the empathy and compassion they deserve, I will have my husband find a healer that can.”
A gentle hand reached out to tentatively cup Vivian’s shoulder, and her peripheral vision picked up the dark blue skin of his fingertips. Kol had come to see what the hell was going on.
“Sirena?” he asked softly.
“I’m fine. Just had enough of this bullshit,” Vivian answered.
Kol turned to look at the females still standing in place, watching the drama unfolding before them. “Did he harm or forcibly touch any of you?”
After a moment the translation repeated his question in several different languages.
The Hispanic woman who seemed to be protecting the others shook her head. “No. He didn’t.” She looked at the scanner she was still holding, then threw it to the floor. “He may need a new one of those, though.”
Kol smiled, then chuckled.
Vivian had calmed enough to realize that her guards had the irritating healer under control, so she needed to speak to the women and form some kind of friendship here. She turned her back on the healer and faced the women.
“Hi, I’m Vivian. And you are?” she smiled, approaching the dark h
aired woman, holding her hand out and dropping her chain to dangle at her side, to shake the woman’s hand.
“Impressed,” the woman answered, nodding her head approvingly.
“Thank you,” Vivian smiled.
“You’re welcome.” Then the woman narrowed her eyes. “I thought he called you Sirena. Why you telling me your name is Vivian if your name is Sirena?”
“Oh! No, you’re confused. See, I’m their Sirena. But my name is Vivian,” Vivian smiled sweetly, still holding her hand out for the woman to shake.
The woman took in Vivian’s chain, the jeweled dagger at her hip, the deep-green velvet cloak she wore, and the bodyguards the little woman obviously commanded with no problem at all. “I think we could be friends,” she acknowledged, reaching out to shake Vivian’s hand.
“Excellent! Now, what do I call you?” Vivian asked, nearly shaking the woman’s hand off her arm.
“Rosie. You can call me Rosie. And this…” she indicated the woman standing next to her, “this is Synclare.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Synclare. And ya’ll can call me Vivi or Vivian, whichever you prefer.”
“Alright, then. Nice to meet you, Vivi,” Rosie responded.
Synclare just smiled at Vivian.
“Likewise, now, can I take a look at your back?”
Immediately Rosie stiffened. “Why?” she asked defensively.
“So I can tell the healer here exactly what it looks like, so he can give us the right medicine for you. I saw you flinch when Synclare touched you. That’s not a little bit of pain you’re dealing with. Were you not put in the healing chamber when you arrived?” Vivian asked.
“I was. Most of my injuries healed, but there are still places on my back that just won’t heal.”
Haven 2: Redemption Page 4
