by Amanda Boone
Greif that wasn’t hers.
She knew they weren’t meant to be, but why did she feel so goddamn guilty about it? She huffed out a breath, turning her head up to the sky again and hating everything about the human condition.
A scream shot out of her mouth.
***
Garthen had never been to a Kaharan funeral. In fact, the first time anyone he knew died was only after impact, and no funerals were held, just a mass memorial service conducted by the men who survived. So, when he had finally erected the observation station they had come to Earth equipped with, he looked to Dredson’s lifeless body.
After only twelve hours of being dead, the green pigment had begun to take over his skin, and anything remotely human about his appearance had drifted away. Garthen figured he should bury him. It seemed a little unfair to the both of them that Garthen could want so badly for his existence to end but Dredson was the one to die, almost as if his wishing it had killed him.
Garthen tried to ignore the guilt by diverting his attention to the physically taxing task of digging him a grave. He sprayed the Kaharan with a substance meant to chemically burn Kaharan flesh. This was the council’s way of making sure no unwanted physical evidence was left behind…if they could help it.
With every new heave of his shovel, he couldn’t help but hate Earth more and more. The sun had begun to rise, setting the sky on fire with its light, and all he could think about was Aleksey.
Aleksey would have found that beautiful.
Aleksey would have smiled, or even laughed at the warmth and the water.
But Aleksey was dead, so Garthen stopped trying to predict what it would be like. He continued to dig, doing a good job of keeping his mind off his past. He listened to the sound of the trees rustling in the wind as he worked. Seagulls zoomed across the shore; their cry echoing in the wind caught his attention.
He threw the wrapped, decaying Kaharan into the pit he had dug for him and returned the dirt. Just as he had made his final shovelful, he heard a scream pierce the morning quiet. He stopped.
The frequency told him it was a woman.
He dropped his shovel and made his way through the wooded area, following the sound of the voice until the trees began to thin and he caught his first glimpse of the beach. Indeed, there was a figure just three hundred meters out, kneeling in the sand just beyond the place where the water met the land.
Garthen narrowed his eyes as he watched her stand up and pace back and forth. Her streamlined body moved with grace and speed. Her long, brunette hair, which looked it had been dipped in some kind of golden dye, glistened in the light and her olive skin shined effortlessly.
His skin tingled as he realized he had to have her.
Within the next ten minutes, he had made his way back to his post. He barged through the doors, thoughts of Dredson forgotten as he changed out of his preservation suit and into regular layman’s clothes. The pack of supplies that had been granted to him contained an ample supply of medications he could use to his advantage. Although his stint with the navy had been short and uneventful, he knew enough to self-medicate and, thus, more than enough to put a human female down.
Thirty minutes later, he jogged back to the spot where he had seen her, hoping to himself that she had not gotten away. The sight of her lying on her back, letting the waves wash over her, filled him with excitement.
He pushed the brush aside and stepped onto the sand, an annoyed wince crossing his face at the sensation of the fine dirt pulling him down. It was no matter, because after the third step, he had grown accustomed.
She had senses like a wolf.
One hundred meters still separated them when she stood and turned, her thick eyebrow raised in confusion. The sound of his approach had been covered by the crash of the waves, thus only Kaharan ears could have picked them out.
“What are you—?”
Her voice pierced him, but he decided to ignore it.
He launched into a sprint, wrapping his arms around her thin torso within the next second.
“Stop!” she yelled, stomping on his foot.
The resulting pain merely annoyed him.
“Shut up!”
The struggling excited him.
She elbowed him in the gut with such force that he doubled over in pain. His eyes flashed wide in surprise. How could a human woman deliver that much pain? The apparent contradiction kept him interested.
But as soon as he was upright again, a backhanded slap met his face.
He realized far too late that he had underestimated her. He didn’t want to hurt her at all. This whole thing was just supposed to be nothing more than a final experiment, a last entertainment before he offed himself, but she was making it exceedingly difficult for the both of them.
As she spread her legs in the universal stance for fighting and put her fists up in front of her face, he realized he was going to have to hurt her if he wanted to leave with her at all. And what kind of man attempted a kidnap and then gave up because the woman put up a fight?
No kind of man.
That was the answer.
So, he avoided a punch to her face and instead landed one in her gut. He went easy on her, slowing the impact at the last second.
She doubled over in pain anyway, and he used that hesitation to whip out his syringe, filled with a sedative cocktail, and drive it into her neck. She melted into his arms. He held her in his arms as opposed to heaving her over his shoulders just in case anyone happened to see him transporting her off the beach.
The spaceship had been totaled, but the adjoining aircraft, something the council had equipped him with for Earth travel, managed to survive. He gave it a quick once-over before throwing her in the passenger area and climbing into the cockpit. With one button, he had freed it from the rest of the ship.
As he fired up the craft, listening to the whip of the blades, spinning faster and faster with every revolution, he couldn’t help but to worry a little about his quick assessment of the craft he was flying in and, furthermore, the fact that he had just left a crashed spaceship in the middle of a forest clearly proximal to human inhabitation. But as the trees grew smaller and smaller, he reminded himself that soon he would be dead and none of it would matter, at least to him.
After a lifetime of worrying, all he wanted to think about was the nice, solitary island where he would complete his short bucket list.
Chapter Three
Keira’s eyes flipped open.
The ground was swaying.
Ouch.
She winced at the sharp pain in her torso. She didn’t want to move, felt like she couldn’t move, but she knew she had to. She sat up.
Slow and steady.
The sun beat down on her, its backdrop nothing but the blue sky. She was in a helicopter. But as she swept her surroundings with her gaze, taking in the curved surfaces, the stainless steel and the streamlined design, confusion washed over her.
Muttering drifted toward her. She used the support of the lone backseat to steady herself as she stood up and peered down the short corridor. A male body occupied the pilot seat. His gaze pointed down as his hand flitted across the controls.
Then she remembered. Her blood boiled with anger as she stomped right up to him. As if of its own accord, her hand slapped him in the back of his head.
His shoulders jolted at this before he turned.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She slammed herself into the copilot seat, her arms crossed.
“Get back,” he said, turning back to the controls.
Keira glowered at him. She had just slapped him. By the rules of kidnapping, he should have issued a swift and harsh retaliation by then, but he just seemed preoccupied by the controls. “No. You have to take me back.”
He glanced at her for a short moment. “I don’t have to do anything,” he said, before turning his attention back to the panel.
Keira examined him, taking note of everything from his dark, shoulder-length hair
to the olive skin that matched hers. His brows furrowed as he continued to mutter, staring intently at everything in front of him. He jabbed his finger at a green button. Then he froze and, thinking better of it, tried something else.
Keira peered out of the windshield. She had been out on the Pacific more times than she could count, but she could not recognize the island they were zooming toward. “Where are we?”
“That is of no concern to you.”
This answer tugged at her nerves. “Yes, it fucking is.”
When he didn’t respond, she realized that it was highly likely he didn’t know what he was doing at all. “Do you even know how to fly this?” As the obvious answer occurred to her, she clicked her seat belt, her heart pounding against her chest.
He glowered at her.
Keira’s heart skipped a beat at the sight of his violet eyes.
“I don’t have to explain myself to you humans.”
Keira cocked her head to one side. “Humans? What does that mean? Who are you?”
Again, he didn’t respond, but kept his gazed trained straight ahead.
Keira glanced at the windshield once more. They had dropped in altitude as they raced toward the island. One more look at the man tugging at random controls told her that she needed to act fast if she wanted to survive this. With a racing heart, she glanced over at her side of the helicopter-like aircraft. She spotted a joystick just between her legs and instinctively pulled.
“Something’s wrong with the wiring!” the man yelled.
“What did you do?” Keira couldn’t help the shrillness in her voice.
“I don’t have time for your questions.”
“Just pull on your joystick! We have to get this thing back upright.”
But he wouldn’t follow her instructions. “Don’t you think I already tried that?”
“What the hell is this thing?” She had to yell over the warning sirens. The screech cut at her eardrums.
“I don’t have time for your questions!”
“Because you’re too busy crashing a helicopter!”
He cocked his head to one side. “A what?”
Just as he said this, the aircraft tipped, its nose heading straight for the water. Keira watched him cut the engine, listening for the sad silence that followed. Sirens no longer filled the cockpit, and the only sound that could be heard was that of the aircraft itself, slicing through the air.
“Oh my God,” Keira whispered as she grabbed on to the seat with her right hand and the hook of the door with her left. Her entire body had been pressed against the taught belt, the weight of the copter pressing down on her. “I don’t wanna die. I really don’t wanna die.” But the deep blue ocean had occupied her entire field of vision.
It’s gonna be okay.
She was a lifeguard. She could handle this. She saw land in the near distance. She could swim if it came to that. She was not letting herself go out like this. So she sucked in buckets of air and squeezed her eyes shut.
When the copter broke the surface, her entire body lurched forward. Her hands flew to her face, cushioning the impact. Her head spun, her brain rattling around inside it as they fell farther and farther under water.
Don’t panic.
She unhooked her seat belt as soon as she could and faced the door. Her baseline knowledge of physics told her the water would rush in as soon as she tried to open it, but she braced herself, because she would die otherwise.
Their oxygen supply seeped through the creases as water rose up to her waist. She had no time, but when she looked back, her captor sat stupidly in his chair, his head hanging over the control panel and a stream of blood dripping from his forehead.
He would die here if she didn’t do something.
But he had kidnapped her. What if he planned to kill her?
The water had risen halfway up her chest. With every second she contemplated, he grew closer and closer to death. She knew she had to do it. Her heart wouldn’t let her just leave him there. As she unhooked his seat belt and hooked her arm around his torso, using the water to keep him afloat, she told herself that if he was planning to kill her, that plan would have surely changed.
She convinced herself she would be able to talk him out of it.
With that, she heaved the door open. Water rushed in, just like she had expected. The force of it pushed her right back into the aircraft. She kept her chest tight and the breath in but relaxed her every other muscle. This was her element.
As soon as she could see again, she pulled him out of the aircraft and just started swimming. His dense body posed a challenge, but it was nothing like the fat women or chubby grandmothers she had had to rescue in the past.
She ignored the ache in her muscles and the burn in her chest as she propelled the both of them closer and closer to shore. Just when she thought she couldn’t do it anymore, just when the beginning of the thought of abandonment crossed her mind, she saw real light.
Her head broke the surface with a painful splash. Her jaw swung open, letting in tons of air. She saved her smile for later and worked on getting him to shore. She swam for what felt like decades, the shore seemingly moments away at times, but eons away at others.
Sweat covered her whole body, mixing with the salty water by the time her foot found sand. Her muscles had stopped sending pain signals to her brain, her whole body falling silent to the strain.
His frame dropped onto the wet sand, as lifeless as ever.
Keira huffed out a breath. “Okay.” The cut on his forehead looked like nothing more than a surface wound, even though his still frame was none too encouraging.
She decided to suck it up and take her stance over him.
Thirty compressions and she was already out of breath.
Two breaths.
She hung over his face, the need to keep him alive overriding any kind of shame or shyness. So she pulled his mouth open and pressed her lips against his. The soft skin stood as a contradiction to everything she had learned about him in their short interaction.
As she kneeled over him, her hands saving him, his body still, she couldn’t help but find him vulnerable in a way that didn’t make her feel like she had power over him.
Her whole body curled at the sensation of their touch, thus she nearly forgot what she was doing in the first place. She delivered the breaths and dragged herself up.
Thirty compressions.
Twenty-four.
Twenty-five.
Twenty…
His back arched as his jaw swung open. But before he could take a breath, water spilled from his lips. Keira rushed to his other side and turned him over, allowing the water to spill out of his mouth and not back into his throat.
A wave of relief washed over her.
Chapter Four
Keira awoke to the sound of her own stomach growling. Her eyes flashed open to the sight of the sun hanging low in the sky…and her captor standing just on the edge of the shore. She gazed at his body, silhouetted by the light and breaking up the image of the waves.
As she sat up, her head ringing and her body burning in protest, she realized she was lost. They were stuck on that island where no one else knew they had come. She put herself on her feet. There were ways to get attention. She told herself a boat would come. It had to.
But first, she needed to find out where she was.
She approached the man with cautious steps, part of her wildly thinking he would hurt her right then and there. “Hey,” she said with a dry mouth.
He looked down at her, his violet eyes, empty. “Who are you?”
Keira grimaced. “You kidnapped me. I could be asking you the same question.”
His brow furrowed. “I kidnapped you?”
Keira scanned him from head to toe, her mind empty of what to say next. “Are you playing stupid?”
“I have no knowledge of what you speak.”
Keira’s lips folded into a frown. “This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I can’t rem
ember why I’m here.”
Keira’s eyes flashed wide. “What?” she whispered.
He faced her with big, earnest eyes. “Will you tell me why I am here?”
Keira stepped away from him. This was just perfect. She had been flown to a remote island in the middle of the ocean and was now stuck there with a kidnapper and potential almost-murderer who couldn’t remember a thing. “I don’t fucking know!”
He shook his head, as if to clear it of something, and then walked toward the wooded area beyond the shore.
Keira followed him. “Well, do you remember your name even?”
“Garthen. Garthen Vell. I remember my name. I know who I am, I just…” He stopped to give her another look. He narrowed his eyes at her, leaning in.
Keira didn’t know how to feel about the proximity.
“You look like…are you a Kaharan?”
“A what?” she asked, making no apologies about the aggression in her voice.
But he just gave a quick shake of his head. “I think I heard a pond a little inward.”
“A pond? How can you hear anything over the ocean?” But even as she asked the question, she had a feeling she already knew the answer.
He stopped in his tracks, raising his eyebrow. “Are you going to follow me to food or simply argue about it?”
Keira narrowed her eyes at him. Something about the way he spoke to her annoyed her and excited her at the same time. Yet, sure enough, after a mere fifteen minutes of hiking through the woods, she could hear the running water herself. She let out a gasp at the sight of the clear creek, the water barely deep enough to cover the rocks and the orange, blue and silver fish rushing along with the current.
Garthen barely missed a step as he peeled his shirt off over his head and stepped in.
“Wait! I don’t know—”
“Are you coming or not?” he asked, his eyes commanding that she follow him.
She took her first step without even thinking about it. When she slipped out of her damp shorts and tank top, there was no wondering what it all meant, no thinking about anything, because if she let her mind wander she would be right back on that beach, soaking in the fact that she was lost.
