Stolen by the Zandian - Renee Rose Page 0,23

smell the alcohol, but I won’t touch it to your skin until you say yes.”

I flip the protective cap up, and she flinches, hard, so hard her whole body jerks into mine with force.

I steady her. “It won’t hurt—not even for a human. When I receive inoculations, I feel the briefest pin prick, and a cold sensation as the medicine goes into the tissue. It will only take a millisecond.”

“All right.” She nods and squeezes her eyes shut. She takes a deep breath. “Do it.”

In a flash, I press the sleek cylinder to her arm and press the trigger. There’s a short click, and it’s done.

She sits so still, I can’t tell if she’s passed out or not. Then she says, “Is that all?”

I put the spent device behind me. “All over.”

“That was it?” She opens her eyes. Touches her arm. “It doesn’t hurt.” She looks up at me, and her eyes fill with tears. “You didn’t lie.” She gulps. “I’m all right. There’s no surgery.”

Suddenly, she burst into sobs, her shoulders heaving with cries so deep and long that I grab her again.

“I can’t believe I’m not in that cell,” she sniffs between jerks of her body. “Owned by the Kraa. It’s all I’ve wanted for so long, and now that I’m out…” She squeezes herself against me, like she’s trying to merge with my skin. “I don’t even know how to do this. To live in a new environment.”

“You’ll figure it out.” I stroke her hair. “You don’t need to do it all at once.”

“I can’t go back into captivity and have them experiment on me whenever they want. I just can’t. The possibility that I could—it’s almost worse than being free. It’s so terrifying.”

“You’re safe now.” I hold her until she cries it out.

The suns rise higher in the sky, and dual beams of light stream in from opposite directions, casting an intricate shadow pattern across our bodies.

She looks up at me and swipes a hand across her eyes. There’s peace there and a new determination. She is back in charge of herself again.

“I’m ready. Tell me what I need to do.”

Kailani

“Stay ten paces behind me,” he whispers. “Walk in my footsteps.”

“Got it.” I’m much shorter than he is, but my stride is long because I use my enhanced muscles to leap from spot to spot where he’s crushed down the crispy waist-high grasses with his large boots.

“Your breathing okay?” He keeps the same pace as the sky gradually picks up more color, reds shooting through the original blue and pink. There are clouds, too, the kind that burst with moisture. So far it’s been dry, which is good news. We can get the flowers while they’re intact.

“Fine. Yes.” It took a few minutes of deep gulps of air, but my strong lungs adjusted even faster than his Zandian ones.

“I’m great.” The cold air on my cheeks exhilarates me. Even the thoughts of dangerous locals can’t dampen my boundless joy at just walking around without Kraa slave masters watching my every move. And having mastered that inoculation with his help? It made me feel invincible. I did a thing that was in my worst nightmares—and I survived.

“I’ve downloaded an ag map of the territory onto my holo. We’ll walk a mile due Southeast, and we should hit a field where we might find flowers.” He turns to look at me.

“How did you get such a map?” I leap across a boggy patch of grass, black mud seeping up between thick gray roots.

“Zandians have information about many planets in the galaxies.” His shoulders seem stiff. I feel like his voice is different from before, almost like he’s hiding something from me.

Suddenly, I hear something. On instinct, I grab his sleeve. “Footsteps to the left. Get down.”

I immediately dive and nestle into the grass. He’s beside me in a flash, his head inches from mine. It’s not the time or place, but the warmth from his body and his lips so close remind me of what we did on the ship, when he spanked me and brought me pleasure.

“You heard that even before I did.” His voice holds grudging admiration. “Good work.”

“Cochlear surgery when I was eight solar cycles. I can’t tell if it’s sentients or animals.” I suppress my surge of pride at his praise. Speaking of the surgery doesn’t bring quite the rush of horror as usual—whether it’s his presence or the fact that I was able to take a vaccine voluntarily, I’m more in control of