reached past her shoulders.
Puzzled, she held a strand out and stared at it as the doors to the room she was in slid open, revealing a smiling Roxy wearing a pair of loose white pants and a sleeveless teal and gold shirt.
“You’re awake!” her friend said with a wide smile.
“Hey.” Lacey cleared her throat and dropped her hair so she could return Roxy’s hug. “Yeah, just woke up. How long was I out for?”
“Only one day.” Roxy reached out and tugged a curl. “Chel thinks you went through the transition so quickly because your body was already altered a little by the slavers. That allowed you to easily adjust to the changes the Kadothian DNA made in your body, like I did. For some reason, your hair grew longer during your transition. I swear, your legs looked like a golden retriever had shed all over them. Don’t worry, I took care of it for you. That and the tumbleweeds you were growing in your armpits.”
An unexpected laugh bubbled up from Lacey, and she grabbed Roxy for another hug. “Thank you.”
Giving her cheek a kiss, Roxy pulled back with a smile. “Don’t worry about it. Anything for a fellow soldier. Look, we’ve only got a few minutes before your men barge in here, so we need to talk.”
A warm wave of desire went through Lacey as she thought of Gwarnon and Chel, of how Gwarnon had touched her, how he’d driven her mad then basically seduced a kiss out of her. She’d be more irritated about it if she hadn’t experienced that brief moment of perfect romantic love with him through their bond before she’d passed out. Chel and Gwarnon loved her and were good men, despite her almost desperate need to believe otherwise. She didn’t know what her future might bring her, or how, but she knew her men would be a part of it.
“Lacey,” Roxy sat on the bed and took her hand. “You are never going to find two men who will love you more than Gwarnon and Chel.”
Lacey held up her hand, cutting the other woman off. “Don’t worry, I get it now. That connection you were trying to explain that you have with Cormac and Nosa? I felt it with Chel and Gwarnon. It was…there is…I can’t even begin to explain it. I could feel them, their souls.”
“I know,” Roxy smiled, her dark eyes growing soft. “Isn’t it amazing?”
“It seems almost too good to be true.” A shiver went down her spine and she shifted uncomfortably as her thoughts went in a rather dirty direction.
Those happy thoughts died a quick death when Roxy said, “I think you should tell them about…you know who.”
The pang of heartache and sorrow that tore through her chest made it hard for her to breathe. God, she missed her daughter and her mom so much and worried about them every hour of every day, but the less people that knew about Jillian, the better. On the other side of the wormhole on Earth, her daughter Jillian was safe from the dangers of the Bel’Tan Galaxy. According to the NevShoo, Lacey and Roxy’s identity had not been revealed to the rest of the Galaxy. The Baladium protected the identity of the fighters until the very last minute, so no one had an advantage in betting. Oh, their basic stats were given out, and odds were made and placed, but a human fighter was something new and unknown. The Baladium was working that angle to increase the enormous amounts of money being tossed around in the various betting pools.
“Do we have privacy?” she whispered.
Roxy’s dark gaze went distant, then she nodded. “As far as I can tell.”
“Once we win, I’m going to find a way go home, get my mom and daughter then alert the Kadothian ship where I am. Hopefully, Gwarnon and Chel will be able to forgive me once they meet my mom and Jillian. I figure if they don’t know what I’m going to do, then they can’t get in trouble for it. The Kadothian High Congress is already going to be super pissed at them. Chel and Gwarnon will understand that I couldn’t leave my family behind, that it would kill my mom to lose us since my dad passed away a long time ago. Sure, she’ll have our extended family, but me and my mom are tight, and she thinks the sun rises and sets on Jillian. And I would burn down the entire galaxy to keep Jillian