that I loved her; she informed me that I was smothering her.”
I can’t speak. My words have dried up, and my esophagus feels like it’s been decorated in sandpaper. My eyes, thankfully, stay dry, though they are stinging something awful.
“So forgive me,” Bash continues, voice cold enough to give me frostbite, “if I decline the honor of just a fuck with you.”
I force my teeth to unclench and ignore how my voice wobbles. “Bash, that’s not what I—actually, I’d like more for us. So much more.”
I’m not sure if he even hears me. If he does, he’s too far gone in his (hurt) anger to believe me. He holds up a hand, and his claws glint, catching light from his brightly burning eyes. “Done. Consider me done with trying to woo you.”
I wish I could shout out a speech impassioned enough to make him see I didn’t mean to offend him. Heck yeah, I want more, but I’ll settle. I’ve learned to settle, because that’s what guys want.
I thought that’s what he wanted too.
But now he’s too injured to really listen, and I’m too emotional to effectively communicate.
I figure he’ll stalk off, he’s furious enough to leave me all alone in the very empty quarry—but he doesn’t do that. He motions to me. “Come. I’ll take you to the preserve.”
“I can find my own way back,” I mumble.
“And I will follow you to make certain that you do,” he grits out, clearly not about to be budged on this issue.
In the end, I trudge to the compound, feeling him behind me even if he doesn’t speak. It’s one of the rare times in my life where I don’t say anything either, but not because I’m boiling with anger like he is.
I’m not angry; I’m sad. I feel like I’ve lost my friend. I just don’t know what to say to fix this, and I know that anything I utter is bound to make things worse.
CHAPTER 28
ISLA
“My next question... How prolonged can one expect this stage to be? Feel free to approximate,” Dohrein murmurs, sounding slightly distracted, as if half his attention is being put into organizing medical data on the tablet of notes that never seems to leave his hand.
I’m on my back, stretched out on the floor, feeling glum. I’m also pouring my heart out to the girls, which also means I’m baring my soul in front of their mates (and Jonohkada), because most of the guys here do not really grasp the concept of private girl-talk. Now that we’re off the clock and not at work, they expect to be at their women’s side as much as they want. And the women here don’t deter them. They want to sit on their mate’s lap and let him play with their hair while they tolerate me whining and moaning about my relationship problems. It’s adorable to the point of being disgusting—but only mostly because I’m having issues getting my own alien to do this couple’s thing with me.
We’re at the infamous compound, a place that looks like a giant sprawling laboratory from the outside… and pretty much looks like one on the inside too. It’s essentially a labyrinth of human cages. Nice ones though. Less a prison; more like hamster setups. It’s got some weird rooms, like a mud room that started out as a site where the aliens tested our interest in building nests (before one of them simply asked us if our species built nests—I guess some of them were just super excited to geek out and field test things on the aliens they’d never seen before) but now serve as the beauty treatment room where you can take a full mud bath or get a facial. (Been there today, done that. My skin is glowing, but my spirits are low.) Before I came here, I guess this place was one big science kit. You know, like the ‘Grow your own tadpole!’ kits they’d sell at the elementary school fair. But instead of twenty-eight little tanks of full-grown laboratory leopard frogs, the Gryfala and hobs were observing humans in a labyrinth of individual rooms.
They’ve relaxed a lot of that now. They still watch us, but I hear it’s a lot less invasive. Whenever we gather in social settings where the act of observing us is not quite the encroachment on our privacy, they’re especially thrilled. The aliens have kitted out large activity rooms like a gym and a dedicated dance studio, and this socializing room with all