“Ava? Are you unwell?”
“No. I just…” She slowly rotated, her brown eyes squinting as she searched the cliff and the beach in the distance. “I was just thinking about Eliana and…”
“And what?” She seemed somber all of a sudden.
“I don’t know where she is,” she murmured almost absently.
“You didn’t find her?”
She turned back to face him. “Does something seem… off to you?”
“I’m not certain I understand your meaning.”
Worry crept into her features, erasing the joy that had lit them moments earlier. “Does something about all of this seem not right to you?”
He frowned. “No.”
She glanced down at the water. “Why didn’t the water bother my eyes?”
“I don’t know.”
“When we were underwater and you were swimming so fast, my eyes were wide open, but it didn’t feel like any water got in them.”
Jak’ri didn’t know what to say to that.
He glanced down at the water but could find no explanation. When he looked up again, his breath caught. A large bruise as thick as his thumb now streaked across her forehead from one side to the other. “Ava? What happened to your forehead?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s bruised.”
“It is?”
“Yes. Did something strike you when we were swimming?” He had been moving fast, wanting to impress her, but not so fast that he wouldn’t see any obstacles in their path. “Or maybe when we jumped from the cliff?” He had seen no wood or anything else floating beneath them before they hit the surface.
“No.” She jumped suddenly and looked around wildly. “What was that?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you hear that?”
He listened intently. “The birds?”
She shook her head as fear entered her expression. “It was a clunking sound.”
He frowned. “No. I didn’t hear it. Ava, what happened to your forehead?”
Her bruised brow furrowed as she searched the horizon for… he didn’t know what. “He slammed my head into the ladder rung,” she uttered distractedly.
Fury filled him. “Who did? Someone here on Purvel?”
Again she shook her head and faced him. Moisture welled in her pretty brown eyes as she moved closer and rested her hands on his shoulders. “Jak’ri… I don’t think I’m on Purvel.”
Confused, he looked around. To the south, the Runaka Sea stretched as far as the eye could see. To the north lay the cliff from which they’d jumped. And lush forest intermingled with sandy beach to the west.
Meeting her gaze, he cupped her face in one hand. “This is Purvel, Ava. This is my homeworld. I’m certain of it.”
She bit her lip. “I want that to be true. I really do.”
“It is true,” he insisted. “Now tell me who hurt you.”
Raising a hand, she touched the bruise on her forehead with trembling fingers.
Jak’ri’s concern mounted when the movement revealed an even darker bruise on the pale, speckled skin of her forearm.
He gently grasped her hand and drew it away from her forehead. “What happened here?”
She winced when he turned her arm a little bit so he could inspect the dark purplish mark that marred it. “He pushed me down the stairs.”
What the drek? “Who did?”
“The Gathendien.”
Jak’ri stared at her. “There are no Gathendiens on Purvel, Ava.” The Lasarans and their Aldebarian Alliance allies had decimated the Gathendien military and driven whatever remained to the outer reaches of the galaxy a long time ago.
His heart clenched when a tear spilled over her lashes and trailed down one cheek.
Her throat worked in a swallow. “That’s why I don’t think I’m on Purvel.”
Jak’ri just stared at her, uncomprehending.
She motioned to the vast blue ocean beyond the cliff. “I don’t think this is real.” Another tear slipped down her cheek. “And I really want this to be real, Jak’ri.” Easing forward, she slid her arms around him, pressed her face to his neck, and hugged him tight. “I wish this were real,” she said brokenly. “I wish you were real.”
Sliding an arm around her, he cradled her close as he kept them afloat. “I am real, Ava. I’m right here, holding you.” He pressed a kiss to her hair. “It’ll be all right. I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
Squeezing him tighter, she whispered, “I wish this were real.”
And the despair in her sweet voice made him want to weep, too.
Ava nearly wept when a big hand clamped down on her arm and dragged her out of sleep.
She’d been with Jak’ri again, swimming in a sparkling ocean and wonderfully free of the bars that now enclosed her.
Yanked off her little nest of blankets, she stumbled a couple of steps before she regained her balance and straightened.
One of the Gathendiens had entered her cell and now pulled her toward the open gate.
Ava dug in her heels, suddenly sure she would prefer her crappy cell to whatever awaited her outside it. But the lizard guy had to be seven damn feet tall and weighed at least two hundred and fifty pounds. Maybe three hundred. That thick alligator-like skin was probably as heavy as it was hard to pierce.
All she managed to do, unfortunately, was piss him off.
Snarling over his shoulder, he swept his heavy tail toward her and knocked her off her feet.
Ava hit the hard floor on her side, one arm still held in the lizard’s grip. She hissed when the floor scraped the skin of her bruised arm. Seriously, could they have made the damn floor any rougher? It was as if they had intentionally applied a maxxed-out sandpaper texture to it to make the cell occupants more miserable and cause more pain every time the bastards shoved people inside.
“Don’t break anything yet, Mocna,” a distracted voice murmured somewhere behind the behemoth. “You can do that later if she fails to cooperate.”
Well, if that didn’t chill her blood, what would?
Ava scrambled to her feet, thankful for the jeans that kept her from scraping her knees.
Mocna—aka the behemoth—yanked her forward out of the cell and deposited her in front of a tall, skinny Gathendien in a lab coat. The same one who had figured out she was from Earth. Something that resembled an operating table equipped with manacles dominated the space between them.
“Disrobe,” the skinny one ordered dispassionately as he tapped the surface of something that looked like an iPad.
“Um. No, thank you,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. Peering up at him, she attempted to delve into his thoughts. If she could ascertain his plans, maybe she could thwart them while finding ways to exploit any weaknesses she might discover up there.
But his mind was closed to her.
Fighting a frown, she tried harder.
Nope. Not a thing.
“Disrobe,” he repeated.
She redirected her mind-reading efforts at Mocna.
Even his mind was closed to her. Crap. Did Gathendiens have some kind of natural defense against telepathy?
It would explain how they had managed to trick the Lasarans into believing they wished to be allies.