Romancing Rem’eb (Ice Planet Clones #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

TIA

S tacy always says trouble comes in threes. Right now? There’s two heaps of trouble, and I’m waiting for a third to head my way.

Man, I wish I was back at Croatoan right now. I wish I’d never gotten on Ashtar’s back and made the long, bitterly cold flight back to Icehome. If I was back in Croatoan and having a bad day? Stacy would cluck over me like she was my mother (never mind that my elegant mother never paid a lick of attention to me), make me something delicious to eat, and let me tell her my troubles.

But I’m not at Croatoan. I’m not even at Icehome. I’m currently sitting in a completely fruit-less fruit cave with Tall Horn Clan and Ashtar. We’re here to try to pull a Sherlock Holmes and figure out the case of the missing fruit. Or at least the others are. I just want to be away from Icehome Beach, because if I’m there, I’m going to see I’rec and Flor.

I’rec and Flor, smiling at each other. I’rec and Flor, sharing kisses. I’rec and Flor, resonating and absolutely not hiding their lust for one another. I’rec looking at Flor in a way he never, ever looked at me.

It’s all awful. All of it. First the fruit cave. Now my sorta-boyfriend of the last four years (and my hope for resonance) resonated to someone else just before I returned.

Two troubles. Whatever the third one is that’s waiting to drop? It’s gonna be a fucking doozy, and I am not looking forward to it.

So even though I should be sleuthing in the cave, I’m sitting on one of the top ledges, away from everyone else, and working on my knitting. Knitting calms me. Knitting gives me something to do with my hands other than to wring them. I pull and knit, and it helps me sort my raw, painful thoughts.

At least, I would be if I had some time alone. Instead of going down by the pool with the others in Tall Horn, R’jaal lingers by my side. I’m surprised about this for a hot moment, but then I remember that he hasn’t resonated, and so he’s probably my husband-to-be.

And that makes me feel weird. Weird, weird, weird.

I pull and knit, pull and knit, giving the ball of yarn the occasional angry tug. It’s not his fault that I feel like a leftover cheese sandwich that got shuffled to the back of the fridge. R’jaal is sweet, but his mopey, yearning personality doesn’t match mine. I figured that out pretty quickly, but now I’m worried that I might be stuck with him.

“Perhaps…” R’jaal begins, his voice careful.

I look up from the stitch I just made, my mouth pressed into a tight line.

“…you should have remained behind,” he finishes.

Oh sure. Me, remain behind. I knit even faster, knowing that I’m pulling too tight and I’m probably going to have to redo this entire row later when my head’s on straight. But fuck it. It’s either knit or choke someone, so I knit. And then stop, because this was a hat for I’rec to match the scarf I’d made him, and now he’s got a freaking mate and everyone’s looking at me like I’m some sort of Jezebel because I kissed him before I even knew he had a mate!

“And what?” I spit out, furious. “Watch them kiss constantly? Watch them giggle over each other? Watch them be happy and in love and know that should have been me? No thank you. I’d rather be playing fruit cave detective with the rest of you.”

R’jaal just gives me another one of those sad-eyed looks. “If it was meant to be you, he would have resonated to you.”

Urge to kill rising. Not that I’d really kill someone. I’m just so…angry. Humiliated. I want to scream and cry. I want to rip my knitting to shreds (except I know how long it takes to make yarn, and no thank you). I want…I want…

I want to be away from here. From all of this.

It’s not that I even want I’rec. I mean, I kinda did because he’s a good kisser and he’s devoted. A little cranky, sure, but we got along well. It’s the humiliation of it all that burns. I stare down at my knitting. “Maybe if we had come back a day earlier it would have been me.”

“But it was not.”

No, I guess it wasn’t. The moment I saw how he looked at Flor, I knew it wasn’t me. It was never me. Even so…read the room. I shake my head, avoiding eye contact with him.“I’m trying to have a pity party and you’re not helping, R’jaal. Aren't you frustrated? Upset? How can you be so calm?”

“Because resonance decides. If someone was meant to be mine, my khui would let me know.” He pauses.“I am glad you came with us, though you should not have snuck away from the group.”

As if anyone was going to let me leave Icehome Beach unless I snuck away? Come on. “I needed to get away from the camp, just like you. And you know I’m right—if there’s some computer stuff here, who’s going to help you with it? A’tam? M’tok? S’bren?”

“A’tar did not want females with us,” R’jaal states. “In case there truly is a stranger we have not met yet. Remember how Juth stole R’ven.”

Don’t threaten me with a good time , I think, but I keep that to myself. A stranger would solve all my problems. It would just hurt R’jaal to know that I’m about as enthusiastic about our resonance prospects as I am for dung collecting. I glance up at him, since he seems to want to hover over me.“You and I both know no one else is getting dropped on this planet, R’jaal. Like it or not, we’re stuck with each other. But I appreciate the company. Here I wanted to come back and show everyone how I’ve matured and I completely lost it when I found out about I’rec.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t know that you do. I feel we’re on different pages.” And you act more like my dad than my suitor, but we’re stuck with each other.

That realization makes me blink hard, and then the waterworks start up again. Tears spill down my face and I sniff. Crap. I swipe at my face.“Never mind. I just need to work through it. My shit got turned upside down four years ago when we got here and I was able to figure it out. I’ll figure this out, too. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.”

He doesn’t argue. He’s probably relieved. “I am going to visit S’bren and the others. Shout if you need anything.”

I stare down at my knitting and wonder if I should just start over. My stitches are too tight. I pick up the hat and tug on the loops to see if they’ll loosen, but no dice. I can’t exactly give gifts to my ex-boyfriend right in front of his new mate anyhow. That’s weird. Awkward and weird. Maybe I’ll turn it into a bag of some kind. I flip it over in my hands and contemplate how to start over.

It seems like I’m always starting over. Every private boarding school I went to as a child, where I had to start fresh every time my parents decided that the curriculum wasn’t ‘challenging me enough’. Then when I arrived here on the ice planet. Then again to Croatoan. I should be used to this by now, but each time I have to ‘reset’ again, it hurts more. I sniff again, my nose full of snot.

Snot and angst. It’s not my favorite combination.

I cry on and off through the day, undoing my project and starting over. I’m going to make a scarf for Raashel, I decide. Something with cute, festive pompoms because every little girl deserves cute pompoms. I stay up on the ledge by myself for most of the afternoon, because I hear M’tok talking shit about me and S’bren and A’tam laughing, and I feel incredibly alone.

They were my friends once, and they were so eager to play kissing games. Now everyone’s mated and I feel like more of a pariah than ever.

I wonder if I can live permanently in the fruit cave. I can be like the stories of a cottage witch in the woods, just hanging out and eating fruit and minding my own business…except there’s no fruit. And I’d be too lonely anyhow. I like people. I’m miserable alone and on my own. It reminds me too much of summers back home with my parents. They’d send me off to one boarding school or another so I could have the ‘best’ education, but summers were terrible. When I wasn’t at camp, I had to stay home. Home meant two parents completely absorbed in their work and with no time for me. The only child of two successful, highly educated lawyers, I’ve always been treated more like a box being ticked than a person. Couples in successful marriages have children, so my parents had one. Me. And then they’d leave me with a nanny or send me off to private school because parenting was too time-consuming. They loved me in their way. They just couldn’t divert time away from important casework for a bored, lonely child.

So no, I need people around. I don’t want to be alone.

It’s not that I don’t like the people here. I like everyone at Icehome, even M’tok. But I don’t know where I fit in anymore, and I want to run back to Croatoan and hide again. I don’t know how R’jaal could stand it all these years, watching everyone resonate around him. I’d have fucking lost it.

Hell, I’m losing it right now.

After a while, even the knitting doesn’t soothe me, and I figure it’s time for more drastic action. I need to do something to tire myself out. So I pull up vines and examine the lines that feed water to the plants. They all seem to be heading in one direction—up. I climb to the top of the cave and check out the computing system, looking for anything that might be amiss. It all appears as it should, so I climb back down again, and then farther down, joining the others by the pool.

S’bren and A’tam are by the water’s edge, sniffing a few scattered leaves. They both glance up when I join them. “Find anything?” S’bren asks me. “I saw you crawling around.”

“Nothing.”

“Of course you did not find anything,” A’tam says confidently. “Your nose is not as good as ours.”

I give him an annoyed nudge. “I know that, ding-dong. But I have eyeballs. I went up and looked at the computer system. None of the components are out of place, and there are no flashing error messages on screen. Furthermore, the interface panels have dust on them, like they always do. No one’s touched them, so that rules out tampering.”

They both stare at me. A’tam blinks slowly.

“The ancestor things,” I say, dumbing it down. “No bad stuff there.”

“Aaah,” says A’tam.

I manage a small smile at his response. It’s not his fault he doesn’t know anything about computers or technology. But this is why I came with them. “How goes the leaf sniffing?”

“It is strange,” S’bren says, putting the leaves down in a row on the rocky surface near the pool.

“It is not strange. You are just imagining things,” A’tam tells him. He gets up and walks away. “I am going to go hunt for scents. Again.”

S’bren shakes his head. He picks up the first leaf, ignoring A’tam’s retreat, and holds it out to me. “I found three leaves that were damaged.”

I take it from him, eyeing the greenery. It looks…like a leaf. A leaf that’s been folded at some point, sure, but still a leaf. “And?”

“I smell nothing on it.”

Now I feel like the dumb one. “…and?”

He plucks the leaf from my hand. “That is just it, T’ia. I should smell something. When a leaf is brushed by someone, it will take on a lingering hint of their scent. If I leave this leaf behind, it will carry a faint memory of your scent for some time.”

Oh. It’s hard for me to realize that their noses are that sensitive. “So they’ve been disturbed, but you obviously can’t smell whoever was here?”

He nods. “I found more leaves that were broken, of course, but these are the only ones that smell like no one at all.” S’bren glances over at me and then leans in. “Do you smell mushrooms? I do, but they all say I am a fool.”

I pull back, considering, and then pick up another broken leaf. I give it a sniff, thinking. “No? But I don’t know what a mushroom smells like anyhow?”

“It smells like earth. Caves. Deep things.” His mouth pulls down in a frown. “No one smells it but me. Perhaps I am a fool.”

“Hey, then you’re in good company,” I joke. “I’m a fool for coming back to Icehome Beach.”

The look he gives me is full of pity. “It is not your fault, T’ia. It is just resonance.”

His sympathy breaks through my unbothered fa?ade, and tears slide down my face again. I suck in a shuddery breath, and when he puts a friendly arm around my shoulders, I lean against him, weeping. Maybe S’bren gets it. Maybe S’bren, out of all people, understands.

He pats my arm, offering comfort. “You and R’jaal will happen soon. Wait and see.”

Ugh. I pull away, frustrated. “I don’t want to resonate to R’jaal!”

S’bren looks surprised at my reaction. “Then what is it you want?”

I get to my feet, because I don’t have an answer. I genuinely don’t know. A few weeks from now, a few months from now, I bet I'll probably be happy for I’rec and Flor. They’re both great people and I can see how they’d work together well. But right now, it’s all too fresh.

I’m still grieving for the future I thought I’d have. I’m grieving for the fact that with I’rec’s resonance to another, I’ve been turned into an outsider again, a problem no one knows how to solve. Maybe that’s what makes me the most miserable of all.

“Never mind,” I tell S’bren, and retreat away to my sleep roll.