Chapter 11
CASSIE
I’m blushing—why am I blushing? Cassie asked herself as she stared, unseeing, at the contents of the cabinet. She didn’t know what to think anymore…which was becoming an alarmingly common theme in her life lately.
First she’d thought Severin was a cold, arrogant, needle-wielding asshole who was probably going to throw her right back out into the Dead Zone as soon as he finished poking and prodding her.
Then he’d cupped her cheek so gently and brushed the tears away with his thumb, his pale blue eyes soft behind the lenses of his glasses, and something inside her had just… melted.
Which was ridiculous because she didn’t even like him.
Or at least, she had decided she didn’t like him.
Decided it firmly, in fact, right around the time he’d ordered Ravik to strip her naked and then stared at her under those glaring overhead lights like she was some kind of weird science project.
But then he’d looked at her like she was a person again—not a specimen or an off-worlder or a defective female who couldn’t lay eggs and certainly not a washed-up human woman whose hormones had gone haywire.
He’d seen her as a person with emotions who needed comfort…and somehow that was worse than when he was being a cold, calculating asshole.
Cassie knew what to do with coldness. She had plenty of experience with men who were selfish and dismissive and cruel in that smooth, casual way that made you feel like maybe you were the crazy one for objecting.
Mitchell had been like that and Sskarth had turned out to be like that too, though in a much scalier and more alien way.
Cassie knew how to armor herself against coldness…but gentleness was dangerous.
Gentleness snuck in under her armor and found all the bruised, lonely places she was trying so hard not to look at.
It made her want to lean into the Blood Kindred’s touch.
It made her want to believe things she had no business believing—like maybe she wasn’t alone…
maybe she wasn’t completely screwed…maybe she hadn’t just gone from one bad marriage to another and then straight into a zombie apocalypse where she was probably going to die or turn into a flesh-eating monster.
And then there was Ravik. She couldn’t forget about the big Beast Kindred, who seemed to be the polar opposite of his friend.
She could still feel his arms around her—huge and hard and impossibly strong.
Could still feel the heat of his big body pressing against her naked skin…
the rough black leather of his vest against her bare breasts…
the steady furnace warmth of him surrounding her as though he could simply burn the cold away by holding her tightly enough.
It had been embarrassing when he hugged her—mortifying, actually. She had been naked as the day she was born and pressed up against a seven-foot-tall Beast Kindred who thought she was his mate and kept sniffing her like she was the best thing he’d ever smelled.
But it had also been…nice.
Cassie frowned as she opened another cupboard in the small but surprisingly well-equipped kitchen area and stared blindly at the contents inside.
Nice? Was she insane? Had the Hunger Virus already gotten into her brain and started nibbling on the parts that controlled common sense?
Maybe. Because only a crazy woman would admit—even to herself—that there had been something almost unbearably comforting about being held by Ravik.
He was so big…so warm…so solid and alive.
Everything about him was hot breath and hard muscle and protective strength, which was such a sharp contrast to Sskarth that thinking about it made Cassie’s throat tighten unexpectedly.
Sskarth had always been cold. Cold hands. Cold scales. Cold mouth.
And don’t forget—cold heart, the evil bastard, she thought resentfully.
Sleeping beside him had been like curling up next to a decorative reptile statue someone had left in an air-conditioned room.
His skin—or scales, rather—had never warmed under her touch.
His arms had never felt like shelter. Even when he had held her in the beginning, back when he’d still been fascinated by her pale, scaleless skin and the “silk” that grew from her head, his embrace had never felt soft or comforting.
Being with the lizard-man had felt like being examined…possessed. And when his status-hungry friends came around—displayed like an expensive piece of art he’d bought to make others jealous.
And kissing him had been the worst.
Cassie made a face as she remembered, while she pulled a squat green canister from the cupboard, mostly because she needed something to do with her hands.
The Visskous didn’t really kiss—not the way humans did. Sskarth had no lips to speak of—just a narrow, lipless mouth and that forked tongue that was always flickering out to taste the air.
At first, she’d thought it was exotic—sensual, even. He had told her he was tasting her scent because she was so desirable and unusual to him, and lonely, stupid Cassie had believed it was romantic.
Now she knew better.
Now she knew it was just another way of assessing her. Sampling her. Deciding whether she was pleasing or inconvenient or too hot or too hormonally unstable or not useful enough to keep.
She wondered how long it had been since a warm-blooded man had really held her like Ravik had. It must have been years—not since before her marriage with Mitch fell apart.
The thought sat in the middle of her chest like a stone and she felt her eyes stinging again.
“Stop it,” she muttered to herself, putting the green canister on the counter with more force than necessary. “You are not going to stand here mooning over two alien warriors while you’re infected with zombie cooties and trapped in an underground bunker. Get a grip, Cassie.”
Still, she couldn’t help glancing toward the doorway of the kitchen area as though Ravik might suddenly appear there, filling the entire frame with his broad shoulders and wild golden eyes. Because apparently the huge, half-infected Beast Kindred had decided she was his mate.
That was another thought she didn’t have time to deal with right now. It was hovering somewhere in the back of her mind, though, right beside the knowledge that she might have to sleep in Ravik’s arms tonight.
Cassie was not thinking about that right now. Nope—not at all.
She was cooking supper. That was what she was doing.
She was going to make something edible from whatever strange alien pantry staples the bunker had to offer, because no matter how bad things got, people still needed to eat.
Even during a zombie apocalypse. Especially during a zombie apocalypse, probably.
Besides, cooking gave her something practical to focus on and Cassie had always been good at practical things.
She’d raised three boys, survived twenty years with Mitchell, escaped to the Kindred Mother Ship, married a lizard man, lived five years on a planet where all the women had tail-holes in their dresses and dry sandy slits instead of pussies, and had somehow managed not to completely lose her mind.
Surely she could manage to make the Visskous equivalent of beans and rice—or whatever staple foods the pantry was stocked with.
She looked more closely into the cupboard and began taking inventory.
There were several sealed bags of something that looked like pearly gray lentils, each little bead perfectly round and faintly iridescent, like tiny BBs made out of moonstone.
The label was written in Visskous script, which Cassie could read after five miserable years on Visslick Prime, though she still hated the way the letters curled and hooked around each other like little snakes.
Kareth pearls, the bags said.
Not bad. Kareth was a staple grain on Visslick Prime, though calling it “grain” was probably a generous interpretation.
It grew in long, hanging pods from squat, ugly bushes that smelled like wet dirt.
When dried and boiled, the pearls softened into something vaguely like rice—if rice had a slightly nutty flavor and a faint blue tint.
Cassie had eaten plenty of it during her marriage to Sskarth, mostly because it was cheap, filling, and didn’t taste like insects—which put it above a surprising number of Visskous foods.
Next to the kareth pearls were flat bricks wrapped in dull silver foil. She pulled one out and turned it over in her hands.
Dried thessa mash, the packaging read.
Cassie made a face. Thessa mash was sort of like refried beans, if refried beans had been invented by someone who hated joy and thought food ought to have the texture of wet cement.
Still, it was full of protein and it kept forever, which was probably why the bunker had an entire shelf of it.
Once rehydrated with water and heated, it turned into a thick brown paste that could be eaten with grain cakes or used to stretch soup.
There were also several tall jars of preserved loompa root, which was a purple tuber that tasted a little like sweet potato crossed with turnip.
Cassie actually liked loompa root, especially if it was roasted or pan-fried with salt.
Unfortunately, the jars appeared to hold it in some kind of briny green liquid, which meant it was probably going to taste like pickled dirt, but beggars in secret underground bunkers couldn’t be choosers.
She moved on to the next shelf.
There were packets of dried sserka strips, which looked disturbingly like strips of old leather and smelled faintly smoky even through the sealed packaging.
Sserka was a domesticated herd animal on Visslick Prime that looked something like a cross between a goat and an armadillo, if God had been drunk and angry when He made it.
Cassie had never liked to see the creatures alive because they had too many legs and made a wet clicking sound when they walked, but the meat itself wasn’t terrible once it was dried and seasoned heavily enough.