Chapter 14
Halley
“Comfortable?” Eot crouches by my legs, arms resting casually on his knees. It looks like an awkward position for someone of his size.
“Yes, thanks.” I’m lying on the floor of the corridor again, my head pillowed by my purple cardigan.
“You can sleep in my hammock,” he offers. “If you can stand listening to Keelo’s snoring.”
“I’m fine here, thanks,” I say softly, not wanting to wake anyone who might already be sleeping. When I glance behind me, I can see the night sky through the still-open door, and Eot’s room doesn’t have any windows.
A little earlier I saw him taking Rin to the mess hall for dinner.
Despite the rumbling of my stomach, I didn’t follow.
Today was…a lot, with Rin being in danger and then security attacking Keelo and Eot.
No doubt everyone needed some quiet time to process, Rin most of all, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that—or in the way of her special alone time with her…
brother? Uncle? Guardian? I’m still kind of confused about their relationship.
I sit up, resting my back against the wall.
Now, everything is silent, eerily so. Rin is in her hammock, and the lights have been dimmed to a low glow, just enough to see by but not enough to prevent sleep.
Eot is the only one still moving around, feet bare, chest bare, hair loose around his shoulders.
He looks almost…soft, like that, for all he’s hard muscles and sharp lines.
Feeling suddenly so fucking lonely, I reach forward, catching one of his hands in both of mine.
“Thank you,” I whisper, “for not kicking me out today.”
He’s silent, looking down at where I’m touching him. In the low light, his eyes seem to glow, almost like when a cat’s eyes reflect light. I’m left wondering if he can see better than me. Maybe he’s noticed how my cheeks are darkening with a flush as my face heats.
Eot is handsome. And not despite his alien features, but because of them—his tusks, his pointed ears, his gold skin.
He’s silent for so long that I snatch my hands back, nervous my palms will get sweaty even in the cooling temperature.
“What are you?” he eventually asks.
“Oh, um, I’m human.” I clear my throat. Nobody’s ever asked me this question. Not my abductors, not Xile, not a single customer. Nobody else gave a fuck. “From Earth.”
“That’s your birth planet?”
“Earth, yeah. Have you… Have you heard of it before?”
He shakes his head. “What galaxy is it in?”
“The Milky Way.” As soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize the impossibility of the situation. What I call my home galaxy is hardly going to be the same thing the aliens call it. It’s like trying to describe your home to someone when neither of you speaks each other’s language.
He shakes his head again.
Even though I knew it was coming, I feel as if my heart is sinking into my stomach, leaving a gaping emptiness in my chest.
Ves’os: blue, horns like a racing car steering wheel, I remind myself, using the facts I collected for Mom to try to fill the void.
Lyd’os: yellow-green, mucus shell, smell like salt.
Eot, Keelo, and Rin: golden, shapeshifters, smile with their eyes.
“You want to go home?” Eot asks.
“So much.”
“Because you miss your family? Because you have a mate waiting for you at home?”
“A mate? Like a friend?” I frown, thinking of the Australian definition of “mate.” G’day, mate. Come over for a beer, mate.
“A mate,” he repeats, as if that’s going to clear up any confusion. “A mate?”
“I have friends.” Is he asking if anyone will have noticed my disappearance? Absolutely, they will have. My mom most of all. There’ll be missing person posters plastered all over Sydney right this moment with my face on them.
Unless…the thought comes unbidden, as it always does when I’m lying awake at night worrying: unless Mom has realized that I was stolen by aliens. Then she’d be more likely to write an academic paper on my disappearance than to report me as missing to the police.
“No. A mate and younglings?”
Oh! “You mean like a boyfriend or a husband. No, I’m not married.”
“Not mated?” he repeats, and it’s clearly another question. For whatever reason, this is important to him. Should I be insulted or flattered?
“Well, I had a boyfriend a few years ago, but we broke up. So no, I don’t currently have a…
a mate.” In my accent, it sounds kind of cringe to call your boyfriend your “mate.” Not sure why my translator didn’t change it to “partner” or “husband”.
Even “beau” would’ve been a better choice.
And I tap the raised skin behind my right ear, about the size of a ten-cent coin, that’s my translator implant, silently scolding it.
“Hmm,” is Eot’s response. Which…why? Were we on Earth and were Eot human, I’d be thinking that he was trying to hit on me. The idea wouldn’t have been an unwelcome one—a good-looking man with a work ethic and a general affection for children makes him practically every woman’s dream. Mine included.
Here and now, though, after the month I’ve suffered through, Eot hitting on me is only one option among a long list of other possibilities, the first of those being him trying to decide if anyone’s going to come looking for me.
It’s much easier to abduct someone when their planet is yet to invent complex space travel.
The reason I’m trusting Eot with the truth of my life is Rin. If she weren’t on board his ship, neither would I be—no matter how handsome he might be.
“What about you?” I ask, because two can play this game. “Are you and Keelo a couple?”
“A couple of what?” He tilts his head slightly to one side. “Keelo is my other half.”
“Yeah, but is Keelo your, er, other half because he’s your mate or because he’s quite literally your other half?” And I interlock the fingers of my two hands, demonstrating how they’d fused their bodies together.
“Together we have a shared monstrous form.” He copies me and locks the fingers of his two hands together. “We’re the same person. Sometimes.”
Huh. “Monstrous” isn’t how I’d describe what I saw.
Xile was a monster.
The aliens who abducted me were monsters.
“You reminded me of a tornado. Do you have those on your planet?”
His blank look has me explaining. “They’re these great columns of air, from the ground all the way up into the clouds.
They usually last for a couple of hours, but they spin superfast and can do a hell of a lot of damage.
” I demonstrate with my index finger extended, turning my wrist in small, fast circles.
“Tor—”
“Tornado.” Now, I sound like my mom. Even after more than thirty years, she never fully lost her American accent, and I picked up her tendency to pronounce Rs more than the typical Australian.
Too bad “mate” doesn’t have any Rs. That might’ve made it sexier.
“Tor-nad-o,” Eot copies. “Tornado.”
“Yeah.” And now that I’m thinking about shapeshifting, I’ve suddenly got a lot more questions.
Like can Eot and Keelo hear each other’s thoughts—when they’re joined together and when they’re separate?
What about their emotions? If one is angry and the other is happy, when they meld together do they feel both of those at once, or do the two opposing emotions cancel each other out?
And what about if one of them is horny? Are they then both turned on? Have they touched their dick while in their shared monstrous form? If they have, would that count as them having had sex with each other, or would it only be considered self-pleasure?
I snap my mouth shut. As much as the scientist in me wants to know the answers, I can’t be asking someone I’ve known for two days about their sex life. Or should that be sex lives?
“It’s been a long few days,” I say instead, an excuse to stop this conversation before it gets any stranger—and an excuse for why I was thinking about Eot’s dick at all.
I’m tired. I’m not thinking straight.
“I’m going to get some sleep.” And maybe then I’ll get over this weird obsession I apparently have with inappropriate questions about two guys I’ve just met.