Chapter 10
Kalani
Breaking away from Iave’s arms I shrugged my shoulders and then wrapped my arms tightly around my midriff.
“Well, that wasn’t great but we got through it.
What is this place?” Deflecting and denying was always my best tactic.
I couldn’t deal with the wreck of emotions I was feeling right now; not on the tiny bit of sleep I was running on.
When I was still struggling with the devastating news of Naomi’s demise.
Scanning around me, I tried to figure out what I was seeing.
To me, it looked most like a military base entrance, the type that housed research and development or something.
There was the airlock behind us, and I was seeing a completely destroyed check post on my left.
There was a destroyed bank of view screens in one wall, a desk with a computer access point or something in front of it, and the decayed remains of metal chair legs but just a pile of dust remained of the seat itself.
The tunnel was wider here, with many more lights and it opened up to a larger cavernous space that had also gotten lit.
I could make out corridors splitting off it in many directions and what I assumed was some kind of waiting area with a not-functioning water detail at the center.
So a military base, or a secret commercial facility maybe that was fancy enough to occasionally receive important visitors down here.
“This does not look like the ancestor caves that I know,” Iave said gruffly from behind me.
I was tolerating the tail curled around my ankle right now, for the sake of communication, but what I really wanted to do was shrug him off and retreat.
I didn’t like feeling unsure and vulnerable, and right now that’s what I was experiencing.
I was treading on completely unfamiliar terrain and I didn’t like it one bit.
“What direction do you think we should go? Any sense of the direction we’ve been heading in so far?” I asked, and I felt even more like I was betraying myself by not having my own opinion ready. Especially since we’d bickered about our heading a few hours ago and this is where it had landed us.
Iave’s expression was dark and shuttered but at my question, he gazed around the open space and the many options available to us.
“Not the right one,” he said eventually.
“I think that tunnel took us away from Bitter Storm and back in the direction of Thunder Rock territory. I suppose if we can find an exit there, I could lead us back to Zathar and Corin.”
I tried to find a positive side to this but struggled to grasp it, instead, it leaped for the bleak truth.
“I can’t believe she’s dead. Do you think it was quick?
” But from the way his face turned grim, I was sure that the answer was going to be no, not that I expected it to be anything else.
He didn’t speak out loud, refusing to give voice to the horrible thoughts.
He just gazed around the place with his head tilted at an angle as if he were trying to figure out what he was looking at.
“Let’s find a safe space to make a nest in for a few hours. We both need food and rest,” he eventually said, and then he withdrew his tail from my ankle and slithered away. Dipping down to pick up his ax from the floor near the door before simply heading to a random doorway in the distance.
It turned out to be a pretty good choice, the room was just a small space that looked to me like a basic type of office.
There was no furniture and the stone floor was extremely dusty, but one wall at the back had been intricately engraved across the entire wall.
Curling swirls and motives that made the wall look like it was covered in climbing vines, the stone a deep dark purple that made it look like real foliage that grew on the planet’s surface.
There were no other exits, and no windows, just a single door; very safe and defensible.
I wanted to agree with him that it was a good place, but he wasn’t touching me.
Besides, he was already shrugging the backpack from his shoulders and starting to yank furs out to spread across the dusty floor.
I didn’t look forward to sleeping in such a dusty place so I reached for a smaller one to use as a makeshift broom.
Iave paused what he was doing to watch me work, but he didn’t step in to help, and he didn’t comment.
Once I was done, he laid the rest of our supplies out on the furs.
Lifting the tip of his tail into the air, he offered it to me slowly, as if he sensed that I’d withdrawn from him.
Maybe that’s why he’d taken his tail away, I’d done it again, resting bitch face and all that.
No, I doubted that something like that, or a little cold shoulder, would stop Iave from making his presence known.
Maybe he wanted to give me space, or maybe he felt as shaken about the situation as I did.
I took the tip with my hand, curling my fingers around the finer scales there.
I was very tempted to stroke my thumb along it and feel the strong muscle respond to my touch.
“Would you like some food? The Shaman packed us ration cakes and dried fruit.” He held out both options to me and since my stomach was an empty pit, I grabbed both.
We ate in silence, and unlike before, it was tense and uncomfortable and I knew that was me.
I hated that he’d hidden what the glowing symbols meant to him.
I hated that I now felt like I had to doubt everything he was feeling, what was real and what was just hormones?
Then again, weren’t all feelings just hormonal impulses; little electrical currents in our brains.
Could we call anything real? And was it any less real just because it started from something different than what I was used to?
Argh… I hated all these thoughts, they were far too philosophical and intense.
I just wanted it to be clear-cut. Yes, he liked me, we should fuck and maybe things worked out in the long term.
Not, yes he liked me but maybe that was just because he thought he should because his body lit up like the Fourth of July around me.
Food and sleep, I should focus on those and the rest would come later.
Once my stomach was full, I carefully unstrapped my sheath of arrows and unlaced my boots.
Then I curled up on the spread-out furs and pillowed my head on my arms. I knew how to fall asleep anywhere I went in just a couple of breaths, tricks Marines the galaxy over taught each other to help function.
But I wasn’t ready to do that just yet, I needed to know what Iave would do first.
He watched me carefully, not touching me but just sitting there while he finished the last crumbs of his own food. He wasn’t certain I realized, but the desire in his eyes was clear. If it were up to him he would be holding me in his arms. Hadn’t I thought before that his scars might match my own?
With a shudder, I let go of some of the tension in my chest, and then I patted the fur at my side.
That was all it took. He slithered closer and then settled himself at my side.
For a moment he seemed to just hover there, right next to me but not relaxed, just taking up a bit of nearby space.
Then he made a fierce growling noise, his expression growing angry and determined and I found myself biting back a smile.
There he was, that was the Iave I’d come to know so far.
His arms snapped out, gathering me to his chest while his long tail undulated and coiled; wrapping me into several warm, muscular loops. “You can have time,” he rumbled into my hair as he pressed his nose against my curls. “But not distance.”
I could live with that so I closed my eyes and pressed my face against the thick scales that protectively covered his impressive pectorals. I went to sleep with a deep sigh, trusting him to keep me safe inside this strange, foreign place.
When I woke up several hours later, it was to the same bright lights that had come on during our struggle with the airlock.
Iave wasn’t at my side but a wrapped package with food was resting next to my head, the thick purple leaves tied closed with a piece of leather string.
Sitting up, I dragged it into my lap while I searched around the small office room for any sign of my scaly companion.
I didn’t see him anywhere but there were more signs of his industriousness.
The backpack with supplies we’d received from the Shaman was neatly propped against one wall and my boots were lined up next to it.
A fur had also been draped over my body to keep me warm while he was away but I still felt a little pang of disappointment that I hadn’t woken up in his arms.
When my hunger was appeased, I started to put on my boots and realized that a little present had been left behind in one of them.
One of those small silver devices that emitted light, curved and with only a groove to thumb as the switch, it was an alien version of a flashlight.
Though the lights were on right now, I was still happy he’d left this behind for me.
I didn’t much fancy getting stuck in the dark again.
Stomping into my shoes, I strapped my bow and ammo on and the alien flashlight I hooked to my belt.
I knew that Iave wouldn’t have gone far, so I intended to find him.
I didn’t think I had to worry about enemy Naga in here, that airlock was a giant obstacle for one, and this place seemed extremely undisturbed.