Chapter 12
TWELVE
NICOLE
I wake up curled close to Arture’s warm chest, practically nestled in his armpit.
He hasn’t moved a muscle, but I’ve scooted all the way over like a lizard pressing itself to a heat lamp.
Even in sleep, he’s still tense, muscles taut and a frown on his face.
In this form, he doesn’t have many smile lines.
Creases criss-cross his brow like a map of the underground.
Yet I’ve seen him smile a lot. True smiles, too, which make his golden-flecked eyes dance, and make me smile in return.
He stirs, and I jolt. What am I doing, I can’t be caught eyeballing him.
Cheeks flaming, I roll as quietly as I can off the other side of the bed and walk to the bathroom.
I don’t want to use much water, so I give myself a cold wash down, including my hair.
I've had worse when a horse dumped me in water jumps, but a warm bath? That’d be nice.
With Arture in the other room, I try to squeak as little as possible from the cold and dress quickly. I'll need more of these pants so I can wash one while wearing the other; I'll ask Arture if he can make me some while I get started on the digging.
He’s still where I left him on the bed, lying flat on his back, his breathing steady.
Drying my hair with one of the robes, I watch the rise and fall of his chest. This strange Samarastock, who I once thought was a cold, calculating spy, has layers.
And somehow, one of those layers is this, keeping me warm at night.
And another is trying to convince me to kiss him. Cheeky bugger.
But then his face twists, a frown darkening his expression, and his fingers curl into the blankets. His breaths start coming faster, shallow, like he’s trapped.
A nightmare.
I reach over, resting my hand gently on his arm. He doesn’t wake, but the tension in his face eases, his body relaxing under my touch. I stay there for a moment until his breathing returns to a steady rhythm, and then slip out of the room quietly.
Snagging a slice of seed cake, I move to the front door.
The tiny cubes vibrate and then move aside, morphing into a gangplank that stretches down to the soft, dewy grass outside.
Morning light filters through hazy mist casting a golden glow over the grassland, and a faint icy breeze brushes against my skin as I step down.
The herd is out there, grazing, and the lead mare puts her head up when she notices me. With a whinny, she trots forward, bringing friends, including a mare with a round belly.
“Congrats on the pregnancy,” I say softly.
Once they're used to me, I stand. They watch me with large, gentle eyes as I make a big circle around them, keeping my distance. These horses aren’t wild, that's for sure.
The fact they're content with my presence tells me they’ve been around other species, maybe others like me.
Their coats are well kept, manes free of major tangles.
They get groomed alright, although they aren't wearing any shoes.
It's so nice to be back with horses. I close my eyes and inhale their scent. Now, if only I could get a hug from one of them. Someone non-judgmental. Who loves me just because.
Talking to Arture yesterday dredged up long buried scars from my relationship with Logan.
And depending where I am in my menstrual cycle, I hit a monthly low point.
I can hear a voice that says what he used to say, but it’s my voice.
It's not going to let me off easy just because I've been kidnapped.
The soft rap of footsteps on the gangplank behind me pulls me from my thoughts.
Arture stands, jaw tightening as he sees how surrounded we are.
He scans the grassland, fists bunching and relaxing in a self-soothing gesture, but his scales harden across his chest with little clicks that carry over the horse's grazing.
“Morning, Arture,” I call softly.
The animals don't startle, but he does. He hisses, “Come back from there.”
“It's fine, everyone's calm here.” All except him.
The horses pick up on his tension, lifting their heads to watch him. They'll be wondering why he's on edge, whether they should fear it too, and their actions fuel Arture's wariness.
“Relax, Arture, it’s really okay.” I make my way back to him, the movement making the horses take a step away.
He sprints to me and the herd scatters. Sliding in the mud, Arture skids to a halt and throws me over his shoulder, then runs back to the ship.
All I can do is bounce with his shoulder digging into my stomach. I push my arms against his back so I can lift my chest and get out some words. “It’s… fine. Put… me… down.”
He doesn’t until we’re back to the gangplank, and Arture slides me to my feet in the shadow of the ship. “They looked like they were going to bolt.”
I straighten my layered top, yanking it back in its place. “Because you looked like you were about to pounce. Animals pick up on your body language; you communicate through your posture and tone as well as your actions.”
“It’s safer not to go near them,” he blasts.
I’m about to bite back when I spot beads of sweat glimmering on his brow in the early morning light. He didn’t sweat much yesterday digging like a machine; he only sweats when he's done lots of transformations, or now.
He’s terrified.
“Sure, but I know animals,” I remind him. I wave to attract his attention, making him focus on me. His cyber eye glows ice blue, but his other pupil has shrunk into a pinpoint inside his golden iris.
I take a deep breath, hoping he’ll mirror me. “Whatever happened to you, I can see it echoes even now. Do you want to talk about it?”
He looks at me as if I’ve grown antlers. “How can that help?”
“It will definitely help, but only when you’re ready.” I gesture in the direction of the hot lake. “Shall we?”
We walk side by side toward the latest pool we dug, the only sounds the quiet crunch of rock under our boots, the squelch as we traverse the bog-rock landscape, and the occasional sigh of a hot wind across the grassland.
Morning shadows stretch along the ground, his long and gangly, mine much shorter.
The more we move away from the herd, the more tension unwinds from Arture's shoulders. There's something there, but he's not ready for me to dig. He needs to calm down first.
Once he's more balanced, he pulls a bottle from his pocket. “Here. I made this.”
I take it, the plastic container warm from his body, like a mini hot water bottle. “What is it?”
“Something you rub on your skin. It'll protect you from radiation and make you less delicious. To insects, I mean.”
I catch the sparkle in his eye as he scrambles up the next patch of rocks.
I pop the cap off and sniff. It smells like warm hay, sweet-nutty and fresh. Taking a deep inhale, I slather it on. “Thanks,” I call after him.
His head pops over from the top of the rocks. “Do let me know if you need help putting it on.”
“Will do,” I banter back. Cheeky. A grin spreads across my face despite myself.
We hear the soft burble of water spilling into the damp ground before we reach it. The pumps are doing their work admirably and the boggy area between rock formations is overflowing.
Arture scrambles up the rocks and crouches down, turning off the flow, and we both watch as the water settles. A small, satisfied smile touches his lips, and I find myself grinning back.
There’s no need for words; we’re on the same page, a rhythm forming between us as we take up our make-shift shovels and start digging a channel to guide the overflow further along.
Once that’s done, we’ll run another pump-pipe combo to get the water to the next section, slowly creating a network that brings the hot water closer to the ship.
The damp top section gives way easily, but underneath, the cool and dark soil is heavy when we lift it.
It’s hard work, but together the task feels almost… easy. This is something we’re building together. Even though we have different destinations, we both want to get off this planet.
I glance at Arture, catching the grin pulling at his mouth as he digs. We push on, breaking through the softer ground with satisfying ease, and it doesn’t take long for a decent channel to form, winding its way through the boggy stretch.
But then the silence turns colder. He pushes himself hard for a while, as if to distract himself, jaw tight as if with pain.
He's hurting.
“What’s up?” I ask, continuing to dig so he doesn’t have to face me if he doesn’t want to.
Arture works on for a while, then pauses, his gaze distant. Tone carefully neutral, he says, "I remember more.”
“Oh, yes?”
"Yeah. I…I left them. Ilia and the others."
He doesn't mean recently. “So… does that mean you remember meeting them?”
“Yes. They… picked me up from a planet.”
There's a wealth of hurt hiding behind those words. I can almost see it, an open wound bleeding out in front of me. I suspect whatever happened to him on that planet wasn't pleasant.
“I stayed with them for… a while. But then I left.”
Putting my spade down, I go for a hard question. “Do you know why?"
His eyes shift away. "It… it’s hard to explain. I can’t put it into words."
I continue digging, letting the quiet settle back again, giving him space. He says he doesn't know how to express it, so I'll give him time to come forward.
Arture and I dig side by side as the day heats and insects buzz. I’m happily sweating buckets, but I’d love some ice-cold water to quench my thirst instead of hot water.
“It’s how they were together,” he says finally, grunting between every exertion as he stabs the mulchy ground.
“It was so different from my entire life up until then.
Samarastocks are competitive, always pushing themselves, reaching for the pinnacle of perfection.
Ilia's crew was content to cooperate. Their personalities clashed, but in a way that… worked.”
I stab my shovel into the ground, dragging it to open a channel and let hot water through. Brushing dirt from my hands, I straighten up. “And how did being near them make you feel?” The question might throw him, but he's a thinking being, not an animal who can't vocalize.
He seems stumped, gazing into the middle distance.
“Confused. A little uneasy, because it was so different, it felt wrong.
But mostly empty. Looking back, I… I know that's what I felt.
I was on the outside looking in, and I know now Ilia would have let me in, but I…
I didn't even know I wanted him to put down the gangplank.”
Tears burn my eyes. "You’d never experienced anything like that, had you? The… ease they had with each other. Companionship. So no wonder it felt wrong to you.”
He doesn’t answer at first, but I see a flicker in his expression—a glimpse of his uncertainty and discomfort as he processes it.
A pang of empathy shoots through me like the cold from an ice pack. Poor guy is in a world of hurt, but at least he’s reaching out. Trying.
“Nevermind.” He stabs the ground. “Forget I said anything.”
I reach over to squeeze his shoulder. "Thanks.”
“What for?” His eye widens, and a scowl twists his face. “I've handed you an opening, haven't I? You're going to use this against me.”
I shake my head. “Thanks for opening up to me.”
The flicker of surprise in his eye is chased by deep, aching sadness, followed by a softness that’s gone as quickly as it appears.
There’s a fragility in him I hadn’t noticed before, a glimpse into the churning self-doubt that he hides behind his stoic facade.
And yet a voice in the back of my mind whispers caution. He kidnapped me, ripped me from my home. He hid for months amongst the other aliens, pretending to be harmless.
He could be trained to manipulate, to use whatever he can to gain an advantage.
He glances down at my hand on his arm, his gaze warm, and my stomach clenches. Part of me feels certain that he’s being real, that this is the truth of his past, raw and exposed before me. But my head warns me to be careful, to keep my distance.
I want to reach out further, to tell him that he doesn’t have to carry that alone. But I keep my words guarded, and remove my hand from his arm. “That has to be really hard to process. I'm here if you need to talk.”
He looks at me with something almost like wonder, and warmth blooms in my chest. Maybe he’s not lying. Maybe this is who he really is, under all the layers and orders.
Or, I could be as desperate as Logan said I was.
I clench the shovel. Fuck, I'm starting to feel really bad, but I’ll keep digging, both into his past and in the ground. And I’ll keep my guard up, too. Just in case.