Page 28 of Invasive Species (Outcasts of Oloria #2)

TWENTY

GARA

No lights shine from the farmhouse. I stare up at Arra-bellah's window as if I can will them to turn on, cold rain running down my shoulders. The house is dark and forbidding without those cheery yellow lights.

“Where is she?” Arture asks.

“I don't know. Get out of the rain.” Apart from rusting in the rain, he sparks whenever the skies cloud over and rumble with thunder.

Which they’re doing now, and Arra-bellah isn’t safe and warm and dry in the house. She has a mammalian template, she loses her body heat as easily as Olorians can change the color of their scales, and there's a storm approaching.

Arture reports, “She didn’t finish seeing to the animals’ needs. The chickens are still free, although they’ve gone under cover.”

They began roosting in their little house as soon as the weak sun fell below the misty horizon and the gray darkened to pitch black. Arra-bellah should have returned at the same time .

My chest tightens as if I were strapped to a gurney for the annual physical, but wherever she is, she isn't my concern.

Except I don't want harm to come to her. She's not the most careful of individuals.

“Could she be swimming?” Arture asks dubiously.

I seize his arm. She wouldn’t, would she?

Not unless she needed to process what we had done this afternoon and how I had cut her off, and decided to go for a swim. The idea of her, soaking wet and cold, shivering and alone, rips at my hearts so hard it’s a physical pain.

Wait. There really is a physical pain in the center of my being, as if unfeeling metal slides underneath my scales and through my musculature. Every beat of my hearts is painful.

“No, she's… not at the lake,” I murmur. I press my hand over my hearts. How is it I know where she is? I rub the spot over my breastbone. It transcends reason or logic, but… I know she's out there.

Could this be… a mating bond? My hands twist in the empty air as if I can just as easily grasp this supposed connection between us. Even if it were real, why did it form after only one carnal interaction?

I know the answer. Because I genuinely wanted her. I wanted her to be honestly and completely in love with me, as much as I was with her.

Instead, she was using me. If bonds are real, they're cruel and stupid, forming a connection between me and someone who would misuse me.

But I still don't want her hurt. “We need to look for her. Arture, stay under as much cover as you can, so search the farmyard. I’ll go…there.” I wave my hand over the dark fields, toward the swimming lake.

“Where?” He turns his head in the vague direction I pointed. “Why there? What intel do you have?”

“No intel. ”

His eyes narrow. “Then what do you know?”

Know? Nothing. Feel? Everything.

I race out, rain pounding on my head and shoulders. Arture calls after me but I can’t spare the breath to tell him what’s going on. Not that I know myself.

“This is highly illogical. This is disorganized, disorientating, and disturbing.” Just like my attraction to Arra-bellah, I suppose.

The pain increases, edging to unbearable. I spit my defiance to the howling wind and run faster past the lake, drawn by an unshakeable conviction that she’s ahead. Her pain radiates like the burning rays of the sun, just as her happiness usually does.

A boom of thunder splits the air like an explosion. My vision tunnels, a ringing in my head getting louder as I focus on it. I smell everything, from the wet earthy soil to the sharp grass and the ozone in the skies. I'm ready to operate through any conditions, but I can't find my patient.

The battering rain comes down in sheets. I force my scales to glow, lighting up my forearm to a dull green, better than nothing as I scan the ground. Sheer gray stones made sleek by the deluge loom up in front as I run; I skid in the mud and slam into them.

“ Drok na ,” I mutter, shoving back from the obstacle. Why did my hearts lead me here?

“G…Gara?” A chatter of teeth accompanies Arra-bellah’s small voice, and even miserable it’s the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard.

I round the rocks to find her in the lee of the stones, in a barely there shelter. The rain doesn’t pelt her completely, and that’s the best I can say about her meager protection.

She’s soaked through, clothes clinging to her, hair flat against her head. She holds her left ankle, face pale with the cold and drawn tight with pain .

“Where does it hurt?” I bark.

“My leg. I twisted it when I fell.” She gingerly brings her palm to her face. “I also headbutted a rock, I’m lucky I didn’t knock myself out.”

I fall to my knees on the hard stone, triaging her injuries.

Her hands are far too cold for humans, and she shivers uncontrollably.

My scales illuminate a dark scrape along the fine skin of her forehead, blood trickling down her temple.

Finally, I turn my attention to her left leg, feeling along the bones and muscles from her thigh over her knee and calf.

They’re intact, but as I get closer to her ankle, a spike of pain builds in my chest.

“Blunt force trauma and abrasion. Shock. Risk of hypothermia. And a potential twisted ligament.” I feel her pulse, dreadfully slow… except she has only one heart.

So fragile, so delicate.

Her pulse quickens as I move in over her, blocking the deluge with my body. Rain hammers on my back, but I won’t let it through to her anymore.

I grab a sterile mat from my pants and gently mop away the blood on her face. The contusion is shallow and looks worse than it is because of the rain mixing with her lifeblood. But also, I don't want to see her in pain, misery etched into her face. Any injury is too much.

She looks up at me through her lashes, heavy with raindrops. I brush her face gently to dry her as much as I can, then heat my chest.

She immediately tucks closer to me, pressing her unbruised cheek above my hearts, and I wrap my arms around her with a relieved sigh.

This will help reverse her dropping temperature, but her ankle will be hard to treat out here. I don’t have my usual splints and bandages, I’m unprepared.

My heartbeats slow, vision drawing into my patient, but a new awareness intrudes. This is potentially my mate I’m tending to, someone my body has connected to. Regardless of whether the bond is real, my feelings were.

And now I can feel hers.

“I’m sorry,” she says, nearly rocking me back in shock.

“Sorry? What for?”

“Everything,” she says quietly.

I tip her chin up to face me, searching her green eyes. Even in the dim light I can see her despair, dark like a predator hiding in the deepest depths of the Olorian seas.

She sniffles, gaze dropping from mine. “I… I'm sorry I fucked everything up between us. I'm sorry I put your picture up. I shouldn't have done it. I wasn't thinking. I… I never think before I act, but that's not an excuse.” Her head drops into her hands, heaving shoulders shaking her entire body.

She's… sobbing.

I stand in silence watching her break in front of me. Arra-bellah shouldn't ever be sad. It doesn't work. It’s as if the moon and system star have swapped places.

“I ruined everything,” she whispers in between her tears. “I lost Mae, I fucked up Ellen’s planning permission with my stupid art. But I'm mostly sorry about you. I… I'll fix it, I deleted the post but the internet is forever, so I'll work out something else.”

The raw emotion in her face rips my hearts as surely as a contusion, but even worse is feeling them. Despair sinks needles into me, doubt clouds my senses, and sorrow drowns all hope.

“Arra-bellah, you have not, quote, ‘fucked up’ anything. There are challenges, yes. The vicious chicken will not allow herself to be defeated. She will be fine. The permissions are in hand with your companion, Law-rah, yes?”

Her breath hitches. “And… what about you? What are you doing here? ”

“I came to find you when you didn’t return and when I felt your discomfort,” I report. “I'll take you back to the farmhouse now.”

Her eyes dim. “Right. Okay.”

But when I go to pick her up, she sets her back against the stone. “I'll walk, you don't need to touch me. I'll respect your boundaries.”

And I know she means it.

This tiny human has thoroughly invaded me. Broken through all my defenses. And even now prioritizes apologies over her own health.

“You're hurt. I will carry you back over the uneven fields.”

“I'll live,” she says, a stubborn set to her jaw.

This maddening, wild human! “Yes you will, now I'm here. Submit to treatment.”

She shakes her head. “It'll hurt.”

“I'll provide the best care I can, I'll be sure not to jostle your ankle?—”

“No, I mean… being close to you. It'll hurt, because…”

I wait as she bites her lip. Unable to watch her hurt herself, I touch her jaw.

Her gaze finds mine as if magnetized. “I… I’m…I’m falling for you, okay?”

“Falling?” I take her shoulders to brace her. “Are you feeling dizzy or nauseous? Are you seeing double? How many of me are there in your vision?”

“No, I’m fine.” She purses her ripe lips together, cheeks flushing a welcome healthier pale pink.

She isn’t making sense. “Whatever you mean by falling for me, I’m a Selthiastock, one of the finest physicians on the planet of Oloria. I’m sure I can help with your condition.”

She chuckles, but stops when she sees my face, no doubt glowering. “Oh, I thought you were teasing. Didn’t Planet of the Pirate Prince cover the term falling in…love?” She blurts the last word.

Love. Love!

“Yes, it does,” I manage to say calmly. “Usually toward the end of the narrative. They fall in lust first, then progress toward mutual understanding along with their multiple couplings.”

“Right.” She hangs her head, miserable. “You touching me right now, it's… hard. Even though I know it's my fault.”

My fingers twitch on her shoulders, as if in a reflex. “Yes, it is your fault,” I say. “It made me feel used. And confused, over whether you want me or… the humanized version of me.”

Her eyes burn fiercely. “Always you, Gara. Just as you are. No changes.”