Alice ate her food slowly, forcing herself to swallow the bland mush she’d been given every day. Either people on this planet only ate once per day, or they were only feeding her once per day.
“He doesn’t have his marks yet,” Helas said, more to the room at large than her.
Unsure what to say, she blinked.
“Do you have any thoughts on this?” he asked with narrowed eyes.
Taken aback, she sat up a little straighter. He’d never asked for her opinion about anything before. Asshole must really be at a loss.
The same question had run through her mind every night. Why hadn’t Luka’s marks appeared? The most logical conclusion was that she wasn’t his mate.
Anxiety took hold every time she pondered this. The possibility she could be Luka’s mate was the one valuable thing about her and was, consequently, the only thing protecting her right now. If Helas came to this conclusion as well, her visits with Luka would likely change dramatically.
Although she fought with herself constantly to not become attached to Luka, to not care for him, the simple truth was, she did. She was just too weak to keep her heart locked away from someone who’d done nothing wrong. He was her rock, and although they could barely speak to each other, she’d grown to feel a connection to him that she’d never felt with anybody else.
“Well,” she began, trying to think of a good answer, “maybe it would help if he could speak to me. He doesn’t seem to always understand me. Also, I’m always touching him, right? Maybe if his hands were free and he could touch me a little, it’d work.”
“You’d be fine with him touching you? The smell of your fear may be detrimental,” Helas replied, eyeing Alice.
The smell of my fear? She pondered his words but decided not to question them. “As long as I have space to get away if I need to.” She tried to make her voice casual, but the thought of Luka wrapping his strong arms around her and hugging her back made her heart pick up speed.
“He can’t understand you because we haven’t updated his translator. Your translator has been programmed with our language, but his has not been programmed with yours.”
“I have a translator?” Alice blurted. She’d wondered why she could converse with Helas, Gishen, and Sal, but she’d just assumed they’d learned English.
Helas cocked his head at her like she was child who’d said something funny. “What did you think? We all spoke your language on our planet?”
Alice flushed, feeling stupid for not coming to this conclusion earlier.
Helas waved a hand dismissively. “Mating is instinctual. There’s no need for you to speak with him, and while drugged, I doubt he’d be much of a conversationalist anyway.”
“Then maybe you should stop giving him drugs.” She could guess what his response to this idea would be. Helas’ main goal may be to gauge whether she and Luka could procreate, but his sick side project of purifying Luka’s genes seemed like something of an obsession.
“No, I think we can do better than that.” He leaned toward her. “He will be unclothed tomorrow. You will touch all of him.”
Alice jerked her head back as though slapped.
Her outrage at touching a drugged, chained man had weakened with each passing day. While it once had felt intrusive to run her hands over his chest, she now knew the contact helped them both stay grounded. Even so, she argued with herself endlessly that what she was doing was okay because of their circumstances and because he wanted her to. She remained unconvinced.
Now that he knew a few words, he would often string simple sentences together. “Alice hand arm.” But there were boundaries. It may seem like he wanted her, but unless they were out of this place and he was no longer intoxicated, she couldn’t assume anything.
Touching him…down there…would be wrong, and being told to do it by Helas turned her stomach. There had to be an alternative. “I think it might be better to sleep in there or in here with him.”
Instead of yelling at her and threatening Luka as he normally did when she openly disagreed, he considered her offer.
“You said proximity might do it. I’m only with him a few hours per day. If you brought him in here and let him stay, they might appear,” she quickly added, hoping he’d agree with her reasoning.
Helas nodded slowly, staring at the ceiling of her room. “We’ll need to make alterations to your room so chains can be attached.”
Alice let herself relax a fraction.
“Let me be honest with you, Alice.” He glared at her with unmasked impatience. “One of my colleagues messed up recently. The same ship you were transported on was carrying another female. She escaped six months ago and was found by citizens who don’t share our opinions. Luckily, she didn’t know who took her, but her sudden appearance caused quite a stir. The situation was resolved, and all personnel who had information about this location were killed, but we’re running out of time here. Powerful people are aware of our existence and every day my colleagues grow more nervous about using these facilities. I need for these experiments to work.”
Another female? Six months ago? Alice’s heartbeat picked up speed. That nagging feeling that she was missing time wasn’t just in her head. But how? If they’d been transported on the same ship, why couldn’t she remember whole months of time? She didn’t know how long she’d been down here for certain, but she knew it hadn’t
