Giving chase seemed to only increase her terror, and she dashed down the nearest corridor without even bothering to check for control panels in the flooring. She hit the first one so hard that the entire ship’s hull turned transparent, allowing us to see what was going on outside the ship.
The female didn’t seem to realize this, however, and took the sudden view of the nature preserve outside as if it were an exit rather than merely a viewscreen.
She headed toward the nearest wall.
“Stop,” I called out after her. “You’ll run into—”
I didn’t get to finish the sentence before she hurtled headlong into the inner hull of the ship, slamming into it with a force that made me cringe in empathetic pain.
She bounced off the viewscreen with a yelp, and landed on her beautiful, curvy rear end.
She truly is terrified of me.
The thought was a sobering one. My poor mate had been so conditioned by the terrors of her own planet that she saw everything as a threat.
I would have to help her learn to feel safe.
But first, the translator.
She burst into sobbing tears as I moved to crouch beside her.
I held the medical device to one temple and spoke soothingly to her. “It’s all right, my sweetness.”
The sound of my voice only made her sob harder, though.
“Please don’t kill me,” she begged.
Kill her? Why on all the settled planets would my mate believe I planned to harm her?
Well, she would learn differently soon enough.
I activated the sedation by pulling the trigger on the medical device, and my mate yelped again at the sound of the click.
She slumped forward in apparent relief, but she still tried to get away even as the sedation took effect, dropping to her hands and knees and attempting to crawl away. I shook my head, saddened by how fearful she was.
What a terrible place her planet must be to live. Poisoned air, males who attacked females random, constant terror for one’s life. Even medicine frightened her. I frowned fiercely. Did they practice medical experimentation on their females? If so, the planet might need to be taken over and taught more civilized ways.
When she realized how much better her life was going to be with me, she would undoubtedly be thrilled.
My mate fought the sedative as long as she could, still muttering about getting away as she slumped down to the floor.
Bending over, I gathered her gently in my arms.
“You’re safe now, my dear,” I murmured to her as I carried her off to the medbay to have her translation device installed so I could explain all of this to her properly.
Chapter Five
Nora
I woke up sometime later to the sound of a soothing male voice asking, “Do you feel better now?”
For a heartbeat, I did feel better, convinced that I had simply passed out somewhere—maybe even before I had seen William fucking Cynthia on my wedding day.
Maybe I had fainted at work and even Peter firing me had been part of a terrible nightmare.
Just a dream. A horrible, terrifying dream.
Then I opened my eyes.
The face that stared down at me was not human. In fact, it was bright green with black stripes and slanted cat’s eyes—also bright green.
Fuck my life.
At the sight of the cat-man’s face, I slid off the metal table-gurney-thingy I was on. I ended up crouched down at the end of the table opposite from him. “What am I doing here?”
Catman stood up to his full height and crossed his arms, tilting his head slightly as he stared at me peeking over the edge of the gurney. “I had my medbay install a new translation matrix for you.”
“A what?”
“A translation matrix. It allows you to understand what I’m saying. I don’t know why you didn’t have one installed at birth.”
“We don’t have those here.”
He looked shocked. “How do you communicate with other species?”
I snorted, resorting to sarcasm, as I often did when frightened. “You’re kidding, right? We can barely communicate with our own species—even the ones who speak our language.”
“You don’t have an official planetary language?” Catman stared around as if he could see all of Earth spread out before him. “What kind of backwater shithole did you send me to, Jalek?” he muttered.
I swallowed down the fear trying to crawl up my throat.
“I’m not going to hurt you, you know,” he said.
Since he hadn’t made a move toward me, and since I apparently didn’t have any way out of wherever I was, I decided to take him at his word. Slowly, I stood up. “That really was you outside, wasn’t it?”
He inclined his head gravely. “It was.”
“You killed that guy. Why?”
His frown suggested my question confused him, and I found myself wanting to reach over and smooth away the lines between his eyebrows.
Jesus, Nora. Put it back in your pants.
But that urge had firmly drawn my attention to two salient facts.
Number one: The green alien catman in front of me was drop-dead gorgeous.
And number two: He was also absolutely bare-ass naked.
Have I mentioned fuck my life?
It’s not like you’re engaged anymore, a voice inside my head pointed out.
I wanted to note that the same voice had been telling me to keep it in my pants just a few seconds earlier. But I was afraid that talking back to the voices in my head might make me realize that I had totally gone insane.
Maybe that really was it. I glanced around what Catman had called the medbay. Maybe this was a hallucination. All of it. Everything.
I turned the idea around in my mind. Trying to move surreptitiously, I tapped on the metal table in front of me.
It felt completely solid.
Anyway, if this was a hallucination, how far back would I have to go? To the park? That’s when the giant psychedelic cat had shown up and started killing people.
What about before that? I wouldn’t have expected to find William fucking a wedding guest in the bathroom, but it
