Page 43 of The Arabis Triad

The smile sharpened, the edges flattening out into a sneer. “They will impregnate you. What if you’re the same type of mother as your own? Would you want to put your child through the same traumatic childhood of abuse that you suffered? You know what that’s like. You don’t want to put your child through that if you can help it. Best to go back to a place where no one expects you to have children. You can stay on your own. safe in the knowledge you won’t inflict anything like that on anyone else. You can go back to your life of solitude.”

Solitude and pain. And a loneliness that was so great that some days she’d physically hurt from it. It had been her decision to stay alone, tobealone, though. She’d never really opened her heart to anyone. She was afraid. Unable to have faith in herself that she wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of her mother. Events had taken her life out of her hands, but she’d found the opposite of her life back home.

She focused on the connection of her men. If she concentrated hard enough, she could feel all three of them individually. She tested the bonds, and what came back to her was none of the things she might have expected. None of the things she’d seen in her mother’s relationships, or the way her ‘stepfathers’ treated her.

There was no trace of selfishness. No hate. No control. No malice. No jealousy. Only longing, desire, warmth. Love.

She gasped. “You lie!”

“Do I? You barely know them. They will change as all men do. They will lead you on until they have you and then they will change. It is the way men treat women. You see it happen all the time. They cannot be trusted. They will trample your heart until there is nothing left to give. You’ve seen it happen time and again with your mother. How many boyfriends has she had now? Twenty? Thirty? They leave after they’ve used her. What makes you think it will be any different for you?”

She put a hand to her forehead. Those were her thoughts, but spoken aloud like that, they sounded warped. Even more, they were sohopeless.

Is that what she believed? Did she sound like that? If she had—and deep down she knew she had—then how much had she missed out on? No love could penetrate that kind of darkness. She hadn’t let any light through to know the difference.

Her heart had only softened when events had been taken out of her hands and she’d been forced to see how blind she’d really been. Self-harm came in many forms. Emotional denial based on lies—andfear—had forced her into self-isolating solitude. She had a chance at happiness now, even if she couldn’t return to Earth. What really was there for her, anyway?

She tested the bonds between them all again. The connection was stronger now. Alive. Filled with warmth. That was what she wanted. Desired. Yearned for. She deserved that. And for once in her life, she was going to choose a different path.

“It won’t be like that for me,” she said.

“You are a little fool. It will be no different. You will end up like your mother,” he said. His hand remained reaching, almost as though he couldn’t move any closer toward her.

Evelyn clenched her fists until they hurt. “I’m nothing like my mother, and those men are nothing like hers. I will not take the same path as her.And I will not take your hand!”

A high-pitched scream erupted all around her. His expression turned into something furious. He lifted his arms and clouds blustered and billowed around him. His face expanded, and morphed into a creature from her worst nightmares.

Holes where his eyes had been, and a gaping, hollow, mouth. His nose disappeared, as did his clothes and body. He rose above the clouds, spewing and boiling, blocking out the sky. Gray turned into absolute darkness. Ice coated her skin and his words froze her further.

“Then you will die here!”

Chapter Seventeen

Coltan

“She hasn’t woken. Why hasn’t she woken?” Ashir poured the same angst in his voice that thrummed throughout Coltan’s entire body.

Coltan’s grip tightened on the spongy mattress of Paxt’s bed. They’d thought if she felt something familiar beneath her, she might wake. They thought all she needed to do was sleep off the effects of the medi-bed and she would wake. They thought, given it had been two days and she had not eaten or drunk a single thing, that she might wake. But it had been false hope.

Her still, pale form lay lifeless beneath the blanket they’d placed over her naked body to keep her warm. Her chest rose and fell as she breathed. Her heart beat. But that was it. There wasn’t even any eye movement behind her closed lids. Not a twitch or a murmur. She might be dead if it wasn’t for the blood pumping through an automatic heart.

Coltan thrust his hands through his hair, pulling his locks with clenched fists. “If I could work that out, she’d be awake by now.”

Exhaustion wove through his mind and body like a weary beast. He hadn’t eaten properly or slept since they’d taken her freshly-healed body from the medi-bed two days ago. None of them had.

“It is not your fault, brother.” Paxt slumped in a chair, facing the bed.

All three of them stared at her without the first idea of what to do.

Yesterday, Paxt had confirmed the scaled ones’ craft was damaged beyond recognition. His drones had conducted missions to search for survivors, but there were none. No others had survived and there were no others to provide any answers to what they had done to Evelyn.

Apart from the semi-sentient beasts on this planet, they were totally alone. Trum was halfway to their location. If Evelyn was still unconscious by then, they would at least have access to better medical facilities.

And they had their crystal. At least there was that.

Paxt kept it locked in a safe place in the dead center of the craft where nothing could steal it ever again.

“What is that shimmer on her forehead?’ Ashir asked.

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