Page 5 of Hainn

“Get the seven hells away from me,” Jezari said, sitting up abruptly and pushing his hands away. “I’m fine.”

Hainn sat on his heels, shutting off his power. Other than physical exhaustion, he hadn’t found anything wrong with her. “What were you doing at the whirlpool?”

“Do you always swim in the nude?” she responded, avoiding his question and giving him a lingering once over.

“As a matter of fact, yes,” he said, moving away a few inches. Her swim garment was clinging to her body and she might as well be naked but he knew better than to make any comment. “Now answer my question.”

“I wasn’t planning to come near this part of the lake,” she said and Hainn judged it as truth. “I was on a shell gatheringexpedition and got distracted. Before I knew what was happening, the current swept me up.”

And now she was lying. There was no evidence of any shells and no one would hunt for them in this deep end of the lake anyway. Her untruth was intriguing but for now he let it pass. “And why are you wearing a breather?”

Hastily she removed the tiny device and stuffed it into the bag at her belt. “I thought it might help. I planned on a long excursion today.”

Lies mixed with truth? Jezari confused him and Hainn was torn whether to keep interrogating her or let the subject drop.

“Don’t report this, all right? It was an accident,” she said as she combed her fingers through her hair and twisted it into a braid. “I won’t come out here again.”

Another lie but why would a Badari Daughter even want to swim all the way out here? Hainn laughed as he went to gather up his clothes, which he’d left on the bank. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell anyone. I don’t want to be in trouble with the Alphas for breaking Aydarr’s edict.”

Jezari paused and stared at him. “You were out on combat duty today, weren’t you? Was it bad? We didn’t lose anyone did we?”

“It was bad,” he said as visions of the horrors at the lab flashed in front of his mind’s eye. “All Badari and allies returned to the valley safely but we couldn’t save the humans there.” He clamped his mouth shut, unwilling to discuss with her how the soldiers had to give mercy to the people who’d been alive. There was no quality of life at the end stage of a Khagrish experiment and no undoing the damage done to a subject.

She studied his face and set her hand on his arm, rubbing it gently. “I’m sorry.”

Hainn remembered she’d been the subject of a deadly Khagrish experiment herself. Better change the subject beforeshe has a flashback. “I’m done swimming for the day. Want me to walk you to the residence area?”

Did she?Jezari pushed away her first automatic refusal of his company and considered. The South Seas healer was an exceptionally handsome Badari and her shameless perusal of his assets when she first regained consciousness left her unsettled and aching at the core. Longings she’d never experienced before swept through her mind and body and Jezari became frightened. Hainn was ahealer—what was she thinking to contemplate encouraging him? Her reputation had taken enough of a hit with those who knew about her unfortunate obsession with the Senior Healer. She couldn’t possibly allow herself to be interested in another healer.

Was she developing another infatuation? How stupid could a Badari Daughter be?

Now she was in full flight mode and backed away from Hainn, heading toward the nearby forest. “I—I have to be going.” As she spun abruptly she stumbled and barely caught her balance. Jezari was afraid Hainn wouldn’t allow her to go off alone but he stood quietly beside the water and said nothing. She stopped at the edge of the trees and said, “Thank you for getting me out of the damn whirlpool.”

He raised one hand in acknowledgment and Jezari bolted before she gave in to the temptation to say anything else or even worse to linger. She ran for quite a while, heading in the general direction of the residence caves before she finally stopped to give her legs a rest. She was sure Hainn hadn’t followed her, for which she was grateful. Seating herself on a fallen log, she pulled the fragment of a cup from her small bag. It was covered with mud or lichen so she wiped it off carefully with a leaf and then studied it. The colors were bright, luminescent in the sunand she could see the pattern was repeating triangles. The effect was pleasing and she wished the cup had been whole.

With a gasp she dropped the fragment and retreated a step. It shimmered extra brightly for a moment and then dissolved, the ashes floating away in the breeze as she watched with a keen sense of loss. Evidently being immersed in the freezing cold water at the bottom of the lake had preserved it but once exposed to the air, the shard had lost its battle with time.

No souvenirs then, she said to herself as she trudged onward toward her pack’s cave, although wondering if the tough metal of the hull would be more resistant to time’s ravages once brought into fresh air again.

She frozein midstep as the ground shifted beneath her, just a quick sideways shimmy. Arms out for balance, she waited to see if there’d be another quake. To her that was the worst part of this swarm of minor quakes the valley had been experiencing lately—waiting to see if the shaking would get worse or if it was merely a foreshock to an even bigger geological event. Today’s tremblor seemed to be over already and she started walking again.At least I was outside for this one.Being inside the Daughters’ residence cave during an earthquake was much more terrifying. They’d had quakes at the mountain complex where she and her sisters had been created and took them for granted there. Of course unbeknownst to Jezari and the others the mountain had been a dormant volcano, working up to blowing its entire top off.

MARL the alien AI assured the Badari there was no such volcano anywhere in the vicinity of Sanctuary Valley and no major rifts either. “The usual minor settling of the earth from previous geological stresses,” he’d said in one meeting Jezari had attended. “Nothing to be concerned about.”

Of course he floated on a cushion of antigrav so he wasn’t worried.

Jezari said a quick prayer to the Great Mother for there to be no more quakes. She wasn’t a fan at all.

The next dayshe couldn’t dive as she had an appointment at the hospital for a routine followup with Hainn on the status of her recovery. Jezari was sure she was fine and irritated by this insistence her Alpha placed on periodic exams. She was ready for a fight when she entered the building, prepared to argue for ending these pointless check-ins.

Hainn was waiting in the exam room he’d been assigned for this task, seated on the chair, playing a game on his handheld. As soon as she knocked and entered the room he rose and put away the device. “All dried out from yesterday?” he said with a smile as she swept past him and sat on the end of the exam table. “Breathing okay?”

“I’m fine,” she said, tossing her hair. “We both know I’m perfectly recovered.”

This declaration brought a small frown to Hainn’s face. “Can you telepath yet?”

Annoyed he’d zeroed in on her weakness, she shook her head. “No. I meant physically recuperated.”

Raising his hands, already glowing green, he stepped toward the table. “May I do a quick scan?”

---