Page 3 of Healing His Mate

Briefly, the answer escapes me. The year is not something we paid much attention to on Trovilia. Our focus was more on the current season, and the one to come. But then I remember. “It is the year forty-two thousand six hundred three.”

Aye-vah drops the screen pad onto the bed. “Hmm, yeah. This isn’t working. I guess I didn’t realize how your answers could differ from mine.”

The door swings open and Varrek enters. A gust of wind sweeps by him, lifting the ends of his long silver hair off his shoulders. He shuts the door and lets out a deep exhale. “It gets colder by the day, it seems,” he says to Aye-vah, then his eyes land on me. “Ah, Nalba! You are back. I am pleased to see this.”

“Varrek, thank god you’re here,” Aye-vah exclaims. “I tried testing Nalba’s memory, but I need you to fact-check her answers.”

“I do not know what that means, but I am happy to help,” he replies, then gives me a nod. He looks . . . different. Mostly the same, but there are creases around his mouth I do not remember seeing. And he looks tired, as if restful slumber has evaded him for many moons.

“You do not look well, Varrek,” I tell him.

He barks out a laugh, and says, “Well, thank you, Nalba. It seems you are feeling just fine. Shall I go then?”

Aye-vah chuckles, too, but I do not understand the joke. “The perils of living with a newborn.”

Newborn?

“So, Nalba, can you tell me what year it is again?” Aye-vah asks, clasping her hands together.

I sigh and drop my head, carefully this time, back on the pillow. “Forty-two thousand six hundred three,” I repeat.

Varrek jerks his head back and gives me a questioning glance. “That is wrong. If we were still going by Trovilian time, the year would be forty-two thousand six hundredeight.”

“What?” I ask, popping my head up. “That is impossible.” I have never been skilled at timekeeping, but there is no way I would miscalculate it that much.

“What’s the last thing you remember, Nalba?” Aye-vah asks, her tone turning serious. “Before you woke up here.”

My memories of that last day on my home planet flood in, and my heart twists at the view of Trovilia in the distance from the ship we are leaving on. “I woke up early and loaded my belongings onto the ship that Varrek secured for the new clan,” I tell them. “We settled into our quarters on the ship, and later that day, we met you and your crew in space. You had set bombs on theStrikerbefore you transferred to our ship, and the moment they detonated, everyone on the ship cheered.”

I remember the pride that surged through me knowing Varrek executed his plan to sabotage his father’s mission flawlessly. As far as the evil King Muryk knew, his only son was dead, along with his entire crew of warriors, and his largest vessel had been destroyed. There would be no feasible way for him to continue pursuing his mission to kidnap females from D’Alluk and force them into a breeding program.

He wanted revenge against the neighboring planet for unknowingly spreading a deadly virus to our citizens––a virus that killed many of our people, mostly females, including Ekoya. But that is not how sickness works.

The D’Allukan tourist who carried the virus did not know he had it. He also did not know it was a disease our people were not immune to. I always understood King Muryk’s anger and where it came from. He lost his wife. I lost my sister. If I could murder a virus, I would do so. That is not something I am capable of, though. I learned to live with the pain. And the opportunity to begin anew on Oluura, far from the place I suffered and grieved, was thrilling. I remember going to sleep on that ship with excitement in my heart.

“That’s . . . the last thing you remember?” Aye-vah asks me, breaking through my thoughts.

“Yes,” I reply.

“Nalba,” Varrek begins, scratching his chin, “We settled on Oluura a long time ago.”

“Five years, right?” Aye-vah adds.

Varrek nods. “Correct.”

My eyes dart back and forth between the two of them, not understanding.

“You have no memory of building a home here? Or your shop? Or the humans arriving?” Varrek asks nervously.

“Or any of your inventions?” Aye-vah adds with a hopeful smile.

Pinching my eyes shut, I try to picture it all––the home, the shop, faces that look similar to Aye-vah’s. I find nothing. “N-no,” I mumble. “I recall none of that.”

Aye-vah blows out an unsteady breath and picks up her screen pad once again. “Nalba, I’m so sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I think you have amnesia.”

CHAPTER 2

NALBA

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