She needs more sustenance. I will catch more sea creatures before we leave.

“It…ventured to me…?” She’s repeating my words as if she did not just hear them and I do not know how to respond to this, so I wait for her to continue.

“Your suit…is alive?”

“The ba’clan are…sentient…yes.”

Her arm jerks in my hand and her chest is heaving now.

“You mean…it’s not like some cool technology you’re wearing. Your suits are…they’re aliens too?”

I think for a moment. She is right, I suppose. But no Vullan thinks of the ba’clan as that.

They are us.

We are them.

“They are not parasitic. Our symbiosis is…mutual. We provide a host and nutrients. They protect us…among other things.” I glance at her arm once more. “Right now, they are healing you.”

She gulps and looks down at her arm again.

“Okay.” She swallows again. “Okay, but…why? What do they want from me?”

I study her. She is still terrified. I keep my nostrils closed.

“What do they want?”

“Yeah, like…they’re not trying to get inside me or anything, are they?”

The tips of my ears twitch. What she says is humorous but it also tells me that though her species is not as evolved as ours, they are intelligent.

She is still thinking of them as parasites.

The ba’clan are nothing like the Gryken.

“No. They will not enter your being.”

My ba’clan are fused with my being, but I do not tell her that. It is a more complicated process than something invading the body.

Though…this is new territory. Ba’clan have never transferred from one Vullan to another.

At birth, a spore is chosen for the young. A single symbiote that will multiply as the spawn grows. They will share experiences, memories, life, all together. Just as my ba’clan have done with me.

For them to transfer of their own volition to Adee’ra…a fully grown female of an alien species…it is something I will have to discuss with Ga’Var and our medic on board the ship.

I know they will not harm Adee’ra, because I know myself, and they are me. But I do not know what they are doing.

I’m focused on my arm when the ba’clan on her skin begin to writhe.

Adee’ras breaths pick up immediately. “What—what’s happening now?”

Her arm is shaking. “What are they doing?!”

She’s shaking so hard, I know it is a conscious effort of hers to keep from waving her arm in the air again.

But nothing she does will get them to remove themselves from her.

Like a wave, they writhe on Adee’ra’s arm.

“They are trying to communicate with you.”

“Wh—what? They talk?!”

“Not with words.”

I place a palm over where the symbiotes are writhing and they calm a little.

I know what they want to do, but I am positive Adee’ra will not oblige.

“They want to heal your whole being,” I say.

She is shaking her head again almost immediately.

No.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” she pants. “Can you take them off?”

The ba’clan across my body bristle at her request.

They do not like Adee’ra’s suggestion.

They do not like rejection.

I decide to try anyway.

Chapter Seventeen

ADIRA

He can’t get the suit off my arm.

I know even before he raises his gaze to mine, studying me.

It’s been at least an hour of him trying to no avail to call the ba’clan back.

They refuse to move back to him.

Sharp clicks leave his lips every now and then.

Nothing.

“Can’t you just tear them off?”

“No,” he replies.

I want to ask why, but I get the sense these things are stuck to me and that forcing them to move will be a painful experience.

What’s worse, and even partly terrifying, is the fact that my hand already feels better.

I can flex my fingers now without feeling that jabbing pain.

Don’t get me wrong, it still hurts like a motherfucker, but it’s more of a steady pain now.

They are healing me.

What worries me is what they might want in return for their assistance.

Nothing is ever free.

I let out a breath as my shoulders sag and my mind flashes back to Mina and Sam.

Except for a slight tingle every now and then, I hardly feel the…ba’clan on my skin.

My situation isn’t an emergency. At least, not yet.

I need to focus on Mina.

“I need to go.”

Fer’ro eases back a little and rises as I do.

God, he’s so big.

As soon as he’s standing again, I feel…vulnerable.

I glance at my arm once more.

I still can hardly see it in the star light, but if I don’t look down at it, it will feel normal, as if I don’t have an alien sentient liquid thing on my skin.

“Where are the other females?”

Of course, he hasn’t forgotten about them.

“They’re safe.” I hope. It would be bad for the first wild animal we come across to be a starving bear or something. That’s why I need to hurry back to where I left them.

“Not for long.”

His words chill me and I jerk my head back as I search his gaze.

It is as it usually is—revealing no thoughts. No emotion.

“What do you mean by that?” I force myself to stand still but everything within me wants to take a step back from him. “Not safe from who? You? That dark-eyed one?”

For the first time, I see a flicker of emotion pass through his eyes.

“I would never harm a female,” he almost growls. “San’ten would never harm a female either.”

I do not believe him.

I saw what I saw.

I heard what this, San’ten, said.

He’d transformed into something terrifying right before our eyes. His body…no, his suit, the same thing on my arm right now, completely distorted. His whole body had spikes all over it and he was ready to come at us if Fer’ro hadn’t intervened.

“I do not believe that.”

There’s a flicker across Fer’ro’s flaming gaze.

The first I’ve seen.

“We are not like the Gryken.” He almost spits the word. “We have never and will never hurt females.”

I swallow as I stare up at him.

He’s all darkness before me.

Again, I’m faced with trusting what’s before me or going with my instincts.

It’s hard trusting something that looks like a demon from hell.

“Can you…can I see you?” For some reason, my heart kicks in my chest and I feel a shiver of anticipation. “Can you retract the suit? Is that even possible?”

Fer’ro blinks at me in the strangest way. His eyes are open, but that inner eye-lid slides across his eyes. It happens in a split second. I would have missed it if I wasn’t staring into his eyes.

Nictitating eyelids.

I’m in awe just like the first time he did it.

I’m almost holding my breath as the darkness moves from him in a smooth wave.

Down his head, his shoulders, and my eyes widen as I notice it slipping lower.

I didn’t expect him to take it all off but curiosity has me silent. I don’t stop him.

Not when the suit melts away to reveal a sculpted chest and arms or when it goes lower, passing his waist.

There are ridges everywhere.

All across his dark skin they run, giving him a strange textured appearance.

I find my throat going dry as the suit slips over his torso, his pelvis, his…

There’s a bulge. A large one underneath what I assume is his genital flap.

My cheeks grow warm when I can’t pull my eyes away.

It’s still dark. I can’t see much but I can see enough and that “enough” is making me feel strange inside.

“Um,” my lips are dry and I have to flick my tongue over them to wet them. Fer’ro’s gaze is locked on everything I do and my heart skips a beat again. “Um, I didn’t know you could do that.”

“We rarely do. Like this, we are vulnerable.”

My eyebrows shoot up as my gaze moves over him, trying my best not to look at his crotch. Nothing about him looks vulnerable to me.