by Sonia Nova
“You don’t need to use whatever that is,” he heard Naomi plead. “The truth is… The truth is, you’re right. I don’t know why you want to know, but you’re right. I’m attracted to him.”
Arez froze.
One more movement and he could have finished ripping the screws from the chair, but he couldn’t break his gaze away from Naomi’s fear-stricken face.
She was attracted to him?
A human female, and an Alliance Ambassador? Attracted to him?
The guards took his pause as a chance to undo the cuffs, pull him to a standing position, and roughly chain his hands behind his back. Arez stayed still in their grasp.
It was impossible.
She had said so herself. The Krezlian interrogator had simply gone too far and Naomi had given him what he clearly wanted to hear. The Krezlians wanted to find a human female that was responsible for some kind of hormonal changes in him, and they thought they had found her. Even if Naomi didn’t know the details of the situation, it was obvious that the interrogator had wanted her to answer that she was attracted to Arez.
So she was lying. There was no other explanation.
Arez’s heart immediately deflated at the realization. He could understand why she was saying it, but despite that, her lie hurt him more than he could’ve ever imagined.
He watched as the interrogator set the syringe down on the room’s small table. The Krezlian nodded, seemingly satisfied by Naomi’s answer.
“Guards!” he called, and two more Krezlians entered the interrogation room. “She’s the one. Take her.”
Arez watched as the guards grabbed her on either side.
“Let me go!” Naomi cried, struggling against their hold. The two guards dragged her toward the door, and within moments, she was gone from his sight.
Arez went cold all over as she disappeared behind the door. Fury started to build within him again. It didn’t matter what she thought of him. He couldn’t watch her be treated like that.
The guards who held him waited until Naomi was gone and then began to drag him to the door as well. He considered fighting them off as his instincts told him, but if he wasn’t able to… They would only increase security every time he proved their attempts too weak. And he wasn’t with Naomi now.
“Thank you for this data, X-9087,” the Krezlian scientist said from where he had returned to his screen. “You shall prove to be a very valuable subject.”
Arez just spat toward the scientist, anger boiling in his veins. The guards pulled him into the hallway and Arez took in a deep breath. He detected Naomi’s scent and as the guards began to walk him in the same direction as that sweet fragrance, he played along nicely – for now.
He would wait for the right moment. He could still save her.
CHAPTER 18
NAOMI
Naomi was still trembling as the Krezlians threw her into yet another closed-off room and shut the door behind her. Her shoulders slumped in defeat and a shaky breath escaped her lungs.
She should have known the Krezlians would be more than happy to commit war crimes to get what they want. They didn’t recognize any kind of code or have any sort of honor. She had thought that she could reason with them… and instead had come literally inches away from being injected by some sort of Krezlian drug.
As terrifying as the experience had been, the Krezlians had finally seemed satisfied once she had admitted that she was attracted to Arez – as if that was all they had wanted to hear.
Naomi found it more than a bit odd. Even with what she knew about human-Ezak-X relations – of Alyssa and the Alliance guard named Xarq – she was surprised by their questions about Arez. War tactics, Alliance secrets that only Ambassadors had access to, and information on the captured women – all of that she might’ve expected. But this?
Yeah, no.
And now here she was, in yet another cell. And where was Arez?
She took a deep breath and looked around, trying to calm down and get a sense of her surroundings. This was definitely not an interrogation room. It also wasn’t like the empty, larger cell she’d been in with the other women. Instead, this current cell had a strip of gentle lighting around the ceiling, smooth white walls and floor, and a bed pushed into the corner.
Curious, Naomi approached the bed. The whole setup looked straight out of a hospital on Earth. In fact, this seemed less like a cell and more like a very plain, modern room in an infirmary.
What the hell were the Krezlians up to?
Naomi sat down on the corner of the bed, since there was nowhere else to sit, and tried to think of a way out of this situation. Her mind went around and around in circles and kept coming back to one strategy – that wasn’t a strategy at all.
Wait for the Alliance reinforcements.
She hated waiting. She wanted to be doing something to help the women still trapped somewhere on the spaceship, but for the moment, she was trapped as well. Naomi sighed.
The door to the cell swooshed open all of a sudden and Naomi jumped at the sound, her heart leaping in her chest. She was still jumpy and full of nerves after the interrogation. There was no way of knowing what would come through that door.
However, she was pleasantly surprised.
Arez stumbled into the room, pushed inside by two Krezlian guards, and the door quickly shut behind him. He regained his balance and stood by the door, frowning at her.
Naomi heaved a sigh of relief, and a slow smile tugged at her lips.
“Arez…”
She was happy to see him. Happy to know he was alright, and happy that she wasn’t left alone in this cell.
But her happiness was quickly replaced by another emotion. Because for the first time since Naomi had seen him appear at the cell with the other women, she had a good look at him. She hadn’t paid much attention to what he was wearing before, too busy worrying about what was going to happen, but now… she did see. Or rather, she saw what he wasn’t wearing.
Naomi’s cheeks flushed and her jaw dropped at the near-nude sight of gray flesh before her. Arez clearly hadn’t been naked a moment ago, but it appeared he was wearing only a loosely fitting robe that had somehow fallen off his shoulders – likely thanks to being roughly thrown into the cell. The robe now hung around his hips, only barely covering him.
Heat continued to creep onto Naomi’s cheeks and she quickly turned her gaze away –too late. She had already seen it all. His muscular arms that were as thick as her thighs and the six-pack of a stomach that appeared as though it was made out of solid stone. Hard muscle made his body look like that of a Greek god – if gods were gray – and intricate tattoos covered his whole being.
“What did the Krezlians do with you?” she asked, keeping her gaze directed at the floor near his feet and trying to ignore the fact that he was half-nude.
Arez didn’t answer. Even though she wasn’t looking at him, she could feel the tingle of that intense stare.
“They interrogated me,” she continued when the silence went on too long. She decided not to mention that the interrogation had been about him. “But now they’ve thrown us back into a cell. So, was this part of your plan?” The question came out more bitterly than she meant it.
When Arez didn’t say anything again, Naomi was forced to look up at him – although she made sure to look at his face only. His brows were knitted together in a deep scowl.
“Truthfully…” he said after a moment, his deep voice filling the small room, “I had hoped they wouldn’t separate us.”
Naomi felt her mouth fall open for the second time in a short while, and she gaped at him in disbelief.
“You had hoped?” she snapped. “I don’t know if you thought you were going to rescue me and fly us away in a speeder into the Agarian sunset or some crap, but you should have just left me in that cell! Because of you, I got interrogated by some twisted lizard, and now I’m locked up with you, far away from my own people who it’s my job to protect.”
Arez glared at her, his mou
th pressed into straight line. He was clearly hurt or at least annoyed by her outburst, but he still didn’t say anything.
“Shit… I just… Sorry.” Naomi sighed. She shook her head, knowing she could hardly blame Arez for the Krezlians’ actions. It wasn’t fair for her to snap at him like that, especially after he’d just saved her ass the day before and now had tried to help again. He had said “maybe a plan” after all, hadn’t he?
Naomi sighed again, realizing that she was fighting off tears.
There was no plan, and now, instead of being able to comfort her people and tell them that the Alliance would be there soon, she was here. In this weird little bedroom cell with a half-naked soldier who wouldn’t even talk to her.
What the hell were the Krezlians up to? What had that interrogation been about?
Her thoughts wandered to the report she had never had a chance to finish. Alyssa…
But what could that possibly have to do with her?
If only Arez would say something, anything, instead of giving her the silent treatment. He knew the Krezlians better than she ever could. Maybe he would have some insight into what was going on.
“Arez,” she said softly. He met her eyes with his dark gaze. “I want to help us get out of here, but I need you to talk to me. Are you okay? What did the Krezlians do with you while I was being interrogated?”
He furrowed his brow. “I was there,” he said finally.
What?
“What do you mean? You…” Naomi’s voice faltered as she remembered the one glass wall in the room. Her heart sank as she realized exactly where Arez had been the whole time. While she had told the interrogator exactly how she felt about him.
He had heard everything.
CHAPTER 19
AREZ
Fuck… Everything was going to hell.
Arez could smell the distress coming off of Naomi in waves. She had barely looked at him since he’d been thrown into the cell with her, and now she wasn’t even speaking to him – now that she realized he had heard everything she’d said about him.
Only into human guys, she had said. She could never find an Ezak-X attractive.
Arez frowned and took a seat on the floor by the entrance. He shouldn’t have expected anything else. If he was being fair, he knew he should take part of the blame for even thinking she could ever be interested in him. No female was ever interested in an Ezak-X. Not for real, at least.
And yet the Krezlians thought she was some kind of a catalyst for the hormonal changes in him. Why they cared, how that was even supposed to work, or how they would know… He had no idea.
None of it made any sense. And why had the lizards put them into a cell together now? After that fucked up interrogation situation? They were up to something. Arez knew it, but he couldn’t put the pieces together in his brain, no matter how hard he tried.
He growled in frustration, glancing at the female who was still avoiding him. If Naomi wouldn’t talk to him, then he might as well use this time to come up with an escape plan. He had been memorizing the turns they took to reach the interrogation setup and now this cell. They were in a cell block just a few minutes from where the human females were and he knew he could find his way back in a heartbeat.
If he could just get him and Naomi out of here…
Frustration built inside him. What the fuck did the Krezlians want?
He remembered what the scientist and the guard had said when they had injected him to induce the simulation… Something about his hormones and… Suddenly, the memory came back. They had mentioned another of his kind with a female.
His brows drew together in thought. Was that why they wanted all the human females? Were they going to experiment on them too?
When the Alliance ship Ka’elea had been on its way to Agaria a moon’s turn ago, the Krezlians had attacked it. Hell, he had been on the same ship himself, but by luck, he’d managed to get away and hadn’t been captured.
But he did know that twenty-seven of his kind had been taken that day – and also that a human female had been with them. A human female who had been rescued and sent back to Earth – along with a male of his kind.
She’d been captured as collateral. Or so he’d been told, but now he wasn’t so sure. He’d also thought the male had been sent to Earth as her bodyguard, to ensure her safe return to the planet, but after everything that had just happened, he wasn’t sure about that either.
Arez hadn’t thought much about the incident back then. He hadn’t known the male, nor had some random human female mattered to him. But now… Now that the Krezlians were obviously not only coming after his kind but human females as well… And he and Naomi in particular…
He glared at the floor. It didn’t make any sense. He was missing something. He knew that the Krezlians were after them, to get their “little pets” back, probably to try to rebuild their army. But what did the humans have to do with it? Weak females on top of all. He couldn’t think of any logical reason for it.
And it seemed like they wanted Naomi specifically, because of him…?
Though, they had got that all wrong. All the Krezlians had managed to do was scare her into lying to them.
As pissed and hurt as he felt about what she had said about him and the Ezak-X, Arez’s heart constricted at the memory of the fear he had seen in her eyes during the interrogation. He didn’t want her to be hurt or to get in trouble – least of all because of him. And yet, that seemed to be the exact reason the Krezlians had wanted the humans… Wanted her.
And he had been the one to pick her out of the cell and deliver her straight into their arms. Fucking brilliant.
Arez groaned at his stupidity. His head was starting to hurt from the circles his thoughts were taking, and he turned to look at the female before him. She was sitting on the cell’s bed, picking at the sleeve of her shirt.
“Naomi,” he said, and she looked up at him. “Whatever happened during that interrogation, we still have to figure out how to get out of here.” He couldn’t read her expression, but it looked somewhere between relief and embarrassment.
She nodded and looked away from him quickly.
She couldn’t even bear to look at him. The fact pierced his heart and he glanced down at himself dejectedly, realizing for the first time that the Krezlians had removed his Alliance uniform and put him into some kind of a black robe that had now fallen half-off.
So, she was bothered by his nudity. Was he truly that hideous?
He knew he was ugly, a monster created by the men who currently held them captive. He knew he didn’t look like any existing species in the universe, that his DNA – which was a mixture of different animal and alien species – was an abomination on its own, but still… For some reason, the fact that she found him disgusting, that she found him hideous, made something break inside him.
“I need to know what the Krezlians are after,” he said, trying to concentrate on the conversation instead of what must be going through Naomi’s mind at the sight of him. A sudden, disturbing thought entered his mind at that moment, and he frowned at the female. He watched her closely as he continued, “Truthfully, I have no idea… But I think you do.”
Naomi’s head snapped in his direction now, her amber eyes wide and her pink lips slightly ajar – as if in surprise. Arez didn’t buy it for a second. Annoyance welled inside him and, suddenly, he knew just where to get the answers to his questions.
“Ex-Excuse me?”
She looked genuinely surprised but Arez wasn’t going to let that fool him. She was Alliance. She had access to all the information in the Alliance universe, and she probably had all of it memorized. Especially when it concerned her own race.
He continued to stare at her, hard. When she didn’t drop her act however, and only gaped at him with her pretty pink mouth open, he growled, “Twenty-seven Ezak-X males were taken from the Ka’elea by the Krezlians a moon ago. Among them was a male… with a human female.”
He didn’t wait for her to conf
irm or deny, but he could tell from the change in her expression – and from the way her mouth suddenly snapped shut – that he was right, and she knew something.
“What happened to them?” he demanded. “They’re related to this, and you know it.”
Naomi shook her head, her expression shuttered. “That is classified information,” she said, her voice quiet.
Anger rose within Arez at her dismissal. After everything that had just happened between them, he wasn’t having any of that. She knew something, and she was going to tell him. When she turned her gaze away from him again and toward the wall, Arez shot up from his spot, and pushed her down onto the bed with him.
She gasped at the sudden movement, looking at him with her eyes wide. He bent over her on the bed, his face only inches away from hers.
“What. Happened. To. Them?”
Naomi closed her eyes, a small quiver traveling along her body, and suddenly, Arez was all too aware of the nearness of the female, of her soft curves under his body, of the swell of her breasts only inches away from his chest. Heat engulfed him, and he couldn’t help himself. He inhaled her sweet, sugary fragrance, and his cock twitched in his robe.
“They survived,” she breathed, her voice like a quiet caress that ran along the hairs on his body.
She didn’t open her eyes when she spoke, as if she was afraid to face him. Of course, she was already repulsed by the Ezak-X. Arez grimaced inwardly. He felt the stab of hurt in his chest at the knowledge, but he also didn’t want to make her any more afraid of him. He pulled back slightly, giving her room to breathe.
Plus, he needed to move away from her. Her scent and the heat of her skin was affecting him too strongly. That was the part he couldn’t understand – the one that didn’t make any sense under the current circumstances. She was withholding information from him. He should be angry. He shouldn’t want to… shit.