The two men ran out of the water and out of sight.
Who was the woman that was standing at the shoreline? Who was the woman who had saved his life?
He thought about hitting his temple but only for a split second.
X-Jorn knew that the woman who was standing there meant him no harm. At least for now. She saved him from having to hulk out on the two men.
“Are you alright?” The woman’s voice was kind, though it was loud as he put his finger inside his ear and got some of the water out.
He nodded but she couldn’t see him.
She hadn’t seen the blue because it was so dark. No moon, no stars. It was cloudy just like his mother said it would be.
He was lucky on that part.
“Can you hear me?” she asked him. Since she couldn’t see him nod his head, he knew that she hadn’t seen the blue that radiated off him before she came to speak to the men.
He nodded his head again.
At least he could understand what the earthling was saying. Though he couldn’t speak the language well, he was a fast learner. He would be able to speak it just fine the following day.
“Are you alright?” the woman asked again. She reached for his arm and he pulled away from her quickly.
Chapter 3
“My name’s Melinda… let me help you,” the woman told him, reaching for his arm again.
Since X-Jorn remained silent, Melinda thought he was hurt. She wouldn’t be able to get a better look at him until she brought him home to help him. She could help him… she knew she could!
Melinda had beautiful wavy blonde hair and light-blue eyes. She looked at him intently, not quite sure why he wasn’t speaking to her.
“You’re hurt—come back to my house and I will help you,” she suggested to him, this time not reaching out for his arm.
Maybe that’s where the men had hurt him. Maybe that’s why he pulled away so fast, before she could even touch him.
Although, it could have been that he was embarrassed. What man would sit there and allow a woman to save him? Not many that Melinda knew.
She had expected him to rant and rave at her. Expected him to glare at her and tell her to go away because of his ego, because of his pride.
Melinda could tell right away that he wasn’t like any other man. That maybe he was new in town and he just didn’t know the ways.
“You can’t just come out here in the middle of the night and walk the beach,” she told him, turning away from him and heading up the beach. “It’s better in the daylight.”
X-Jorn followed her without saying a word. She hadn’t figured him out, which was a good thing. The closer they got to the start of the beach the clearer his eyesight had gotten from having his eyes open under the water.
The only good thing about that was it flushed out the sand that had hurt his eyes so badly from when the men were shoving his face in the sand.
“There aren’t a lot of nice people out here. You have to learn to read them here. Where are you from?” Melinda asked, hoping that whatever pain he was feeling would go away during conversation, or that it would at least take his mind off it.
He didn’t say anything. How he wanted to speak to her. How he wanted to open his mouth and let the words flow, but he didn’t know how to speak like her. He remained silent. Anything else would scare her off.
Before X-Jorn hit the streetlight of the parking lot he had turned in to human skin form. The blue was gone and in its place was a nice tan. The muscles he had were already there, just in human form. He couldn’t have his cover blown.
He couldn’t trust anyone, not even her—so why was he following her?
She wanted to help him and he knew that was an act of kindness. Unfortunately, from his first experience with the men back at the beach, he learned the hard way that he couldn’t trust earthlings.
X-Jorn looked over his shoulder. His muscles were flexing, his jaw was clenched, and he was feeling a little nervous. He didn’t want the men to come back. He didn’t want to be attacked again… and also didn’t want that for Melinda. The two of them were helpless… well, one of them was pretending to be helpless so that they weren’t found out.
Him.
“Don’t worry, I don’t think they will be back,” Melinda said, laughing.
His eyebrows rose up. He hadn’t heard laughter like that before. He hadn’t heard sweet laughter; this was different, but it was such a wonderful noise to his ears.
“You don’t have to worry about them because I threatened to call the police,” said Melinda, as she waved a small device in her hand. Her fingers wrapped tightly around it.
“It’s funny—this is the first phone that my mother ever gave me,” she explained to him. “I still hold onto it to this day.”
He nodded his head, staring at what she called a “phone.”
X-Jorn could see that this planet wasn’t worth saving. The two men had ruined it for him. Melinda told him that he had to be careful, that there weren’t many nice people out there. How at night he shouldn’t go out.
He realized that what his mother had been saying all along was right. That earthlings—humans—were not to be trusted.
He could see that they were almost as bad as his mother. The two men had ruined it worse than what he thought they could. The fact that they slammed him down, roughed him up, and tried to kill him was all the convincing he needed.
They tried to kill him in the water! He could have lost his life. Or he could’ve taken theirs. He felt the anger build in him just as he had seen happen to his mother. He felt the anger build in him like it does in humans.
X-Jorn could see that Angry Queen and the humans were not that different. There really wasn’t much of a difference at all.
He could see what his mother meant, that if anyone found out about them then Earth would destroy them quicker than Zar-Kan could destroy Earth… and then where would they be? They would be dead, never to be seen or heard of again!
Not that the earthlings would ever believe such a crazy story. He had heard about how the humans didn’t believe aliens existed, like they thought of aliens as a fairytale. Stories that were told and then soon forgotten. The humans didn’t know that they had one walking around their planet right now!
Their planet that was to soon be destroyed.
X-Jorn didn’t see anything that was worth keeping. Nothing worth stealing. Nothing worth taking back.
That was… until he looked at Melinda.
The next thing X-Jorn knew, they were standing in front of a white house. Melinda had her hand held out to him with a smile on her face as she opened the front door.
There was the only thing that was worth saving on planet Earth. The only thing that he couldn’t imagine being taken away.
And that was Melinda because of her act of kindness towards him. He could see now that she wasn’t out to hurt him—only help him.
“Come inside, let me bandage you up,” Melinda said as she looked at his arms.
He looked down at them too.
The men had been rough with him; they had sliced him without him even realizing it. He wouldn’t have thought to look down if Melinda hadn’t pointed it out.
Chapter 4
X-Jorn followed her into the house, watching as she shut and locked the door behind them. She still had a smile on her face.
He let her take his hand this time. She led him to the kitchen and turned on a light. He blinked his eyes several times, as the light was very bright, and ran a hand through his damp brown hair.
“You look like you get a lot of sun,” said Melinda, noticing his deep tan.
When X-Jorn didn’t say anything, she shrugged her shoulders.
“Not much of a talker, I see. It’s alright, I’m not most of the time either,” she said, then laughed. “After what happened to you, I didn’t think you would be up for talking. Trust me, I don’t take offense to it.”
There it w
as again. He felt his lips growing into the form of a smile when she had him sit down at the table.
“I will be right back; don’t go anywhere!” She pointed a finger at him.
He stayed put even though he knew that he should probably leave and go update his mother. To let her know to attack.
He was curious about Melinda. She showed him that she was nice. He couldn’t very well just go back and tell his mother that the one thing that she wanted to eliminate she couldn’t because of a human!
That’s not what she was looking for.
He had a few days; she had given him three days, to be exact, and that was a surprise in and of itself.
Melinda came back in a flash with a needle and thread.
X-Jorn’s eyes grew wide.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Melinda explained to him. “I’m a nurse. I can see that you need to be stitched up. Would you rather go to the hospital and explain to everyone there what happened? They wouldn’t like that you’re so quiet and anyways, it’s just easier to get you stitched up here.”
The thought of going anywhere near another human was terrifying to X-Jorn. In a way it made his blood boil; he had to calm down before his blue showed.
That was something that he was learning to control. Something that he had to control.
As nice as Melinda was being to him, he knew that it would be hard to explain. Not being able to talk, not being able to tell her that he wasn’t there to hurt her.
She wouldn’t believe him even if he tried to explain it to her.
No, he had to keep himself calm while he was there and hope to find a way to explain to his mother that she could destroy everything down here but one human.
No one came before his mother. He knew this. He didn’t know how he was going to explain it to her, but he had to find a way.
In the end she would just destroy Earth with Melinda here. Just to be spiteful, just to show X-Jorn that she was the queen and whatever she said was law.
Melinda hummed while she stitched him up.
She hadn’t lied to him.
X-Jorn didn’t felt a thing. He felt a little prick from time to time but no pain that would make him mad. No pain that would have him make a noise that only his own planet would understand.
“All better!” said Melinda, as she kissed his arm and then laughed when she pulled away from him.
“Sorry, that was weird!” Melinda giggled, her face turning red.
He wanted to ask her what the red was, wanted to know why she was looking at him as if she had done something wrong.
In his eyes, she hadn’t done anything wrong at all.
If he could even speak, he would let himself be known. Let himself be figured out… and that wasn’t okay.
He knew that it wasn’t. With all the questions that he wanted answers to, she would definitely figure him out quicker than anyone else.
Melinda would wonder why he was so weird. She seemed to be a smart girl and there was no doubt that she would be scared of him.
That beautiful smile of hers would disappear with fear and shock taking its place. And he didn’t want that.
“Listen, you can spend the night here tonight,” she said. “Since you won’t tell me where you live so I can take you home, this is the safest place for you. I have a couch in the living room that you can sleep on.”
When Melinda got up from her chair, he did too. He followed her into what she called a “living room.”
He saw a flat box set on top of something steady. She pointed at the couch and he sat down on it.
Melinda pointed at the flat box he was looking at. “If you want, you can watch television.”
“You can lay down. I’m not going to hurt you,” she giggled, motioning for him to lay down on the couch.
He grinned and laid down on the couch as she had suggested, and watched her leave the room.
When she came back in she brought a blanket that she covered him up with; X-Jorn pulled it all the way up to his chin.
“If you’re cold I will get you another blanket,” she told him, but his eyes were closed and he felt it best not to open them. He wanted her to think that he was sleeping so she could leave the room and he wouldn’t feel so silly laying there on her couch.
It worked; he opened one eye and saw that she was no longer in the room. She had left on a little light so that it wouldn’t be so dark for him.
Chapter 5
Early the next morning X-Jorn heard Melinda coming down the stairs. He opened his eyes when she opened the curtains to let the light into the room.
Melinda smiled at him as he shielded his eyes.
“Not a morning person, huh? Well, that’s about to change,” she said. “I think we need to go out. I want to show you a few spots. I usually go jogging but not today.”
The clothing that she was wearing revealed more skin than what she had exposed last night. She wore a shirt with thin straps and a pair of shorts that were a little too tight—almost like the pants that his mother had picked out for him.
The bag he brought with him was still on the kitchen floor. He wanted to change quickly.
Melinda noticed him staring at his bag and said, “You can change in the bathroom. It’s right there.”
He took his bag without saying anything to her and went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
When he came back out he was wearing a pair of shorts that were much longer than hers, as they went almost down to his knees.
“Who dresses you? Your mother?” Melinda asked, laughing at him.
He knew that she wasn’t being mean. It was a joke of sorts and so he smiled at her. His brown eyes were beaming. He could feel the happiness that he wanted to find.
Melinda didn’t even bother to eat breakfast. She was too excited and curious when it came to X-Jorn and she wanted to know everything about him.
She wasn’t the type to be pushy and didn’t want to be that way with X-Jorn. After all that he’d been through she knew that asking a lot of questions wasn’t going to put him in a good mood.
Those brown eyes though. How she enjoyed looking into them. She saw how cloudy they were last night and knew that he was disturbed without him even saying a word. Now his eyes were shiny and she could tell that he was happy.
“I thought that we could go down to the pier today,” Melinda said, throwing the idea out there. “I like watching the seals.”
He didn’t say anything so she shrugged her shoulders. She figured X-Jorn not saying anything was a good indication that he might want to go, considering that a lot of men would complain or grunt about something like that. She was sure of it.
“It’s not too far away,” she continued. “It’s just a small walk and it’s so nice out.”
When she gathered her purse and made her way to the front door, she opened it and waited for him.
X-Jorn walked out the door and waited for her as she locked it behind them.
“If you need a place to stay another night my couch is available,” she offered him, letting him know that he didn’t have to be in a rush to leave.
He found that Melinda made him feel good; he couldn’t find anyone that was as nice as her.
X-Jorn walked beside her instead of behind her this time.
He took notice that others walked beside each other when they passed by other people, and figured it was the normal way to walk with a human.
Melinda brought him down to the pier. They sat on the dock together.
Melinda had her legs up under her so he did the same.
Looking around, he could see that there were fishing boats and that people were laughing and having a good time.
He could see the little humans with animals of sorts, and they had smiles on their faces just like Melinda did.
Friendly ones.
“Right there, look right there!” Melinda cried out, nudging him.
He quickly turned his eyes to where
she was pointing and saw exactly what she was seeing. Hearing the excitement in her voice, he could see that they meant a lot to her.
“Those are seals! They come up here so close sometimes,” Melinda explained. “They are hungry and snatch bait from the fishermen. The sad thing, though, is that I see very few of them now. I used to see a lot of them.”
Her excited voice turned into a low voice. A voice that he hadn’t heard before.
It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t because she was mad.
There was no smile on her face, but he could see the sincerity in her blue eyes with the way she looked at the seals approaching the dock.
It looked as if she might be sad—he was sure that was the term for it.
“But I’m glad that we at least have some seals,” she said, giving a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
She was smiling so she seemed to be in a better mood.
“Happy people,” the thoughts he was thinking came out of his mouth in words.
“Yes, they are happy. For the most part, life isn’t always hard,” Melinda was surprised X-Jorn spoke, though she didn’t want to show it.
It was the first time that he had spoken to her since she thought that he was a mute and just couldn’t speak at all.
X-Jorn nodded his head and put a smile on his face.
It was easy to see that the people on the dock as well as the men on the boat, who were pulling nets up from the water, were happy with their lives.
X-Jorn thought to himself, maybe not everyone was as mean as the men were that had robbed me last night.
The sun was warm; the blue sky was beautiful.
He heard screams and stood up quickly.
“It’s kids. They are having fun in the water. You know, my mother always told me not to scream when I was in the water. Afraid that I would be drowning. So, I had to be a quiet child.” Melinda laughed as she shared the memory with him.
X-Jorn relaxed when he saw for himself that the screams he heard came from kids playing with each other. They were smiling and they threw their heads back to let the sun kiss their faces as they continued to enjoy life.
The Sacrifice- Tentacle Soldier Warriors Box Set Page 13