Enduring (Valos of Sonhadra Book 8) Read online

  He was definitely a male. And I realized that there were worse ways to die than being eaten by an alien beast as I watched the massive cock between his legs twitch and rise while he stared at me.

  I could be raped first.

  “What are you, little one?” His voice was deep. It came out with an echo, as if spoken in a spacious cave. The rumble in it reminded me of the sound of rocks rolling down the side of a mountain.

  Little one?

  Wasn’t that what I’d called the furry creature in the forest? Just before I kicked it like a football. Did he think I was an animal? Was I better off if he did? Was he less likely to rape me? My mind couldn’t handle so many questions in its current state.

  The alien man lowered himself to a crouch in front of me and shifted even closer. So close, the rock-hard ridge of his erection dug into my shins. I winced and tried in vain to move back, grinding into the boulder behind me.

  “Where are you from?” This time his voice sounded softer. It might have been just a product of my imagination, but I believed I even heard concern.

  Encouraged, I lifted my gaze to meet his eyes. They were a stunning ruby-red. The last rays of the setting sun hit them at an angle, making a multitude of sparkling lights burst out of his irises and play on the russet skin of his face. Some of the sparkles got caught in his long dark eyelashes, like tiny droplets of dew on a spider web.

  It was mesmerizing. With the slightest turn of his head, the lights twinkled and moved, like in a precious gem’s facets under a bright light.

  Overwhelmed, I tried hard to concentrate, to remember the sounds that he had made, to see if I could replicate any of them to form a coherent reply. The effort proved to be too much for my exhausted brain.

  Even though I had no reason to trust this rock man, I had nothing left in me to fight.

  Despite his raging erection, he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to rape me this very moment. Neither did he show any signs of being likely to kill or eat me. Lured by the perceived lack of danger, the last traces of adrenaline evaporated from my body, leaving me with zero resources to go on.

  “I . . . ” I started in English, forgetting that he would not understand me.

  My head swam. His face blurred out of focus, his bright scarlet eyes now looking like shapeless tendrils of dancing fire.

  In a futile attempt to steady myself, I grabbed on to his forearm at my side, wondering how it could feel soft and hard at once, before I slumped and darkness took me once again.

  Chapter 5

  This time it was not the same darkness that enclosed me when Dr. Zukov put me under. I didn’t float in oblivion only to gradually emerge into dizzying pain.

  This time, it was like my system had simply shut down, and when I finally came back, it felt like the whole world jumped on me at once. Lights, sounds, the sensation of cold. The feel of something against my shoulder . . . A tepid, wet touch that instantly cooled my skin, making me shiver.

  Then I heard a splash. Like in splash of water.

  Water!

  I forced my eyes open, blinking in the warm, hazy light filling the room.

  Yes, I was in a room or something resembling one. It had shiny, brown walls, which matched the ceiling. Light was dancing over the surface, filling the room with a warm glow. The faint crackle of burning wood and the smell of smoke lead me to believe that the illumination was coming from a campfire somewhere to my side.

  “Look, Qlraensuekx. Her eyes are open. She’s alive.”

  My headache was unbearable, but I understood the words perfectly, except for the second one. I didn’t ponder over its meaning, though. I didn’t care about any of the words at all unless they meant water.

  I groaned and tried to turn to my side. The groan left a sharp pain in my throat on its way out, as if I’d coughed up a ball of steel wool.

  Water, I wanted to say in English, but it too came out as an unintelligible groan. My attempt to move didn’t fare much better either. I levered myself off the surface I lay on—something hard covered by thick fur—but my arms shook, and I collapsed.

  Someone must have held my head in their lap, because a pair of hands caught my shoulders and eased me down, placing my head back on a thick, muscular thigh. The light in the room, as dim as it was, irritated me, and I closed my eyes again. It just felt like too much effort to keep them open anyway.

  “Why is she so restless? Shouldn’t she be low on energy and feeling sleepy right now?”

  “No idea. Just keep her skin wet. She must be dehydrated.”

  What?

  It made no sense, even in my feverish state.

  I heard another tantalizing splash, and the same wet touch returned to my shoulder. It moved up the side of my neck to my cheek. I turned my head as fast as I could and caught the wet sponge between my teeth, fervently sucking the moisture out of it.

  It was not enough, not nearly enough. The few drops of water that entered my mouth were instantly absorbed by my parched tongue and none made it as far as my throat. Still, I wouldn’t release the sponge, holding it in my teeth with all the strength I possessed.

  Whoever held the sponge gasped in surprise the moment I bit on it, but didn’t try to pry it out of my mouth. He’d tugged at it tentatively at first but then let me have it, realizing I was not letting it go.

  I grabbed the sponge with both hands and greedily sucked every single drop of water out of it.

  “Is she hungry?” The confused-sounding voice came from somewhere above me.

  Weak, freezing cold, incredibly thirsty and in pain, I hadn’t been paying much attention to my surroundings. There must have been at least two individuals. However, I couldn’t tell their voices apart. They had the same low rumble with echo as the voice of the rock man in the valley.

  One person held my head in his lap. Another one had been wiping my body before I took hold of the sponge. Whether or not there was anyone else present, I couldn’t tell.

  I didn’t even have it in me to focus on the words and sounds they made. All I could do was frantically filter their sentences in search of a word that meant water in their language.

  I recalled that one of them might have said the word wet, but I didn’t remember the sounds he made at the time, and couldn’t repeat them now.

  “She took my sponge!” Incredulity laced the words.

  “Get another one.” A snappy tone.

  “You know, it really worries me. Her skin is so soft and delicate. It looks like it needs lots of moisture to sustain itself.”

  “Everything about her is soft and delicate.” A hand stroked my hair.

  “The sponging isn’t helping.”

  “If she is an animal, she may be a water creature. We should take her to the pool.”

  “She looks so much like Ilena. She couldn’t be just a beautiful, rare animal.”

  “Honestly, I have no clue who or what she is, but we can’t let her die, Vlunn. Give her to me.”

  A pair of strong arms lifted me in the air. The movement intensified my headache, and every muscle in my body protested from being disturbed.

  Why can’t they just leave me alone?

  I was being carried somewhere. Every step an agony, but I fought another moan of pain because I knew it would only make my throat hurt more.

  I thought my hallucinating brain conjured the sound of a rushing stream of water, just like someone imagined an oasis in a desert. It started far in the distance somewhere, moving closer as the person carrying me approached it.

  Water?

  I still couldn’t believe my ears, even when the sound of the stream came closer, and I could smell the warm moisture in the air.

  Carefully, I opened my eyes. We were in what looked like a huge cavern, with a tall waterfall cascading down one of the rocky walls into a large pool. I stirred eagerly in the arms holding me, but he didn’t release me. Instead, he stepped over the edge of the pool and jumped in, pressing me to his chest.

  The water was warm, too warm to be refre
shing to drink, but I didn’t care. The person holding me dipped me in carefully, making sure that my head and face were above the surface.

  Frustrated, I twisted in his arms and ended up upside down, with my face under the water. Greedily, I gulped in as much as I could manage, not caring that I was swallowing air along with water and that the warm streams were now rushing up my nostrils.

  He lifted me up, and I choked, coughed and spewed water out of my nose only to jerk away from his arms and submerge my head in it again to drink more.

  Another pair of hands landed on my shoulders gently. Neither tried to pull me away from the water again, but the four hands supported me firmly as I drank, unable to stop.

  My stomach roiled in painful spasms, stretched to its limit from all the water I’d drunk too fast. I shoved away the hands holding me and struggled to the edge of the pool.

  I only managed to drag myself halfway out with my shaky arms before my stomach emptied itself on the rocks beneath me.

  My arms gave out from under me, and I rolled on my side, with my legs still in the pool.

  God, why did everything have to be so painful?

  I felt the rough skin of a large, warm hand touch my cheek. The gesture was light and tender. Another hand brushed my hair away from my face, and two more hands caressed my shoulders. No one said anything. Neither did they try to get me do anything at all, but their touch felt comforting.

  I sensed that they didn’t want to hurt me. They actually appeared trying to help me, caring for me. It was more than I’d had in years, and it gave me hope. I was not alone.

  There must be a reason why I survived this day, and if I wanted to find out what the reason was, I needed to continue to survive.

  I pushed off the edge of the pool, going back in to rinse the filth off me. Deeper and deeper into the water I went, willing all the dirt and pain of my past to wash away, unconcerned that I was rapidly sinking to the bottom. When my toes touched the rocks underneath, I shoved off with all the strength I had, and soared back to the surface.

  Two pairs of hands grabbed me on each side for support, helping me higher and higher. All the way back to the light.

  Chapter 6

  For the next several days . . . Weeks? Months? I slid in and out of consciousness. I didn’t truly sleep. It felt like my mind simply shut itself on and off at random intervals, and all my memories of that time were a series of snapshots of images, feelings and pain.

  I was given water regularly now, along with some thick, meaty broth. I realized I needed any sustenance I could get, but my body still struggled to keep it all down, making me periodically suffer through violent spasms of vomiting.

  I just hoped that with every minute of this torture the poison of all the experimental drugs that I had been pumped with for so long was working its way out of my body. I’d survived so far. I was determined to keep on living now.

  Throughout all of this, they were by my side.

  Like everything else, their images remained distorted in my head. Of whatever I’d seen of the rock man in the valley, I could only add the now familiar sensation of their hands on me.

  They supported my shoulders when I drank from a cup, held my hair up during my endless bouts of vomiting, and kept my half-conscious self from drowning by holding my head above the water in the pool. The soothing rumble of their muted voices comforted my soul, even as my body arched and twisted in agony.

  Then one day I opened my eyes, startled that I could think clearly once again.

  I can actually process what I see.

  It was the first fully conscious thought I’d had in a while.

  The sensation of being freezing cold was what truly dragged me back into reality. I was naked, curled into a ball, lying on a thick hide placed on top of a slab of granite by a wall of polished stone.

  I shivered and my teeth chattered. I stretched my arm, searching for the edge of the hide in an attempt to pull it over myself like a blanket. When I found it, however, the hide proved to be too thick and stiff for a cover.

  The campfire in the middle of the room was all but out.

  I sat up slowly, holding on to the wall for balance, as my head swam with dizziness. The muscles in my arms shook weakly, but other than that I felt much better than I had in ages. I brushed my hand along my calf. The wound there appeared to be healing too.

  The room I was in looked more like a cave shaped as a tunnel, with the entrance at one end. The other end disappeared into darkness far in the distance. The polished stone walls were supported by a high, vaulted ceiling.

  “Are you alright?” A deep rumbling voice arrived from somewhere, and I turned towards it as the rock man in his smaller, more humanoid form entered the room.

  “Do you need anything?” He came closer and sat on my bed, one of his legs bent in front of him so he could face me. I edged back into the wall behind me to keep some distance between us and tucked my knees up. Apparently, his disregard for my personal space during our first encounter was not accidental.

  Remembering that time, I shot a glance at his crotch. Yep, he was still butt-naked, but at least his penis was flaccid right now. Draped ever-so-casually over his thigh, it still seemed humongous compared to Jeremy’s, the one and only man I had ever been intimate with, and I swallowed hard, forcing my gaze up.

  His eyes were golden yellow. The mesmerizingly beautiful facets of light shimmered from inside the irises, making all shades of orange and gold roll through when he moved.

  Did the color change day to day or was this another male altogether? This one appeared identical to the rock man from the valley. However, unless I had completely lost my mind—which was a very real possibility—I believed that the eyes of the man from the valley had been ruby red.

  The male gently brushed a strand of hair from my face.

  “If only you could understand me.”

  Suddenly, I wanted him to understand me too. It might have been safer to play dumb for a little while longer, just to gauge the situation, but he must have been one of those who were here all this time, trying to make me feel better, feeding me, bathing me, cleaning after me. He had seen me at my worst.

  Painfully shy, especially with strangers, I didn’t feel as awkward around him as I normally would. His countenance put me at ease, and I felt safe enough to speak.

  Time to concentrate, Zoya.

  I thought back to the sentence he’d just said, remembering the sounds he’d made for each word. I lacked the word “I” to form a proper sentence, but I had enough to reply.

  Carefully rolling my tongue and rearranging my lips to form the foreign sounds through the teeth chattering from cold, I said slowly, “Me understand you.”

  His eyes wide in surprise, he jerked away from me, only to move closer the very next moment.

  “You can?” His voice boomed with excitement.

  I fought the urge to nod. Who knew what the gesture might mean for these people. It was better to refrain from any form of body language for now and focus on verbal communication only.

  “Can,” I said with affirmation.

  “You can talk?”

  “Can talk,” I repeated patiently. “Can understand you.”

  I hoped he would use the word for “I” so I could build a full sentence. As it was I feared I sounded like a parrot, repeating fragmented phrases after him. I wished for him to know that although the language was theirs, the words and the meaning behind them were my own.

  He just stared at me, his mouth agape, and so I went for the tried and true method of Me Tarzan, You Jane.

  I placed my hand flat on my chest. “Zoya can understand you.”

  I tapped my chest slightly and repeated to really drive my point. “Zoya.” Then I touched his chest and peered at him expectantly.

  He was still staring at me. There didn’t seem to be much understanding yet among those pretty gold sparkles in his eyes, just silent shock.

  “Okay,” I mumbled, slightly discouraged. So far, I had just suc
ceeded in making him speechless, which was not helping me at all. I needed him to talk if I wanted to expand my vocabulary.

  Lost in thought for a moment, with my hand still splayed on his chest, I slowly became aware of the feel of his skin under my palm, warm and rough like unpolished stone heated by the sun.

  I pressed more firmly. His pectorals were as hard as a rock, but there was give in the layer of ash-brown skin over the hard shell underneath, making it feel soft and firm at the same time. It appeared a couple of armor-like plates were just beneath his skin, with irregular ridges outlining each. These looked exactly like the shin guards on his legs, the ones that I had mistaken for greaves earlier. Similar in appearance to armor bracers, more plates circled his forearms from the wrist to elbow.

  The plates were not external coverings, but a part of his body.

  I slid my hand to the centre of his chest, and felt his heart beating almost in the same place where a human heart would be. The beat was much stronger, though. Powerful and urgent, it prompted me to raise my head to see his face.

  The sunny gold in his eyes had darkened to bronze, his gaze fixed on me, his whole body frozen under my touch. I caught movement in his lap—my touching had an effect on him. A massive erection rose from between his thighs.

  I swallowed hard and withdrew my hand quickly, suddenly extremely aware of my nudity under his intense stare. He reached for me unexpectedly and cupped my exposed breast, making me gasp in surprise.

  Caught off guard, I froze for a moment while his thumb brushed my hardened-from-the-cold nipple back and forth. It caused an almost entirely forgotten tingling sensation to roll through my body.

  His head tilted to the side, as he appeared to study the hard bud of my nipple.

  His strange scrutiny was beyond sexual. I realized what fascinated him, and the thought brought me back to my senses. I slapped his hand away.