23. Chapter 23

"Are Kenley and Sandra friends now?" Dawn asked me when we strayed from the group to collect some samples for her. This was becoming harder since we didn't want to pick the same things twice.

"What do you mean?" I asked, scrutinizing a thick leaf , wondering if we had already cataloged one of those.

"It's probably nothing, but I saw them standing around earlier, and they looked awfully chummy."

That was news to me, but I got distracted by a creepy-crawly that reminded me of a centipede. "Oh, look."

"Cool!" Dawn exclaimed and snatched it up, pressing it tight between two slides, making me avert my eyes.

"Ugh, I hate this part."

"It's just a bug." Dawn laughed, and we forgot all about Kenley and her chumminess with Sandra .

Most of the day, I was distracted by fingering the necklace Tzar-Than had given me. I was exhausted from the sleepless night and the events of the previous day, but my heart beat faster whenever my thoughts returned to Tzar-Than and our kiss. His words, you'll do , still echoed in my head but were losing their callousness after the gift he had given me.

I had already noticed that he wasn't a man of many words, and given the tragedy that had befallen his tribe, I fully understood his dislike of us humans. I was actually more surprised that he was willing to take one of us as his mate.

How would life be by his side? Would he gentle out over time? His rough exterior didn't bother me. He behaved right in all the things that mattered otherwise. He had saved my life, taken a lashing for me—something I still felt queasy about and didn't want to analyze right then. He had given me a present—I wasn't looking for possessions or jewelry, but it was the gesture and the gift itself and what it represented. Let's not forget the kiss!

Nobody had ever kissed me like that. Nobody had ever made my knees go weak. I wasn't a stranger to sex. I had enjoyed a few encounters with men, but they had never made me feel like this.

I was so tired and deep in thought that I let my guard down that night.

"Hey, can I talk to you?" Kenley asked after dinner.

I looked at the darkening sky. For some reason, I felt a bit wary of going out into the wilderness, away from the protective fires and guards. But Kenley pulled me through the rows of tents, and I figured she must have something important to tell me, something she didn't want others to overhear. For a brief second, I wondered if it had something to do with her and Sandra's chumminess, but I was so tired. All I wanted to do was to go to bed.

By a thicket of several twisted trees, she stopped. I could barely see the glow from the fires from here, and it was getting chilly.

"What's up?" I wanted to know with a sudden urge to return back to camp.

"Bitch!" Something hard slammed into the back of my head, and as my knees buckled, I saw stars. Only my reflexes, making me push out my hands, saved me from hitting my head against a rock.

Fashionable boots kicked me in my stomach, so hard that bile rose up my throat. Another kick aimed at my back made me lose the contents of my stomach.

"Yuck, that's disgusting," Sandra cried.

"Come on; we've got to finish her," a voice that sounded like Kenley's urged while I heaved some more.

"She's getting up," Erika screeched in her heavy accent just when I managed to get on my hands and knees.

"Oh my God, what are you doing?" I heard Lexi scream, but more kicks brought me back down to the ground, where I rolled into a ball to protect myself as much as possible, but the hail of kicks never ceased.

I must have passed out because all the other memories are more like flickers of a slideshow. A kick here, a blow there. Voices, I think she's dead. Let's go. I'll take this . Here, keep that. A rough hand pulled my necklace from me.

And then everything went dark .

First light was just breaking through the sky when I came to, moaning. Everything hurt, and the pain was all I could focus on at first. It took a few minutes before I added more discomfort to my already anguishing array of complaints. My tongue felt swollen, and my throat dry and raw. An urge to cough nearly overwhelmed me, but the surety that the pain would send me back into la-la land gave me the strength to suppress it, for now.

Slowly, I took inventory of my body. I felt bruised all over. The pain in my head was the worst, my thigh a close second, and I prayed my femur wasn't broken. My stomach hurt as much as my sides and back. Overall, I concluded that the only thing that didn't hurt on my body were my toes.

With effort and sheer willpower, I managed to slowly roll onto my stomach and to get on all fours. I stayed like that for a few minutes to breathe through the pain assaulting me from all sides.

When I was sure I wasn't going to pass out again, I narrowed my eyes to stare through the darkness of night to where I was sure the camp was located. Disappointment hit me when I didn't make out a faint glow coming from any fires.

How long had I been out? Even late at night the guards usually left a few fires burning.

The guards were my only hope. If I could just catch their attention or that of a roaming sentry, I would be okay. First, however, I needed to get closer to our camp, praying Sandra and the queen bees weren't around waiting for me. And Kenley.

Her name hurt .

How could I have been this stupid? I never trusted people. Never.

I thought she was my friend.

But here I was.

I didn't search for other instances, but they popped into my mind. Like how she had been awake when I went out to talk to Tzar-Than, and Sandra coming out of nowhere. Now, I wondered if she had alerted her. Dawn's warning about the chumminess rang in my ears. How long had she been spying on me or whatever it was she had been doing?

How they must have laughed at my naivete.

I shook my head to clear the thoughts about women who didn't matter right now, but the motion made me so dizzy that I plopped back down on the ground. My stomach muscles contracted, ready to make me throw up again, but there was nothing left to come out.

They must have thought you were dead, my mind rationalized, and another wave of nausea overcame me. These women had tried to kill me!

This hadn't been a hazing or warning. They had actually sought to kill me.

I had known they weren't my friends, had felt their animosity, and, hey, they weren't on my list of favorite people either, but were they worth killing? That seemed a bit extreme, didn't it?

With sudden clarity, an image came back to me from the assault. Fingers clasping my necklace and ripping it off me. My hand shook as it moved up to my neck, where no necklace graced it any longer .

Tears stung my eyes. Tzar-Than gave that to me.

That must have been the final straw for Sandra. For whatever reason, she wanted Tzar-Than and somehow convinced her group that I had to die.

Cold sweat ran down my back, and I shivered. The movement aggravated many of my various pains, but my mind was too busy going through the process of digesting that these women had actually tried to kill me.

What would happen now? Under no circumstances could I allow them to find me first. They would finish what they had started out of sheer desperation now.

I crawled to one of the twisted trees and used it to pull myself up on my feet. It hurt like hell, especially my thigh, and I figured they must have bruised the muscle. As I slowly began moving it, the pain lessened, thankfully.

Kenley and I didn't walk that far from camp . I encouraged myself. Y ou can make the few yards .

One step at a time , I promised myself. One step at a time . Every tenth or so step, I stopped to lean over my knees and pant, trying to catch my breath without aggravating the other pains. Right then, most of them had died down to a slow mumble, but I was sure that they didn't need much encouragement to start screaming at me again.

When I stopped for the fourth time, my forehead creased in worry. I should have been able to see at least a little glow from the fires by now. Hear the sound of subdued voices. The camp should be coming to life. But there was nothing .

Had the guards put all the fires out? Why? I didn't think they had ever done that before.

Or was I wrong? Was I heading in the wrong direction?

I turned back to where I came from. I hadn't paid that much attention to where Kenley had directed me, but I thought from here it looked exactly like the way we came.

Just a few more steps, just a few more steps , my mind repeated like a mantra, but when I entered a big fat empty space where I knew the camp had been, the mantra abruptly stopped.

The only reason I was sure that I was in the right place was the perfect circles on disturbed ground where tents had been not too long ago. A myriad of footsteps all around them, and rocks assembled in smaller circles where fires had burned.

The camp had left. They were all gone.

Slowly, I sank to my knees when I realized that the sun wasn't coming up as I had thought but going down.

I was beyond screwed. I was alone.

Alone on an alien planet!

I let that sink in as black swirls swam in front of my vision, threatening to take over. No, I screamed on the inside, no, I will not lose consciousness again. I will not !

I had already lost too much time.