Page 23 of His Human to Charm

My eyes meet Thro’s as he cautiously steps forward, like Toron might snap awake at any moment and kill him.

“I need your help.”

Thro looks to my mate, then to me, and gives me a soft nod. “I will stay. I will protect you until your mate is awake again.”

A sob breaks from my throat at the kindness in Thro’s words. This male who just did all he could to help me, who took a beating for helping me, is still willing to stay with me. To help me when there’s nothing to be gained from it. I usher him over to me, wrapping an arm around him when he kneels beside me and Toron. He winces when I hug him too tight.

“Sorry,” I mumble as I try to pull away. Thro wraps his arms around me, a sad cry escaping his throat, and we hold each other for a moment. “We’ll be okay.” I manage to get out between tears. My face is soaked, Thro’s face is soaked, and our tunics are a mixture of blood and tears. It’s not a good look, but it’s made better knowing I have a friend right now. Someone staying with me and getting through this together.

“I want to go back to your tribe when this is all over,” Thro mumbles into the crook of my neck. “I do not want to go back.”

I rub his back, his cool scales shifting underneath my fingertips. “Of course,” I manage to say. “You’ll always have a home with me.”

14

Alice

“We’re running low on dried olack,” Thro says as he hands me a chunk to chew on. “We’ll need to refill the waterskins as well.”

I rub my eyes, hating that I have to try to figure out what to do. Toron’s still passed out on the floor. Thro and I were able to roll him onto his back the first day he was here. I cleaned his wounds as best as I could and bandaged them with some of the tunics from the demons that were killed. Toron doesn’t stir when I clean them, or any time I remove the stained bandages and rebandage him. I’ve poured small amounts of water into his mouth and watched his throat work to swallow it, but we haven’t been able to feed him anything since he still hasn’t regained consciousness.

“You said the river is near?” I ask, looking out of the front door that’s barely hanging on by its hinges. At night, we’ve been moving the dining table in front of it to keep it closed since we don’t want anything coming in to eat us while we try to sleep. Thro and I have been taking turns sleeping, though I know he’s been letting me sleep longer than he should. I try to have him nap during the day, but he hates leaving me on my own.

“It is.” Thro eyes me warily. “You will not go alone.”

“I’m not leaving Toron on his own, and I’m not letting you go out there without anyone to protect you,” I say with more authority than I feel.

Thro is fourteen, which means I’m the designated adult, and he has to do as I say. Not that he isn’t a regular fourteen-year-old who gives me attitude about it, because he is. He most definitely is.

“You cannot protect yourself, and I am more capable than you,” Thro says, a bit of a bite in his words. I know it’s only because we have been cooped up in this small house for three days now, running low on food and water, and the threat of someone coming to find us is very real. Not to mention, we’re still healing from our injuries without enough food, water, or sleep.

“I’m not sending a child out into the forest,” I tell him, rising to my feet and dusting off my legs as I stand.

I don’t want to go out either, but we need to go now rather than wait until we’re in dire need of water. The hunger we’ve been dealing with is one thing because we can survive eating smaller and smaller portions for now. I can’t survive without water, though, especially with how much I sweat during the day on this hot planet. I move over to the dining room table and grab the four empty skins and one halfway-filled one. Thro is standing next to me in an instant, his eyes red, face scrunched up in displeasure.

“I will go,” he says through clenched teeth.

“Nope,” I reply, shaking my head and raising one of my brows. “Children stay here.”

“And if he wakes while you are gone, and it is just me here?” Thro says, pointing at Toron with one clawed finger. “When he guts me because you are not here?”

“He won’t.” I roll my eyes and start walking for the door.

Thro grabs me around the shoulders and turns me to face him. He might be younger than me by quite a bit, but he’s just as tall and stronger than me, thanks to being an alien lizard man.

“Don’t touch me like that.” I narrow my eyes at him, fury flaring inside me. I know I’m weaker than the inhabitants of this planet. It’s been made abundantly clear to me. I do not need my only ally here to treat me the same way.

Thro’s eyes flicker back to black, his hands leaving me like he’s finally realized why I’m so upset at what he’s done. His face falls, a quiver in his lips, reminding me he’s still a child, a very emotional and traumatized child. “I am sorry, I just want… I cannot do this...”

“Together,” I say, placing a hand against his chest. “Me and you are getting through this.” I wait for him to acknowledge my words before pushing the water situation again. “Which direction is the river, and how long of a walk?”

Thro looks out the doorway, his head turning left to right over and over until he retreats back inside. His eyes don’t linger on the bloody spots where his companion was left after Toron killed him. His corpse was there when we went to sleep that night, but by morning, it had been dragged away, food for some nighttime creature.

“It is that way.” Thro points straight through the trees. “Not very far.” He looks up to the sky, able to tell time based on how bright the clouds are, something I haven’t learned to do yet. “You should be able to get there and back before half the day is gone.”

I grind my teeth together, trying to figure out if that’s a long way or a short way away. Less than half a day there and back could be a long time, but I’m pretty sure we’ve already been awake for quite a while. I rub at my temples, too tired to try to reason out how long it will be, and just decide to keep walking until I hear water. I grab one of the knives from the table and head outside.

“Be safe, Alice,” Thro says as he sits in the doorway. His shoulders are raised and tense, his fists clenching rhythmically. “I do not want to be the one to tell your mate that you are lost again if you do not come back.”

---