Page 20 of An Alien for the Farm

When she glances at me again, she blanches because I’m still glaring at my siblingkin. Frakking bad timing. It’s with great effort that I force my annoyance away enough to face the Liora in our presence.

“As the star breaks the dawn.”

She gives me a brief nod. Gaze shifting to Varek, she gives him another slight bow before hurrying back through the grass-feed. It swishes in her haste as she makes her way back to her lodging.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, Varek snarls back at me. “What the frakk was that about? I was looking everywhere for you and the strange female. I thought you both fell in that well since you were nowhere near the lodging.”

“She’s not strange.” I’m standing and in his face a second later. “She’s…different. Special.” His brows lift higher. “And you were supposed to come in three hors.”

“Do you not see the star’s position, brother? I’m on time.”

With a growl, I pull out my communicator, eyes widening slightly as I check the time. He’s right, of course. Varek is hardly ever wrong when it comes to time.

“Fine,” I grunt, turning my face to the sky and running my hands through my mane. “I apologize.”

“Care to tell me what that was all about?”

“No,” I growl, brushing past him, my focus on the little lodge as I walk back through the field.

Varek follows behind me, his confusion thickening the air around him. “What’s going on, Zynar?”

There’s a light within the little lodge but the door’s closed and there’s no sign of Eleanor. She’s hidden herself away.

“I…don’t know,” I murmur, something pushing me onto the little porch and to Eleanor’s door. I stop just outside it, my fist hanging in the air as I contemplate whether I should pound on her door and apologize.

But apologize for what?

Inside, my core-beat wails. The last time I felt like this, it was when Varek and I found the wreckage with our mor. This unsettling feeling, like a part of me is being ripped in two. That I must fix—whatever this is!

I didn’t do what she wanted me to do and Varek came before I could figure out what that was.

With a defeated sigh, my fist falls, and I step off the porch.

Varek’s gaze bores into my skull.

“Let’s go, brother.”

He glances back at Eleanor’s place before heading with me back to our transport.

“Everything okay?” he asks, and I realize I’m being sour with him for no reason. He’s always been by my side. He’s everything I have. The closest thing I have to home. He deserves an explanation, too. But how can I explain what I don’t even understand?

“All is well,” I reply.

In all my orbits, this has been the most confusing sol of my life.

And I need to figure out why.

Varek nods, chin to chest, but his gaze shifts back to the little lodge. I know this isn’t over. He’ll ask me to explain again, but later, when I’m hopefully not so sour about what just transpired.

As Varek starts the engine and heads back to the town, I take out my communicator, pulling up the search.

With unsteady movements fueled by something I can’t name, I type in the one word that might give me all the answers I need.

“Human.”

8

ELEANOR

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