Page 45 of Homecoming

Aeryn had a thought, and she fought her way to Orc, who was organizing a search party. “Where did you find them?”

He got a map and pointed.

She tried to remember the moon, where it would highlight, and what shape her sister would have been in.

“She would have headed here.”

Orc frowned. “Why?”

“I am assuming that they roughed her face up a bit. Her vision sucks when she gets eye infections and stuff, so this is related. Last night was a full moon, so everything would look bright, aside from the stuff that was backlit. That would have been these islands here.”

Orc looked up, squinted his eyes, and muttered, “Shit. That is deep water, and she wouldn’t have had much fuel.”

Skaay got into his boat and called a research station and then someone named Kimo.

Exeter, Ahheel, and Mini hopped onto his boat and headed out.

Orc said, “Do you want to come with us?”

Sohar shook his head. “We will follow and become a checkpoint.”

Thera nodded. “We are going, too. I will see what the animals are saying, but depending on distance, it becomes like a crowded room.”

The village coordinated with supplies and communication, and they were off to find her. The thugs said they had taken her just after two in the morning, so she had been lost for six hours.

Chapter Eight

“Suckiest ways to die: number sixty-nine.” Orla shuddered and didn’t look at the shark-bitten propeller.

Her fingers were swollen, her eye was shut, and there was a rattling in her lungs that didn’t sound good under the boot bruise.

She floated in the middle of nowhere. No paddle and in a plain grey zodiac. The sun was getting higher, and her skin felt raw.

Whales were visible in the distance, but they weren’t the kind that ate noodles, so she was going to stay away, not that she could do anything else. She was a tub toy.

She started getting sleepy when her body figured out it had no resources left. She was glad one of them was thinking.

* * * *

A dark figure moved under the tiny boat, and he sent a signal to Kimo, who would pass the message along.

* * * *

A flotilla of vessels coordinated and headed out to the deep-water spot where whales were bemoaning the loss of their toy, and huge tentacles kept rising and touching the figure in the boat.

Aeryn sent a column of wind to lift Orla’s bloody body out of the vessel. They had a medical team on the yacht that got to work the moment she touched the deck.

She listened to them list off the damage, and when a hole was jabbed into her side to help her lung inflate, Aeryn couldn’t stop crying.

Sohar called the village and said, “We have her, but they are all being charged with kidnapping and attempted murder.”

He took pictures and sent them on to Kekoa. He listed the injuries as they had been called out. They were heading for the trauma centre on Emerald. She wasn’t mated and was too badly hurt for Dorian’s water or Skaay’s touch. There was nowhere to touch that wasn’t bruised or broken.

His new sister was tough.

Ligo walked up from the rear deck. “How is she? There was a lot of blood in the boat.” He tied a sarong around his hips.

The yacht was turning and heading to Emerald.

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