Page 21 of Victoria's Discovery

“No, no! Don’t look over there. Nothing to see!”

The moment she touched him, he zeroed in on her hand then raised his gaze to her face, his expression somewhere between surprised, a bit suspicious, and intrigued.

“Uhh… I have to pee!”

It was the first thing to pop into her head and, while it was true, she immediately slapped a hand over her mouth, shocked she’d actually said that to the hot alien.

At his startled look, she lowered her hand and smiled a little awkwardly.

“I am so glad you can’t understand me,” she breathed.

Chapter 11

After a lengthy and uncomfortable game of charades where Victoria struggled to communicate her need to use the restroom—or corner, as it were—she decided she liked the language barrier a hell of a lot less. Not being able to use words meant there was no polite or delicate way to signal her needs.

Once she finally got the message across, she then had to endure the humiliating and undignified ordeal of squatting in a corner. Thankfully, Thegan and Thorn did their best to shield her naked ass from the masses.

Unfortunately, that meant they were standing right fucking next to her, listening to her pee.

By the time she finished, she was near tears, and if her face got any damn hotter it was going to catch fire. The only positive she found in the situation was that the pellets acted like kitty litter, absorbing both the liquid and the scent, so at least she hadn’t fouled up their cage.

She knew they could tell she was exceedingly uncomfortable afterward as she retreated to the opposite corner with her head down, hiding her red face behind the curtain of her equally red hair. Thegan, the big sweetie, murmured to her reassuringly and tried to cheer her up. That helped. What helped even more was Thorn utilizing the corner after her.

When he finished and sat back down with her and Thegan in the opposite corner, he tried to pretend like he hadn’t done it specifically to make her feel better, but she could tell by the surreptitious, searching look he gave her that was exactly why.

Catching his gaze, she offered a small smile and murmured, “Thank you.”

He grunted dismissively and kept searching through his various pouches and pockets, but she caught the slight uptilt of his lips.

Letting it go, she looked over at Thegan when he made a noise of surprise in time to see him pull a pair of shiny rocks out of his furry hip pouch.

“Oooh, pretty,” she whispered, leaning forward to get a closer look.

He set them in the middle of their little circle and went back to digging. By the time he and Thorn finished, they had a nice little pile of stuff. None of it seemed particularly useful or like it would help them escape, but it was interesting, and Victoria welcomed the distraction.

Other than the shiny, reddish-gold rocks, there was a length of thin leather cord, a small leather pouch, a handful of what she thought were nuts, half-a-dozen rough-edged coins made out of what looked like rubies, each stamped with symbols that reminded her of runes, two combs carved from wood, and the strip of supple leather about the size of a hand towel, the same one Thorn had placed against the back of his neck when she’d peeked through the hole in the ceiling.

Before she could ask about any of the items, another rise in noise in the hold drew their attention and prompted the guys to quickly return the stuff to their pouches. Pushing to her feet, Victoria moved to the side wall, squishing her face against the glass in an attempt to see down the aisle where the noise was coming from.

A scan of the ceiling didn’t show the hose coming back, and she couldn’t see far enough down the aisle to see what was causing the ruckus.

“Can either of you rough day anything?” she asked, looking up at first Thorn then Thegan who’d come to stand by her sides before squishing her face against the glass again.

“Kan,” Thegan murmured.

“Yeah, me either.”

Looking across the aisle at Vi’kail, who was pressed against the glass like they were, she waved to get his attention then pointed from her eyes to him and gave him a questioning look. At his side-to-side hand wave that she took to mean ‘no,’ she sighed.

“I could go up and take a rough day through the hole,” she offered, pointing to the ceiling to clarify when Thegan glanced down at her.

He immediately shook his head, rambling off alien too fast for her to understand before shortening it to, “Kan kalaus.”

“Not safe. I get that, but not knowing what’s headed our way doesn’t seem super safe, either. Not that we could do much about it, even knowing what’s coming.” Realizing that, she sighed again but nodded. “I guess we wait and see.”

It didn’t take more than five minutes before they saw exactly what was causing the uproar.

They all spotted the two beings going from cell to cell at the same time, but where Victoria’s first reaction was to gawk wide-eyed at the ridiculous looking fish people dressed in unflatteringly skin-tight space onesies, Thorn’s and Thegan’s was to go on high alert. For the second time, they snatched her up and had her pinned in the farthest corner before she could do more than grunt, blocking her with their bodies.

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