Page 28 of Victoria's Discovery

Using her teeth to tear a hole in her sleeve near her elbow, Victoria ripped it off then wet it in the little bit of water that hadn’t splashed out of the trough. Returning to Thorn, she cleaned the blood off his face, applied pressure to his cut until it stopped bleeding, then left it there, hoping the cold water would help reduce the swelling.

That done, she tore off her other sleeve, wet it, then knelt next to Thegan and lifted his head just enough that she could position the rag under him so it would press against the knot on the back of his skull.

Pushing to her feet again, she hissed in pain but did her best to ignore it and limped to the wall to peer over at Vi’kail. To her relief, he was awake now and sitting up against the back wall of his cell, his pet perched on his bent knee.

Tapping on the glass with one hand and waving to get his attention with the other, she gave him a questioning look when he met her gaze. At his nod and side-to-side hand wave, she blew out a breath and smiled then immediately winced and reached up to tentatively touch her cheek. It was swollen and felt hot to the touch, but it could’ve been so much worse.

Catching movement, she looked back up at Vi’kail who’d gotten to his feet and was staring at her in concern. There was that warm feeling again. He really wasn’t an asshole. Mimicking his side-to-side hand wave, she returned his earlier nod to tell him she was okay.

He didn’t look particularly convinced and the concern on his handsome, green features didn’t lessen, but he nodded, more in a resigned way that he obviously couldn’t do anything about her hurts than in acceptance of her assurance.

Waving goodbye, for no particular reason other than it seemed like the thing to do, Victoria turned away, hobbling from wall to wall, knocking and waving until she caught someone’s attention then doing what she could to calm them down and ask if they were okay.

A few of the human women were in worryingly bad shape. One definitely had a broken leg, another’s shoulder appeared dislocated, and almost all of them were covered in bruises and, in a lot of cases, blood.

Victoria did a double take at the cage diagonally across the aisle from her. That woman was one of the few who’d previously been caged alone. She damn sure wasn’t alone now.

In there with her was an alien Victoria could only describe as spectacular.

His skin was a shiny, metallic bronze, but that wasn’t what had her gaping in awe. It was the huge, black-feathered wings he was sporting that had her jaw dropping.

“Whoa… ”

Prying her gaze off of him, Victoria leaned to the side to get a glimpse of the woman sitting in front of him. She was rubbing her eyes and staring up at the winged guy, but she didn’t look too terribly hurt. Shocked and more than a little freaked out, but not injured other than the arm she was favoring.

Victoria watched, tense, worried the big male was going to leap on the small, brunette woman, only to let out a breath of relief when he crouched down and seemed to be trying to reassure her. That was good. Damn good. There wasn’t much she could’ve done if he was dangerous or mean other than maybe ask Vi’kail’s pet to scratch his eyes out, so him trying to appear non-threatening was a huge relief.

Spar, who’d also been by herself when Victoria was knocked out, was now caged with new aliens, as well. Two, in her case.

When the hell that happened, she didn’t know, but at least all three looked to be alright. Actually, Spar looked wary and kind of pissed off and Victoria was pretty sure she was yelling at the males in her cell, but she couldn’t see any blood or broken bones.

The new aliens were in worse shape than the intimidating woman, both sporting some nasty-looking bumps and bruises, but they were awake at least, so that was something.

“Maybe they’d tried to protect her?”

That could account for why they were in worse shape than her, but it didn’t explain why Spar was yelling at them. The only thing Victoria could think of was that one of them had accidentally, or even purposefully, copped a feel. Spar definitely struck her as the type to take no shit.

“Or maybe she’s just aggressively questioning them and trying to find out how or when they were deposited in there with her?”

Victoria’s first reaction to waking up and realizing that she’d been given cellmates was to panic, but Spar seemed like a badass and not at all the type to go the scared Chihuahua route.

A groan from behind had Victoria whipping around in time to see Thegan raise a hand to touch his head. Hurrying to him, she lowered herself to the floor with a wince.

“Thank goodness, you’re awake! Are you okay? Uhh, shit, what’s the word? Kalaus? Merkja?”

He murmured something and cracked open an eye to meet her worried gaze. He offered what she was sure was supposed to be a smile but was definitely a grimace of pain before he apparently noticed her bruised face. His other eye popped open, his smile disappeared, and an alarmed frown tented his brows as he reached out to lightly run his knuckles over her hurt cheek.

Victoria let out a shuddering breath and leaned into his touch for just a moment before forcing herself to sit back on her heels. At that, he narrowed his eyes and gazed at her searchingly.

Being the recipient of such an intense look, particularly coming from a wildly attractive alien who’d kissed the ever-loving hell out of her with what she was positive was more than one tongue, made her feel fidgety and twitchy and like throwing herself at him was a really good idea, but that was probably just the near-death experience messing with her emotions.

That was a thing, right? Wanting to have sex to celebrate not dying? It definitely felt like a thing just then, despite them both being injured and in dire circumstances.

She’d pretty well written off the kisses from both Thegan and Thorn as a weird-but-really-fucking-good alien custom because, honestly, nothing else made sense. Them actually being interested in her like that was… well, it seemed far-fetched to say the least.

Victoria may be overly optimistic, at times, but she was a realist, too. She thought of herself as pretty, but not beautiful, and definitely not the kind of femme fatal capable of attracting super hot alien men with excitingly large penises.

That would be awesome, and she’d be tickled pink if it was a possibility. Unfortunately, she’d crushed on enough hot guys, who definitely didn’t return her enthusiasm and proceeded to let her know about their lack of interest in creatively cruel ways, to know better.

---