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“Her father?”
“Dana and John haven’t had a very happy childhood,” Korum said, and she could feel his hand tightening on hers. “Their father is someone who should’ve been exterminated long ago. Based on the intelligence we’ve gathered about your Resistance contact, John’s father has a particular fetish that involves very young children –”
“He’s a pedophile?” Mia asked quietly, bile rising in her throat at the thought.
Korum nodded. “Indeed. I believe his own children were the primary recipients of his affections.”
Sickened and filled with intense pity for John and Dana, Mia looked away. If this was true, then she couldn’t blame Dana for wanting to get away, to leave everything connected with her old life behind. Although Mia’s own family was normal and loving, she’d had some interactions with victims of domestic and child abuse as part of her internship last summer. She knew about the scars it left on the child’s psyche. When they got older, some of these children turned to drugs or alcohol to dull their pain. Dana had apparently turned to sex with Ks.
Of course, this was assuming that Korum wasn’t lying to her about the whole thing.
Thinking about it, Mia decided that he probably wasn’t. Why would he need to? It’s not like she could break up with him even if she found out that Dana was held here against her will.
“And what about John?” she asked. “Is he all right? And Leslie?”
“I assume so,” he said, and his voice was noticeably cooler. “Neither one has been captured yet.”
Relieved, Mia decided to leave it at that. She had a suspicion that talking to Korum about the Resistance was not the smartest course of action for her right now. Instead, she refocused on their surroundings.
“Where are we going?” she asked, looking around. They were walking through what seemed like an untouched forest. Twigs and branches crunched under her feet, and she could hear nature sounds everywhere – birds, some kind of buzzing insects, rustling leaves. She had no idea what he had in mind for the rest of the day, but she just wanted to bury her head under a blanket and hide for several hours. This morning’s events and the resulting emotional upheaval had left her completely drained, and she badly needed some quiet time to come to terms with everything that happened.
“To my house,” Korum replied, turning his head toward her. There was a small smile on his face again. “It’s only a short walk from here. You’ll be able to relax and get some rest once we’re there.”
Mia shot him a suspicious look. His answer was uncannily close to what she had just been thinking. “Can you read my mind?” she asked, horrified at the possibility.
He grinned, showing the dimple on his left cheek. “That would be nice – but no. I just know you well enough by now to see when you’re exhausted.”
Relieved, Mia nodded and focused on putting one foot in front of another as they walked through the forest. Despite everything, that dazzling smile of his sent a warm sensation all throughout her body.
You’re an idiot, Mia.
How could she still feel like this after what he had put her through, after he had manipulated her like that? What kind of a person was she, to fall in love with an alien who had completely taken over her life?
She felt disgusted with herself, yet she couldn’t help it. When he smiled like that, she could almost forget everything that happened in the sheer joy of simply being with him. Underneath all the bitterness, she was fiercely glad that the Resistance had failed – that he was still in her life.
Her thoughts kept turning to what he’d said earlier . . . to his admission that he’d grown to care for her. He hadn’t intended for it to happen, he’d said, and Mia realized that she’d been right to fear and resist him in the beginning – that he had indeed regarded her as a plaything at first, as a little human toy he could use and discard at his leisure. Of course, “caring” was far from a declaration of love, but it was more than she’d ever expected to hear from him. Like a balm applied to a festering wound, his words made her feel just a tiny bit better, giving her hope that maybe it would be all right after all, that maybe he would keep his promises and she would see her family again –
A squishy sensation under her foot jerked her out of that thought. Startled, Mia looked down and saw that she had stepped on a large, crunchy bug. “Eww!”
“What’s the matter?” Korum asked, surprised.
“I just stepped on something,” Mia explained in disgust, trying to wipe her sneaker on the nearest patch of grass.
He looked amused. “Don’t tell me . . . Are you afraid of insects?”
“I wouldn’t say afraid, necessarily,” Mia said cautiously. “It’s more that I find them really gross.”
He laughed. “Why? They’re just another set of living creatures, just like you and me.”
Mia shrugged and decided against explaining it to him. She wasn’t sure she fully understood it herself. Instead, she resolved to pay closer attention to her surroundings. Despite growing up in Florida, she wasn’t really comfortable with tropical nature in its raw form. She much preferred neatly paved paths in beautifully landscaped parks, where she could sit on a bench and enjoy the fresh air with minimal bug encounters.
“You don’t have any roads or sidewalks?” she asked Korum with consternation, jumping over what looked like an ant hill.
He smiled at her indulgently. “No. We like our environment to be as close to its original state as possible.”
Mia wrinkled her nose, not liking that at all. Her sneakers were already covered with dirt, and she was thankful that the wet season in Costa Rica had not officially begun yet. Otherwise, she imagined they would be trekking through swampland. Given the highly advanced state of Krinar technology, she found it strange that they chose to live in such primitive conditions.
A minute later, they entered another clearing, a much larger one
