AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER EIGHT
Haina
Itwasmid-afternoon,andwe were thirteen days into our trip to join the cause. I’d crawled into the bed in the bow just as the sun started to rise, with Jorik on one side of me and Rix on the other, making the “sandwich,” as they called it. Zane, of course, offered to take the first watch.
Noise in the kitchen area of the boat roused me, though I didn’t bother to open my eyes right away. Sleep without a day of torturous training and rigorous scientific experiments being conducted on your body could go on for as long as you liked. I had no cameras in my room, no cold bucket of ice water being thrown on my body if I groaned and tried to turn over and rest my exhausted muscles.
I grinned but didn’t open my eyes. I was free, and with each new passing day, I was more and more grateful for the men on the boat and how they were helping me claim that freedom and everything that it encompassed.
As my smile spread across my face, I stretched my toes to the end of the bed and my hands above me.
I couldn’t feel any heartbeats beside me, so I brought my arms to the side and spread myself wide on the bed like a starfish. One side of the bed was still warm, and instinct had me rolling over to it and curling up in its remaining heat.
Zane had been here last.
I could smell him. Woodsy and fresh.
He’d been going to bathe in the fresh water we found after we returned from the shore. He said he preferred his “privacy,” whatever that meant. I was just happy for the distance between us when he left.
We’d washed our clothes a few times, and thankfully Neffers had packed a couple of pairs of cargo pants and shirts for me, so I wasn’t re-wearing the same stuff over and over again. The guys had managed to find some of the clothes Neffers would have stashed for himself, and with some seam-pulling, they made it work. Neffers wasn’t as muscular as these three—particularly the broad-chested and tree trunk armed Jorik—but Neffers was tall, so at least the pants fit.
Caught in a time bend between being asleep and awake, I buried my nose into the warm space where Zane had been and slowly started to tune my mind into the boat and everything happening.
“How many more days do you think we have?” Rix murmured, keeping his voice low.
“Another two weeks, tops,” Zane said gruffly. “We might be able to stretch it to three if we reduce the dosage to a sixth each, but that’s really skirting the edge.”
“And an organic fix just lasts a few hours.” Jorik stated, an air of authority clear in his tone.
Zane made a noise in his throat to say he agreed.
“Fuck, I don’t think I could go through with it,” Rix said, chewing on what I had to assume was mint leaves. In fact, I could smell the mint. I giggled internally at how well I already knew each of the guys. Well, maybe not Zane, but I stopped trying to figure out that grump.
But Rix, was pretty easy to figure out. Jorik had been slightly tougher puzzle, but it didn’t take too long for me to realize that he was just a squishy teddy bear underneath all that muscle and brain. His heart was as soft and kind as his muscles were hard and rippling.
But Rix had been chewing on mint leaves since we started collecting them in the forest. He said he hated having bad breath and that chewing on the mint was a sure-fire way to keep his breath smelling minty fresh.
My minty fresh guy made a rumbly noise in his chest. “I just couldn’t,” he went on. “Not now. Not now that we’ve gotten to know her. Not now that I’m … never mind.”
I blinked a few times and adjusted how I was lying on the bed so that I could see what they were doing. What did Jorik mean byan organic fix? And did I want to know?
Zane and Jorik were sitting in the booth, and Rix was leaning against the cooking area. Zane had an elastic band around his bicep tight enough that the veins in his strong, muscular forearm were beginning to bulge.
Rix slid a syringe into a vial and pulled up a deep red serum—made of my blood—then handed the syringe to Zane. He pushed the needle into a raised vein in his arm and pressed down on the top of the syringe, but only a third of the way down.
He sucked in a sharp breath and slammed his eyes closed at the same time his jaw clenched tighter than I’d ever seen it and a jagged vein pulsed in his temple. His face turned red, and his body went ramrod-straight. Then, just as quickly as his entire body had gone stiff, his lungs released a whoosh of air, his shoulders relaxed, his jaw loosened and his complexion returned to normal.
He removed the tourniquet and passed it to Jorik. Jorik did the same thing to his enormous bicep, then slid the syringe into a raised vein, pressing down another third of the way. Jorik had the same reaction, and when he came back from his near-hemorrhaging statuesque state, he handed everything to Rix, and he followed the same pattern until the syringe was empty.
“Bought ourselves another three days,” Jorik said, reluctance thick through his tone.
Rix grimaced, sighed, and nodded. “I’m going to go ashore, find some water and some more herbs. It rained, so mushrooms might be out.” He disappeared up the ladder and out onto the deck.
Jorik sighed, too, and stored the syringe in a small black canvas pouch along with the vial of serum before passing everything to Zane. Zane stowed it all beneath the cushion he was sitting on in a small divot for storage.
“I’m going to go with him.” Jorik sounded defeated, and the heavy trudge of his footsteps and the way he rounded his big shoulders emphasized it. He followed Rix up the ladder, and within a couple of minutes, I heard them rowing to shore.
They’d never gone to shore without me. They’d always invited me.
