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Euthanized.
Because I’m an unwanted clone of a real person.
The thought keeps spinning in my head, making me miserable as Veronica finishes checking me over and then we eat dinner with the others. R’jaal watches me closely, and I know he’s troubled by my silence. I don’t have anything to say. What can I say? I’m bummed that I’m not a real person? I stared at every woman on the beach hoping that we wouldn’t have the same face?
That it’s bad enough that I thought I was kidnapped by aliens and wouldn’t be able to return home, but it turns out that I don’t have a home at all because I was created in a lab?
Just the thought breaks something inside me. A knot forms in my throat and I’m on the verge of tears all over again. I hate that. I hate that I can’t be strong about this. The other women seem to be adjusting all right—no one’s sobbing near the fire. They’re eating dinner or sewing or talking to each other, and no one tears their hair out or wails up at the stars like I want to.
They’ve had longer to deal with their clone-ness than I have, I suppose. Here I’ve thought I was a person this entire time and that’s not the case.
And now poor R’jaal is stuck with a clone. He’s the only good thing and I feel like I’m going to lose him, too, because I’m not what I’m supposed to be.
If I lose him, I don’t know what I’m going to do.
People are talking around me—or maybe even at me—but I’m not listening. I cling to R’jaal’s arm, desperate. He’s the only anchor I have in a world that feels increasingly unreal. A clone. I’m a clone. I can’t get over that. Somehow, someone’s made me, a full-grown adult with memories, in a lab. For what purpose, I wonder? What awful, terrible purpose could anyone have to duplicate a human being? Organ harvesting? Sex trade? Cannibalism?
All of it makes me sick.
R’jaal wraps an arm around me and leans in close. “You should eat something, my resonance. You need your strength.”
“I’m not sure I can eat.” I look at the others around the fire, laughing and eating bowls of food, and no one seems to be as devastated as I am. Aren’t they upset? Why am I the only one that’s getting fucked up over this? I don’t get it.
“Try? For me?” He tips my chin up and forces me to meet his gaze. His expression is so sweet and full of understanding that it makes me ache. I nod. For him, I’ll try anything.
I manage to choke down a few mouthfuls of food, but I’m too distracted to notice how it tastes. Someone hands me a cup of tea and it’s warm and slightly bitter, and I down it, too. Then I sink against R’jaal, exhausted. It’s as if the mere act of taking care of myself has drained me.
“Come,” he says, nuzzling my ear. “I will show you my home—my hut. It is your home now, too. I built it for the day that I would have a mate.”
I let him lead me away from the fire in a daze. I’m vaguely aware of others calling out to us, saying they want to spend time with me tomorrow, get to know me, and a male voice yells out something that makes the other men hoot with amusement. R’jaal only huffs, but I can tell he’s pleased. My focus narrows in on him.
R’jaal is the only thing that matters now. I’m not a real person, but if he’s happy with me, then that’s all that matters, right?
He leads me down the beach, away from the fire, and steep, gray cliffs rise up from the bed of sand, like walls are cupping the cove to protect it from the nasty, snowy winds in the mountains. Little charming huts made of what look like driftwood are set near the base of the cliff, each one on a wood platform about a foot off the sand. They have wooden walls and what looks like a teepee-esque roof with a smoke-hole at the top.
R’jaal moves to a hut at the end of the row and then pushes aside a flap that covers the door and gives me a look of excitement, as if he can’t wait to show it off to me. “Anything you don’t like, I will change,” he promises me. “This is your home now, too.”
I nod, a knot in my throat, as I duck inside.
The interior is just as cozy as I thought it would be. R’jaal is thoughtful, and of course it stands to reason that his hut would be made to be as pleasing to a future mate as could be. The floor is made of wood, with a cut-out in the center of the hut lined with rocks to form a fire pit. Woven baskets for supplies are off to one side, along with his spears and what looks like fishing gear. There’s a thick bed of furs that looks incredibly inviting, and a skin stretched on a wooden frame that looks like part of a project of some kind. Inside, the temperature is quite nice now that we’re out of the wind, and my khui is giving me all the warmth I need.
