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I missed my cat.
For a fraction of a second, I convinced myself the noise drifting through the room was her scratching to be let in. But no, Donna was on Earth, with Morris and perfect David. And that wasn’t scratching anyway—more like crying.
I sat up, listening harder, just in time to hear an unmistakable sob.
What the hell?
It was coming from outside Kaelum’s door, so I opened it with the panel and poked my head out. I wasn’t going to be tricked into helping any pretty plants or cute man-eating puppies or whatever monstrous other thing the Thorzi might keep around as proof of their amazing warriorhood, but also, if there was actually someone crying, I wasn’t willing to let that happen.
What I found outside was not at all what I’d been expecting.
“Ree?”
Crumpled to the floor as though the air had been let out of her, arms wrapped around her knees and shoulders shaking, Ree looked completely out of place in the hallway. Had no one stopped to help her? To even notice her? My friend looked like utter hell, her hands scraped and bruised, eyes red from crying.
Fuck! I’d known I couldn’t trust Crux.
I glanced both ways, seeing no one, then waved her into the room. Was she running away? Hiding from that big asshole? She rushed into Kaelum’s room without hesitation, flinging herself into my arms.
“What’s going on, Ree? Why are you hurt?”
“He said”—she stopped and gasped for breath for a second, having to choke out every word—“he said you were causing trouble, so we all had to be separated. Our own rooms, alone, locked in. Lucas, I’m afraid Gen’s gonna kill herself.”
My blood ran cold.
“Genevieve?” I asked, my voice sounding far away to my own ears.
She nodded, grabbing me by the shoulders and holding me so tight it almost hurt. “He hasn’t let any of us see her in days. For a while he was letting Beau, but then something happened and—I don’t know, Lucas, but I knew if I could get to you, you could help. There was no way he’d be so pissed at you if you couldn’t do something to stop him.”
The door opened again, and she jumped and spun to face it, backing away, hands up. Ree, the badass who’d thrown herself at Crux when the rest of us had been terrified of him.
It was just Kaelum, with a giant plate of food and a scowl on his face. The scowl didn’t disappear when he laid eyes on Ree, but it turned less angry and more concerned. His gaze shot to me. “What has happened?”
Kaelum would have believed Ree, but I thought that from our time together, I knew him. I knew better how to explain it. “Crux has been lying, Kaelum. He hasn’t sent anyone home, not even Genevieve. He’s locked them up alone, like prisoners. We have to get them out of there. To get them home.”
For some reason, he looked pained at that last, but he set his jaw and nodded. Then he motioned to a table, and walked us over to it, setting the enormous plate of food in front of us. “You, eat. Both of you. I will summon Jax, and we will come up with a plan. Your people will not be treated this way.”
Ree ate like a woman who’d been starved for weeks, and given how she was looking a touch hollow-cheeked, the bastard might have been starving her. Or maybe she’d been refusing to eat, like a hunger strike, which I wouldn’t blame her for. I’d have done it.
Whatever it had been, it was done. She stuffed her face full of what Kaelum had brought for our breakfast, and made faces like it was the best stuff she’d ever tasted. There were some of the fruits he’d given me names for, and pieces of a sausage-like meat and something like breadsticks with jam inside—almost like a jelly donut, but not quite as sweet.
That last, she moaned at. “Oh my god, if we weren’t stuck with that Crux asshole this place would be amazing, wouldn’t it? The food here is to die for, and all he gives us is those little Styrofoam bars in plastic wrap.”
“Styrofoam?” Kaelum asked as he came back into the room. “I do not know this word. Is it white? That would make it travel rations, only used to save on space in ships. It is not eaten as anything but a necessity.”
She scowled and tore into another square piece of sausage. “I’m not even surprised. He doesn’t think of us as people. He treats us like lab rats.” She turned and shook the uneaten half of the sausage in my face. “He won’t even use our names. I’m number forty-seven, and he ignores me when I say anything at all.”
Kaelum looked positively sick, like he hadn’t even imagined the possibility, and well, I felt a tiny bit better.
I’d let this happen, after all. I’d been living in the lap of luxury, being called precious, with food when I wanted, and hot and cold running blowjobs.
Okay, no, only hot.
But my friends had been trapped in a prison, treated like lab rats didn’t deserve to be treated, by a guy who... I turned to Kaelum. “You said he can read people’s minds?”
Kaelum nodded. “I presume he read yours, and that is why he swears you wished to leave Earth.” He looked over at Ree. “He swears this of you all.”
She held up the piece of sausage, looking at Kaelum, and then it, then back to him. “If this was what it was like here? Sausages and weird fruit and”—she waved at Kaelum’s silk robe I’d wrapped myself in to open the door—“nice soft clothes? You bet your sweet bippy I’d be all over this. Take my eggs and make all the babies you want, as long as I can live the pampered life. But he’s got us in square cells with nothing but cots, and two Styrofoam squares a day to eat. It’s prison. No, it’s solitary confinement, because he won’t even let us talk to each other. I only made it out because Wes is some kind of computer genius, and managed to short out the door on my cell.”
