"Yeah," I mumbled. "I just feel bad for her."
"Don't," he said. "She's a Mole."
I huffed at that and decided to use his words against him. "A Mole girl, Zasen. One who is currently confused, lost, and all alone. We just walked her miles from what might be the only home she's ever known, led her through a crowd screaming at her, and held her down while your mother treated her feet!" I huffed out a frustrated breath. "She can't understand what we're saying, but she sure as fuck gets the expressions and tone we use. And I don't care who you are. When everything you know has been ripped away, even the strongest people - even you - will crack a little, if not break completely."
He thought about that for a moment before nodding slowly. "Yeah. I know." Then he glanced back at the chair the girl was sitting in. "But she's still a Mole, Kanik. I still might have to kill her, so forgive me if I don't want to think about it too much, okay?"
"Okay," I relented, because he had a point. "Although, if you want her to trust you, you can't treat her like the enemy."
"I know."
"And the longer you're nice to her," I went on, "the harder it's going to be to hate what she is when you start figuring out who she is."
"I know."
"So how are you going to handle this?" I asked.
He simply reached up to scrub at his face. "I'm going to call her Orin, remind myself she's a Mole, and keep in mind that Drozel might have a point."
"What? Which one?"
"This damsel in distress act could be just that. An act." He paused to clench his jaw, clearly annoyed. "She could be an assassin. She could be a spy."
"Her?" I scoffed.
"Her," he said. "Oh, she's probably not, but she could be one. She could be a weapon they designed to slip inside our defenses." He turned so we were both facing the back of the girl's chair. "Kanik, not all of those bruises on her are from us. Some of the ones on her face were there when she was chained out."
"So they beat her first?"
"Or," he countered, "she's been trained to ignore pain. Trained, Kanik. Exposed to it over and over until she can prevent her own reactions to it. That's what humans used to do to their special forces. They'd push them until they broke, then pick up the pieces and rebuild them into these amazing soldiers. Then they'd use them to slip into the places the main lines couldn't reach."
"Or," I countered, "she's a desperate woman who's lost, alone, and probably scared shitless."
"Yeah. Or that." He sighed. "But since I can't rule out either one, I have to keep both possibilities in mind. You should too."
Twenty-SevenAyla
Once I was dressed and much more comfortable, the Wyvern wrapped my feet. Surprisingly, he did it almost as well as the doctor had. And while he focused on that, the yellow Dragon and Kanik busied themselves in the food preparation room.
But I now knew the brown one's name. Kanik. That had to have been what he was trying to tell me. I just didn't understand why all three of these men were here. Was this really the Wyvern's home, or was it something else?
Soon enough, good smells began to waft in from the other room. There was more clattering from Kanik and the yellow one, and then the Wyvern made his way to my side and offered me a hand up. Confused, I took it, aware I was starting to feel the bottoms of my feet again.
Then, slowly, the blue-tailed Dragon led me into the food preparation room and guided me to a chair at the end of a rectangular table. I was barely sitting before the other two carried over plates heaped with food - most of them things I'd never seen before.
The yellow one carved at the meat, removing a large piece just to place it on the plate before me. Kanik added a ladleful of the orange tuber beside it. Then he gave me the same amount of a green vegetable that was oddly shaped. It wasn't leaves like I was used to. This was small, round, and about half the size of my pinky finger.
And once I was served, the other three men all began to reach for things to put on their own plates. Confused, I looked around, taking in the table. In front of me was a glass filled with clear water. To the side of my plate was a folded napkin made of white cloth. On top of that were utensils almost identical to the ones I was familiar with from the compound.
Once they had what they wanted, the men simply began shoveling it into their mouths. There was no prayer, but they talked as they filled themselves. The tones were light and joking. The smiles were at odds to what I was used to back in the compound. But when I took too long to join them, the yellow one noticed.
"Orin?" he asked, miming using his fork.
So I carefully took a taste of the tuber. That made the yellow one smile and return to his own meal. And it was good! Much better than it had been when raw, even if I couldn't begin to describe how or why.
I ate, sampling the new foods and finding them all delicious - even the meat. There were flavors to them I hadn't expected, but I liked it. Not wanting to let the serving go to waste, I tried to finish it all, but couldn't. There was simply so much of it!
When my bites came slower and slower, Kanik reached over to slide my plate away from me. I glanced up, worried I was about to be punished for the waste, but he just tipped his head at the remaining food, then at me, and lifted a brow.
I grimaced and rubbed my belly, hoping he'd understand I meant there was no more room. He grinned. I wasn't sure if he'd understood or was just being nice, but nothing about his manner seemed upset or offended. Hopefully that was a good thing?
After that, I was guided back to the same chair I'd used before, and then the yellow Dragon pressed the book about Idaho into my hands. While I flipped through it, the three men cleaned the table and food preparation room.
But with a full belly and an aching body, the events of the last few days began to catch up with me. My eyes were closing before they even finished. When the men wandered back in, it seemed the Wyvern noticed my drooping lids. Chuckling softly, he led me to that bedroom one more time, and I was honestly too tired to resist. But when he began to turn down the blankets on the bed? That made me wake up fast and step back warily.
He merely gestured to the exposed sleeping spot, smiled at me, and left the room. Limping on my aching feet, I followed him to the door and locked it. I would not go through all of this just to be forced into bed with a Dragon instead of a Righteous man!
Then I surveyed the space. The room was easily as big, if not bigger, than the room Meri, Callah, and I had shared, but there was only one bed. It was twice as wide as the one I'd had in the compound, and when I pressed on it, I found it to be much softer, so I climbed under the blankets.
But this wasn't my bed. This wasn't my home. My body might be exhausted, but my mind was spinning, replaying everything from Callah's words to Mr. Saunders' kiss, and of course everything that had happened with the Dragons.
It felt like an eternity since I'd been able to relax, and now all the sounds were so strange. I heard steps on the stairs, making their way higher. After that, I could make out footsteps on what must be the level above. In the room with the chairs, someone was talking, but I didn't know the men's voices well enough to tell them apart yet.
But my body finally began to relax.
Once I managed to get to sleep, I slept hard. The bed was wonderfully soft and the blankets amazingly thick. I didn't even have dreams to make me toss or turn. I merely closed my eyes and found oblivion. The next morning, I woke to light streaming into my face. Shifting towards the other side of the bed, I squinted against the pain of it and tried to find the source.
There, on the front wall, was a window. It was made of glass, and cloth hung from a bar above it, but the fabric had been pushed to the side. Curious, I sat up and tried to see through it, surprised to find a section of grass with a street just beyond. There were houses on the other side of that.
