She breaks the kiss, and there’s a worried look on her strange, smooth little face. “You might not like what else I have to say.”
I want to tell her that nothing else matters. Not as long as she is with me. But there’s such anxiety in her strange eyes that I bite back the words. “What is it?”
“Your men are here to rescue five women,” she says, her fingers fiddling with the laces on my vest. She won’t look me in the eye. “But there are six more of us. Hibernating.”
I study Georgie for a long moment. Her words don’t make sense. Perhaps she still has not grasped all of our language. “The word you say, it means . . . sleeping? Did you mean something else?”
“No, I mean hibernating,” she says again. Her smaller hand grips mine, and she pulls me toward the wall with the strange panels and the lights, much like that in our elders’ cave. When we get to the wall, she touches it with a pat of her hand. “They’re asleep in here, and they have no idea what is going on.”
I am astonished. “Asleep in the walls of your cave?”
“Yes,” she says, her expression sad. “We were afraid to wake them.” And she tells me an incredible story of being taken from her home while she was sleeping and finding herself in the belly of the cave-ship. “We are the extras. These in the wall are the original cargo.”
I don’t understand her words, but I understand what she is telling me. “Your numbers are twice what they seem.”
“I hope you’re not mad?” Her face is worried.
Mad? I am ecstatic. That there are five women who are young, healthy, and mate-able seems as a gift from the gods. Six more is an unthinkable bounty. I want to press Georgie against me and crush her in a hug for saving my tribe from what feels like certain destruction. Instead, I must remain calm. “Six more females . . . And they will be frightened and confused and will need to be treated carefully.”
She nods. “Your men will need to be careful around them. They haven’t been held captive like us. As far as we know, they might still think they are at home, sleeping in their beds. This is all going to be very strange and very frightening to them.” She squeezes my hand. “We didn’t want to wake them when we weren’t decided. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
I do. Georgie’s telling me that however reluctant the humans are to join our tribe, these women might be even more so. That it will take time and patience to bring them into our tribe. “I understand.”
“Some of them might reject the . . . khui,” she says, her mouth struggling to form the word. “That must also be their choice.”
It’s not something I comprehend, but as long as Georgie takes the khui, I care not what the others do. I press her palm to my mouth. “I shall leave it in your charge.”
She nods, a grim look on her face. “I’ll get the others, then.”
? ? ?
The men retreat, a little awed by the newest revelation that there are yet more human females. I see eagerness in their faces, and they want to stay behind to be the first to lay eyes on the new females—in the hopes of resonating to one. But we know the women will be hungry when they awaken, and a sa-khui male’s instinct is to feed and tend to his mate. So the men set off hunting, and Georgie and her women get to work prying open the compartments. I watch from a distance, unable to let my mate leave my sight. She and her women are weak and listless, and I am worried that the khui-sickness might be too much for them.
With Kira’s help as translator, they manage to open the strange wall, revealing six long tubes with floating, naked women. Georgie is right. Six more women, all so similar to my Georgie that it makes my heart clench uncomfortably at the thought of her being trapped inside one of those tubes.
One by one, the women are freed from the tubes. There’s confusion at first followed by sobbing. The others wrap the new female in a warm fur and take her aside to answer questions she might have, feed her, and clothe her. Some of the women stare blankly as Georgie and the others explain. One is furious. There is one with flaming orange hair and orange specks all over her strange pale skin. She sees me and chokes back a little scream, only to be comforted with small pats from Georgie and the other women.
My mate is right. It will take some time before these women are comfortable, and it’s time we don’t have. Georgie and her women cannot last much longer without a khui.
As the women share clothing and chatter together, I head out to check on the men who were exiled from the hold to give the humans time to acclimate. A few of my hunters have stayed behind to guard the hold while the others search for more food. Amongst them are Aehako and Rokan.