TBT: Alien Redemption - Just One Little Word

Her doctor’s voice brought her back from her contemplation of the mountains that reminded him of home.  “What do you want more than anything, Ray-Ray?”

She turned to look at him.  His eyes were big, bigger than most Kalquorians she’d seen.  The vibrant blue-purple orbs almost seemed to glow against his dark skin.  She swallowed hard, the lump in her throat having nothing to do with the blockade against her speech.  What did she want?  Boy, she would love to give him an earful on that.

Conyod nodded in encouragement.  “If it’s something I can get, I will.  Then all you have to do to claim your prize is say just one word.  Any word.”

Love.  I want to say love.  Because every time I look at you now, that’s what my heart screams.  It might be just infatuation, but damn it, it feels like the real thing.

He leaned close to her, his gaze avid.  “There is something you want.  I can see that.  Tell me.”  He nodded at her handheld computer sitting on the floor next to her cushion.  She used it to communicate with the staff, since her stubborn throat refused to open up.

Damn it, she didn’t want to type.  She wanted to talk.  But fear of what she might say, the secrets she might tell, kept it all bottled up.  Back on Earth, she’d been beaten and tortured for information.  She’d kept the words inside, only screaming as hideous pain was inflicted on her poor body.  I’ll never, ever tell you anything had been her internal mantra for all those terrible months.  And now she couldn’t tell anyone anything at all.

She wanted to make Conyod proud.  And he’d said she could say any word.  Perhaps a word her now-dead torturers wouldn’t understand?

Rachel opened her mouth.  She thought of a new word, saw its brightness in her head.  Watched it travel down, down, closer to her mouth, approaching where the blockage always appeared just in time to keep her silent.  Closer still, the passage still open, almost there…

“Retig,” she said.

The word was little more than a breath, with just enough grating undertone straining through to make it audible.  It had been years since she’d spoken, and the weakness of her surgically healed vocal chords was obvious.  But she’d said a word.  Damn the bastards who had shut her up, she’d talked.

Conyod's mouth dropped open.  He blinked.  Then pure, unadulterated delight suffused his face, making him smile broader than Rachel had ever seen him smile.  Her heart thumped painfully to see how he transformed with unguarded happiness.

Imdiko Conyod’s clanmates Dramok Erybet and Nobek Sletran are home from the war. However, he no longer knows these men. Changed by the horrors they’ve seen and done, they are very different people. How can he allow them to clan the traumatized Earther Rachel Hicks, whom he’s come to love so deeply? And how can he not clan her when she’s the only thing right in his life?

Erybet and Sletran keep secret the truth of the terrible crime they committed on the Earther colony of New Bethlehem. The damaged clan tries to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives with Rachel, a woman as passionate as any three men could wish for. But the murders of other Earther women mean Erybet and Sletran must face the monstrous act they thought they left behind. Someone calling himself the Beast of New Bethlehem is murdering Earther women … and the killer may be closer to the clan’s beloved Rachel than anyone suspects.

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