Read Online Return to Eden by Kaitlyn O'Connor - Free Book Online

She thought about it, feeling her throat close
with thirst at the prospect of finding a reservoir full of
water.
    On the other hand, should she lead an
invader to a water source?
    One look at his expression was enough
to convince her that a) he hadn’t caught one word out of three and
b) it didn’t matter what she said. He was going to
investigate.
    He studied the thing on his arm for
several moments, frowning. “Big ting no harm here.”
    It took Anya several moments to
translate, but she had to agree with his assessment once she had.
They were going to be a lot safer underground—well, unless there
were big things that could and would crawl underground with
them.
    Of course, there was the fact that the
pipe wasn’t big enough for anything really big, but she didn’t want
to meet up with anything that could if it had a lot of really sharp
teeth like the things she’d seen so far.
    She didn’t understand what was
happening. She hadn’t exactly had a lot of time to think about it
since she’d been awakened at daylight by those things eating her
clothing and the pipe she’d taken shelter in. She hadn’t had time
to do anything but absorb one shock after another, but she didn’t
think quiet time was going to help a lot.
    The monster bugs and then the … Well,
they looked like dinosaurs. They didn’t look like any pictures
she’d ever seen of dinosaurs, but they sure as hell weren’t natives
to Georgia! She supposed something similar might have roamed the
earth millions of years ago, but she was pretty sure this area had
been part of the ocean then.
    So she was also pretty sure that ruled
out any kind of sci-fi time warp.
    Granted, she’d already been shook up
when she first saw the obelisk, and it was huge, but she didn’t
think these things had crawled out of that thing, either. In any
case, she couldn’t figure out any reason why the alien invaders
would’ve sent these things down. That was probably the most bizarre
way to invade another planet that had ever been thought up! Surely
they would’ve used technology?
    The alien—Aidan—nudged her and
indicated with a jerk his head that he wanted her to follow
him.
    Duh! Like she was going to go the other
way!
    Particularly when he had the
light.
    Her bare butt felt cold and wet when
she got on her hands and knees to follow him, reminding her that
she hadn’t had more than a couple of sips of water since the day
before. The hope that the pipe might lead to a reservoir encouraged
her to ignore the pain the rough concrete inflicted as she
crawled—to a degree. She paused after a few minutes and pulled the
sleeves down over her palms. There was nothing she could do for her
knees, unfortunately, and the crawling was way worse on them than
her palms.
    She began to consider whether she was
more worried about her modesty or her knees and decided the hell
with it. The jacket was way big on her. She thought the sleeves
might cover her legs.
    Stopping again, she pulled the jacket
off and shoved her legs into the sleeves. It was a struggle to get
her feet through the wrist holes, but she managed it and pulled the
jacket up around her boobs. When she’d finished adjusting the
jacket she discovered Aidan had stopped to see what she was
doing.
    She could well imagine what was going
through his mind, but he didn’t say anything. He merely turned and
continued crawling.
    The makeshift trousers
were a mixed success. The sleeves fit her legs pretty tightly, but
they did protect
her knees and shins. It was loose everywhere else, though, and she
had to keep pausing to adjust it.
    They’d been crawling for an hour or
two, pausing to rest briefly about every fifteen minutes or so,
when Aidan stopped in front of her again. Instead of turning and
sitting down as he had been doing, though, he remained motionless
long enough to arouse her curiosity. She discovered when she leaned
over to peer around him that there was an iron grate blocking their
path.
    “ Could anything
else