CHAPTER 42
Paralysis.
Catatonia.
Naïda searches for words within Michael’s specialized vocabulary. Her own species has no terms to describe this state: like a waking stasis, but hypersensitive, not restful. Definitely not that.
There is a sensation like sensory feedback, yet with no original stimulation; a silence so profound it is like a pressure, or maybe endless vibration with no causal movement.
Those are only the physical sensations. Terrible as they are, the intangible ones are much worse, the feelings she would never have known without human contact. Far better if she had not.
She has failed. She is a failure.
Failed her bondmate. Failed the Creators. Failed her own species.
She still cannot comprehend how she so completely misunderstood Michael’s desires. She wanted only to
