by Amanda Milo
We moved slowly at first, then faster, faster, until I was banging her into me, her button getting tapped and rubbed and making her stifle screams into my shoulder as she curled her fingers against my scalp and took out her excitement on my hair.
Afterward, knowing how hard she worked to stay clean, I tossed down our blanket, spreading it out, then pushed her to her side and washed away every track of my come.
She flipped me on my back so fast—so damn strong it stunned me—I knew she was strong but shit! This had been nothing for her, and I wondered if, as a younger man, I would have felt emasculated in this moment.
That wasn’t even close to what I felt now.
I loved that Nori was strong.
I needed Nori to be strong.
She draped herself over my hips, almost primly. My cock was only too happy with this, and stood right up for her. Taking it in her hand, she pressed it back onto my stomach. “Can we thigh fuck this way?”
I folded my arms under my head, and sighed in anticipation. “Yes, we fucking can.”
ELEVEN
ONE YEAR LATER...
CHARLIE
Preta bumped my shoulder, breaking my stare. “What’s the verdict today?”
I chewed the skin on my bottom lip, deliberating. “I think Zeus is Lonan’s boy. I’m almost sure of it.”
“That’s not what you said three days ago.”
My eyes slid Preta’s way, her sly smile working against my nerves in the way only a little sister could accomplish. I grumbled under my breath, forcefully stripping a soft green shoot of its orange nuts.
She was right. Three days ago, I thought he was Kahn’s kid. But he was being so sweet just now...
I looked over to where Zeus was playing nicely with Dan and Mira, Zeus’s sister. Rezz’s tail flicked lazily as he watched over the tots, appearing the perfect fearless companion when the warm afternoon breeze sent his glossy black and sapphire feathers to ruffling.
My Lonan was the sweet one, so Zeus had to be his kid.
“What about Mira’s father?”
I picked up another shoot, sneaking a nut from Preta’s basket and avoiding her slapping hand quickly enough to pop it into my mouth. With an exaggerated mmm, I crunched into it.
“Degenerate,” she mumbled, pulling a smile from me.
“She’s Dason’s.”
Preta squinted suspiciously.
“Or she could be Zaid’s,” I sighed. “I don’t even know anymore!”
Every time I thought I figured out which of my four were the biological fathers of my children, Mira and Zeus went and did something to mess up my theory.
Forget about physical resemblance—they looked more like me than any of my guys. Not that it mattered, but it certainly seemed to keep my brain occupied.
“When are you going to have another one?” I swiped a second nut, and that time Preta did smack my hand. “Ow!”
“Stop stealing my nuts then!”
We shared a grin.
“Good question,” she hummed. “There’s still so much of Sonhadra left to search.”
Dad.
I softly returned her shoulder bump. That was true. We’d come across multiple pods, all deserted, but no signs of our father. We didn’t doubt there were other survivors out there, but we hadn’t crossed paths with any.
In one of the first pods we found, after the babies were born, we discovered a lab that was mostly intact. We were thrilled to clear the cabinet of its sealed contraceptive injections.
That’d been like Christmas. Barefoot and pregnant wasn’t the life I envisioned for myself and being able to get back some control over my body gave me peace of mind.
“Plenty of time.” I caught her eye and winked. “And I expect a niece. It’s only fair. Dan needs a little sister.”
“I always wanted an older brother,” Preta wistfully declared.
“Brat.”
She pointed toward the toddlers. “Still think he’s Lonan’s?”
Zeus giggled as Mira’s hair stood on end before the poor girl started crying.
Preta wickedly crowed when my shoulders slumped. I groaned.
“Fuck...”
TWELVE
GERARD
“You’re dying.”
“That’s a bit dramatic, Nori.” I groaned, flicking a beetle off my arm while she continued to swing that lethal machete rhythmically, clearing a path. “It’s just gray hair. Most humans eventually get it.”
“Because you’re dying.”
“Jesus Christ!”
Nori giggled.
A miserable huff deflated my chest. Explaining to an alien why a human got gray hair, after she asked about the flecks around my temples and sideburns, was a new fresh hell. The sweltering heat didn’t help my fraying patience either.
She found new ways to get under my skin every day, and on this muggy, miserable one, it was the gray. I wondered when it would hit me. My father grayed late in life, and this far, I’d been damn lucky to keep a full head of my natural brown hair.
“Don’t worry, old man,” she grinned over her shoulder, holding her blade steady, “I’ll take care of you.”
I growled, catching her upper arm and tugging her to my chest. Her unique scent of engine grease and fresh leaf oil that she rubbed into her remaining skin every morning set my blood to pumping.
I loved this woman.
Even if she drove me fucking crazy.
Nori stood on her tiptoes, threading her fingers into the hair at the nape of my neck and kissed me. Quick and rough—her signature style I’d come to learn.
“Did you hear that?” She murmured against my lips, her eyes widening, her body stiffening. I knew alert when I saw it, and Nori was like ten fucking bloodhounds in one exceptional package. Her sight and smell were good. Damn good.
I shook my head. “What is it, girl?”
She slapped my arm—gently I might add—and I chuckled.
An eagerness lit her eyes, the pupils expanding, her mech humming as it revved up.
Nori just caught a scent.
As much as I tried, I couldn’t smell whatever it was she did. Without another word, she turned on her heel and sliced through the brush with renewed gusto. I kept a good five feet between us. She’d never nicked me with the blade, but there was a look about her now I’d only seen once before—when she’d come close to cornering the theraracha.
Months had gone by since we’d first met, and I’d started to believe the giant bug she talked about was a figment of her imagination. Like a unicorn she was chasing to keep her sanity or—
I gagged, choking on the pungent wall of stench that hit me straight in the gut.
“For fuck’s sake,” I wheezed, my eyes watering, voice strained as I tried not to breathe through my nose. “What the hell is that?”
“Rotka.”
“Rot-what?” It certainly smelled like rot. There had to be a pile of dead animals nearby with that stink.
“A rare fruit,” she whispered, and my eyes darted around us, my feet stepping lightly, careful to make as little noise as possible.
“A fruit that smells like a fucking slaughter yard?”
“Only because it is unripe.” She pushed aside an elephant ear sized leaf. “Stay close.”
I heard it then—the sound Nori’s keen ears picked up long before mine—multi-layered cackling. A mixture of hissing cockroaches and singing cicadas that raised the hair along my arms.
“The h—”
The chittering rose to a screech that had me wincing, followed by the snapping of thin branches. The foliage swayed eerily when the hot air gusted, wafting the rotten aroma.
A roar—a fucking monstrous roar—came next.
Nori took off running toward the sound.
What the fuck is she doing?!
“Nori!”
THIRTEEN
PRETA
“What are we looking for again?”
“You will know it when you smell it,” Ammos assured me,
holding out his hands in a silent request to carry Dan.
As I transferred the currently leaf-less baby, I heard the amusement in Ryan’s tone when he called, “You guys and your weird plants.”
Ammos smiled, not bothered in the least at the teasing.
I took the opportunity to turn to Charlie, and made gimme hands for the most adorable girl in the world: my niece. “She’s the cutest,” I declared without bias. “She takes after me.”
I said this for Charlie’s benefit; sisters have to give each other crap to maintain a healthy relationship. It is fact.
But at the same time I said it, Ryan was saying, “She takes after you.”
I beamed at him. “That was so sweet!”
Pretending to be offended, he dragged me in for a quick kiss before he growled, “You stole the fucking moment.”
Greenery sprouted on Dan.
Mace snickered. “That didn’t take long.”
I tsked. “Dishes duty for Ryan.”
“Again,” Ryan sighed.
Charlie laughed. “How do you like having a houseboy, Preta?”
I bumped her shoulder, grinning at the back of Ryan’s head. “I love it!”
With the way Ryan cussed, our special baby had no hope of staying human-looking for long unless Dan gained control of it at some point, because Ryan was showing no signs of luck at mastering his mouth.
Truthfully though, we didn’t mind that our son had some alien moments. His siblings definitely would.
At this thought, I turned to Charlie. “I hope I have a baby girl as cute as yours.”
I spotted Kahn’s incredulous look of, ‘Not possible,’ and melted a little. My brothers-in-law were wholly devoted to their family, and their loyalty was steady as the tide—as it should be.
Charlie leaned in and conspiratorially whispered, “Wanna trade?” Making goo-goo eyes at Dan in Ammos’ arms, she sighed, “Boys are so much easier.”
“She’s joking, Kahn.” Dason grinned when the static grew. “Relax.”
“At least Dan is a normal name,” Charlie reached down to run her hands through Zeus’s silver curls. “My son’s name belongs on a dog.”
I cackled when my sister shot a playful glare at Kahn. She’d caved on naming her boy, and humorously agonized about it ever since.
We skirted around a sprawling tarn, its beautiful multi-colored rocks so eye catching they almost begged to be touched. Forget mermaids luring you into water—the sight of the rocks could do it all on their own.
Mace was leading our group, clearing a path in his dragon form. It became obvious when the stench hit him; the scales along his nose wrinkled up, and he dropped his head down and sneezed, scattering dead leaves and debris everywhere.
Being that our human noses were nowhere near as sensitive, it wasn’t until we got well past the spot he’d been standing in that we detected the reek.
As the source of the stench came into view, I wondered if dead Kahav sprouted different tree types. I wanted to comment on the smell, but I didn’t want to offend our aliens in case they knew these... trees.
The ground shook when Mace plopped his massive hindquarters on the ground, declaring, “It is as if the Sonhadra itself wanted to cease the fussing.”
Ryan glanced at Dan, then at Zeus and Mira. “Babies aren’t crying.”
“I meant you.”
There, at the base of an odd-looking tree, was Caedon.
“Buddy!” Ryan exclaimed, crouching down.
Technically a former food source, we all knew Ryan was missing his alien pet. He might have been fussing about it.
This season, when the last of Caedon’s fur was gone, he’d been ready to return to the wild, and Ryan was sad to see him go.
“What are the odds of meeting him out here?” Charlie asked in wonder, giving voice to what I was marveling over.
I shrugged. “Well, Ammos and Chor did tell us all sorts of creatures are drawn to the Rotka.”
“The Rot-what?”
I held out my hand like, ‘see!’ “That’s what I said.”
“If you can believe it,” Lonan murmured to us while Ryan wiggled a leaf to entice his former pet, “the fruit on this tree is ripe, so the smell is not overpowering.”
I buried my nose in sweet smelling, downy-soft baby hair so my voice came out muffled when I replied, “I’d hate to find out what your version of overpowering is. Phew.”
Caedon made an odd sort of reluctant, grumbly-sounding noise, but he shuffled forward, making his way to the treat Ryan offered—revealing a tiny line of baby vejo-kaolins trailing behind him, along with a girl version of Caedon.
“Awww!” I didn’t mean to squeal it, but, just—how cute was this?
A loud chittering noise had me hunching over Mira.
Caedon didn’t chitter.
Mace’s head whipped around, staring next to us at a giant pile of brown dirt that I hadn’t noticed before.
Wait. Not dirt. I quickly passed Mira back to Charlie as my eyes began to pick out features here that didn’t look quite right; as someone who had become somewhat intimately familiar with the practice, my eyes recognized that there was a sort of camouflaging going on between the surroundings and this thing’s color and form.
Two types of animals camouflage: prey... and predators.
Hisssssssskkkk!
It rushed forward—only veering from its trajectory at our group when Mace charged.
When it skittered sideways, we got to see all of it. The creature was a giant alien roach.
“Preta!”
I heard Charlie, but I was frozen in place, and I knew without looking that I’d deployed my own form of camouflage in response to the fear. Though it’d be really nice if my programming kicked on in reaction to the threat—for example, perhaps it would let me run away—without the command code, I didn’t have control over that part. Dan! I couldn’t even shout for Ammos to take him and run. I could only stare at this thing of nightmares, everything from its rows of legs, to the swiveling, wedge-shaped head, and the two creepy, whip-like antennae extending longer than Charlie and I were tall that were sweeping rapidly back and forth.
It was the teeth—the mouthparts, whatever the bug equivalent—gnashing as it collided with Mace that had me terrified. Roaches on Earth could bite a person and they ate meat. What could alien cockroach-like creatures do?
Charlie caught my arm, breaking me out of my frozen state, pulling me into a huddle just as Kahn and Zaid formed a protective wall of fish-men, a disgruntled vejo-kaolin family crammed in around our feet, and Ryan and Ammos pressed a very terrified baby into my arms. All three toddlers were wailing in panic.
With a bellow that shook fruit off the tree, Mace’s wings slammed down, catapulting him up onto the creature’s back, where he began using the power of his big jaws.
Or trying to.
Horror washed over me to see his teeth slip and glance harmlessly off the alien bug’s carapace as it advanced on us.
Chor’s dragon form crashed into its side like an air-projectile missile.
Claws raked at hard shell as he attempted to get to its underbelly, his battle cry deafening. Ammos nodded to Charlie’s mates before he joined him, and in any other circumstance, the sight of a dangerous looking dragon with a flower closing its bloom on his head would have been comical, but there was no laughing about this. He looped vines to hold the thing fast, only to have them bitten through and severed by the bug, and I finally caught on that Mace’s attack was localized to two specific areas.
Wings.
He was struggling to disable the roach’s wings.
It didn’t work.
With a deafening chitter-hiss that made my skin fade to camo, it threw its wings open, dislodging three snarling dragons and taking to the sky.
Charlie’s guys each wore looks of grim determination; as my Kahav harassed the flying monstrosity to hover over the lake, it became clear why.
The alien tribes were working together, a tag-teaming protec
tive detail.
Air rushed past us as Chor beat his wings once in order to make a gliding descent right in front of us. That was apparently the cue: Zaid and Dason broke from our group, racing for the water.
FOURTEEN
CHARLIE
The chaos around us, the ear splitting cries of the toddlers, and the looming threat sent my synapses to firing. My hand clutched onto Lonan’s arm, my nails digging into his skin when Zaid and Dason booked it toward the tarn.
“What are they doing?”
“Keeping you safe.” His voice was a growl, his eyes a flaring storm. He wasn’t paying attention to me, but the behemoth flying cockroach that made Earth’s pests look like harmless seeds.
Kahn’s volatile current sizzled, the heat wafting off him and drying the air around us. Static licked my skin, and I knew he was quickly unraveling.
As if a thread had snapped, his arms ignited, the current traveling over his entire body.
Preta and I jumped back.
Lonan shared a glance with Chor and then told us, “Stay here!”
He and Kahn took off.
Lonan’s skin burst with a blue haze as he zoomed toward the tarn, determination in his every footfall.
Zeus clung to my leg, and I crouched down to loop my arm around him, attempting to calm him. He was terrified. I was terrified.
Rezz’s large body planted in front of us, tail rattling, as if anything that came our way would have to go through him first. My fingers nervously scratched through his silky feathered mane, grateful for this alien animal that watched out for our little ones daily.
It was easy to forget Sonhadra was full of uglies outside the little piece of the planet my family occupied.
She reminded us now.
Chor’s giant dragon wing curled around us when all we could do was watch in horror from afar.
Ammos and Mace nosedived the roach over and over, one after the other, like kamikaze dragons that couldn’t die.
Preta’s arm brushed against mine as I attempted to huddle close to her, a part of my body in contact with our children and my sister—four of the most important people in my life.
