by Stasia Black
I tug a long sleeve shirt on to cover my peeling arms and then jerk on a pair of jeans from my bag.
“I can’t handle this right now.” I look up at Shak, who is still standing in the bathroom doorway. “I can’t handle being anywhere near you right now. I’m leaving right now and don’t you dare follow me.”
Without another look back, I storm out the door. And Shak, for once knowing what’s good for him, doesn’t come after me.
Chapter Eighteen
Shak
Juliet does not want me to follow.
Juliet does not want me.
And Juliet does not want my kit.
Of course she does not. Who would want the kit of a bastard nobody of no caste?
I roar in anguish and throw the mattress off the bed. The mattress where not so long ago, Juliet gave her body so freely to me.
Even here, on her planet, I am but a lowly shopkeeper.
I thought my station and caste would not matter to Juliet but of course they do. They matter to everyone. It is the lesson I have learned all my life.
I fall to my knees on the floor, hands to my head.
Societies are bound by order. Else all would be chaos. Juliet is wise. She looks at me and does not see a male who can provide for her. She looks to the future and sees only uncertainty.
I did not prepare her. After she told me of her con dom, I did not consider that our coupling might conceive a kit. I was even somewhat pleased that she wanted me for pleasure’s sake alone. We would work our way towards wanting a kit, I thought. After I told her everything.
But now it has all happened backwards and she is furious with me.
But ancients, the transformations to her body, what a miracle. She may not be happy to have such a kit as mine inside her but she carries the future of an entire race. Here, on this primitive planet, billions of light-years from our home, we have found the secret of rebirth.
Juliet has given us this gift.
She will be the First Mother.
But will she ever come back? She told me not to follow. She was adamant.
She carries my kit, though. And what if danger befalls her? My feet take me towards the door. Protecting her is my new first directive.
I open the door, easily catching her scent I know so well now on the air. She went to the right. I start to take a step in that direction but then pause.
You were stalking me!
Like a hunter does prey?
Yes. Exactly like that.
I frown heavily. I am larger than her and a male. Her last male abused her. If she considers me her hunter, that means she is afraid of me in the same way as she was of him.
I remember the taste of her fear. In our last coupling, during the moment of ecstasy, I felt deeper into her than ever before. I glimpsed her childhood. Hiding with her sibling in the dark while a man raged outside. Her father. She was afraid of him.
So much of her life has been spent in fear. Afraid of the people who were meant to care for her.
I cannot be one more on that list.
But I must protect—
Then I swallow hard. She has lived many years on this planet and survived well enough without me. I eliminated the threat of Robbie and his family.
And if I follow her now, I might lose her forever.
I slam the wall with my fist in frustration and the wall breaks beneath my force. But then I close the door and pray to the ancients that she returns to me.
Chapter Nineteen
Juliet
I bang on Giselle’s door until she finally lets me in.
She is a smiling and looks relaxed, in a black cami and pajama pants, cup of coffee in hand.
“Is Ana here yet?” I ask, pushing my way past her into her apartment. “You told her it was an emergency meeting, right?”
Giselle rolls her eyes at me. “Don’t tell me you caught Ana’s bug. Seriously guys, enough with the emergency meetings. You can just come over because you want to.”
I ignore Giselle and focus in on Ana who is lounging on the couch, also with a cup of coffee in hand.
“Cappuccino?” Giselle asks. “I just got my new fancy espresso maker in last week and I’m having fun experimenting.”
“God yes,” I say but then my hand shoots to my stomach. Shit. “No, scratch that.” Oh dear God, what the hell am I doing?
“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out.
Giselle knocks her cup of coffee over on the counter and Ana leaps up off the couch but I hold out my hand. “But there’s more. So much more.”
I look at Ana. “You were right. About the aliens. They’re here. And…and one knocked me up.”
“Bullshit,” Ana says. “That’s not funny, guys.”
She glares at both Giselle and me, then reaches down to grab her purse. “Maybe you don’t agree with all my ideas, I get it, but that doesn’t mean you have to make fun of—”
“Jesus Christ, this isn’t about you!” I tug my shirt off over my head and extend my arms.
Giselle gasps and Ana immediately drops her purse and runs over to me. She runs her finger along the patch where my skin is peeling, exposing even more of the shimmery gold scales.
“What on earth?” Giselle whispers, slowly inching our direction. “Juliet, what the hell is going on?”
“You know that guy with the weird name I’ve been texting you about? Shak? Yeah, he’s an alien.”
Ana grabs my hand, which is thankfully still all the way human, and drags me over to the couch to sit beside her.
“Tell. Us. Everything.”
So I do. Everything from Robbie disappearing to his fellow gang members showing up in my apartment and Shak taking them out like they were nothing. And then briefly going over that night’s events and those of this morning.
“And then just a few hours later you woke up like…this?” Giselle asks.
I nodded.
“What’s Shak say about it?” Ana asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. He just got all excited that I was pregnant and said the baby was turning me into a hospitable incubator or some shit. But really, he didn’t know because this has never happened before.” Even saying it out loud has me choking up.
“Oh my God.” Ana sits back on the couch, eyes wide. “Do you know what this means?”
“Uh, I’m pregnant with an alien baby?”
She waves a hand. “Not just that, silly. Remember what you said you saw in his mind when the two of you were, you know…bow chica woaw woaw.” She rolls her hips in imitation, as if I couldn’t get it from her description alone.
“Thanks for the visual,” I deadpan. “Now get on with whatever the hell it is you’re trying to say.”
“Isn’t it obvious? Their sun went out. Their planet died. They’re here for a new one. And like, integrating with the local population is part of the plan. They send their handsomest aliens out to seduce and impregnate the locals, all part of a sneaky world domination plan.”
I roll my eyes. “If they were here to take over the world, why don’t they just take it over? Why mix with us at all? From the way Shak tells it, they’re pretty snobby about shit, like they have a caste system and everything.”
“What if he just genuinely likes her?” Giselle asks. She turns to look at me. “You said he did put the condom on.”
“Yeah, which he knew would break in like five seconds because of his super dick and super sperm,” Ana says.
“Jesus, Ana.” I turn away from her.
Talking it all out with them has only confused me even more. That connection during sex, was that something that Shak could fake? I felt like I was inhabiting his body, looking back on his memories like they were my own. I felt his devotion to me and it wasn’t just based on what he could get out of me or how he could use me.
I stand up and walk over to the window that looks out on Giselle’s small backyard. The sun is setting. Is Shak still back at the motel? Or did he wander back to the flower shop? Where does he sleep at night? Ther
e’s so much I still don’t know about him.
A loud knock at the door startles all of us.
Is it Shak? I should have known that telling him not to follow me would do no good.
“Should I—?” Giselle starts but I shake my head.
“I got it.” I walk to the door and take a deep breath before answering. Talking with the girls has made me feel stronger. It’s time to face Shak and work through this mess—
I open the door. But it’s not Shak on the other side.
It’s a naked seven foot man, body covered in dark purple scales. A raised, ridged brow juts out over his eyebrows and his nose is just a small bump on his face, like someone took a clay form of a human nose and sanded it down until there was only a suggestion left.
He’s Draci.
I try to shut the door but he slams it open easily with his hand.
“You,” he hisses, first looking towards Giselle but then frowning before his gaze locks on me. “You are coming with me.”
“You can’t have her,” Ana screams, running towards the dragon man with a baseball bat.
He snatches the bat out of her hands easily and tosses it away. Ana stumbles back and I scream for her to stay there. “Don’t. They can breathe fire. I’ve seen it!”
Everyone in the room stills.
And then, before another word can be spoken, great wings unfurl from the dragon man’s back, he wraps his arms around my waist, and then he takes off, up, up into the sky, me screaming the entire way.
Chapter Twenty
Juliet
In the past 24 hours, I’ve had sex with an alien, learned I’m going to be baby mama to an alien, been kidnapped by aliens…and oh yeah just maybe might be turning into…you guessed it, an alien.
I was not into sci-fi when I was a kid.
I never even liked watching the Avenger’s movies. Of all the people for this to happen to, it just really should not be me. Like Ana. She was trying to hide it, but I could tell she was excited when I showed her my new skin and told her about Shak.
Why couldn’t it have been her he picked that day in the coffee shop?
Okay, so the second after I think it, I feel a stab of jealousy.
But seriously. This shit is scary. Like the alien guy who grabbed me and then flew away with me in his arms. What the fuck!?
Then he tied me up and threw me in the back of this space shuttle thing. And then we flew into space and landed In. A. Spaceship.
Where they promptly did some weird laser scan thing of my entire body and then tossed me into a cage.
I’m in a big room with four examination tables. If I were an optimist, I would say it’s their version of a hospital, but I’m afraid it’s more something out of a horror movie. Like a lab where they’re planning to do experiments on me.
If I get that lucky.
Because one effect of the laser scan? Suddenly all their constant hissing noises started making sense. Like a language I could understand.
And all of the six dragon men circled in the corner are talking about me.
“We should kill it now before it takes root any further. It is an abomination.” This from the purple dragon guy who’d kidnapped me.
Awesome. Glad they gave me the language zap just in time for me to hear that. I scoot back to the furthest corner of the cage. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
Another dragon guy—or girl, I can’t really tell the difference at this point—shoots back, “Your father the King believes this is the only way. And the offspring has taken root. You saw the scan. Its heart beats. It grows strong and quickly, like any other Draci babe.”
The purple guy spits on the floor in disgust. “Better our race die off with dignity then become this mutant abomination.”
He’s fond of that word, isn’t he now? I glare at the floor of my cage, my hand going to my stomach.
In all the craziness of this morning and my preoccupation with the changes my body is undergoing, I haven’t really stopped to think. But holy shit. I’m pregnant. With a baby who has a little heartbeat.
How could it happen that fast? It takes weeks for— But the dragon guy did say it was growing quickly, and it sounded like that was normal for their kind.
Will it be a boy or girl?
What the hell will it look like? Half human and half alien? Or more on the human side since Shak has some human DNA, too?
Dear God, does it matter what they look like? He or she will be a little person, vulnerable and in need of protection.
I feel my bottom lip wobble.
I was never going to have kids. Never ever.
I see Mariah’s face in my mind and her terrified eyes in that moment right before the end. Me knowing there was nothing I could do to stop it. To save her.
My eyes flash up at the purple dragon man in fury but he doesn’t notice. Of course he doesn’t. I’m so far beneath him he probably considers me little more than a bug to be squashed.
But he’s apparently done arguing for my immediate death. He leaves and the others file out after him, leaving only one dragon guy behind. He never looks my way. I assume he’s some sort of technician because he is glued to his chair by a control console, his hands rapidly moving over glowing screens. The screen is angled away from me so I can’t see what’s on it.
I shiver and rub my arms. Because oh yeah, they ripped off all my clothes before the scan and it’s freezing in here.
For about an hour, nothing happens.
When the door to the room opens again, I tense, preparing for the purple dragon guy. Did he get his way? Is he going to kill me?
But then my mouth drops open.
Because it’s Shak who walks through the door.
I sit up straighter and make sure I’m covered as much as possible.
It’s dumb to want to have some dignity in his eyes when he’s the one who got me in this situation in the first place.
But when he sees me, his eyes go from worried to pissed in about three point two milliseconds.
And then he starts to roar. “Release my mate! She is carrying the grandson of the King and you cage her like an animal?”
King?
Because I wasn’t in deep enough shit as it is.
And what a liar. Shak told me he was of the lowest caste and here he is, the son of the freaking king?
God, I sure do know how to pick ‘em.
But at least when Shak starts towards my cage, the technician makes no move to stop him.
Shak snaps the lock on the door as if it is nothing. It was five inches thick, all pure metal. I’d been fiddling with the thing whenever no one was looking, trying to see if there was any way I could jimmy it open. But it wasn’t like any lock I’d ever seen before.
Then just like that, Shak’s opening the door and holding out a hand to me.
This is all happening so fast. And as much as I want to scream at Shak to go fuck himself, that he had no right to do what he did— I want out of the cage more and he seems to be my only ticket out.
So I take his damn hand.
Chapter Twenty-One
Shak
I immediately pull off my human chest covering and hand it to Juliet. She’s naked and shivering. And it’s all my fault. She turns her back to the room and slides the cloth on over her head. It comes down to her knees.
I take her arm and lead her to the med bay exit.
I do not look at or address anyone else as we leave and walk down the corridors together towards my barracks. I throw my shoulders back and portray confidence but I am not sure how long First will allow me to walk around freely. I would run with Juliet back to the shuttle and try to escape, but I am almost certain that would fail.
And I do not want to put Juliet through another confrontation right now.
Better to show Father and the Queen that I am merely asserting my rights to that which was promised me—a place in the Thraxian caste by my father’s side. Thraxians have ruled the throne for four millennia. My father is the fifth i
n the succession of Thraxian kings and I would have been the sixth, had he married my mother and she become Queen.
But he did not and so First will be King when Father dies.
Father is yet a hale and healthy 621 years old, though, just barely past his midlife. So there is time before I must bow to my brother.
When we finally get to a corridor that is clear of any Draci, Juliet squeezes my arm. “Where are you taking me?” she whispers.
I give a slight shake of my head. We cannot talk here. They are always listening.
She makes a disgruntled noise but does not try to communicate again.
I take her to the only place I can think of. My barracks.
I bang on the door first just to make sure Ezo is not doing anything embarrassing and then wave my hand over the sensor to open it.
I was hoping for Fortune, that Ezo would not be at home.
But Fortune has rarely favored me.
“Hey Shak,” he starts to say but then he freezes. “You have a human! Shak, why do you have a human with you?”
He leaps up from his bunk and runs the few paces to us, immediately reaching out and touching her hair.
Juliet jerks back and moves behind me, using me as a shield.
“Ezo,” I snap. “She is not a curiosity. She is a person.”
“Oh.” Ezo stands up straighter, chastised. At least he is wearing human pants. “I apologize, human female.” Then he cringes. “I’m screwing this up. Hold on a second.” He picks up his tablet he’d discarded on the bed, looks at it for a long moment, then tosses it back.
“Hey babe, great to meet ya. Wanna go out later for beers and burgers?”
A shocked little laugh escapes from Juliet and she peers out at Ezo from behind me.
His eyes are shining. “How’d I do? I’m studying like…” he pauses, obviously searching for words. “…like insanity. I can’t wait to get to earth. I want to try chocolate. I’ll eat a lot of chocolate. And pizza. Pizza and chocolate. And chocolate is for romance. Females like it, yes?”
