by Amanda Milo
I look to Gracie, and if it were anyone else but Callie who’d spoken, I know she’d be offering one of her characteristic bold statements—perhaps a sarcastically teasing, ‘Oh yeah, that definitely looks like a whole lot of nothing.’
But Gracie is watching me, and when sees she has my attention, she gives me a small smile, and squeezes my hand as if in apology.
My hearts sink as I look into her eyes. She wants me to leave Callie and Zadeon to their secrets.
It pains me, but I turn to the pair, and force myself to nod. “If you say so.”
Gracie attacks the side of my face with her lips.
I feel as if she’s rewarding me, and it should be noted that I might have been experiencing the beginnings of feeling slightly stung when she chose to essentially shield Callie and Zadeon from my prying—but with her mouth touching my skin, I find I’m fully recovered. In fact, I’m barely aware of anyone but her all of a sudden.
Gracie’s methods of distraction are highly effective.
And welcome.
“Love, you did so good.” She pulls back, smiling. “Did it hurt?”
“It was excruciating,” I confirm.
She tugs my shoulder, so I offer her my talon. She pushes it back and tugs my shoulder again. My brow furrowed, I slowly follow her nudging until my face is lying over her thighs. She did just praise me for behaving ‘good,’ and naturally, reward should follow good behavior, but we normally hold on to a modicum of privacy. “What exactly are you offering me here?”
Her loud laughter rings out, and she sinks her fingers into my hair, working them like the gentlest of wool carders.
“This is good too,” I admit with a grudging sort of masculine petulance that should be unbecoming, yet Gracie finds hilarious—evidenced by her not so restrained snickering.
I must be bonded, because hearing it (and feeling her body jerk and spasm pleasantly against me, even in mirth rather than passion) alters my mood for the better, and I have an intense desire to keep her close. “Come, veetling,” I murmur, before abruptly standing—and therefore temporarily losing the warmth of her thighs against my cheek and her hands on my head.
I intend to have these restored to me soon.
“Oooh, from the look in your eyes I believe I will be coming. Happy day for me,” Gracie proclaims, waving to our friends as I swoop her up in a wing clutch and carry her to our castle.
CHAPTER 24
DOHREIN
“You don’t find his demeanor… I don’t know, ‘markedly relaxed?’” Gracie asks mildly.
Hob wings manage flight by way of membranous structures connected by a series of flexible joints. This design allows for unparalleled dynamic movement, but it’s teveking difficult to duplicate.
In the rotations since Levi’s injury, I’ve given Hotahn’s group unintended privacy for the simple fact that I’ve had a breakthrough in my project. For now, it’s receiving nearly my full focus.
The rest belongs to Gracie. In variable amounts. It really depends on how often she removes her clothes. She doesn’t always—initially—desire sex when she does it; this female simply gets bored and enjoys riling me. Just as she observed about Levi requiring stimulation, so does she.
One of her favorite methods for being stimulated is to tease me into abandoning my senses until I attack her.
Gracie interprets my snort as a response to her comment on Hotahn. “It’s like he got la—are you frying your petri-dish skin again?”
“Studying the effects of electrical impulses on tissue samples.”
“Mad-scientist-ing.”
“I don’t even know what that means.”
She groans. “You don’t even know what a mad scientist is! You aren’t one, so to compare you to the likes of Sergei Bryukhonenko or even freaking fictional Victor Frankenstein—you don’t! know! Frankenstein—!—would therefore be a gross exaggeration, thereby you would be exceedingly hot—”
By hot, she means riled. Gloriously insatiable creature.
“—by me saying it. Instead, it’s got absolutely no value to your lexicon, so I get absolutely no reaction whatsoever. You make me sad.”
I smile at my sample of skin that was indeed grown in this glass dish. “That’s not what you said this morning.”
Both my attention and my teasing brightens her instantly.
Not unlike the children’s reaction when Doc calls out that they’re going outside. In the daylight. As they happily assemble themselves at the door to the playyard, I wait for Hotahn’s unsettled tailblade clicking.
My eyes lift to the viewing window when I don’t hear it.
Hotahn is strolling out behind them.
Hotahn is… strolling.
Not stalking.
Not storming.
He’s not smoking from his nostrils or snapping his tail. “What in all the hells…” I marvel.
Gracie bounces up and down, beside herself. “His behavior, right? Just look at him: vigilant but even less agitated than he was earlier. One could go so far as to say he's relaxed. Hotahn! Relaxed!”
My eyes flick to her. “Why do you say ‘even less agitated?’”
“I came in early to offer Levi, Doc, and Cricket some waffles, and he was seriously moody. When I came back to pick up plates, he apologized, and when I told him everybody gets in a nark sometimes, he smiled at me. My waffles are almost amazing as I am, but I think something else is up.”
Her waffles are almost as amazing as she is, but I too agree something is… “Playback footage,” I instruct the equipment while I wash my hands. Gracie and I load it to the section of recording after she left the room. Doc also leaves the room—to go to the B.C.U.
Hotahn carefully uses his tailblade to cut food down to an appropriate size before serving Levi and Cricket the yanak milk and the heavenly, square-ironed, leavened-batter coated in imitation-sugared tree sap confections.
Then Hotahn leaves the frame.
Both adults are now out of the frames.
They’re taking advantage of the only blind spot. (Doc’s room is monitored yet it clearly shows that it stands empty.)
The B.C.U. is not monitored because it never occurred to me.
My wings drop in shock, slapping tile floor.
With an admirable awareness of timing, Hotahn strolls back into the frame precisely as the children begin to show the first signs of growing restless.
“You know, the kids having to fend for themselves before they got here means that despite being so young, once the food is set down, they’re set. They weren’t worried, and they didn’t make a peep,” Gracie says in wonder. “Bet that makes quickies easier.”
On screen, we watch them all file out into the playyard all over again, with Doc taking the lead, the children skipping through the door, and Hotahn strolling behind them.
Without a word, I head for their B.C.U blind-spot-rendezvous point.
“This is so pervy,” Gracie laughs as she follows me inside.
“This is for science.”
She gasps another laugh. “That’s a joke on Earth!”
“I’m quite serious,” I assure her.
Perfume hangs heavily in the air. Something I wouldn’t have questioned—Doc is a female. Females apply scent maskers. It is a fact.
It is a cover up. How long has it been working?
“Hon, have a dekko at this.”
When I move to Gracie’s side, she points to the towel bar. The slightly mangled metal towel bar with impressions bent in the depth of, say, Rakhii fangs. “He’s been biting down to muffle himself.”
It would have been hidden if they’d had a chance to hang a new towel.
I open the laundry basket lid but Gracie claps her hands over it. “Okay, that’s enough for scienceing. No hamper-diving.”
“I’m attempting to detect if Hotahn smells bonded.”
Eyeing me the same way she does Zadeon when he brazenly displays his mate’s under garments, she steps back.
But there’s no
overpowering bonding scent. Now that I’m thinking of it, he’s displayed no obsessive scent marking on Doc’s person or even her things.
He demanded her attention during the Waterfowl Shouting game. He defers to her ruling of the children. He hoards her things: most of the markers of a bonded male.
However—and this is a big deviation—he’s not attacked me whenever I near Doc’s vicinity.
He’s self-managing his impulses.
As Gracie tugs me to the main room, I think of Brax—a very interesting case because he’s bonded to Tara who is mated to Tac’Mot. Until Brax was provided an impulse-controlling spray, he was struggling not to harm his longtime friend and former slave. But once Tara’s children arrived, he appointed himself as nanny and in doing so, occupied that overwhelming Rakhii tendency to—compulsively—affectionately smother the objects of his affections.
Hotahn’s bond with Doc is muted by the presence of the children, and therefore controllable.
Yet, many single, unmated Rakhii exist on this planet and travel the galaxies. “It’s as if they have two forms. Inactivated Rakhii are untethered males. But once they’re activated, they need to tend and rear.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “If it’s possible to isolate the chemical their brains release when they are completely content either in bond or raising offspring, and if a synthetic could be created to dose them before—”
Gracie flicks the outer side of my wing with the back of her fingers. “Like hormonal birth control, but instead of a precaution against babies it’ll prevent Rakhii madness. Ingenious.”
She bites her lip thoughtfully. “Your hormone theory makes sense. Something gets triggered, changes the balance: boom, bonded Rakhii going full throttle. But if you can level out those chemicals by way of surrogate...”
“He retains control.”
She snorts. “Still a grumpy arse. Although… Doc seems to have a handle on how to ‘control’ that. Bet now that we know what to watch for we’ll find Doc’s doing a whole lot of overtime in that loo whenever the kids are asleep,” she says with a smile. “And I bet Hotahn’s got to take a leak every time she happens to go in. Imagine that. Maybe we should have given them separate bathrooms. We’d have been onto them ages ago.”
“Likely so,” Hotahn agrees from the doorway.
Gracie slaps her hands together, declaring, “There were children in the next room, what is wrong with you?” Despite her words, her tone is excessively proud for him, not accusing.
Hotahn’s ears remain level, tips pointed behind him, when he explains “It’s healthy for children to be aware that their parents are affectionate.”
Gracie guffaws. “I bet you loved learning that!”
Hotahn smiles. “You teveking bet I did.”
Just outside, Cricket gasps, “You swore in alien!”
Gracie could not appear any smugger. “Now just how would she know that, hmm?”
CHAPTER 25
GRACIE
Dohrein’s having a field day. Right before I left, Tara’s twins ventured outside, and Cricket wanted to meet them, so the two groups made introductions.
To everyone’s relief, it was pretty uneventful—the kids even played together a bit, and since nobody’s got claws or the ability to envenomate it must have been delightfully boring for the aliens.
Brax and Hotahn got on well instantly, and Dohrein was basically experiencing the wonder of Christmas watching Tac’Mot’s interactions. Apparently a Wanbaroo is a bit of a rare sight.
I left them to it, because I’ve got a meeting with the guy that can make all my castle dreams come true: The Quarry Master.
Seriously. That’s his frickin’ title.
He manages a series of massive rock quarries and is responsible for the building of some of the pretty rookery towers I’ve seen.
To bathe, I opt to leave the drybath powder on the counter, and I climb into the shower. Showers seem a touch less threatening than a bathtub, on account of there’s no rising water. It’s not fuck or drown here. Just spray, and I can handle that.
I will.
I aim the showerhead at my feet and crank the water on.
Courage isn’t something I’d say I lack, yet here I stall: shaking and afraid of water like I’ve got the hydrophobe.
Just the touch of it against my toes has me clenching my teeth together. Blood pounds in my ears, my heart speeds into overdrive, and my hands shake as I scramble for the Off tile.
No! I can do this.
I just have to fight through a little mountain of panic.
I stand, shivering, gasping, heart pounding—but I’ve slowly adjusted the showerhead in degrees and now the water is hitting my collarbones, and I’ve not died from hyperventilation yet.
Fuck this phobia. I will crush this.
I stiffen when a hand lands on my shoulder, but only because it’s cold. The shower’s open style; no sliding door, no curtain, no tub side or anything, so there’s no change in temperature to alert me that someone’s entering.
But I don’t mind that Dohrein’s followed me in. In fact… I’m grateful not to be… alone. No, not just alone—grateful to have him.
“You’ve almost got it,” he murmurs.
“Damn straight,” I pant. Dohrein spins me and I gasp as my back is pummeled.
He scowls at the water like it’s offending him before he sends me a grimace of apology.
It’s so Dohrein that the sight of it makes me smirk. “It’s fine, Rein.”
“Your lips are blue.”
Water droplets fling off my hand as I give a careless toss. “Totally normal.”
His wings make an agreeable, dismissive gesture. “For an attack of human anxiety, maybe.”
He’s right, but instead of talking it to death, I lay my head on his chest, and with him here, with us touching, with his calming presence and his hearts beating under my ear, the temperature of the water finally reaches me. I sigh, and my body relaxes under the spray. “Just so you know, I like your arms.”
His chin is heavy on the top of my head. “How fortuitous. As it happens, I like them around you.”
CHAPTER 26
GRACIE
Early on, Dohrein took the time to make me this sparkly, slightly tacky-surfaced stress ball that I can choke when I’m irritated.
I named it Mandi.
Squeezing it tightly in my fist, I clamp my elbow over one of my sketchbooks, cram the rest in a messenger-style bag along with something fun for Callie. Before I exit our room, leave Rein a piece of paper with bad imitations of Gryph lettering, and a tiny obscene sketch to give him something fun to look forward to when I get back—just in case he can’t read my poor attempt at written alien language.
He’s off to either stare some more at our friends, or he’s poking his petri-dish skin again.
The alien I love grows his own skin and electrocutes it.
It isn’t harming anyone. As alien habits go, this seems like a perfectly inconsequential, innocuous hobby, really. Just like his collection of 3D anatomical models of Rakhii ears.
I shut our door and set out for my first destination. Before I whip out my drawings of houses, town squares, and farmer-things for the quarry guy, I’ve got a little time, and I intend to put my other sketches to good use: clothing sketches. When I first got here, I put the research team watching me to work making me things. Not just because I love a little power, but because they told me to show them what I wanted, and they’d do their best to make it for me.
But I want to make it for me.
I need a job here. I like designing. Can I make a career out of it? Who the hell knows until I try. Only problem? I don’t know how to sew with alien sewing machines.
But if I ask, someone here is bound to be willing to teach me.
Here being a relative term. I’ve exited the compound and crossed to the closest rookery—it’s basically a Tudor-esque, gothic-ish stone bachelor pad for guys that can fly.
Bachelors that have been selecti
vely bred for a domesticity gene a kilometer long.
I pound up the steps to a big arched door, and press the heel of my hand down on the release mechanism. It’s situated at the top of a door handle made from an ornate curve of metal longer than my forearm. I’m sure the guys can get this thing depressed using their thumb, but I feel like I stumbled up the beanstalk and am about to hear “Fe, Fi, Fo…” as I lean all my weight into struggling the door open. Yes, struggling it open. I’m shoving my hair out of my face as I step into a room full of shocked hobs.
“I told you I smelled a female,” one blurts.
Other than that, no one speaks, and no one moves.
They’re all so tall.
Add their massive, powerful wings that are tucked to the sides of their bodies and each and every one creates an imposing image. To the part of my mind that I wish didn’t exist, they create a distinctly threatening image.
The lightest rustling movement makes my head snap up—
To see more hobs perched at various heights ringing around the inside of the tower wall.
My throat closes.
Instantly, I’m pissed. I know most of these arseholes. I know I don’t have to be afraid. I fucking hate that I am.
They all know it too. A sea of concerned eyes stares back at me. Not only can they smell that I’m scared, they can smell the anger building in me, rising like a bitch mist—I can tell by the looks of fear on their faces. I bark at the closest one. “Can you sew?”
Not the question he was expecting, he opens his mouth to answer, only to stutter to silence. He tries again. “I’m sorry?”
Old me would have snapped out a snide, “You should be,” but I’m taking the advice of my brand new little conscience—I’m trying to do better, Cricket—and I wrench control of my mouth before my mouth can be mean. It’s not his fault I react to fear with aggression. I furiously squeeze Stress-Mandi. I try to scan the other hobs towering over me, and my tongue goes dry. “Back up! You’re fucking suffocating me!”
