It wasn’t the critique she’d wanted. He didn’t go after her methods. She would have had numbers for that. No, Reese’s whole objection amounted to a scoff and a roll of his eyes.
He turned to the audience, addressing them directly, as though Rae weren’t even in the room. “Are we honestly having this discussion about extraterrestrials based on the findings of one overeager researcher?”
“See here,” Rae said, enough invective in her tone that Reese spun immediately.
He smiled at her like he’d won something. “The heart of science is replication. If you can’t stand the heat…” Because he had won something. He’d baited her.
Rae took a breath and counted to three, bringing her riotous pulse under control, lowering the temperature of her glare to freezing. “So out with it.”
“Pardon?” Reese asked, smiling at first.
“Your critique. I’m certain you have one.”
The smile continued, but now it was plastic. “I’ve said my piece.”
“Have you a substantive critique? I’m always looking to improve my work, Reese. Do you have something to contribute beyond, ‘she’s talking about aliens! How dare she!’ ”
Reese worked his jaw and shrugged. “I do question the analysis. All you’ve determined is the elements don’t match anything from Earth. The question of—”
“They’re not elements,” Rae insisted. “They’re complex molecular structures which, after careful review, appear to be assembled using nanotechnology not available anywhere on Earth, and they’ve been carbon dated to approximately the crater’s era. Not only are they not natural, but they’re beyond the capacity of mass manufacturing.”
Reese went to speak, but instead, someone stepped forward from her peripheral vision.
It was that man in the kurta, and he was closer. She could see his face, broad and with perfect bone structure, and she noticed how his shoulders would have made a fully padded linebacker look small.
The scientist in her knew these were signs of high levels of testosterone through puberty and—likely—still today. The woman in her knew she’d get a thrill out of feeling the hard line of his jaw with her fingertips.
Still advancing, he seemed possessed of a graceful confidence. “I have a question.” His voice rumbled and he was focused entirely on her.
She wasn’t sure she could speak, her throat tight and lungs nonresponsive. So she nodded.
He took his time asking, and it gave Rae a chance to notice a female tech journalist nearest the stranger gripping tight to her seat, as though the turning of the Earth might toss her from it. At least Rae wasn’t the only one.
“The materials you found,” he said, his attention entirely fixed on her. “Did you expose any of them to electromagnetic radiation?”
“Of course. It’s part of a battery of tests we performed.”
“I see.” He watched her with stony eyes, and it made her stomach flutter, unsure what his intentions were. “Explain these models to me.” It was an order.
“They’re statistical models that extrapolated the location of ejecta based on the crater’s size and the force applied. We got lucky and found samples at our second dig site.”
“Explain more.” He took a step forward.
Rae fought the urge to retreat from his advance. He didn’t seem like a typical scientist, and certainly not a reporter. Just who the hell was this?
Reese took that opportunity to butt back in: “And for another thing, how are you certain you sampled actual fragments from the asteroid impact?”
“For that, we’ll need to look at some math,” Rae said happily. She forced her attention from the gorgeous man working his way closer, instead going over the formulas until Reese’s eyes glazed.
Before she’d finished, though, Reese interrupted her again: “So let me get this straight. Because your math says you got the rocks from the right place, you think aliens blew up the dinosaurs. Let’s talk a minute about the discussion section of this paper.” He narrowed his eyes.
“You use the phrase ‘defense against extraterrestrial attack.’ As in… defending ourselves from E.T.?”
Rae bristled. “If E.T. is lobbing asteroids at our pale blue dot, sure. If my models are accurate—and, spoiler alert, they are—these extraterrestrials have already eradicated Earth’s dominant life forms once. That kind of radical, callous disregard for biodiversity is a sign we’re dealing with technologically advanced, morally degenerate beings.”
“Morally degenerate?” shouted someone in the crowd.
Rae turned and blinked. She ended up looking at a woman with close shorn hair, wearing a seafoam green pea coat. She seemed absurdly tall, even from her sitting position, and in spite of being visibly upset, she didn’t stand.
Tired of being interrupted, Rae stared the woman down. “What would you call destroying most of a planet’s biomass in one fell swoop?”
The woman huffed. “First of all, the asteroid maybe wasn’t launched to destroy your planet. It might’ve been there to seed portal technology so aliens could come here, portal technology that maybe turns on when you expose it to electromagnetic radiation, Ms. Smarty Pants!” She nibbled her lip nervously. “Uh, as a for-instance, I mean.”
“So the aliens missed?” Reese scoffed. “I’m not sure which of you is crazier!”
The tall woman jabbed a two-fingered point at Rae’s ex. “Have you ever fired a projectile from across the galaxy, you little suck worm?”
The male stranger made a gesture with his fingertips, which immediately shut up the tall woman. As though chastised, she sank further into her seat, and the huge man nearly cut Rae in half with a glare.
“Whatever the cause, watch your tongue. Humans have seen their share of moral degeneracy.”
“O-kay,” Rae murmured, wondering who let all the crazy people into her lecture.
Reese had spotted it too, and he scowled up at her. “Did you plant these people in the audience? This whole thing reeks of a publicity stunt. How much did you pay this washed-up, community college actor?”
“What?” she shouted. By now, murmurs had broken out through the audience and all semblance of professionalism had evaporated. The day—her great moment—blew away like dust in the wind.
“Why does it always have to be personal with you, Reese?” She realized it had always been this way. He’d treated dating her like he was doing her a favor—like she was this lonely flower who needed him.
The more she outperformed his mediocrity, the more she’d shattered that illusion, and the more scorned he’d become. She all of a sudden saw him, the real Reese, in how he grasped wildly for some way to undermine her work.
“Personal? Typical, hurt little girl,” he sneered. “Making it about our relationship and not the science.”
It was exactly the reverse, and having him turn it back on her obliterated her pity. She opened her mouth to give him a piece of her mind.
“Relationship?” boomed the enormous stranger. He glanced between Rae and her ex. “With this undeserving whelp?” He sucked in a breath, as though mortally offended, the first strong emotion she’d seen break the hard lines of his face.
“What chicanery could allow this creature to claim any female?” he muttered, casting a disdainful gesture at Reese.
Okay. Rae hadn’t hired him from a community college, but if she found out later he was an actor, maybe she’d hire him to wander in and mock all her exes.
Watching Conan belittle Reese was the sort of thing she’d have liked to scrapbook—that made her want to get into scrapbooking so she could scrapbook it.
But then, Conan took it a step further, marching for Reese. There were four rows of people and foldout chairs blocking his path, but his expression scattered the crowd and he kicked his way through chairs, fists tight in a way that made the fine hairs on Rae’s neck buzz with alarm.
Reese tried to shrink back a row. “Now, now.”
“I am Prime Garr domé Kaython and I challenge your cla
im to the golden-haired female on the dais.” He ripped a buckle from inside his kurta and tossed it onto the floor at Reese’s feet.
Reese had toed back as far as he could go. “Is this a prank? Is there a…” He glanced around. “Is there an anime convention nearby?”
The kurta now parted, revealing the stranger’s smooth muscular flesh beneath: it showed the hard ridge of his rib line and a torso built lean and powerful at once, like a cat.
“My primacy will be collateral. You are small. You may surrender without shame.” He glanced back at Rae. “Unless she prefers I break you.”
This had gone well beyond amusement for Rae. She did not like the way this mentally deranged barbarian threw around terms like “claim.” She set fists to hips. “Just who the hell do you think you are?”
He glanced back at her. “Did I not introduce myself once already, female?”
Rae set her jaw.
“I am Prime Garr domé Kaython,” he said, staring right into her when he said it. His voice and intensity terrified her.
But she was not about to be upstaged, either. “And I am Dr. Rae Ashburn, whose name is on the sign. So get the hell out!”
Just then, Reese had found his taser. He gripped it a moment and let out a shout while plunging it at Garr’s bared chest.
A rapid clicking filled the air. Garr glanced down at the object set flush to his chest. He snatched Reese’s wrist and examined it. “I am going to feed this trinket to you,” he growled.
That’s not right. That’s impossible. Rae knew how a taser worked. The electrical signal mimicked the same one in the skeletal muscles of a human, forcing them all to contract at once.
Against someone who was all muscle, it should have worked better instead of not at all. She stared, stunned, at something she knew shouldn’t have happened. What was the explanation? Had it misfired? Was his nervous system different somehow?
It got stranger. The offended female from before stood from the audience and wandered closer. And she was at least eight feet tall, lean and wearing a pea coat that didn’t make it past her hips.
Rae might have actually guessed an anime convention cosplayer, except she’d have had to wear stilts, and Rae could clearly see where the woman’s knees bent. The biomechanics were… impossible. She was actually eight feet tall. That was four inches higher than the tallest woman in the world.
The tallest human woman in the world.
“Oh holy shit,” Rae breathed. For six full seconds, she watched Garr and the giantess seem to communicate with a silent stare. There were security officers coming down the aisles.
Garr glanced sharply at Reese and squeezed his wrist until the taser fell from his limp fingers. “Surrender your claim and I leave your bones intact.”
“I— I surrender!” he shouted. “Take her! She’s yours, buddy!”
Rae was already turning to bolt. If she were wrong, well, this would seem incredibly stupid to her in posterity. But she believed her eyes; she trusted her science. She ran.
And she got out the back exit into an alley before a chain link fence stopped her. The conference center door banged back open behind her and she tried to scale the fence.
A hand gripped the back of her jacket, dragging her off, spinning her around.
She stared up into the barbarian’s eyes. Something happened to them. They were dark brown before, but as Garr blinked, they changed, like a chameleon shifting its colors. Now there were no discernible sclera, irises, or pupils. His eyes were solid black and shiny like marbles.
“I claim you,” he said. “You are mine now, clever creature.” His finger stroked the point of her jaw, and she realized his hands were enormous too. He could have palmed her entire head with just one mitt.
“You’re an alien,” Rae said.
“No. Ythirian. You are an alien.” He stroked her cheek and she flinched at his red-hot touch, unable to control the shudder that went through her. But it was a shudder born from more than just fear.
“Are you going to kill me for my research?”
“Nothing will kill you but time, now that you are mine,” he murmured.
She prayed the security guards would get here soon.
He produced from his kurta a strange, purple blossom embedded in a nest of brown fibers. The blossom featured several layers of petals folded over one another. It had a floral scent that was sweet and dark at once, and he offered it to her, as though a gift.
She glanced from the flower to him. “That isn’t from Earth, is it?”
“We call it a night blossom.” He moved the flower nearer to her face, and she wondered if this brute was trying to be romantic. Then, however, the petals bloomed abruptly outward, revealing a gorgeous burnt-orange center. From the stigma, it puffed a violet cloud of dust.
She inhaled on reflex and immediately felt her mind slow. The world shifted around her, the colors dulled, and she slumped back into the chain link. “Did… did you just… rose-hypnol me?” she asked, sinking onto the asphalt.
“I claim you, taliyar.” His kurta unwound at the sleeves and slithered around her torso, swaddling her in fabric that felt surprisingly silky, but at the same time binding her wrists together at her chest.
He was wrapping her up, knocking her unconscious—kidnapping her, she realized in sudden horror. “And you are safe now that you belong to me.”
Chapter Two
Rae woke cocooned in fabric unlike anything she’d ever touched. Where it grazed bare skin on her hands and throat, it was creamy without being slippery or cloying. It breathed like a cloud.
The fabric covered her face and bound her legs together, arms folded across her chest with palms to either shoulder. She lay on her side on the hard ground.
Her other senses filled in some blanks: the susurrus of wind through leaves and earthen scent from the ground told her she was in a forest. Struggling to free herself, she went utterly still at someone’s grip to her shoulder. Her assailant flipped her onto her back.
Rae tried to scream. A hand clapped over her mouth—she could feel it through the fabric. “No one will hear you but wild animals,” said the voice of that enormous, dark-haired stranger. “Even Vaya is scouting.”
Garr was his name. Vaya must have been his giantess sidekick.
“I’m taking the otoya off you now. I can tell from your pulse and the scent of adrenaline that you’re preparing to run. However, you’re on my world. There is nowhere to go. Nod if you understand.”
Heart thundering in her ears, Rae nodded.
His fingertips grazed her throat. She instinctively froze like cornered prey. Rather than rip out her throat, his touch merely caused the fabric—the otoya—to dissolve until it was slippery and wet.
It slid off her body and left behind dry skin. Like tiny rivers of ink, it flowed up Garr’s thick forearm. The initially shirtless alien wore only billowing white pants, but the otoya transformed into a pristine sable jacket with trim that matched the pants. It was long like the kurta he’d worn, but open in front, so that she could see a wide band of his upper torso.
Garr had been in disguise at the conference center, but now she could see the network of black markings—like tattoos—on his bronzed skin. A starred nova symbol rested over his heart, and tiny circles marked his throat beneath either ear.
Tribal stripes angled down his neck on either side, tracked his collarbones, and then joined the nova—in turn, other lines spread from the nova either across his chest or down his abdomen, disappearing into his clothes. She tried not to wonder what other markings he had; or to think about why he straddled her.
He set fingers to her jaw, tilting her head left and right, examining her in return.
Rae jerked her chin from his hand, glaring at him. “Let me go.” She despised the quaver in her voice.
“My domé told me you would demand freedom.” Her own fear was reflected back at her through his shiny black eyes. “But you are mine now. I am Prime Garr domé Kaython, and you are claimed. Your last m
ate surrendered you.”
“That’s not how it works.” Tears burned from the corners of her eyes.
“It does here.” He gestured around them.
And that was when it hit Rae: she was no longer on Earth. She lay at the foot of a bizarre forest where the shapes weren’t quite right. Cliffs flaked in dark green scales the size of shields rose on two sides of her.
There were patches where the scales were absent, revealing honeycomb pores of uneven size beneath, most ranging between ten to twenty inches wide. Bunches of violet and teal flowers burst from some of the pores, and tree trunks from others.
The trees were ridged in tiny versions of those scales instead of bark, and only some of them grew straight up. Others formed arches or bridges, and far above, the tallest trunks wove organically together.
A dense canopy overhead let dappled sunlight through, and in its midst were chattering, gliding lizards and bright-feathered rodents. The whole place gave her the sense of a rainforest mixed with a coral reef.
“Where are we?” Rae’s voice was high and thin.
“Ythir.”
She swallowed. “And you brought me through a portal.” She recalled Vaya’s words at the conference and realization settled in.
“The asteroid was meant to seed our world. And… and when I examined the debris with electromagnetic radiation, I activated those seeds.”
“Yes.”
She imagined explaining that to her parents. Mom. Dad. You know how you warned me about spending all my time in books? Well, I started an alien invasion.
Thinking about her parents only made her stomach knot. “Listen, Garr—whoever you are. I don’t belong here. I’m an Earthling. You’re… Ythirian. I’m a geneticist, so maybe you don’t know this, but our species couldn’t possibly be capable of mating. If that’s what you’re after.”
“Kaython will provide.” He hoisted her by the shoulder to her feet.
What the hell is a Kaython? “Is he the one who taught you English?”
“She taught me. And yes.” He strode five paces away, head tilting back and nostrils flaring, scenting the air with whatever alien senses he possessed.
Royal Protector: Battle Of Love (Celestial Mates Book 8) Page 8
