by K. Webster
It’s been ages since I’ve come down here. It’s cold and echoes. Hadrian tends to love it down here, hence why I don’t come down here much. He’s a mortling trapped in a mort’s body. Winds me up every time. Thankfully, he’s not here.
Breccan squats by the shimmering blue-green water and runs his fingertips through it, creating a ripple. I stand beside him and look at the giant pool that continues to provide us with pure water deep from within the planet’s core. Something swims by and I take interest that we’re finally growing yaxout. It only took five revolutions for those eggs to finally hatch.
“How are Emery and the mortyoung?” I ask, not quite brave enough to discuss what I really want to.
Breccan smiles. “Calix is a proud father to his new son. The mother is doing well. They named him Hophalix. He’s not as big as my Sokko was at birth and he’s quieter too, but he watches with an intelligence that reminds me of Calix.” He rubs at his neck. “His hair is strange, though. Yellow like his mother.”
“Does he look more human or mort?”
“His skin is the same pale color as you or me and his eyes are like ours too.”
We both nod because it pleases us. Our kind is strong and fierce compared to the humans. If they grow to be fine males one day, they’ll need our strength.
“I know you didn’t come here to discuss Calix and Emery’s new mortyoung. Something is bothering you,” Breccan says, not meeting my gaze. “Want to talk about it?”
I let out a sigh and find a rock to sit on. It’s cold and freezes my rump, but I like the biting chill. Anything to stave off the heat burning through my lower region. My mind drifts to the way she was spread over his cock. Her juices were smeared along his cock and I thirsted so rekking badly to taste them. To the point of madness. I should have left them alone and allowed them to mate to deal with their problem, but I had to involve myself. I wanted to be a part of it. The craving to bring her pleasure as she rode my mate was sick and mad, but a craving nonetheless. It was selfish, but I did it anyway.
“It’s about Grace,” Breccan says.
I jerk my nog up and find him watching me with a knowing stare.
But he doesn’t know. It’s too complicated and wrong for him to even guess.
“Breccan,” I start, and then scrub my face in frustration. “I don’t know where to begin.”
He stands and walks my way. “Start from the beginning.”
With a heavy sigh, I admit what’s weighing so heavily on me. “It’s about Sayer.”
His brows furl and he crosses his massive arms over his chest. Ever since he found Aria, he’s been calmer and at peace. I’d been at peace with Sayer…until Grace. Now my mind is at war.
“Sayer’s my mate,” I blurt out. I lift my chin in defiance against my commander, ready to take on whatever punishment he feels like delivering, but also hoping desperately he’ll come at me with advice instead.
“I figured as much.”
“Wait…” I trail off. “How did you know?”
He smirks. “You’ve been joined at the hip for as long as I can remember. Wherever he goes, your eyes follow. Where you go, Sayer’s not far behind. You’re secretive, sure, but I’ve seen lingering glances and touches that are too intimate for friendship.”
Heat burns through me. “Are you angry?”
“Angry, no. I suppose I’m confused. We’ve been given the books of those before us. I don’t quite understand the mechanics of having a male as a mate, but if I use my imagination, I can figure it out.” He cocks his nog to the side. “Do you love him like I love my mate?”
I nod rapidly. “I do. Rekk, how I do.”
This pleases him because he smiles.
“But…”
“But?”
“Then we discovered his mortling is growing in the new alien, Grace.” A brief flash of her large, round breasts bouncing teases my memory. “The pheromones…”
“Ahhh,” he says with a frown. “Did they…you know?”
“They didn’t want to,” I explain, “but I encouraged them. For the mortling. For their health. It was making them crazed with need. A need that required sating.”
“And how did you feel about that?”
“I was angry at first, Breccan. Jealous. I didn’t want her touching him. But when they were both hurting, I couldn’t do it to either of them. Grace didn’t deserve being put in the condition she’s in and Sayer was helpless too.”
“So they mated,” he says softly.
“And I watched.”
His eyes bug out. “You watched?”
“For their safety,” I utter. The lie on my lips tastes bitter. I watched because I was aroused by the idea of seeing them together. I watched because I wanted to. My curiosity at seeing the female naked and stretched out over his cock drove me wild.
“How did that go?”
“It was her first time. She wasn’t, er, ready to take him.” My ears burn in shame. “So I helped them.”
A stormy expression crosses over Breccan’s features. “You helped?”
“The book,” I rasp out. “Explained how to pleasure the female. Sayer was so lost to the need he couldn’t focus. I didn’t want her to be in pain and I promised I’d look after them both.” I swallow down my shame. “I touched her and made her come. And when she was under the effects of the toxica afterward and Sayer fell asleep, I comforted her.”
“And now everything is a confusing mess?” he offers, a wry grin on his lips.
A rush of air escapes me. “Yes. I want…” I close my eyes and shake my nog. “I wanted to be with her in that way too. But it feels like a betrayal to Sayer to even think that way.”
“How does Grace feel about all this?” He nudges me with his elbow, drawing my eyes to him. “We’re not Kevins, Jareth.”
Anger surges up inside me. “We are not Kevins. Nobody forced her.”
“Good,” he says with a breath of relief.
“Grace is prickly,” I admit. “But I think we’re wearing her down. I think she will grow to like it here—to like us.” I kick at a stone near my feet. “She wants to give us the mortling after it’s born. But doesn’t a mortling need a mother?”
Breccan grumbles. “My gut tells me they do need a mother, but I also know our people are caring and nurturing. There’s still so much we don’t know about the aliens. If she doesn’t feel the instinct like the other alien females do, we cannot fault her, Jareth. She’s frightened. If it is her decision to give the mortling to you two, then I know without a doubt you’ll take care of it.”
“It’s a part of Sayer. I already love it.” I smile thinking about holding the sweet thing that looks like part of Sayer and a part of Grace.
“You want my advice on where to go from here?”
I nod rapidly. “Please.”
“Since they’re going to have physical needs ongoing until she gives birth, I suggest the three of you sit down and talk. Explain your feelings. I can bet that Sayer has similar confusion warring inside him too. Maybe the three of you can work out something when you’re alone. A test. If she’s in agreement, then continue more intimacy between the three of you. Grace has no one. She’s all alone on an alien planet. You two can be there for her. Together. I feel like these things have a way of working themselves out.”
“This could fail miserably,” I grumble. “The worst possible outcome is that Sayer would realize he cares only for Grace and then I’m left all alone.”
Breccan gives me a soft smile. “Or, it could succeed and then you’re no longer two mates, but an entire family.”
My heart does a jump in my chest, loving that concept more than I’ll admit out loud. Now that he’s mentioned it, I can’t help but let hope fill me up to the brim. Hope is a filthy word on Mortuus, but I want to roll around in that word and cover myself from nog to claw in it.
9
Grace
The morning after wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.
I’m the first to wake up.
Or well, the baby—mortling, I remind myself—is. Though feeling it move in my stomach has become an ordinary occurrence, there’s always a moment before full consciousness where I forget where I am and that I’m pregnant. Then the little one inside me moves, almost like a ripple at first. A wave from the inside out. A reminder that I’m not alone. Not like I used to be, anyway.
I press a hand to my stomach and feel it bump around inside. Good morning. It’s hard to maneuver to my feet, considering the bulk of my weight now resides in my stomach, but I manage it with a few groans and protestations from the mortling. My stomach growls and I’m so distracted by the thought of breakfast that I momentarily forget there are two naked aliens in bed behind me.
Sayer snores in his sleep and I spin around to find them wrapped around each other, their arms and legs intertwined until they are one being. I stare at them with one hand resting on my swollen belly and even though I’m carrying their child inside me, I can’t help but feel as though I don’t belong.
Their pale limbs are wrapped so tightly together I can’t differentiate between whose belongs to who. Sayer’s face rests in Jareth’s throat. When one of them shifts, the other makes room, like an ocean tide, ebbing and flowing. Natural. There’s no denying that they are meant to be mates. Made for each other.
So where does that leave me?
Before they can wake and answer the question, I turn and leave them alone. I don’t want to discuss what happened any more than we already have. I think Jareth wants to keep me around based on our conversation while Sayer slept, but I’m not entirely convinced it isn’t just to make sure I don’t run off with the baby. Besides, they seem so happy together, so complete. They don’t need me to screw things up.
I eat alone, unable to say more than a few words in greeting to the other couples sharing their breakfast. Emery is pale, but her face is alight with happiness as she nurses her newborn blond-haired son. I decline Molly’s invitation to join the three pairs and instead retreat to my room with my plate. It’s yet another place where I don’t fit in. They all have a pair and even though I’ve never wanted to be the other half to complete someone’s whole, it’s hard not feeling left out when I so obviously am.
Scowling down at my empty plate, I decide to visit Avrell. I haven’t entirely forgiven him for what he’s done, but I’m willing to put up with his presence as long as it offers a distraction from my thoughts. After discarding my plate in the cafeteria, I waddle my way to his office.
“Come in,” I hear from inside after I press the little buzzer button to announce myself.
I find Avrell squinting at a computer screen and muttering under his breath. The dark slashes of his brow lift when he realizes it’s me. “Grace. I wasn’t expecting you. Is everything okay? The mortling—”
“Is fine. That wasn’t what I wanted to talk about.” I take a seat at his desk because even the small amount of exertion has tired me out.
He places the tablet on his desk and sits on the corner. “Okay. What can I help you with?”
I notice photos of the other human on the screen, the one they haven’t been able to wake from a coma. Finding it easier to speak about things that aren’t so personal, I point to the tablet. “Still no luck?”
Avrell scratches his temple with a pen, which he tucks behind his ear. He crosses his leg at the ankle and gestures to the tablet. “Feel free to look. I haven’t had much luck with any of my tests so far—which if you knew me, would illustrate how thoroughly frustrated I am.”
“Unable to inseminate her also?” I say with a sardonic twist of my lips. Okay, so I was still a little bitter, even though I was starting to come to terms with everything. Just because I’d accepted what had happened didn’t mean I’d given up holding him responsible.
He doesn’t respond to that, because what is there to say?
The woman in the photos is mid-twenties, like the rest of us. Her hair is dark brown and falls around her shoulders in perfect ringlets. I resist the urge to finger my own lank mud brown locks. Her caramel-colored skin is flawless. I have no doubts if—or when—she wakes up the morts are going to be fighting over her.
When I realize the creeping, tense feeling inside me is jealousy, I scoff mentally. I’m not jealous. I don’t want to be mated to anyone. The baby I carry will go to loving parents and I’ll go back to my life—my real life. The one I worked so hard for that seemed to matter so much before I woke up here.
“I’ve tried every method available to me to wake her, but none of them have been successful.”
“How are her stats?”
Already I can feel my brain turning on, coming to life. It’s as though my neurons are electrified. Problems I can solve, solutions I can find. This is my happy place. My muscles relax and the baby even seems quiet as though it’s anticipating finding the answers alongside me. I have a brief image of me teaching a little wild-haired mortling who has my eyes and Sayer’s hair how to conduct experiments before I force it to the back of my mind. There’s no use imagining what will never happen.
“Stable, though her brain activity was weak until recently.”
I make a humming noise in the back of my throat. “Did you scan her brain for any damage?”
Avrell nods. “There was some swelling, though it’s gone down since we removed her from the cryotube. Otherwise, her vitals have been consistent.”
While tabbing through the scans and data, I mutter, “Perhaps she had a bad reaction to the stasis itself. Some people don’t handle it well. Or maybe she was injured in transit and it’s just not showing up on the scans. If her brain activity is increasing, maybe the injury is healing itself?”
“That’s possible and likely the cause. Do you mean to say you’ve heard of others being injured in cryosleep?” Avrell asks.
“It happens on occasion, though they don’t like to talk about it. They’re prisoners after all and people don’t normally care what happens to them so long as they’re punished.” I squint at the brain scans, wishing I had a physical copy or if Avrell will be open to letting me repeat his tests.
It feels good to be back in a lab, even if it isn’t my own. It feels right, which only reaffirms my decision to leave as soon as I have the baby. I don’t belong here. I don’t fit in. Despite what happened between Sayer, Jareth, and me, they’re already a unit and they don’t need me butting in.
“The prisoners,” Avrell prompts and I have to resist the urge to bat him away like I would a fly. “Who doesn’t like to talk about it?”
“Everyone, I guess.” Though I wish he’d focus on the issue at hand. “Would it be possible for me to examine the patient?” I wonder aloud. Then I notice the look on his face. “What?” It’s not out of the ordinary for me to completely lose the thread of a conversation when the gears in my brain are working. “Did I say something?”
“You weren’t a prisoner?” he asks.
Slowly, as though I’m moving through gel, I lower the tablet from where I’ve been studying it. “What makes you say that?” I hedge.
“You speak as though you weren’t one of them. Aria, Emery, and Molly were all prisoners on the transport. You weren’t.” He says it as though it’s a fact, not a question. My expression must confirm his thoughts, because a coolness comes over his. “What were you doing on the carrier?” he asks.
I consider lying. I don’t owe them anything and my position here is precarious as it is. I still don’t fully trust them after what they did to me, but I can already tell he wouldn’t believe me even if I was as convincing an actress as Aria had been. “I was, I am, a scientist. I was sent to Earth—er, Mortuus, to Exilium Penitentiary, to study the effects of the environment on a select group of test subjects. Or I would have, if I’d actually gotten to my destination.” Though, I don’t know how long ago exactly I was sent, how much time has passed, and why I got stuck in one of those cryotubes. I was supposed to go to the prison to do a job, not end up in the same predicament as them.
“You did this to us?”
The devastation and horror in the question has me spinning. Molly’s face is pure white and slack with shock. One of her hands grips the doorframe as though it’s the only thing keeping her upright.
“Molly—” I begin, but she holds up her other hand, which trembles.
“You were on the ship. You knew what was happening to us. You weren’t a prisoner and you were sent to experiment on us and you act like what happened to you”—she waves at my pregnant belly and shakes her head, scoffing—“wasn’t the same. What a hypocrite. My daughter was going to the prison to find me. Would you have experimented on her, too?”
Before I can make an argument—not that I can come up with one—Molly spins on her heel and races away.
I turn to Avrell and press a hand to my heated face. How had everything devolved so suddenly? “Did you know she was there?”
He doesn’t deny it. I’d underestimated him and I didn’t have a very high opinion of him in the first place. “She needs to know. What you don’t seem to understand—and I hope you do someday, truly—is that we’re a family here. We aren’t perfect. We make bad decisions, like anyone else, but we’d die for each other. We’d hurt for each other. We’d kill for each other. You’re a mother to one of our own and that deserves a certain amount of respect, but so did Molly. The information you have could help find her daughter.”
I simply shut down. After the night with Sayer and Jareth and now this with Molly, it’s too much. I let Avrell take my arm and lead me away like one of the prisoners I was supposed to study. Maybe a part of me even feels like I deserve it. Had I become so blind to the consequences of my work that I was willing to do whatever it took to be the best in my field? At the time it had felt like such an honor to be chosen. To be revered and touted as a savior of humankind, but at what cost?
If saving billions meant the life of one, was it still worth it?
Was that how these aliens had felt when they stole us from the ship?
They didn’t have any other choice.
