Gift of the Beast: Holiday Starrs

by Sonia Nova

  Shea only hoped it would last.

  Chapter 8

  Garr

  Garr’s blood felt like it was boiling inside his veins. Ever since Lila’s father had joined them, the atmosphere in the house had changed. Garr could smell everyone’s displeasure, though they tried their best to hide it.

  The entire day, Garr had been struggling with his desire for Shea, and he hadn’t thought anything could douse it – until he had met Evan.

  As soon as the man had opened his mouth, Garr had realized why everyone disliked him so much. How dare that man speak to Shea like that, like she was nothing? Shea was the kindest, smartest, funniest, and most beautiful woman Garr had ever met. He wanted to tear Evan to pieces for his treatment of her.

  He knew he couldn’t. Tearing the heads off your enemies wasn’t allowed on Earth. He’d get into trouble. So, instead, he settled for sitting next to the man instead of Shea and glowering at him throughout the dinner. If there was any way he could help protect Shea against this person, he would do it.

  The mood lightened a bit as they started eating. Garr had never seen so many dishes of food all at once. People talked on both sides of him, and Shea’s parents kept asking him if he’d had this dish and that before. Apparently, he was supposed to taste every single thing on the table.

  It was all very overwhelming, especially when he wanted to stay alert and watch Evan in case he tried to do something. He didn’t want to be impolite to Shea’s parents though. Renee and Darius had cooked a wonderful meal for them, so he tried to focus on eating.

  “Mommy, I want to finish the snowman,” Lila announced. “I forgot the nose.”

  Lila hadn’t touched her food for a while, and Garr realized he wasn’t the only one growing restless at the table and hoping to escape. Lila had gone to get the carrot nose for the snowman earlier, but that had been interrupted when Evan had arrived.

  “Honey, we’re still eating,” Shea said. “We’ll finish him tomorrow.”

  She clearly did not look like she wanted to go outside. Garr could understand why. It was dark and the temperature had dropped below freezing again.

  “Why?” Lila pouted.

  Shea was about to answer when Garr got up. He could help Lila and give Shea a break. Besides, he could use a break for himself. It didn’t seem like Evan would do anything for now, so Garr felt it was safe enough to leave the table. He silently held out his hand for Lila.

  “Oh, Garr, you don’t have to. She can wait,” Shea said with an apologetic expression, but Garr didn’t mind. He liked to be useful, and he liked Lila.

  Clearly, Lila was happy to go with him as well, because she immediately jumped out of her chair and grabbed Garr’s hand.

  “Yay! Thank you, Garr!” she exclaimed, and the beaming smile on her face warmed Garr’s heart.

  Evan stared at the scene with a fiery expression in his eyes, but Garr ignored him. His opinion didn’t matter. Only Shea’s did. Garr didn’t want to step out of line or do something she wouldn’t approve of, so he looked at Shea, waiting for her permission.

  “Oh, go ahead, then,” she said, giving in. “If you really don’t mind. Thanks, Garr.”

  She beamed at him – her smile reflecting her daughter’s – and Garr’s heart thudded in his chest. He gave her a tentative smile back as he escorted Lila to the kitchen to get a carrot.

  Evan waited until they were both out of earshot – as far as he knew – before he spoke. He didn’t seem to realize that Garr’s hearing was sensitive enough to be able to make out every one of his next words, even as he and Lila left the house.

  “So, are you an alien fucker too, like your sister?” Evan asked, clearly directing the question at Shea. Zeriq growled low in the background, but didn’t say anything. “I must admit, I thought better of you, Shea.”

  “That’s enough, Evan!” Shea said. “Garr is twice the man that you could ever be.”

  Garr blinked. He didn’t know what to think of that. What did it mean to be twice the man? Was she comparing their sizes? He certainly was much bigger than Evan.

  “Here, Garr!” Lila exclaimed, distracting him from the conversation going on inside. She was jumping around the snowman and holding the carrot toward it, but she was far too short to place the nose where it belonged. “Help me up so I can put the nose in?”

  Garr walked up to Lila and silently lifted her up so that she could put the carrot on the head of the snowman. He still didn’t quite understand the purpose of the three balls of snow and why Lila had wanted to make it look like a person, but it clearly brought her a lot of joy.

  She giggled as she tried placing the carrot on the face. First, it was slightly too much to the right, then too far to the left. Lila carefully measured the spot until it was nearly perfectly in the middle.

  “There!” Lila said, clearly satisfied with the job. “Isn’t it the best snowman ever?”

  Garr couldn’t say that he had ever seen any snowmen before, but he nodded. It was the only one, but that also made it the best, didn’t it?

  As they started heading back inside, Garr tuned back into the conversation in the dining room. It sounded like the biggest part of the argument had passed, and Shea was trying to de-escalate the situation. She spoke to Evan in a voice that she sometimes took with Lila when Lila wasn’t listening to her.

  “Look, let’s just get through this dinner, okay? I didn’t invite you here to start a fight. Please, don’t make a scene. For Lila’s sake.”

  “You disgust me,” Evan hissed, and the hair on Garr’s body stood on end at the nasty tone of his voice. “At least the person I’m with is human.”

  Garr opened the door back to the house. He didn’t understand what Evan meant by that. Was he talking about him and Shea? He wasn’t with Shea in any special way. They had all been eating dinner in the house together, humans and Ezak-X.

  He entered the dining room again with Lila. Evan eyed his daughter suspiciously, clearly looking for some form of damage on her, but Garr had taken good care of her. He was proud of how he had helped her with the snowman.

  Lila jumped around excitedly, telling them all to come look at the finished snowman with the carrot nose. But despite her excitement, there didn’t seem to be much interest for the activity around the table.

  “Later, honey,” Shea said. “Let’s all finish dinner first.”

  “Come now, have some more stuffing, Lila,” Renee said, starting to pile more food on her granddaughter’s plate.

  “I still can’t believe you would trust an alien with our child,” Evan muttered as he leaned across Lila to get another serving of roast.

  Garr stiffened at his words. He knew that Shea wouldn’t have let him go outside with Lila if she didn’t think he could handle it, and Garr had done well. Hadn’t he?

  Shea looked apologetically at him but didn’t say a word. She didn’t need to. The expression in her eyes delivered the message clearly, and some of the tension left Garr’s body.

  He had done well. At least, Shea thought so.

  She turned to look pointedly at Evan then and nodded toward Lila. The child didn’t seem to have noticed the quiet exchange between her parents, but Evan clearly took the point and remained quiet. If he hadn’t, Garr would have gladly smacked some sense into him. Whatever reprieve he had felt outside, his irritation at the man was coming back full-force.

  They were onto dessert before anything else happened. Lila was picking cookies in the kitchen with her grandma when Garr’s hand accidentally brushed against Evan’s as he was reaching for a plate. His hair stood on end. He definitely hadn’t intended to touch the man. Evan seemed even less happy about it, though.

  “Don’t you fucking touch me!” he hissed.

  “Evan! Don’t be ridiculous.” Shea’s eyes widened in shock and she glanced toward the kitchen where Lila was. But even that didn’t seem to stop Evan now.

  “He may be good enough for you, but I’ll not have your alien fuck toy touching me! You’re just willi
ng to whore out to anyone, aren’t you? Even if they’re not human?”

  Garr stood up. He only realized that he had done so when Zeriq stood too.

  Anger boiled in his veins and a low growl emanated from his throat. Every remark Evan had made against Shea the entire night had built up until now. It was too much. Garr clenched his hands so hard into fists that his arms were trembling. With great effort, he was resisting the urge to tear Evan’s head off.

  How could he talk like this to Shea? Garr wasn’t going to let him. He would rip the man’s tongue out before he managed to say another word.

  Suddenly, getting into trouble didn’t seem like an unreasonable price to pay to bathe in Evan’s blood.

  Evan stood too, his expression thunderous. But before Garr could act, Zeriq stepped between Evan and him.

  “Garr, take a walk,” he growled.

  Take a walk? Garr’s eyes bulged in disbelief. Take a walk? And leave Shea here alone with this man? He would as soon as detach his feet from his legs.

  “Garr,” Zeriq warned him again. “Take a walk.”

  From the corner of his eye, Garr saw Lila, who was just emerging from the kitchen with her grandmother. She stared up at him with wide eyes, and Garr realized he couldn’t kill her father in front of her. That would make him even more of a monster than Evan.

  Zeriq was right. He was an Ezak-X, but he was the more socially adept one of the two. Clearly, he was looking out for Garr so that he wouldn’t make a mistake in this situation. Because attacking Evan would be a mistake, no matter how he treated Shea and how much Garr wanted to rip him to pieces for it.

  There was no way he could stay in there and not do it though.

  More violently than necessary, Garr thrust his chair away from the table. He wrenched his feet off the floor and forced himself to walk away. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done in his life.

  “Garr, wait–” Shea called after him, and his heart leaped in his chest. He wanted to turn around – nearly did turn around – but he forced himself to keep going.

  Walk away. He needed to be a lot calmer before he was ready to face Evan again.

  He heard Zeriq come around the table and block Shea from following him. “Not now, Shea. He needs to calm down.”

  “Should have known you’d pick a guy with anger issues,” Evan muttered. “Just like you, to take anyone who’ll have you.”

  Garr clenched his fists and shut the door behind him with a bang. He blocked Evan’s voice from his ears and took a deep breath as he entered the yard.

  The freezing evening air did little to cool his bloodlust. He needed something to do. Preferably, something to beat or shred to pieces.

  Noticing the remaining firewood, he picked up a fresh log that needed to be cut and smashed it viciously against the ground. It felt good to smash something, even though what he really wanted to smash was Evan’s skull.

  Garr wrestled with his instincts, beating the log into smaller pieces. His whole life, he had been taught to kill any adversary. He’d lived in peace on Earth for a while now, but those old instincts were quick to come back up when someone he cared for was attacked, even if the attack only consisted of words.

  Garr knew that he needed to learn how to do things the Earth way now. He was no longer owned by the Krezlians. He no longer had to struggle every day just to survive. Those violent instincts had served him well in the past, but there was no need for them here.

  He couldn’t act on them here.

  Once he was finished with the log, Garr started walking without knowing where he was going. He wasn’t worried about getting lost. He would be able to follow his own scent trail back to the house if he couldn’t remember the way back.

  He brushed past the snowman as he headed for the street. The carrot nose came off as he did, and he vaguely heard Lila complain about it inside. She must have been looking out of the window.

  Garr felt a pinch in his heart for destroying it. She had been so careful about placing it in the exact right spot. But he was too shaken to put it on right at the moment. He could fix it on his way back.

  He walked quickly down the dimly lit streets, breathing hard and clenching his fists. Trying to calm himself.

  Shea was a grown woman and perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She hadn’t seemed cowed at all by Evan’s disgusting comments. She was strong and independent, and she could handle it. She likely wouldn’t even want him to fight her battles for her. She didn’t need Garr getting into the middle of her business. It wasn’t his place.

  Garr took a sharp breath and sucked cold air into his lungs. Slowly, reason started to return to his mind. He decided that it was best to make sure he didn’t return while Evan was still at the house. He didn’t want to stretch his self-control further than it could handle being stretched.

  He walked around the block five times before he decided that Evan must surely have left by now. He was a lot calmer, though he still had the strong desire to separate Evan’s head from his shoulders.

  He didn’t know why he was reacting like this. Garr barely knew Shea. Why should he care so much about her? It didn’t make any sense.

  Garr was hardly quick to warm up to people; quite the opposite, in fact. He’d never cared about another person before. But somehow, Shea and Lila had wriggled their way into his heart, a heart he had previously thought cold and dead. He wanted more than anything to see the two of them safe and happy.

  He didn’t know how it had happened, but he would have to find the answers to those questions another time. Garr didn’t want to stay out too long and have to wake people to let him back in. If that happened, he would rather spend the night outside.

  Shea had been so upset the last time he’d done that. He certainly didn’t intend to do it again any time soon.

  He took another deep breath, staring at the sky. An odd, green light flickered in the distance, similar to the one he’d seen at the hostel. Garr focused on it, trying to determine if it really was the northern lights he’d heard about. But before he could catch it again, the strange flicker was gone.

  Thankfully, by the time Garr returned, so was Evan. He could tell at once by the absence of the man’s scent. The lights were still on in the house though, so it seemed that the rest of the family was still up.

  Garr heaved a sigh of relief. He wouldn’t have to inconvenience anyone or upset Shea by staying outside. He walked to the front door and rung the bell.

  The carrot he had knocked off the snowman was back in place, but he didn’t pause to wonder how it had gotten there.

  Shea pulled the door open, her expression a mix of relief and happiness when she saw him. Garr’s chest warmed at the sight.

  “Oh! Garr! Thank goodness! I was worried so you’d left and wouldn’t come back. I know Evan was awful to you. I’m so sorry…”

  Her expression turned apologetic and Garr lifted a finger to her lips, silencing her. She thought that he was angry on his own behalf, when he was in fact angry on hers. There was nothing she needed to apologize to him for, and Garr tried to let her know that in his gaze. He was still rattled enough to be beyond speech, but he hoped Shea would understand him anyway.

  Shea sighed and stood aside to let him in.

  “Thank you for coming back,” she said. “I would hate for our holiday to be ruined by Evan. Are you okay?”

  Garr nodded, and Shea smiled at him.

  “Great,” she said. “Do you want some eggnog? You missed out on dessert.”

  There was an edge to her words that made Garr’s heart pierce. He clenched his fists. Had something else happened with Evan while he was gone? Should he have stayed instead?

  Shea walked him to the kitchen, though he couldn’t care less about eating dessert. He wanted to find out what was wrong with Shea and how he could help.

  “Evan is gone,” Shea said quietly. “We put the presents he brought for Lila under the tree, and tomorrow, she can open them. Evan will come again tomorrow morning, but just for
the opening of presents and not dinner.”

  Shea’s expression was tense as she spoke, and it was then that it hit Garr.

  Shea had to deal with Evan on a constant basis. Of course, she did. He was Lila’s father. But besides being Lila’s father, he had been Shea’s partner. He had been someone she had trusted enough to have a child with. Someone she should have been able to depend on.

  Had he treated her like this before too? Is that why Shea felt like she needed to do everything on her own, because she’d never been able to depend on Evan?

  The anger that Garr had managed to squelch rose back to the surface. Evan may not have done much else during his visit but talk, but Garr knew that words could hurt too – sometimes more than a physical attack ever could.

  Shea already had her hands full taking care of Lila. She didn’t need a former partner making it all even more difficult on her.

  Garr wanted to beat Evan up all over again. He knew he couldn’t, but what he could do was help Shea. She may be independent, but she clearly needed help every once in a while. She needed support. Something Evan hadn’t given her.

  Garr knew he could be useful. He could be someone she could depend on. He’d taken Lila outside before not just because she had wanted to, or because he’d wanted to escape the dinner. If it had just been him, Garr would have sat through the dinner no matter how uncomfortable he was.

  No, he’d taken Lila because he’d known Shea would like it. He’d done it to help her, and he wanted to keep helping her like that. He wanted to make her smile like she’d smiled at him in that moment.

  Right now, Shea’s smile was tired though, as she gave him a glass of eggnog.

  “I just need to put Lila to bed,” she said. “I’ll be right back. Enjoy your eggnog.”

  Garr was more interested in helping her and spending time with her than eating, but he nodded. Maybe she would sit with him once she’d taken Lila to bed. He’d like that. He might have to ask her to stay if he wanted her to, though.