“It was a good thing we inserted that observation chip,” T’Lax continued.
Ruth stared hard at her porridge. That was how they had known she was in trouble, apparently. They had implanted her with a chip that monitored her bio-rhythms and stuff without telling her. For science. They wanted to know what life within the protected conservation zone was like, what the Gandry ate, what the air content was, how long they slept, and yes, what their mating habits were. Someone on board the ship was going to write an article about it, but T’Lax was only interested in increasing their numbers.
She’d only found any of this out about an hour ago, when she’d woken up. Her medical procedures involved a fair bit of stasis, it seemed. But nothing hurt and she was clean and her hair was brushed and soft which was a novelty. She wasn’t starving but she could eat, hence the porridge. She didn’t want to be there long enough to ask for another steak dinner. Her shoulder felt stiff but she was too scared to look under the gown at the damage just yet.
“Anyway, you seem to be adjusting well to their way of life. Better than we had predicted,” T’lax said, changing the subject in response to her stony silence. “You even have your own tribe now, though still only one male. The breeding prospects are not-”
Ruth cleared her throat to cut him off, though she didn’t know what she was going to say. She just didn’t want to hear the end of that thought. “I only want Gron. He’s enough for me,” she said, her voice quieter than she would have liked. A thin thread of panic was thrumming constantly next to her heart and it choked her at the mention of Gron’s name. She could ignore it for the most part, but she knew she had to see him soon. She had to get back. He would be out of his mind.
“You understand that’s quite unusual for Gandry society. Unheard of, even,” T’Lax pressed. His voice was giving her a headache and she wanted to rub the spot where they had implanted the translator.
“It’s normal for human society, you know, my culture.”
T’Lax rattled out a sigh, not even trying to hide that he thought she was being stupid and uncooperative. What a prick.
“Well, perhaps it’s for the best. We still don’t know if you can conceive from him. It would be a waste for more males to dedicate themselves to you if you are not going to produce offspring to replace them,” he said. It said. Ruth still wasn’t sure.
Anyway, ouch.
Gron hadn’t made her pregnant, but to be fair, he hadn’t really had much chance so far. She’d had two periods since she met him, one on T’Lax’s ship while he was unconscious in the medical bay, before which they’d only been having sex for three or four days if she remembered correctly, and then another one on the planet with him. Thank God for pre-packaged space tampons that aliens made in a lab. Anyway, just because she hadn’t gotten pregnant in the first month of regular sex didn’t mean she was never going to. And she still wasn’t sure she wanted to. Not when her baby would just be another experiment to T’Lax, the guy with teleportation technology.
God, T’Lax had no idea what she’d been through since he sent her down to live among the Gandry. All that stuff with Kranu, what was that about? And Troii. And now she was in a tribe with her in-laws. But the past few weeks had been really great. Everything had been going so well, no drama, not until she’d taken it upon herself to run in front of an alien tiger from Hell.
“When can I go back? I mean, I’m all healed up, right?” she asked.
T’Lax looked at her. “I was going to talk to you about that actually,” he said, and the bottom fell out of Ruth’s stomach. “Since we found you, and learned you had mated with Gron, we have invested in developing the transport routes to your planet.”
“What?”
“This means that you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I can send you home to your planet,” T’Lax said, sounding chipper.
Ruth gaped at him. Go home? To Earth? God, that felt like a lifetime ago. How was it possible? Why was he ready to let her go?
“You’re letting me go? But you said... You... want me to breed with Gron, don’t you? You said now that we’ve been together, he won’t do it with anyone else.”
T’lax made a dismissive gesture. “Gron is only one male. We have alternatives.”
Alternatives? Something about that phrase sent shivers down Ruth’s spine.
But this was her chance to go home. She could have clothes and coffee and a job and an apartment again. Her parents. TV. Bathrooms, with toilets and showers and soap and toilet paper and towels, and electric lighting. People who spoke English. Painkillers. All of it.
She could have it back, like she was never abducted by aliens, like she was never thrown into a hole or stranded in a death-forest with nothing to eat, or made to sleep on leaves. She could go back and pretend it never happened. Be Ruth again, who takes public transport and works in an office and spends way too much on over-priced coffee with fad flavoured syrups in. Leave Gruth, the alien bride, behind.
Leave Gron behind.
That was what it was about, wasn’t it? If it weren’t for him, she would take the offer in a heartbeat.
“Hm, would you rather stay?” T’Lax noted curiously.
“I’m thinking about it!” Ruth snapped.
“Well, I’ll leave you to do that. I’ll come back when we’re ready to transport you to the planet’s surface, if that’s what you decide to do.” With that, T’Lax left the infirmary where she lay, leaving her alone. She moved from her sitting position to lying down, staring up at the ceiling.
Immediately, the sensible part of her joined forces with the part of her that just wanted to go home. He’s an alien, they said. You can’t even talk to each other. What kind of relationship can you have like that? You’ll be living wild in the forest for the rest of your life. It might be fun now but what happens when you get old? If you go home, you can have someone you can talk to in the evenings, you might have kids one day, you’ll make your parents happy.
But her heart wasn’t listening. She wasn’t convinced. She knew what she should want, so why didn’t she know her answer? She loved Gron.
So what if you love him, her sensible brain said. That’s just love, that’s just one part of life, there are a hundred other things to consider, other ways to be happy. And what if he dies, huh? Then you’re just stuck on an alien planet for the rest of your life, alone with no one to talk to. You’ll wish you went back to Earth then.
But Gron loved her. And right now, he was thousands of miles below her but still within reach, and he thought she was dead, or that she had left him. Either way, he almost certainly thought she was never coming back.
So you have the perfect escape. He thinks you’re dead. No reason to go back.
But that bothered her. She remembered when she had thought he was dying, how much she would have done to keep him alive. He had walked away from her that time he had left her with Troii, after she had asked him to stay. But that had been the only time, in all their time together, everything they had gone through, and it wasn’t like he had left her standing alone in the forest with no idea how to survive. He hadn’t abandoned her, he had come back, and he had been so sad, and hurt, and apologetic. So many times he had whined at her, nuzzled his face into her hair. He always looked so panicked when she was mad at him, like he needed her. And he always looked so happy when she did the littlest thing, the slightest touch.
There was that thing with the blowjob, when he’d turned his back on her and ignored her. No denying he was upset that time. But he’d got over it when he’d paid her back so maybe he was just spooked by something. Since then he was fine with it. They’d been really good for a while actually, seeing Troii that last time had been the last thing that had stressed her out. Since then everything had been perfect, like paradise.
Was it worth giving up Earth and other humans and basic communication for?
The lifestyle? No. She’d still rather have more than two outfits – one of which was a long t-shirt and the other a red sheet
- and three pairs of underwear including a bikini. She’d still rather sleep indoors on a bed with pillows and a duvet, and have a couch, and eat hot food including meat every now and then. And shoes. Walking barefoot through a sun-lit forest and bathing in a pond was never going to appeal more than that to her, no matter how beautiful it was at times.
And Gron’s family... They were nice, and she liked them, some more than others, but she knew they still thought she was strange and weird-looking. They didn’t really get her, and she couldn’t blame them, but they put up with her for their son’s sake.
And that was it really, wasn’t it? Gron. They were together. They were in love. They were the real deal. They were basically married. She loved him. She loved looking at him, she loved making love with him, he made her laugh and kept her warm and safe and he was sweet and kind and generous.
He bit the cat monster when she had thrown herself in front of it, even though it most certainly would have killed him if his parents hadn’t also piled on while Mruin dragged her out from under it. They had done that for her, at least in part. They had been trying to save Gron, but he was trying to save her. They all could have got up into a tree. She was already down. But Gron did it anyway. She had heard the cat monster screaming.
He was more than committed to her, he was dedicated to her.
But he thought she was dead. He was free.
But T’Lax said Gron would have mated for life.
If she went back to Earth, could she get over him? Did she want to get over him?
Her first instinct was to say no, loudly. Forget being sensible, her heart demanded. This wasn’t something you could be sensible about. Happiness and love were things you felt. You couldn’t decide to be in or out of love, or that one happiness was worth more than another. Gron meant more to her than anything else, and if she thought she couldn’t live with herself if she let Mruin die, how could she ever live with herself knowing one of the stars in the sky was Gron missing her? And once she was on Earth, there was no changing her mind.
She wanted to be with Gron. She desired him, in a big way, and not just in a physical, sexual way, but in a selfish, needing, consuming way. She wanted him to be with her.
It was a huge decision.
Ruth didn’t believe in destiny or fate, or at least, she never had before. Things just happened, some good, some bad, and until she had discovered aliens were real and met Gron, most of the things that had happened to her had been pretty normal and boring. But just the fact that she was here was mind-blowing. She was in space, on an alien ship. She was the only human for light years. She’d fallen in love with an alien and had basically moved in with him, something she’d never done with a human boyfriend. She’d been happy with him and his family.
T’Lax had told her when they first met that she’d been beamed up at random. A human woman of breeding age. But would anyone have fallen in love with Gron? Would anyone have lived naked with him in a forest, slept on a cave floor, ridden on his back? Would anyone have fought for him, cared for him when he was sick? Would he have done all of that for just anyone? Any human woman of breeding age?
She didn’t believe it. There was something about them, him and her. They had fallen in love with each other and that was pretty incredible. It didn’t even matter that they couldn’t understand each other.
This was where she was meant to be. More so than on Earth. Nothing waited for her there, her life had been boring. Home was a clearing in a forest full of sunlight. It was Gron’s arms. She’d follow him anywhere, a cave, a cell. She didn’t need comfort, she needed him. Or rather, she wanted to follow him. She wanted to be with him, because he wanted her. No one cared about her like Gron did. No one behaved like she was their whole life. She wanted to hear his unintelligible, intelligent growls and rumbles every day, and in her ear when they cuddled at night.
Thinking about that, her decision seemed easy to make. Go back. Go home. Find Gron. The end.
Chapter 24
That’s what she told T’Lax. She wanted to go back to Gron.
T’Lax looked surprised, but he didn’t object. He did insist on a metal anklet for her. He said that if she needed help, to press one button. There was also a light that would come on when they wanted to talk to her, which was when she was supposed to press the button to agree to being beamed up. They didn’t want to repeat what they had done when they had to save her life, and make her disappear in front of a group of primitive Gandry who would have no way of understanding what they had just seen.
It was polite of them to ask her permission before they beamed her up, she supposed. Less polite was that this anklet was clearly not optional, and she would not be able to take it off.
It would also record more of what was happening outside of Ruth’s body. That meant social behaviours and language of the Gandry. She didn’t like to bring a spy camera into Gron’s midst, but her first priority was getting to him.
“Put me down somewhere near to Gron, okay?” she told the alien working the console in the transporter room. He gave her a sceptical look, but didn’t say anything. “Hey, it’s no good if you put me down in the middle of nowhere, you know. You have to put me down by the tribe.”
“I will use the co-ordinates from where we picked you up,” he said, and Ruth did not like his tone, but she took it.
Once again she went and stood on the platform, taking with her another bag of supplies just in case. She was awake this time for the stomach-flipping sensation, but then she was on the ground. It was night, which she wasn’t expecting, but there was enough silver moonlight to see by. She looked around, but didn’t see anyone. They must all be asleep on their platforms, she thought. It was so quiet, it was eerie, like a ghost town. Everything was grey and blue, and all she could hear was the wind passing over the canopy while everything else was still.
She picked her way carefully over to the platform she shared with Gron, not wanting to make a noise and be discovered by one of the others first. The fresh air felt invigorating after the recycled air of the ship. Just the openness of being outside, exposed to the elements, made her feel vulnerable and alive.
She realised she was excited and nervous, like meeting her date on prom night. She had butterflies as she crept up the stair-like branches Gron had manoeuvred for her. They required a bit of scrambling and climbing and she had to use her arms a lot more than conventional stairs, but they worked. They were a set of four or five small, single branch platforms that descended the two-storey distance to the ground.
Would Gron be asleep, Ruth wondered? But she needn’t have worried. As she reached the platform and rounded the trunk of the tree, she made out his shape in the dark. She recognised him, but she didn’t know how. He was sitting with his back to the trunk, his head in his hands, holding her pink blanket so that it spilled over his wrists and down his arms to pool between his legs. She spotted the rest of the stuff she’d left behind laid out delicately by the tree trunk.
Ruth’s heart twisted with a real physical pain. “Gron,” she croaked quietly. To her surprise, Gron’s shoulders curled in even more, and his head slid between his hands so that they covered his ears, his foot tapping in agitation. Had he heard her? This was not the reunion she had expected.
She put the bag down and approached him. As she got closer, he seemed to grow more agitated, his fingers pulling at his hair.
“Hey... Stop that,” Ruth murmured as soothingly as she could. This was definitely him. Was he mad at her for leaving? Had something happened to him since she’d been gone? Slowly, she reached for his jaw and when she touched him he flinched.
“Gruth...” he groaned, his face still hidden.
God, he sounded rough. He sounded like he’d been crying, or still was. He sounded like he was in pain and begging.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Ruth replied. “You know it’s me, right?” she slowly coaxed his chin up, forcing him to look at her.
She tried not to react to how he’d changed. He was so gaunt now. Ruth
tried to tell herself it was the moonlight, but his skin looked ashen grey and his eyes and cheeks were heavily shadowed. His lips had lost their plumpness and pulled down at the corners as if they couldn’t hold up their own weight. His fur was a mess. She’d never known it to need caring for, but now it looked seriously neglected, with bits stuck in it and random tufts sticking up here and there, and none of it lying smoothly.
She bit her lip as she looked him over. “Aw, babe... what happened to you? Is this all because of me?” she whispered, stroking some hair out of his face and picking the worst of the dirt and leaves out of it.
His expression was not a happy one. He didn’t seem happy or relieved to see her. Instead there was a tortured sort of expectation in his eyes, like he’d been here before and knew how it ended. Then something in him seemed to change, give up or give in, and he sat up in one smooth motion, discarding the blanket and catching her lips in a kiss.
Ruth was surprised but certainly not displeased, and she followed his lead in the gentle, luxurious kiss. It held none of his usual fire or excitement, instead he dominated her mouth, forcing her body to bend to his and her head to go back as he rose to his knees, but he kissed her tenderly, licking into her open mouth as if he wanted to taste her. He groaned, and she put her hands to his chest, his skin feeling worryingly cool.
His hands travelled under the top she was wearing, part of a new outfit she had got off T’Lax of a t-shirt and shorts. When he felt the raised scars left over from her surgery, he groaned again, sounding like he was dying, and she almost shushed him. He’d wake his family and then what would happen to their reunion? He broke the kiss and sat back to look at her scars with an expression like she’d just stabbed him in the chest.
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