by Ella Maven
Anna had made a home here. With an alien. And a child. I was in awe. Tears pricked my eyes and I sniffed as I retreated to the couch. I sat down and smoothed my hand over the surface. There were short hairs. I didn’t really want to know what animal this used to be.
I draped the blanket around me. The pelt was soft and thick, and even though it was warm outside, I appreciated feeling covered up for once.
Anna approached me with a pretty plate held in her hands. “Is that ceramic?” I asked.
She shook her head, but her cheeks stained pink with a pleased blush. “Not ceramic, no, but I was able to find a light clay that fires really well and is durable. I make a dye from some of the wildflowers.” She shrugged. “It’s not Fiestaware, but it’s better than nothing.”
I took the plate from her hands and admired the swirls of purple and yellow below the food. “Well, I think it’s amazing.”
“Thank you.” She sat down on a chair beside me and placed a cup of liquid on the coffee table in front of me. “You might have had this drink already. They call it qua, and it’s like water.”
I ducked my head, because yes, I was familiar with qua. I’d bathed in it and orgasmed on the bank of a stream. I chugged some of it to hide my blush.
“So, the food.” Anna pointed to assorted items in front of me. The first was bland-looking beige rectangle. “This is what they call tein. It looks unappetizing but is actually surprisingly good. Really filling. The rest are some local fruits.”
“Daz gave me a tein bar on the way here. It’s not bad.” I sampled one of the fruits and relished the flavorful, moist flesh.
“So,” she said. “How about while you eat, I explain how I got here?”
“Yes,” I said with my mouth full. “I’d love that.”
“I suspect it all started same as you. You woke up on a spaceship, right?”
I nodded. “You got it.”
“This was ten sun-cycles ago, and I don’t think the Rahguls quite knew what they were doing. There were four of us women and three died on the plane, probably from whatever they used to drug us.”
My stomach soured. “Oh no. That’s terrible.”
“Yeah, that sucked, and then it sucked even more when the spaceship crashed.”
My mouth dropped open with food in it. I had never been great with manners. “Whaaa?”
“I managed to survive the crash, but I had no idea what to do or where I was. Then a bunch of Drixonians arrived—”
“Drixonians?”
“Oh, sorry, yes. That is what Tark and Daz are. Drixonian warriors. Drix for short. So, they took me back to their settlement, healed me, and then Tark basically stole me in the middle of the night and the rest is…” She gestured to the space around us. “The rest is history.”
“Wait, wait.” I waved a hand. “Why did he steal you in the middle of the night?”
Her lips twisted bitterly. “The leader of their clavas, that’s what they call their…”
“Motorcycle clubs?”
“Sure, we’ll go with that. Anyway, the leader of their clavas was a jerk and wanted to either sell me or do other, um, nefarious things to me. Tark refused to let that happen. He wanted to protect me, and the best way he knew how was to separate himself from the clavas and keep me hidden.”
“So, you haven’t seen anyone for ten years?”
Anna smiled, but it was strained, and my heart hurt for her. “No. Only Tark and my Bazel. It’s okay. Sure, I’m lonely, but I’m with a man I love and a child who means everything to me. If I’m going to be stuck on a planet with no way back to Earth, I’m happy this is my situation.”
“You love him?” I glanced around and then lowered my voice. “Is he listening? Blink twice if you’re here against your will.”
She laughed. “I know, it sounds crazy, right? To tell you the truth, I started falling for Tark before we could even talk to each other. I thought I was going a little crazy, or it was something in the air. But I can’t deny he’s everything I never thought I’d have. He’s thoughtful and caring and protective and loving.” She shrugged. “I don’t even notice his color or his horns or whatever anymore. He’s just… Tark.”
I wanted to be incredulous, but I couldn’t be. Because I was falling for Daz, wasn’t I? How else did I explain my trust in him or how I let him eat me out in the middle of the wilderness?
“So, Earth.” My voice shook. “We aren’t getting back?”
Anna’s lip trembled, and she bit it as her eyes filled. She shook her head, red curls bouncing around her shoulders. “I’m so sorry, Frankie. Only the Rahguls have the technology. The Drixonians lost all their ships in the war with the Uldani and can’t even fly back to their home planet, Corin.”
I had suspected we’d never get back, but it was still a blow to have someone definitively tell me I’d never see my best friend again, or my dad. I’d never again taste spaghetti with homemade tomato sauce.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Maybe there’s hope?”
Anna swiped her fingers under her eyes. “I held onto that hope for a while, and eventually had to give it up. I also could never leave Tark. He’s everything to me. My heart and soul. My cora-eternal.” She pointed to the bands on her wrists. Hadn’t she called them loks? “These? They show we’re mates.”
I nearly choked on a purple ball of bread. “What?”
“Mates. Just like your loks prove you’re mates with Daz. Fatas chose us for each other, and are lives are linked now. Forever.”
Forever?
Nine
Daz
I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the chit. My mind was a fractured thing, separated into so many questions and concerns I swore my head would explode.
I’d never in my life thought I’d see a young Drixonian again. They called her Bazel, and she was a female. A female! A bit smaller than average, with light blue skin and no scales. Her hands were delicate, her tail thin. She had little horn nubs and the cutest face I’d ever seen. A smatter of darker dots splashed over her nose and across her cheeks.
Like her mother. A human.
I wanted to scream at Tark. Hurt him. All this time he’d kept this monumental secret. He knew what I was thinking because he kept glancing at me warily. I held my tongue because Bazel was close by. I wouldn’t make her father bleed in front of her. I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions in private though.
“Bazel,” Tark said, clearing his throat, obviously uncomfortable. “I’d like you to meet one of my friends. This is Dazeem.”
The chit ran right up to me, the blukas galloping behind her. “Hello!” she said and hugged my thigh.
It took all my strength to stay upright and not collapse under the weight of this revelation. “Hello,” I whispered. I held my hand over her head, intending to touch her. I hesitated, glancing at Tark for permission first. With a strained smile, he nodded. I patted her head and her soft hair tickled my palms. “It’s very nice to meet you.”
She pulled back, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “I haven’t met any of Dad’s friends before.”
I cocked my head at Tark. “Dad?”
“It’s one of Enna’s words. Slang for father.”
“Does Bazel speak both our tongue and Enna’s?”
Tark nodded. “Drixen and English.”
“Smart girl,” I murmured.
Bazel beamed.
“I need to talk to my friend in private. Stay in the yard with Rufus, okay?”
“Sure, Dad.” She picked up a stick and threw it for the blukas, who ran after it. Bazel followed. What kind of name was Rufus?
Tark met my eyes and led me inside his workroom, which was a separate building from the house where the women—my female—currently sat. I checked for how Fra-kee was doing. She seemed content for now, her white glow fairly warm and content.
“So, Dazeem.” Tark sighed. “Out with it.”
“You kept this a secret.” I tried to hold my temper at bay as I turned to
face him with gritted teeth. “You didn’t trust me.”
Tark didn’t back down. He’d always been a confident male, and now he seemed to swell before my eyes. “This had nothing to do with trust. It had everything to do with protecting Enna. The less who knew about her existence, the better.”
“But you bred her. You knew humans were capable of having our chits and yet you still didn’t share this knowledge. Our species is dying!”
“I did what I thought was right!” he roared as he pounded his chest. “I would die for her. I had to kill two Drix just to ensure her safety, because Bult planned to sell her to the Uldani.”
I huffed. “Bult was a coward and a traitor to our ways.”
“There will always be traitors, Daz. Always. And I wasn’t willing to risk her safety. She’s soft and kind and was brought here against her will. The least I could do was protect her.” He gestured to the marks on my wrists. “I see you’ve bonded. So, you tell me. Would you put your mate’s life at risk for the greater good of the species?”
I balked as a firm “no” slid up my throat to lodge behind my teeth.
He stepped forward, his voice lowering. “You’re connected now. Don’t you feel her? She’s in you so deep you can feel what she feels. All her pain, all her happiness. You now share it with her.”
I bared my teeth. “What do you know of it?”
He tore off the bracelets he always wore around his wrists. The golden tattoos shone in the rays of the sun. He held them up on either side of his head. “Enna and I are bonded too. She is my cora-eternal. That is what these loks mean.”
I sucked in a breath. I hadn’t noticed the bands on his Enna, but then I’d been a bit preoccupied with Fra-kee and the existence of a chit. I looked down at my loks and rotated my wrists. Cora-eternal? But that was a myth, only possible on rare occasions and only with Drixonian females.
“How?” I said, my voice a whisper. “How is this possible?”
Anger faded from Tark’s voice as he placed a heavy hand on my shoulder. “Fatas—”
I shoved his hand away. “I don’t believe this. Fatas has done nothing but punish us. Why would she give us this reward?”
“This isn’t about believing or not. The evidence is there on your skin and in your cora. She Is All, Daz. And it’s up to us to protect her.”
She Is All. The mantra of Drixonian warriors. Protect our females at all cost. When we’d lived on Corin with our females, we’d been successful at defending our home, the most respected and feared warriors in the entire galaxy. But we couldn’t protect our females from sickness—that intangible enemy didn’t care about our guns and knives and machets.
“What did you think these meant?” he asked, brushing his fingers over my loks.
“I didn’t know,” I said. “My mind has been a bit crowded with my female’s emotions. She’s constantly feeling. It’s exhausting.”
He laughed. “You’ll get used to it. It was a lot for me at the beginning too.”
“How did you meet your Enna?” I asked.
“The Rahgul ship she was on crashed. We heard it and went to scavenge the site. We found her. Alive. I knew right away she was mine. Bult scratched her, drew her blood. I felt the scratch like it was etched onto my own skin.”
I remembered the Kulk striking Fra-kee, and how the echoing pain had exploded in my own skull. “Did your loks appear right away? Ours happened seemingly out of nowhere.”
He cocked his head. “What happened right before they appeared?”
“I killed a Kulk who had been tracking us.”
“Any significance to this Kulk?”
“Must you avoid answering a direction question?”
He smirked. “Did that Kulk hurt your Fra-kee in any way?”
“Yes, he hit her.”
“Draw her blood?”
“How—?”
“The bonding process starts when our female’s blood is spilled, and we feel the pain. The loks activate and the bond is complete when we kill the being responsible.”
I sat down heavily on a chair in the corner as I processed what Tark was saying. The one-armed Kulk spilled her blood and the loks appeared as soon as he died. Dead by my own hand. “How do you know this?”
“Shep,” he said. “The elder from my old clavas. He’s taught me much about humans and my connection with Enna.”
“What happens if the bond isn’t finished? If whoever is responsible dies by another?”
Tark leaned against a table full of circuits and wires and crossed his arms over his chest. “That, I do not know.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off my wrists as they lay on my thighs. “My Fra-kee is very brave. Her laugh is like…” I scratched at my chest. “Like sinking into a heated spring.”
“My Enna is also special. Despite her being stuck here, she always has a smile for me. At night and even sometimes in the morning or afternoon—” He grinned. “—she lets me lick her until she screams and then takes my cock.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “You think I don’t know how chits are made?”
“I can’t imagine how elders like Shep feel, knowing what it’s like to lay with a female and losing them all with no hope of ever being inside one again.”
“My Fra-kee tastes like nothing I’ve ever had,” I said, the memory flooding my thoughts.
Tark nodded emphatically. “It’s an honor Fatas chose us.”
I shook my head. “But why us?”
“Is something wrong with me?” He feigned offense.
I shook my head. “Clearly you are the right choice, but I…” I sucked in a breath. “I cannot believe I am.”
“Tell me, Daz. Tell me what is so wrong with you? You’re a drexel—”
“I’m only the drexel because the rest of the males didn’t want to lead. They voted me in, and I couldn’t refuse.”
Tark rolled his eyes. “They voted you in because they knew you were the best for the position.”
“Every day, I wonder what I have done to deserve their respect,” I spat. I slammed a fist into my chest. “I led my own brother to his death and yet they still trust me.”
Tark immediately sobered. “You cannot continue to hold yourself responsible for Rex.”
“He entered that building on my orders—”
“If it wasn’t your orders, it would have been someone else’s.”
The guilt clogged my throat and tightened my lungs. “I studied the Uldani’s movements. I was the one who determined it was safe. I was the one who was wrong.”
Tark straightened. “And if another led, then we’d probably all be dead or rotting in the Uldani dungeons. You were responsible for most of our major wins in the Uprising.”
“At what cost?” I said, despair threatening to drown me. “We live in secluded groups scavenging for food and tech. We have no future, and there are males who have rejected our values like Bult. Fatas abandoned me long ago, and now I’m supposed to believe she has given me a female as perfect as Fra-kee who can carry my young?”
Tark didn’t speak for a long time, watching me silently. “I understand you believe Fatas has deserted you, but you cannot deny the bond you have with your Fra-kee. Those loks are on your wrists, and you will earn them or die trying.”
I straightened. “I never said I wouldn’t do everything in my power to be worthy of Fra-kee. I still think Sax would have been a better choice. I should be in that Uldani prison instead of him.”
Tark pulled up a chair across from me and stretched out his legs, crossing them at the ankle. “Explain this more to me. So, they captured Sax and are holding him until you make the delivery?”
“Yes. The Uldani didn’t tell us what the cargo was, and I didn’t ask. Imagine my surprise when I showed up to find six females being guarded by a dozen Kulks.”
“So, they assigned Kulks as guards, but you were responsible for the delivery?”
“Yes. Granted, we are stronger and more likely to survive the journey while keeping all th
e females alive than the Kulks. But it still seems suspicious.”
“When Enna arrived, Shep had heard rumors the Uldani were collecting various female species.”
The base of my horns throbbed. “What?” I hissed.
“They’re either starting a zoo or they are testing them genetically.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled sharply to keep from smashing apart Tark’s work room in anger. “Fleck. Flecking Uldani’s.”
“You see now why I did what I did to protect Enna?”
I rubbed my forehead, because yes, I did understand. I just wished the situation were different. “I understand. I’m still not happy about it, but I understand.”
Tark sat up straight and leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees. “I need to know now. Do you plan to deliver Fra-kee and the other females to the Uldani?”
I leapt to my feet and stood over Tark, growling through clenched teeth. “How dare you ask me that?”
He rose slowly, with zero fear, as he locked gazes with me. “You cannot fault me for asking.”
“You have known me for a hundred years—”
“And Bult used to be an honorable Drix too. But this planet and this life flecks us up. I know you and Fatas aren’t friends—”
“I don’t care about Fatas. These loks matter to me only because they are confirmation of what I already knew. Fra-kee is mine. My female. My mate. My cora-eternal. Nothing will take her from me. I will protect her and the rest of the females until Fatas decides to put me out of my misery.”
He didn’t move. “And what’s your plan after you leave here?”
“Collect my males and the females from the hideout and take them to our settlement. There, safe behind our walls, we’ll have the entire clavas to defend them.”
“And your brother?” His voice softened.
“I will find another way to rescue my brother. But not at the expense of the females.”
Tark’s muscles relaxed, and he shrugged, turning around to pick at parts on his worktable. I glared at his broad back. “So?”
“So?” he tossed over his shoulder. “You have given me all the assurance I need. Now I need time to assemble the translators for the females. Tomorrow, I’ll update yours with all the Earth languages. It’ll probably take all night, so you and Fra-kee can stay here until morning.”
