Tchaikovsky: Stargazer Alien Barbarian Brides #3

by Black, Tasha

  Worse still, something drew her inexorably to this man, in spite of her every instinct telling her to be wary.

  Angel’s mind balanced on the razor’s edge between outright panic and seeking answers.

  “What the hell is going on here?” she demanded, determined to come down on the side of reason.

  “Shh, you’re going to wake the baby,” he whispered back.

  4

  Peter

  Peter watched the female’s eyes grow wider.

  His own heart was nearly pounding out of his chest.

  She was his.

  And he was hers.

  Whether she knew it yet or not, this woman was his blood mate. They had been fated to each other from the instant of her birth.

  But she was also human.

  His mind fought to contain both ideas at once.

  It was humans who had locked him down in the dungeon of one of the galaxy’s cruelest pleasure ships and used him in ways that still haunted him.

  But somehow he didn’t fear this one. She was made for him. She was his blood mate.

  And now he had told her about the baby. He couldn’t take it back.

  “Baby?” she echoed.

  He swallowed. Even the timbre of her voice was like a caress.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding. “Come.”

  Her dark eyes sparkled with interest.

  Suddenly Peter was overwhelmed. He was proud and excited for her to see his son. But it concerned him that she didn’t know about the bond, even if she felt it. She should know what drove her curiosity, what would make her interested in everything about him and little Tchai.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked in that melodious voice.

  Give her time, my pet.

  His grandmother’s voice was in his mind now, gentle and amused.

  “Sorry,” he told her. “This way.”

  She stopped to scoop up her tiny robot.

  He felt a pang of guilt that he had batted it away. But his job was to protect Tchai. It wasn’t his fault that the woman and her robot had invaded their den.

  “Can it be repaired?” he asked gruffly.

  “I think maybe just a reboot?” She lowered the little thing gently to a band around her wrist, where it automatically clicked into place.

  “That’s a good sign,” she remarked.

  Peter nodded and headed into the chamber where the baby slept. This was the longest Tchai had ever been out of his sight. Peter was beginning to feel a bit unsettled.

  Happily, the baby was still sleeping soundly in his little nest.

  “Ohhhh,” the woman said, kneeling for a better look. “He’s beautiful. What’s his name?”

  “Tchai,” Peter said softly.

  “Like the tea?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” he admitted.

  She turned and looked up at him in surprise.

  He realized, too late, that it might be odd not to know the origin of his son’s name.

  “I’ll show you,” he told her.

  He offered her his hand automatically. But when she took it, the jolt of electricity that sparked between them almost knocked him off his feet.

  She stood before him, so close, her lips parted slightly in surprise.

  “Who are you?” she asked.

  Oh, but there were too many answers to that question.

  “I’m Peter,” he told her simply.

  “Angel,” she said.

  It took him a moment to realize that she was telling him her name. The way she looked at that moment, he would have believed it to be a job title.

  “It fits,” he said gruffly.

  She smiled and he saw starlight.

  “Did I really see you transform from a monster into… this?” she asked, gesturing at his body, a slight smile pulling up the corners of her mouth.

  He was pleased if the form he had chosen gratified her. It was odd that she seemed unfazed at his being what he was.

  “I’m a barbarian,” he confirmed. “I can change my shape at will.”

  “That’s incredible,” she breathed.

  He blinked his way out of the haze of lust her tone inspired. “Have you never met a barbarian?”

  “I’ve never even heard of barbarians, at least not in that sense,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m… new to this world.”

  That made sense. She would pick up prejudices in time. For now, he was grateful that she wasn’t aware that his kind were seen as outcasts. Maybe there was a chance this blood mating could work after all.

  “So what did you want to show me, Peter?” she asked.

  He led her through the sleeping chamber and pressed the side of a shelf.

  It slid away to reveal a tiny hidden room.

  “Wow,” she said.

  “After you,” he said, gesturing to the room.

  She stepped in and he followed, trying not to lose himself in the incredible blue-black shimmer of her hair, or the sway of her hips.

  On the wall was the frame where Tchai’s pod had been mounted.

  Beneath it was a golden placard.

  Tchaikovsky

  “This is his name,” Peter said. “But it seems a very large name for such a small human. So I will call him Tchai until he grows into it.”

  “Tchaikovsky,” Angel murmured. “You said he was your son?”

  “He is now,” Peter said. “I worked on this ship as the head of security. Something went wrong with our flight and I was put in stasis. I don’t remember why. But I woke to a beeping sound, which led me to this secret chamber. His pod was malfunctioning. So I took him out.”

  “Wow,” Angel said.

  “There doesn’t seem to be any trace of other survivors,” Peter said carefully. “I’ve been watching over him ever since I found him. I will do so until he is grown. He is my family now. Wherever I am he will have a home, always.”

  The woman looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

  Maybe she didn’t like children. Storybooks made it seem that all females loved babies.

  As usual, Peter had misjudged a human’s intention. His blind lust had caused him to make a fatal error in trusting this one enough to meet his baby.

  “Do you know who Tchaikovsky is?” she asked him.

  What an odd question.

  “I’ve just explained. He’s my son,” Peter said.

  “No, I mean the real Tchaikovsky,” she said. “He was a famous Russian composer.”

  “I see,” Peter said. Something about that did seem familiar. He was no expert on Earth culture, but the name had rung a bell when he first saw it.

  “I think I know who Tchai really is,” Angel said slowly.

  “What do you mean?” Peter asked.

  “I think he’s a clone of the original Pyotr Tchaikovsky,” she said, her voice soft with wonder.

  “Why would this be?” Peter asked.

  “Think about it,” Angel said, pacing the little chamber. “Why would someone go to the trouble to send a baby in stasis into space? Why would there be a secret chamber or a pod or a golden placard?”

  “I… I don’t know,” Peter admitted.

  “This baby is a clone of Tchaikovsky, sent from Earth,” Angel said. “He was probably sent here at great expense, so he could realize his full potential making fresh music in the new frontier.”

  Peter spun on his heel and marched back to the baby. All this talk made him very nervous.

  He could hear Angel’s footsteps following him.

  “This is incredible, Peter,” she was saying. “Can you imagine how important he could be?”

  Tchai slept on, tiny fists clenched, his dusky eyelashes caressing those sweet, chubby cheeks. Whatever potential he might have, right now he was a baby. And Peter could not imagine any being more important than his son.

  “Peter,” Angel said. “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but this baby is a treasure. He rightfully belongs to the government of New Russia.”

  “He is an individual be
ing,” Peter spat. “He doesn’t belong to anyone.”

  Angel took a step back and her expression lost its excitement.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she protested. “I only meant that they would adore him and give him everything he needs to realize his potential - all the musical instruments and lessons and comforts you can imagine. This might just be the luckiest baby in the galaxy.”

  “So they’ll put him in a gilded cage and force him to perform,” Peter said. “Is that what you mean?”

  Peter knew all about gilded cages from the pleasure ships. Being adored was an empty nothingness compared to being loved.

  “I hope not,” Angel said. “But, Peter, it’s not up to you, or me. According to intergalactic code, he must be returned to his people.”

  “No,” Peter roared.

  At the sound, Tchai burst tearfully into wakefulness.

  5

  Angel

  Angel watched as the enormous man lifted the fussing baby into his arms.

  “It’s okay, my little one,” Peter crooned, and the baby went immediately silent.

  Family.

  Without meaning to, Peter had endeared himself to her one simple gesture - a gesture that showed that above all else, he and the boy were clearly family.

  And family meant everything to Angel. It always had. It was why she had found herself in the Space Cadets program in the first place, chasing her brother literally to the stars just to stay together.

  Tears prickled her eyes and she had to look away from the sight of the tiny hand caressing the handsome alien’s cheek, the safety of that bond they shared together.

  Her eyes fell on the undersized stasis pod in the corner of the room, the one Tchai must have come out of.

  She walked over and sat beside it. It was reminiscent of the one she had been found in, with a few key differences.

  There were inscriptions on the side of the small pod, most of which seemed to be in Cyrillic letters. But there was a marking too. The logo consisted of three equal horizontal lines and the head of a bear with Saturn-like rings around his head superimposed on top.

  This was the symbol for New Russia, they had been using something like it since before she went into stasis. It was unmistakable. And it meant the pod was marked as their property.

  “What are you looking at?” Peter asked.

  She turned to him, and saw the baby was looking at her too.

  “Hello, Tchai,” she said softly.

  The baby buried his head in the crook of Peter’s neck.

  It figured. Angel had never really been a baby person.

  “The pod,” she replied. “It’s marked as property, which means that it and its contents can be claimed as legal salvage.”

  “I have claimed him then,” Peter said.

  “There is no tag on this pod,” Angel said carefully. “And you have no witness droid. And now that the baby is out of the pod, he no longer falls under the rules of salvage. Nothing sentient can be salvaged.”

  “I know that,” Peter said.

  “It’s a good rule,” Angel told him. “The loophole allowing unconscious beings in stasis pods to be salvaged probably ought to be closed too.”

  Peter flinched visibly.

  She wondered what he had to be jumpy about. She was the one who had spent hundreds of years in stasis only to be sold to the highest bidder.

  “In any case, Tchai is not yours to keep,” she said as calmly as she could. “He needs to go back to the people of New Russia. It’s the right thing to do.”

  She looked away as a dark expression appeared on his face. Surely he knew she was right, even if he didn’t like it. Returning the child to his people was the only sensible thing to do.

  She tried not to think about the fact that a reward for returning the baby might be enough to buy her freedom. That was not the reason she wanted to return him.

  “The right thing to do is to love him and care for him,” Peter said. “I won’t hand him over to some government. Besides, how do we know that what you say is accurate. Can you read that writing?”

  Angel opened her mouth and closed it again.

  “No,” she admitted. “I can’t. I recognized the alphabet as Russian. And the flag represents New Russia, but I can’t read the words.”

  To his credit, Peter didn’t reply. He lowered his head to brush the baby’s forehead with a gentle kiss.

  “I have an idea,” Angel said. “Why don’t we check the ship’s archive? There should be definitive information there.”

  Peter sighed.

  “I have to go to the galley for more food anyway,” he said. “We can stop on the way.”

  Angel nodded, satisfied.

  He was a good man. She had spent all of five minutes with him, the first two of which he’d been a monster pinning her to the ground, but she could see already that he was a good man.

  Down, girl, she told the side of herself that was still panting at the excitement of his touch.

  She had never been one to believe in love at first sight, or even lust at first sight. Maybe it was just the years in stasis making her respond to him this way.

  But somehow she didn’t think so.

  She wasn’t sure what it was, but something drew her to this man.

  6

  Peter

  Peter turned his back to Angel. Holding the baby in one arm, he pulled on a pair of sweatpants that had been left behind by the chamber’s former occupant.

  The pants rode low on his hips, but they were better than nothing. There was no need to be naked near this woman any longer than necessary - he had no wish for her to see her effect on him.

  She, on the other hand, was going to be treated to a view of his bare chest.

  If the books in the ship’s library had taught him anything, it was that human females were fascinated by men without shirts. And though he had not copied his form from one of their romance books, he hoped his muscular build resembled those heroes enough to make her notice him.

  “Are you ready?” he asked her, turning around.

  He saw her eye the place where his pants met his hips, and swallow.

  Good.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  Damn. That voice of hers would always give her the upper hand in this game.

  He marched forward with Tchai in his arms, feeling confused.

  On the one hand, he knew to his bones that this woman was his blood mate.

  On the other, she was so indifferent to what was best for his baby.

  He could not indulge in his feelings. Tchai’s needs came first. He could not be with this woman if she wanted to take him away.

  But gods, she drove him mad with those big eyes, and the scent of her hair.

  He hadn’t felt desire like this since before the pleasure ships. His labors there had left him cold to the thought of females in the years that had passed since.

  But Angel… His body, his very soul, longed for her with an agony he had never known before.

  Maybe it wasn’t as simple as one hand or the other. He was a shapeshifter after all. He could have as many hands as he needed. But no matter the number, it was hard not to picture them all exploring the body hidden under her space suit.

  “How did you get here?” he asked, hoping some conversation would distract him.

  “I was dropped off by my captain,” she explained. “I’m a treasure hunter.”

  “A scavenger,” he corrected her, without thinking. His people had even worse words for what she did.

  “Sure,” she said. “I guess that’s accurate.”

  He had suspected as much. No wonder she knew so much about tagging and salvage, even when she had never seen a barbarian before.

  “How did you choose this career?” he asked.

  “I didn’t choose it,” she said.

  They had come to a door. He pushed, but it didn’t budge.

  “That’s odd,” Angel said. “BFF21 and I came in through here.”

  Peter g
ave the door a shove.

  “Something’s blocking it,” he said.

  “Is it the same thing that was trying to get in before?” Angel asked.

  The note of fear in her voice made his blood boil with the instinct to protect her. His skin began to crawl a little, the need to shift forms taking over again.

  “Here, hold Tchai,” he said.

  She studied him with an expression of barely restrained terror.

  “He’s not heavy,” he told her.

  She held her arms out, still looking reluctant.

  Peter wondered how anyone could look at his delicious son and not want to hold him.

  It suddenly occurred to him that maybe she was being sly, and only pretending to demure. That wouldn’t do at all.

  “Listen,” he said. “I have to trust that you aren’t going to run off with him.”

  “Of course not,” she said.

  “Give me your robot,” he replied.

  “B-but—” she stammered.

  “No buts,” he said.

  He watched as she slid the wristband off. It was hardly an even trade, but at least it was something.

  He took it from her and slid it partway through the ventilation duct next to the door.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “You’ll see,” he said.

  She scowled at him.

  “Be a good boy,” he whispered to Tchai. “I will be back for you in just a moment.”

  Angel held her arms out.

  Tchai kicked his legs out straight and made a complaining sound as Peter held him out.

  “Oh, don’t fuss, little one,” Peter told him, pulling him close again. “That’s Angel. She will keep you safe while I open the door.”

  He tried to hand the boy off a second time.

  Tchai’s little legs kicked and his little face squished into the saddest expression Peter had ever seen on any creature. Then Tchai’s lower lip began to tremble.

  “Oh for heaven’s sake,” Angel said. “You can’t leave him with me. Look at him.”

  As if on cue, Tchai let out an earsplitting wail.

  Peter tucked him close to his chest once more, hoping they had not given themselves away to whatever lay in wait on the other side.