Her Alien Mates (The Drift: Haven Colony Book 1)

by Susan Hayes

  He turned down one of the smaller lanes, leaving behind the cheerful, welcoming storefronts. Back here were the studios, kilns, and forges. The air carried the scents of baking clay, paint, and sawdust. Some walls were decorated with murals in a variety of styles and colors, and he took a little time to check out the ones that had appeared since his last visit.

  Even if he hadn’t been here before, finding his destination wouldn’t be difficult. All he had to do was follow the rhythmic clang of a hammer striking metal. He stepped through the gate and into a small, walled yard. The space was partially covered to shield the occupants from the weather while still allowing the heat to escape the forges, but even then, it was warm enough Kade started to sweat the second he walked in. Damos was shaping what looked like a dagger blade, his strikes never changing rhythm as he glanced up and gave Kade a smile and a nod.

  Tra’var was seated at a small table out in the sunshine, working on some delicate piece of jewelry. His head was bowed over his work, and he didn’t look up until Kade was only a few steps away.

  “Weren’t you working on that same piece the last time I was here?” Kade asked, teasingly.

  “Kade! I didn’t know you were back already. And no, this is something new. The female who bought the original wants one similar to give to her daughter.” Tra’var rose, stretched, and clapped a hand on Kade’s shoulder.

  “Business is good, then?”

  “It is. And you?”

  “Thriving. The day will come when I’m only one of many traders making the run between this place and the empire, but for now, I’m enjoying the lack of competition.”

  “So, what brings you here? That dagger Damos made for you need sharpening already?”

  “It’s holding its edge perfectly. I’ve come about something else.”

  “What do you need?”

  “Harani.”

  Tra’var grinned. “Congratulations. Anyone we know?”

  “Shadow.”

  The other male shook his head. “I don’t know the name. Cyborg? We haven’t crossed orbits with many of them yet.”

  “She’s a cyborg, yes. But she is also my mahaya.”

  “That is good news! The more of us who find our mates among the other races, the better. That’s the whole point of this place, after all.” Tra’var’s gaze wandered to Damos, who had stopped hammering and turned to place the blade back in the forge. His wings had never fully developed because of his mixed parentage. He could manage short flights and glides, but he would never be able to soar the way most of their kind could.

  “Indeed it is.” He touched the circular scar on his wrist. “I just never expected it to happen to me.”

  “Well, it has. So you’re going to need armbands. We’ve got several sets made already.” Tra’var paused. “But your situation is special, so maybe you have something else in mind?”

  It was a kind way of saying harani were made in sets of three, and he didn’t need the third one. Only, he wasn’t sure that was true.

  He explained the situation and then described what he wanted. Not the usual two strand style, but three, all in different metals. “I need two of them done quickly, one for me and one for Shadow. Tomorrow if you can manage it. I’d like a third, too. I’ll pay for it now and you can send it to Shadow when it’s done.”

  Damos and Tra’var exchanged a look, and then they both nodded. “We can have this ready for you by tomorrow morning. We can even have a drone deliver it to your ship.”

  “That would be perfect, thank you.”

  “We’re honored you asked us to create your harani,” Damos said.

  “I wanted something well-made, beautiful, and nontraditional. Who else would I ask?”

  Tra’var grinned. “The compliment is appreciated, but you’re still not getting a discount.”

  He grinned back. “It was worth a try.”

  Damos thrust out a calloused hand. “Let me get another look at that dagger. I assume you’ll want one similar to give to your mahaya?”

  He drew out the blade and placed the hilt in the forge master’s hand. “I… damn. I forgot about that tradition.”

  “Do you want something delicate or practical?” Damos asked as he looked over the blade in his hands.

  “Given that my mate was a soldier, I think she might take offense if I give her something decorative.” This was the first time he’d spoken to anyone other than the healer about his new status. It felt strange to say the words out loud. He hadn’t even sent word back to his family yet. He should probably do that soon.

  “Practical, then.” Damos looked thoughtful. “Is she pretty?”

  “Beautiful. Different from our females, but…” Kade tapped his heart. “She is mine.” Just thinking about her sent a fresh surge of need humming through his body. They were getting stronger now and harder to ignore.

  Damos pursed his lips and then nodded. “Perhaps it’s time we started expanding our clientele to the far side of the river.”

  Tra’var perked up and then gave his anrik a wide grin. “Witnessed. I’m holding you to that.”

  Damos made an obscene gesture and turned his back on Tra’var. “Come with me, Kade. I’ll show you the lot and you can take your pick.”

  He followed Damos inside, past racks of weapons, metalworks, and jewelry in various stages of completeness. He really needed to talk to the pair about sending some of their work back home with him. He knew beings who would pay handsomely to get their hands on anything that came from the newest colony, just so they could be the first of their circle to have it.

  He pushed the thought aside. There was no point in having that conversation until he figured out how to extricate himself from his current dilemma. No ship meant no trading, and no trading meant no income. Shadow deserved better than that. She deserved better than him. He couldn’t change their destiny, though. All he could do was try to be a better male—for her.

  “Sonofastarbeast,” he snarled as understanding dawned as brightly as a binary sunrise.

  “Problem?” Damos asked.

  “No. Just a personal epiphany. I’ve finally realized what a pack of interfering, judgmental, bakaffas my ancestors are.”

  Damos snorted. “Aren’t they all?”

  “I never considered that possibility before, but now I think about it. You make an excellent point. So, why do we ask them for guidance at all?”

  Damos shrugged his massive shoulders. “Because it’s that or scream into the void.”

  “At least the void doesn’t answer.”

  The forge master stopped and turned to look at him, his pale amber eyes full of shadows. “Sometimes it does.”

  He set a hand down on Damos’ shoulder. “Whatever it said, I’m glad you didn’t listen.”

  For a long moment, Damos was silent. He was already turning away when he spoke again, “Most days, so am I.”

  Twenty minutes later, Kade was on his way back to his ship with Shadow’s gift in his pocket. He’d need to find her soon. They’d been apart too long, and the sharhal was a double-edged blade. Being with her meant more exposure to the pheromones that were driving them both wild, but too long away from each other and the mating fever would flare up on its own. It short-circuited his brain and left him frustrated and riding the ragged edge of his control. It was probably doing the same thing to Shadow.

  Unless she and Denz were doing more than just having breakfast. Jealousy struck like a rogue comet, threatening to knock him out of orbit. Part of him wanted to track her down immediately. She was his. Why had he allowed her to go out with another male?

  The still-rational bit of his brain managed to throttle his emotions back, but it took longer than he liked to regain a sense of calm. He knew why he’d agreed to this arrangement, and he went through all the reasons as he made his way home. It was what Shadow wanted and what she needed to be happy. Denz was a good, honorable male. Besides, Kade had always assumed he’d be sharing a female with another male, and Denz was a far better choice t
han Rantz would have been.

  On it went. By the time he was back onboard, he was calm, or as close to it as he was likely to get. A quick check told him it was still morning, but not for much longer. She still had a little time left with Denz.

  While he waited, he could deal with the last task on his list. It was time to send a message to his family and let them know he’d found his mahaya. His father would be happy for him. His mother would shed her scales when she learned that not only did he not have a normal triad bonding, but his mate wasn’t even Vardarian.

  He fixed his hair, straightened his clothes, and sat down to record his message. “This is going to suck vacuum.”

  8

  Being with Shadow was easier than Denz had expected. He’d convinced himself that things between them would be complicated because of who she was, or more accurately, who her clone had been. It was possible he’d been a fool to wait so long, and the time they’d lost was something he would regret for a long time. Even if this attempt at an unorthodox triad failed, he wanted to know Shadow better.

  They’d ended up going to his office to eat. It wasn’t much for romantic ambiance, but it was private. He’d considered inviting her to eat at his place, but that felt like it might cross a line. This was their first date, after all.

  They used his desk as a table. She was seated across from him as they ate and chatted between mouthfuls of food. They’d gone with a variety of options, and the desktop was littered with containers full of sweet pastries, an egg dish made with plenty of spicy sausage and mushrooms, and freshly baked buns stuffed with savory fillings.

  Once they’d made a healthy dent in their feast, Shadow took a sip of her coffee, leaned back in her chair and gestured around them. The space was bigger than it needed to be and had a minimal amount of furniture, but it was functional. “I’m curious. Why isn’t your home on the same side of the river as your office? Why not have them closer?”

  “In the beginning I lived just a few streets away from here. The first buildings in the colony were all clustered in this area. Once the cyborgs were woken out of cryo, I moved to be nearer to them. At the time, I was pretty much the only being on the planet who wasn’t aligned with one group or the other, and I thought it was important for them to be reminded they weren’t alone.”

  “Especially since there are only a few hundred of us and several thousand of them.” She winced. “I didn’t realize I’d started thinking of it that way. Us and them.”

  He speared a portion of sausage with more force than necessary and nearly drove the prongs of his fork through the bottom of his recyclable plate. “It’s insidious thinking, and it needs to stop, but so far, we haven’t thought of a way to fix it.”

  “There’s more than enough room on this side of the river to move everyone over. Right?” She pointed to a digital representation of the colony that spanned one wall. “This place is far bigger than I realized until I saw it from the air yesterday.”

  “It is.”

  “Then why not encourage the cyborgs to leave their side? Maybe move some occupational training sessions into the Vardarian areas. The Bar None gets plenty of traffic from both sides of the river. So, we just need to give them a reason to cross the river all the way. I mean, you need to. You and the council.”

  He considered her idea from several angles and then nodded. “I hadn’t thought about the training sessions. You’re right. Now that everyone is settled, there’s no reason why the sessions can’t be held all over the colony.” As he spoke, the idea grew. “Make sure we have them near other restaurants and shops. Give all the cyborgs a chance to explore the city.”

  She flashed him an eager smile. “That would be great. I haven’t got any idea what I want to do for work yet, and I know I’m not the only one. A few arts and crafts classes are starting, but maybe you could see if the Vardarian craftsmen want to offer more classes? Most of us don’t even know if we have any artistic talent yet.”

  That gave him pause. Why hadn’t the cyborgs on the council brought that up? For that matter, why hadn’t he considered it himself? “Hold that thought. Will you? I need to make a note of this.”

  He paused and then spoke again. “Tab. Privacy mode ended.”

  “Good morning, Denz. What can I do for you?”

  “Good morning, Tab.” The AI program was one of his own designs, though it was based on Vardarian technology instead of human. “I need to add a new topic to this afternoon’s agenda. Please note that we need to discuss shifting training locations to a variety of areas around the colony, with an additional note that we should consider classes in art and music, both theoretical and practical.”

  Shadow nodded enthusiastically. “And maybe figure out some kind of apprenticeship program for later?”

  “Tab? Note the apprenticeship idea, too, and please credit these ideas to Shadow.”

  “Noted and done. Will that be all?”

  “Yes. Reengage privacy mode.”

  “You have an AI named Tab?” Shadow asked, a smile dancing at the corners of her mouth. He liked her smile. It was warm and gentle, just like she was.

  “I do. Before…” He gestured around them. “Before all this happened. I programmed artificial intelligence systems. I used to think I was good at it, too.”

  “You don’t anymore?”

  “The Vardarians’ tech is light-years ahead of anything on this side of the galaxy. I’m learning new things all the time.”

  She laughed and toasted him with her mug. “So am I. But seriously, why did you name it Tab?”

  “Because it’s job is to keep tabs on things for me. And when you work with voice activated programs, you can’t call everything ‘computer.’ If you do, you’ll activate every program in earshot.”

  “I can see why that would be a problem.” She set the mug down. “Like the way the Grays gave us all the same name. It could be confusing when more than one of us was in the room. Not that it happened often.”

  “I imagine there was a lot of pointing.” He tried to make it a joke.

  “There was. I think it was hardest for Nyx, though.” Shadow selected a pastry with a generous dollop of fruit compote on top and took a bite.

  He was missing a connection here. “Why?”

  Shadow finished her mouthful and then tapped a finger to her temple. “Because she was in contact with almost all of us on one level or another. Can you imagine getting flashes of your clones’ lives and thoughts and having no way to know who was who because we all had the same name?”

  This was news to him. “She could do that?”

  Shadow’s eyes widened. “You didn’t know? I thought that was in my file.”

  “It’s not.” At least, not in any of the data he’d seen, and Phaedra had made sure he had access to the best information available before they’d all agreed to invite Nyx and Shadow to join the colony.

  “She never let our captors know. But she had links to quite a few of us. She tried to help us fight our conditioning when she could, and we…well, we were her windows into the outside world. Albeit it very narrow windows that opened and closed randomly and never showed her much.”

  “You were linked to her?” He paused and then corrected. “You’re still linked?”

  She nodded, the motion mirrored by her pastry. “We are. We’re getting better at figuring out how to control it, but talking by vid-chat or hologram interface is much easier.”

  “So you’re telepathic and empathic?”

  “Not really. I can’t read minds. Not even Nyx’s. I’d get flashes of connection when we could send a few focused thoughts or emotions. More like a data burst than a conversation. She says our link was one of the strongest she experienced. It varied between the clones, probably because of the tinkering they were doing to try and stop us from breaking our conditioning. That’s the theory, anyway. There’s even some traces of Pheran DNA in our genetic makeup. They suspect that’s why I can sense emotions, too. But it’s all guesswork.”

  He r
eached across the desk and took her hand. “You talk about it all so calmly. Aren’t you angry?”

  She squeezed his fingers tightly. “I was. Still am, sometimes. I hate what they did to me and my sisters. But Nyx survived years of captivity and pain, and she’s still here, trying to make a new life for herself. If she can do it, I know I can too. And part of that means I have to let it go. If I hang on to anger, I can’t move on. Nyx and a very nice Pheran counselor explained that to me before I left.”

  There was an edge to her first sentence, a dangerous buzz that hadn’t been there before, but it faded as she continued speaking. It was like just saying it aloud was enough to help her let go of her anger, but he noted her grip on his hand hadn’t eased at all. “You’ve had a lot of adjustments to make. New home. New life. New everything. It’s okay to be angry sometimes. I know I am.”

  She managed a tight smile and a little nod. “But it gets easier.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was making a statement or asking a question, but his answer was the same either way. “It does. And when the human females get here, you’ll see how far you’ve come. They’ll be trying to adjust to a whole new reality, and you’ll be the one who has already managed it.”

  He’d meant it as a comfort, but Shadow’s eyes widened. For a second he thought he’d screwed up somehow.

  “When are they getting here?” she asked.

  “I don’t have dates yet. I was told the first ship should be arriving before the end of summer, though.”

  “That’s perfect!” She dropped her half-eaten pastry onto her plate. “Where will they be housed?”

  “We were thinking in one of the empty areas of the colony.”

  She shook her head hard enough her hair fell into her eyes. She shoved it back with sticky fingers, leaving a trace of berry across her forehead. “Don’t do that. Move the cyborgs there instead and then make the area we’re housed now into a transitional space. From now on, all new arrivals could be housed there. It’s already set up for it. Communal kitchen and dining areas. Meeting rooms. Shorter distances to walk while they’re adjusting to the new gravity.”