He takes her to the climbing gym now. She can already climb better than I can. She's almost stronger than me already and she's only five. Her horns are just starting to grow, and even though her skin is much more of a pale blue, she's taking after her father more and more every day.
"I mean to really climb, Muru. To smash the records as I have. She will destroy the female records as I destroy the male ones. Between the two of us, we will hold all the records."
"As long as she's having fun."
I rest my head on his shoulder and hold his hand.
Liliana runs up to us, the alien boy behind her. "Mommy! Can Kussi come play at our house some time?"
Raiska's body goes rigid, and he sits up to face Liliana. "Boys only want one thing, sweetheart—"
"He's four—"
"I'm five," Kussi says. "Maybe Lili can come to my next birthday party though."
"See," Raiska says, "an older boy."
"He's only a few months older than me," Liliana says. "Please, Daddy, can he play at our house?"
"He may," Raiska says, "but you will play with the doors open."
Liliana looks at him in confusion. "Why would I close the door?"
"Yes," I say, cutting Raiska off. "Kussi can come play at our house. It's so nice that you made a new friend. Kussi, did you ask your parents if it's okay?"
He points over to a couple several dozen feet away from us. They wave to us.
"You can come over tomorrow," Raiska says, leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head, his elbows pointing up into the air.
"Thanks, Daddy!" Liliana says, and her and Kussi run back off toward the water.
"You gave up pretty suddenly there, Raiska."
He shrugs. "I could tell it would make you happy if I just dropped it. I've been with you long enough now, Muru, to know which battles are worth fighting."
I smile wide and plant a kiss on his cheek. He takes hold of me and kisses me deeper.
We break the kiss and look into each other's eyes. His eyes are still as striking as that first time I saw him, but now there's history and family between us. Still, I feel a fire in my veins every time I look at my husband, and I know that fire will never die down for as long as we live.
THE END
Want more like this? Alien’s Primal Bond shows how Ellie and Kula met. The Ulkar want to breed Ellie, but Kula is sent to save her. He’s an Aparan warrior, the only race in the galaxy strong enough to fight the Ulkar. He swears to die protecting her, but there’s only one way to save her: The Ulkar will not breed with a woman who has already been claimed, so Kula will have to do it first. Click here to read more (also available as an audiobook.)
Want more of Raiska, Kula, and their kids? Check out the bonus scene Little Kula and Liliana steal from Big Kula. Click here to get the bonus scene.
Sneak Peek of Alien’s Primal Bond
One
Ellie
“Is it just me, or is that guy staring at you?” Natasha asks me.
I sip at my coffee and risk a look back up at him.
He’s tall. He’s built. He’d look really good if he were sitting with some of his friends and laughing. He’s not doing that though. He’s sitting alone and staring right at me, almost unblinking. His eyes are an otherworldly green, like a polished turquoise gem.
“What guy?” I ask deadpan.
Natasha laughs through her nose. “He’s kind of hot though. If you’re into the intense I’m going to kidnap and murder you type.”
“Please, Natasha, don’t scare the shit out of me. He’s doing a good enough job of it already.”
I like coming to coffeeshops like this to get work done, but between Natasha distracting me and Creepy McMurdereyes having a one-sided staring contest with me, I’m not getting anything done at all.
Natasha looks over her shoulder at him. He doesn’t look away from me even as she stares right at him.
“I should say something to him,” she says.
I grab her wrist before she can stand. “Please, don’t.”
“Why not?”
“What if he comes up and talks to us? Or you make him mad and he...does something?”
He’s not just tall and built. Something about the way he looks makes me think he’s dangerous. He’s wearing a tight shirt that hugs his muscles, but they aren’t the kind of muscles you get from just going to the gym. They look like the kind of muscles you get from fighting people. Or maybe from dragging innocent women up several flights of stairs into dark attics.
“I’m going to do something,” I say.
“You just told me not to!”
“Let’s see what he does when I return the favor.”
“Don’t, Ellie!” Natasha hisses.
I make a big show of grabbing my chair and turning it so that I’m facing him. I look right up at him and stare him down. I decide to see how long I can go without blinking. If he has any shame, he’ll turn away from me. Maybe he’ll even just leave the coffee shop.
Five seconds. Ten seconds. Fifteen seconds pass. He’s still staring me down. I wait another fifteen, counting slowly down in my head. He blinks once, but doesn’t break his gaze.
I reach zero and shake my head at him, throwing my hands up in the air in confusion. Who stares like this? What is his fucking problem?
He meets my exasperated head-shaking with a smirk. It’s barely visible, but definitely there. He nods his head slightly, as if confirming to me that he is indeed smirking at me.
I give him the finger.
A woman at a nearby table gives me a dirty look, but I ignore her. I wag my middle finger at the creep and bite my lip at him. He tilts his head at me with furrowed brows as if he’s never before in his life been given the finger.
He brings his own hand up, and his fingers twitch. It looks like he’s trying to raise his middle finger, but struggling with it. He uses his other hands to force his other fingers down, and once his middle finger is up, he sticks it up at me. He smiles and waves it around just like I did. There’s no malice in his expression though. He’s giving me the finger as if it were a friendly wave.
“Excuse me, girls.” I look up and see the woman who gave me the dirty look glaring at me. “I don’t know what passes for flirting these days, but I have children, and I wouldn’t want them seeing this.”
She points over at the creep, who is wiggling his middle finger around so fast it looks like he’s fucking the air with it.
“I don’t see any kids?” Natasha says, gesturing at the empty seats next to the woman.
I’m splitting my attention between the annoying woman and the hot creep, and I’m desperately gesturing for him to put his finger down and cut it out, but he’s switched now from fucking the air with it to running it across his lips as he continues to stare me down.
“My kids are in daycare,” the woman says, “but I bring them here on weekends.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am!” I say, interrupting Natasha before she escalates the situation. “This absolute creep,” I point right at him as I emphasize the word, “has been staring at me for the last twenty minutes. I thought the offensive hand gesture would maybe put some shame in him, but he apparently has none.”
The woman scoffs and shakes her head at us, and she glares over at the man, who has at least put his middle finger down. It’s not like he notices the woman staring though. His intense gaze is for me alone.
“I’m done,” Natasha says.
She gets up and walks up to him before I can stop her. “Excuse me? It looks like you’re done with your drink, and you’re making everyone uncomfortable. Especially my friend. Can you please leave?”
My heart is pounding against my chest, and I’m covering my mouth with my hand. I was fine with messing with the creep a little bit, but Natasha is being way too direct for my taste.
The man just slides his chair over and sits back down so that Natasha is no longer blocking his view of me.
It’s too much. I go up and grab
Natasha by the arm, trying not to make eye contact with the man while up so close to him.
“Come on, Natasha, we’ll just leave.”
“No,” she says. “He should!”
She jabs a finger at him, and I make eye contact with him.
I’m too close now. The turquoise eyes are even more strange up close. I find myself staring into them, feeling like I could get lost inside them. His facial structure is nearly perfect: High cheekbones, a chiseled jaw, and perfect skin. The skin is almost too white, as if he’s never stepped foot in the sun for even a second. He smiles at me again, and I feel myself blushing despite everything.
“Would you like me to leave?” he asks.
His voice is deep, and he has a strange accent. I don’t know what a “creepy” voice sounds like, but this isn’t it. The question even seems genuine.
“Uh...yes,” I say. “Please.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, he gets up and walks toward the doorway. He opens the door, and when the little bell rings, he turns around to face me. He shoots a middle finger up at me and waves it at me with a smile, and then he’s gone.
Natasha bursts out laughing. “That was so fucking weird!”
“Yeah, really funny stuff.”
The moment he’s gone, a sudden panic overtakes me. My chest tightens, and I get the horrible feeling something is watching me. It’s stupid, because he was watching me for the past twenty minutes, but now that he’s stopped and there are no eyes on me, I suddenly feel like something even worse is staring me down. There’s not though. Even the rude woman isn’t looking at me. Nothing and no one is watching me, but I can’t shake the feeling that I am indeed being watched.
We sit back down to work, but I can’t get the man’s eyes out of my head. Or the shape of his body. The contours of his face are burned into my mind—stained to my eyelids. I see him even when I close my eyes.
When I think about him, the feeling of being watched by something sinister goes away just a little bit, but as soon as I open my eyes again, the feeling intensifies.
“I’ve got to get going,” Natasha says.
“Can you stay a bit longer?”
“You okay?”
“I just keep feeling like someone is watching me.”
“He’s gone,” she says.
Natasha looks through the windows. Then she even stands up and looks through them to get a better view outside.
She sits back down. “He’s not there, Ellie. You’re shaken, but creeps like that always back away when confronted. He’ll bother someone who won’t stand up for herself now that you chased him off.”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
I’m not at all convinced. If anything—as stupid as it sounds—I wish those intense green eyes were back on me.
I let Natasha leave. I can’t tell her that I feel like some thing is watching me. Some kind of monstrous thing rather than a mere man. She’d think I’d completely lost it.
When she leaves, I force myself to try to focus. Finals are coming up in a week, and as usual, I’ve procrastinated most of the papers I’ve had to write. I’m not in the right headspace at all to study or write, but there is no way I can take even an afternoon off with how much I have left to do.
As I work, the feeling of being watched gets worse and worse. It feels as if whatever is watching me is getting closer. When the man first left the coffee shop, it felt like it was watching me from a mile away with binoculars, but now it feels as if it’s just across the street from me.
I decide to go home. The feeling that something is coming closer and closer to me won’t go away, and the primal urge to get up and move is growing. I need to run from whatever it is, even if I can’t see it, and even if it makes no sense at all.
Two
Kula
There’s just one coming for her. But it’s getting closer. I left when she asked me to because I thought the Ulkar would keep its distance from her, but it’s acting bolder than I expected it to.
I shouldn’t have left. Staring at the human signaled to the Ulkar that I would protect her, but now that I’ve left, it doubts my resolve.
She seemed put off by my staring, but I did it to protect her. It didn’t hurt that I got to look at her the whole time too. She’s stunning. She’s the most exquisite thing I’ve ever laid eyes on.
In that moment when she approached me, I almost lost it. Her hair is either red or brown depending on the angle the light hits it, and it smells like strawberries. And her face turned even redder than strawberries when she met my eyes up close. It took every ounce of my resolve to not reach up and touch her.
I will protect her. It’s supposed to be my job to prevent the Ulkar from harming any humans, but I’ve changed my mission: It’s now just to protect her. To protect Ellie. It’s no coincidence that the Ulkar and I are both drawn to her. It’s forbidden for me to so much as touch her, but I will keep her safe.
The Ulkar won’t take her in front of so many other humans, but when Ellie comes back outside, it will start looking for an opening to take her. I won’t give it one.
As soon as Ellie comes outside, I’ll—
There’s movement from all directions. Dozens of them are coming now. They’re swarming in on her. The one closest to me laughs. An Ulkar’s laugh is more like a screech that makes you wish you were deaf. Even though I’ve fought Ulkar many times before, it sends chills through me. They all start laughing as they move toward Ellie.
Three
Ellie
As I’m packing my computer up, a horrible coldness goes down my spine. It’s like a horrible screeching sound that’s so high-pitched I can’t hear it, but I can feel it vibrating through my bones. Just moments ago, it felt like there was just one thing watching me, but now there are many more, coming toward me from all directions. And it feels like they are all screaming.
I grab my phone and shove it into my purse, zipping it up as fast as I can. I need to get out of here. Whatever feeling I had is more than a feeling now. Whatever is watching me feels real, and even if I’m going utterly insane, I know I need to run.
I walk outside and look around at the sky. I feel like they are coming from the sky, but I don’t see anything. It’s cold out, but the sky is unseasonably blue and clear. I really must be going insane, but my body seems positive I’m in danger, so I walk as fast as I can toward my apartment.
Then he steps out from an alleyway and puts himself right in front of me, blocking my path. His turquoise eyes piercing right through me.
“You can’t go home,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
Despite how much he bothered me earlier, seeing him makes me feel safer. Whatever paranoid delusions I’m suffering from don’t seem as terrifying when he’s looking at me.
“I know you have no reason to trust me,” he says, “but my name is Kula. I’m here to protect you.”
“From what?” I ask, trying my best to look at him like he’s the crazy one. As if I weren’t running away from shadows.
“I think you can feel them,” he says. “Dozens of them are coming for you.”
“Did you put something in my drink?”
No, he didn’t. I ordered it, sat down, and never got up. He never got near my drink. If I’m going insane, Kula couldn’t have had anything to do with it.
Having his big, towering body and hard muscles in front of me makes me feel safer. Not safe, but safer than I did before. That buys him enough goodwill with me to at least hear him out.
“What is coming for me? Dozens of what?”
“I’m going to protect you,” he says, “Whether or not you let me. It will be much easier if you let me though. If you go home, they will take you. If you come with me, I can at least promise you that I will die before you are harmed.”
“Take me where? You still haven’t told me what they are.”
He grabs my hand and starts pulling me with him.
My first instinct is to rip my hand away from him and maybe slap h
im. His hand is warm though, much warmer than it should be. And the way he holds it is much more gentle than I expect, like he’s afraid he could hurt me by even squeezing too hard.
“Where are we going?”
He points forward. “The forest.”
So the guy who I was worried was going to kidnap me and lock me in his closet is dragging me into “the forest” to protect me from the scary things that I can’t even see?
Sounds reasonable.
It’s all kinds of crazy, and I’m a logical person. The thing is, if the things I think are chasing me are completely fabrications of my own mind, then there is logically no way Kula should know about them. As insane as it all sounds, the fact that he knew I was running from something almost feels like proof positive that I am running from something real. Something other than complete delusions.
We reach the forest. It’s a small college town, and the downtown area is next to a large, hilly forest. There are a lot of summer cabins in these woods, but it’s already late Fall, and almost no one is living in these cabins at this time of year.
There’s no cars or foot traffic. I’m alone in a forest of abandoned buildings with the man who is probably just slightly less crazy than I am. I dig my heels into the ground and stop before we go even further from civilization.
“Kula, Tell me everything or I’m not going another step further.”
His jaw clenches in frustration. In anger. His chest heaves and his nostrils flare. He’s annoyed, but considering how to answer me.
“You’re not going to believe me,” he says, “unless I show you. When you see my true form, you may be frightened, but I promise you that the things coming for you are much more frightening than me.”
“Your true form?”
As if in answer to my question, he rips his shirt off. His muscles are even more hardcore than they looked without the shirt.
And there’s a big scar cutting across his chest. Was he in a war? A sword fight? Who the hell has a scar like that? He digs his nails into the scar.
The Breeding Prize: A Scifi Alien Romance (The Breeding Games Book 2) Page 16