Highland Barbarian Alien (Possessive Highlanders Book 1)

by Leith Briar

  I was sleeping, and then I was wakened by pain like I have never felt before.

  It is gut wrenching.

  As if someone is twisting my stomach and tearing it apart at the same time.

  I don’t know much about childbirth, but I always thought it started with twinges. Contractions. I thought the pain ramped up over the course of several hours… but this is just constant.

  There isn’t a single minute of reprieve to catch my breath. To recover from the last gut wrenching cramps.

  The door crashes open and in bursts Colm… quickly followed by Brody and Loche.

  “Out!” I practically scream the words at them. The last thing I need is a fucking audience.

  I close my eyes while they all speak frantically in their gibberish language. I just want to be alone. Well, that’s not true, actually. I want someone who can actually help me, but since that’s not here then I guess alone is good.

  Curling up into a little ball and dying sounds better.

  Hearing the words Uisge-Beatha makes me want to explode. I’m over here dying and they are discussing alcoholic fucking beverages?

  “You need to leave,” I tell them again, trying to be more firm but sounding utterly pitiful.

  Colm rushes to my side, which is precisely the opposite of what I told him to do but probably the thing I should have expected most.

  He strokes my hair back from my face and it feels unnaturally sharp. Opening my eyes to glare up at him, I notice he has changed. He’s frantic.

  Cute.

  But he’s not the one dealing with this.

  “Out,” he says to the men standing behind him, all of them gawking at me.

  I thought Loche was supposed to have had many sisters?

  I’m going to guess he was never around for the actual birthing of their babies. Of course he wasn’t, because even in medieval times they had sodding midwives.

  “Tell me what to do? Please, mo chridhe?”

  He says it just as another shooting pain wracks my whole middle section. This cannot be normal, surely?

  The more I think on that, the more I’m convinced that maybe it’s not normal.

  Maybe humans aren’t actually supposed to give birth to big giant alien babies.

  Who’d have thought it?

  My mind wanders to the bastards who planned the whole thing and how much I hate them. Plaigh.

  Then again, maybe they’d have drugs and medical implements and things that you’d find for actually delivering a baby.

  Suddenly Vrexor and his slimy grey hands don’t seem like the worst idea.

  “I need help,” I manage to choke the words out through gritted teeth. “Honestly, I think I’m going to die.”

  His already glowing eyes go even wider, and they dart from my stomach to my face and back again, over and over like a pinball.

  He is not helping.

  “Winona is sending someone. They will be here within a few hours. Brody assures me. Can you hold on?”

  Hold on? Sure, why the hell not? Put the fucking kettle on, will ya?

  But I don’t say that. He’s trying to help, I guess.

  “You don’t have painkillers? Drugs? Anything?”

  He furrows his brows. “Loche suggested whisky… It heals us, takes our pain away. But I do not know what it would do to you.”

  “Give me it!”

  When he doesn’t move, and another wave of pain crashes over me, all I can do is squeeze down on his claws and pray that the pain I’m creating in my hand dulls the ones in my stomach and back.

  “I fear I cannot risk your life, Sophia. It could well help, or it could kill you.”

  “Death is better than this,” I sob out.

  Honestly, I feel as though I am slowly losing my mind.

  He tries to pull me in close but I slap him away, suddenly remembering that he was the one who did this to me.

  “I could… I could change you?” His voice is soft and hesitant when he suggests it, as if he’s scared of my reaction.

  “Come near me with that thing again and I will cut it off,” I tell him.

  He laughs at that, and then I laugh at his laughter because it’s the only thing stopping me from crying.

  We go on like that for a long time. I tell him all the ways I hate him, and he laughs at my insults. I call him all manner of expletives, some of which he clearly doesn’t understand. All the while the pains get worse until I have the overwhelming urge to use the toilet.

  It’s at precisely the point at which he’s helping me cross the room, that someone else enters it.

  Well… not someone, exactly.

  Something.

  “Thank all the fucking gods,” he mutters.

  I must say I am feeling similar thoughts. Do all those gods have epidurals, I wonder?

  The creature looks a lot like the ones who came to my wedding ceremony. She is as tall as Colm, and her skin is shades of deep red and matches the gems she has threaded into her hair. Hair or tentacles, I can’t actually be sure. I notice the gold hoop earrings that hang down are bigger than my ankle bands. Immediately she scans the room with her ears, like they’re some kind of radars. I wonder if they are the human equivalent of eyes?

  But I don’t wonder for long as another pain wracks my body.

  It is the strangest feeling, like I genuinely could not place what I want or need. I want to be given space but at the same time I want to be held up. I want to run, but I also want to curl up into a ball.

  But more than any of that, I want to go to the toilet.

  The wise-woman says some words to Colm who replies in a foreign language. It could be his or it could be hers — I don’t have the mental capacity to work it out right now.

  “She says you need to push.”

  I need the toilet.

  But maybe that is the same feeling getting confused.

  I make my way back to the bed, but the woman comes and takes a hold of my arm, stopping me. I look up at Colm for guidance. You are supposed to lie on your back, right?

  That’s how it is in the movies.

  Well, apparently not.

  Apparently you are supposed to get down on all fours.

  It’s at this point I am telling Colm, again, that he needs to leave and leave now.

  “You wouldn’t understand her,” he says.

  Fuck.

  * * *

  Everything after that happened in a blur of pain, tears, and sheer exhaustion.

  I did as the woman told me, biting down on Colm’s arm like a dog with a bone, until the last minute when I felt the over whelming urge to stand up and get out of my own body. That’s the only way I can describe it. I had enough, and I was checking out.

  I was leaving.

  But just as I stood, his head was out, and he dropped into the world screaming like a seagull. I think Colm caught him, or perhaps it was the wise-woman — I can’t really remember.

  Colm says it was him.

  Either way, no babies were harmed or dropped on their head.

  Although you wouldn’t know it from the sound he was making.

  The wise-woman helped to fix me up and did what needed to be done. He was healthy, and huge, Colm said. I hadn’t been able to look yet.

  When I was finally cleaned up and sorted out, she helped me into bed and Colm laid him down on my chest and wrapped us both in a pile of furs.

  I looked down, still not quite believing this little bundle of life just came out of me. What a strange and surreal feeling. It made me tear up, and when I looked up at Colm, I thought I might have seen a hint of something similar.

  But I didn’t look at Colm for too long. I couldn’t keep my eyes off him. Truly a monster baby, complete with rolls of fat everywhere and a head of dark hair just like the both of us.

  After a while, Colm sat down on the bed beside us and reached over to stroke his cheek with his hand that had finally returned to human. Even though the babe was huge, it still looked giant compared to his head.

>   “What should we call him?” I asked.

  He didn’t even take a minute to think before he replied, “Niall.”

  “Niall?”

  “Aye. Niall. It means champion.”

  I’m about to argue, not seeing why he needs a name that means something like that, when he continues.

  “I had a brother once, a long time ago… and that was his name.”

  “I like it,” I tell him, glad he got there before I could interject and tell him I didn’t. “Niall.”

  He leans over and puts his head under me so he can get a better look. “I understand now why men are not usually present for these things.”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” I retort, not being able to help the sarcasm.

  He chuckles. “No. It is not that. I just thought I was going to lose you. More than a few times. But I am glad I was here. My heart feels as if it is about to burst.”

  I glance up at him and don’t even try to hide the smile on my face. “I’m glad you were here, too.”

  He leans down and kisses my forehead, so gently it’s almost a whisper. When he retreats his eyes are glowing, but not in the scary way I’ve become accustomed to. A frown passes over his face, and his Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. “I love you. More than I have the words for.”

  I take a moment to look at the man while I let the words settle in. His handsome face. His silver eyes. The scar that cuts right through his eyebrow. It’s one I don’t think I could ever tire of seeing, but it’s more than that. It’s more than anything I’ve ever felt before, and it took the little bundle in my arms to make me see it for what it is. The feeling that the most important things are no longer inside you anymore, they are outside… walking around in the world.

  Walking around in the galaxy.

  “I love you, too.”

  THE END

  Epilogue

  Loche bursts into the room with all the grace of a car crash and the minute I’ve peeked by eyes open, I know something is wrong.

  There is no light poking in through the shutters. It is still before dawn, which means it’s too early for him to wake me.

  But he doesn’t announce what exactly has got him so rattled, and begins, as usual, to fetch my clothes and trinkets from the chest.

  “There’s a fire?”

  He pokes his head up. “Ah, you are awake.”

  “Did you think I could sleep through that?”

  He gives me a faint smirk and straightens. “Should I really answer that?”

  Swinging my legs down from the bed and taking a long stretch, I glance at him from over my shoulder. “No, don’t answer that. But do tell me why I’m up at this unholy hour?”

  “I just thought you would want to see your husband… I mean… I can come back later?”

  I throw him a look that could easily be a dagger before I can no longer fight the smile. “He’s home?”

  “Aye, he is home.”

  It’s not like Colm to return home and go anywhere other than straight to our chamber… so this is a new development.

  Loche must see the look of confusion on my face because he quickly explains. “He was headed here, but Niall was prowling the corridors like some stray dog, and appears to have interceded him.”

  Ah.

  I laugh at that, feeling a strange mix of pride and the urge to throttle him. It’s not unlike my son to not be in his bed when he should be. He has never been a sleeper, even as a tiny baby. It was as though he was scared sleep would slow him down too much. I guess he takes after his father in that sense. He is curious and feral and far too interested in finding out what mischief — or perhaps havoc — he can wreak.

  “Where are they?”

  Loche rolls his eyes. “Where do you think?”

  I smile and cross the room, helping him to get my clothes ready. I still haven’t quite got used to having someone do everything for me, even though he seems to enjoy it.

  Once I’m dressed, I grab one of Colm’s furs from the chest and throw it over my shoulders. The summer has long faded and now we’re on the edge of winter.

  In truth, I couldn’t say how much time has passed by. The seasons don’t work like they do on Earth, so it’s incredibly difficult to track the passing of time. Niall grows quicker than any human child would, and he doesn’t seem to grow at a linear rate, either. His newborn phase went by in a blur, and he only seemed to slow down somewhat for the terrible twos.

  Now he is running and jumping and cursing under his breath when he thinks I can’t hear him. It makes my heart sad sometimes, because I haven’t really been able to enjoy it… but that feeling quickly subsides when I happen upon moments like these.

  I’m standing in the shadows near the stables watching Colm hand his arse to him in the snowy slush-mud. The pair of them are covered in dirt, and the maternal part of me — that I still can’t quite get used to — is dying to scold them and get Niall in from the cold.

  But he doesn’t get sick like other children would. He doesn’t get sick, and he doesn’t get hurt. Which is exactly why Colm cuts him absolutely zero slack.

  “You’re an arsehole,” he says, his little fists clenched while he crouches down, just recovered from one of Colm’s pushes that sent him flying. He talks a strange mix of my contractions and Colm’s insults.

  His father laughs him off and takes a quick lunge towards him, sending Niall scuttling back. “I may be an arsehole, but you, my son, are a wee shitebag. Are you going to run from me all your life?”

  This has the desired effect, and instead of retreating, Niall springs up and crashes his shoulder into Colm’s stomach. I know my husband’s strength better than most people still living, so I know it likely may as well have been a feather, but Colm falls back anyway and lets Niall get the better of him.

  Now both of them are in the dirt, and I can’t keep hiding in the shadows any longer.

  “You’re going to put your father’s back out,” I scold him.

  He’s crouched on Colm’s chest and trying to bare the teeth he doesn’t yet have, but at the sound of my voice his head jerks around and his face lights up.

  “Did you see that, Ma? Did you see what I just did there?”

  “I saw it,” I reply, not being able to help my smile at the pride in his voice.

  Colm doesn’t miss the opportunity his distraction has provided and swats him with the back of his hand, sending him off his chest and back into the slush.

  He jumps up, agile despite his huge size, and heads straight over to me, leaving Niall to dust himself off. “The little shit doesn’t leave me alone,” he jokes, even though his face is beaming with pride.

  “You wind him up. One of these days he will beat you for real.”

  He laughs as he draws me in close to him and threads his fingers through my hair, pulling back slightly so he can look down at my face. “Perhaps then I can retire?”

  “Would you want to retire? Somehow I don’t picture you as a house-husband…”

  He chuckles at that and bends down closer to my ear, presumably so little ears can’t hear what he’s going to say. “I can think of more than a few ways to pass the time.”

  His low rumble still has the power to make my breath catch and my knees feel weak.

  “You’ll need to show me,” I tell him, cocking my head to the side to give him better access to my neck.

  But he doesn’t take it. Not yet at least. Instead he turns, spinning me around with him. “Niall!” he booms.

  “Aye, Da?”

  “Sgail is in the stables with your Uncle Brody. If you wash him down for me, I will let you practice with my daggers after supper.”

  Niall’s eyes light up at that, and he nods his head enthusiastically before swaggering towards the stables. “Aye. You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  I raise my eyebrow at Colm. “Daggers? Really?”

  But he just laughs and scoops me up in his arms, and I don’t need to look down to know exactly where he is headed.

  “Y
ou will not complain so loudly about my methods once I am finished with you.”

  Also by Leith Briar

  Highland Barbarian Captive

  Highland Barbarian Bride

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