by Kit Tunstall
This is a novelette that bridges the gap between books’ four and six. It’s short, sweet, and sexy.
Chapter One
Titus Varg approached the small cabin warily, since he was unable to activate his disguise that would have made him appear human. The mechanism had been damaged when the ship crashed. It had taken him nearly three days to cover the distance from where the Serinda had impacted with Earth to this location, slowed as he was by his inability to blend in with his suit’s chameleon function malfunctioning. Trusting in his shea, he had allowed it to guide him as it had done all his life.
It was difficult to move slowly, as excitement rushed through him. Finally, he was going to meet his mate. He could feel the mating flare beginning already, and he hadn’t even seen her yet. He only hoped she would have an open mind and listen to him before she threw him out of her home.
Not that he would be deterred. He was stubborn, and he would fight for her no matter how long it took. Titus hadn’t folded across the stars just to end up deprived of his mate. He was hoping she would experience something similar to the mating flare, but he wasn’t familiar enough with humans or their culture to know if they had such an experience.
Emperor Aryk and Dr. Ha had been little help in preparing them for dealing with human culture. Their sole goal was to assimilate and conquer, removing the viable human females for breeding, and leaving the rest of the humans to rot.
With a small sigh, Titus pushed aside his disgust with those two as he stepped onto the rickety porch. He held his breath for a moment as the wood shifted underneath him, waiting to see if he was going to fall through it. He let out another deep breath of relief when it appeared to stabilize, and he wasn’t certain if it was in great disrepair or simply couldn’t accommodate his larger frame and weight compared to a human.
Either way, he moved gingerly across the last few steps until he reached the front door. He lifted his hand and knocked firmly, holding his breath as he waited for someone to answer the door. There was no response. He waited a moment before knocking again, and there was still no response.
His shea was prompting him to open the door, and he sensed his mate was in danger. The cabin door was locked, but that required little effort to bypass. He simply used a particle rearranger, one of the things he had scavenged from the crashed ship, to force the lock open. The device emitted a small glow as it worked, and then the door yielded.
He slipped inside, feeling a wave of relief wash over him to be out of sight. It was too conspicuous for a Dazon male to wander around without his disguise in place. In his case, it was particularly noticeable, because the crash had burned away more than half of his uniform. The skin underneath it had fared poorly as well, but thanks to the nanotechnology inside him, he had healed almost fully during the last three days. There were still rough spots on his skin, which was a lighter shade than the rest of his golden-brown tone and would be until the regeneration was complete, but he didn’t look as much like he had just stumbled out of a fiery crash as he had done days ago.
He paused for a moment, straining to hear any sound that could indicate why his shea was encouraging him to enter her cabin. It came to him after a moment—faint groans. Following their direction, his heart squeezed in his chest as he imagined finding his mate injured or on the brink of death. He had twenty doses of nanotechnology in his kit, but if she was too far gone, it might not be enough to save her.
His shea couldn’t predict the future. It could only guide him, so he had no clue if he was going to end up finding his mate alive or dead. He had no idea how his future would unfold. Shea didn’t work that way. It was simply a highly developed sense of instinct with flashes of precognition, and in his case, he retained shea due to a larger-than-usual latrael gland. The gland had withered among most Dazons due to genetic manipulation over the past three generations, but shea and the mating instinct used to be common among his people.
Realizing he was distracting himself from checking on his mate in case he found her too far gone to save, he forced aside his thoughts, squared his shoulders, and opened the bedroom door in front of him. He braced himself for whatever he would find. At least she had been alive a few seconds ago, and even if he was only with her long enough to ensure she didn’t die alone, it would have made his journey across the stars worth it.
He entered the dim room, pausing to click on a light. That elicited another groan, and using his scanner, he evaluated her condition. He pulled back the sheet and blanket to look at her face as the equipment did its job. The mating instinct flared to life, as he had expected, at the first look at her beautiful face.
She had high cheekbones, a rounded face, dark lashes, pouty lips, and dark-brown skin. Her hair was a tangled, matted mess at the moment, but he was certain when she was feeling well, it was a beautiful mass of kinky curls. He wanted to run his fingers through them, but he was sidetracked by the readouts from his device.
He frowned with concern when he saw how slow her pulse was, and how low her blood pressure had dropped. She had been ravaged by ROMKS, Dr. Ha’s retrovirus. It had clearly done its job and reprogrammed her DNA, but it had left her with devastating side effects.
Wasting no further time, though he would love to spend hours just staring at her face, he pulled the blanket down the rest of the way and turned her onto her stomach. He blushed a bit as he lifted her nightgown, which was sticky with sweat, and injected the nanotechnology into her spine. It was the fastest delivery route—aside from the brain stem, which, due to inherent risks, could only be utilized by someone with full medical training that he lacked—and she needed it done quickly.
Medically, that was all he could do to counteract the symptoms ravaging her, but he couldn’t leave her as she was. He got to his feet and went to her bathroom, connected to her room, and brought back a stack of damp and dry towels. With loving precision, Titus washed away the sweat and the sticky residue from her skin, averting his eyes from her breasts and the intriguing triangle between her thighs.
Like most Dazon males, he was a virgin, since he lacked sufficient rank or income to acquire a retiring female. He had been forced to donate genetic material to the breeding facilities once Dazon scientists identified his highly developed latrael gland, since it was a sought-after trait. Even their most brilliant (and depraved) scientist, Dr. Ha, couldn’t explain why the gland had withered over the ensuing generations.
No scientist, Titus didn’t know for sure, but he was certain it had something to do with both the way the doctors had been forced to manipulate DNA to ensure the survival of the race, and also a lack of feminine exposure. It was simply a theory of his own, but he believed the men’s latrael glands had shrunk over the generations because they hadn’t been exposed to enough women to stimulate the glands.
Latrael glands were naturally larger in males than females, though females had also experienced shrinkage. It was speculated the primary function of the latrael gland had been to help one find a mate, so if there were no mates available, or far too few, it seemed logical the gland would shrink.
Having been treated as a science experiment most of his life, Titus was careful to preserve his mate’s modesty and dignity as he bathed her and dressed her in a fresh nightgown he found after a little searching in the dresser across the room. He flushed even hotter when he realized he was holding a pair of her panties, and he quickly discarded them before reaching for the nightgown. He wanted her to wake up, but not right that second, or he feared she would think he was some sort of sex-mad pervert.
After he had cleaned and dressed her, all he could do was wait. His own injuries had taken a toll on his energy reserves, and he found it difficult to keep his eyes open. Somewhere after midnight, he surrendered to the need for sleep and lay down beside her on the bed, careful not to disturb her, and not presumptuous enough to get under the covers with her. If she woke before him, he wanted her to feel safe and secure, at least as secure she could with a strange alien in her bed.
Chap
ter Two
His shea woke him, warning him to put up an arm, just as something heavy collided with it. Otherwise, it would have hit his head. He let out a small groan of pain, automatically wrapping his hand around whatever had hit him and tugging it forcibly from her grasp. He opened his eyes and looked up at her standing over him, struck anew by her beauty.
Clearly, the nanotechnology had done its work. She still looked ill, but not nearly as devastated as she had before. Where she had hovered on the brink of death, it was clear now she would recover within a few days. She was clearly feeling well enough to try to beat him to death in his sleep…with a copper dog statue? He laughed aloud at the object in his hand. “This is an inventive weapon, my mate.”
She put her hands on her curvy waist, probably unaware of how it exposed the generous swell of breasts through the thin blue fabric of her gown. “Who are you, and why are you in my house? Why are you in my bed?” She actually screeched the last question, and her outrage was clear. Underneath it was a strong note of fear too.
That was what robbed his amusement and sent a pang through his chest. He carefully set down the statue on the bedside table before holding up both his hands in a gesture of surrender as he slowly got to a seated position. He didn’t stand, not wanting to intimidate her. “My name is Titus Varg, and I’ve come because you’re my mate.”
Her eyes widened, and he couldn’t help noticing they were beautiful chocolate-brown with flecks of gold.
“You’re crazy. Get out of my house.”
He continued to hold hands aloft, trying to project a nonthreatening demeanor. “I’ll leave if you insist, but I ask you to keep an open mind and listen to me first, my mate.”
She glared at him. “I have a name.”
He waited for half a second, but when she didn’t supply it, he asked, “May I know it?”
Her eyes flashed with anger, and there was an air of challenge about her. “Amelia Whimsby.”
“Amelia.” Her name tasted good on his tongue, and the syllables caressed his ears in a loving fashion. It was a good name for her, and he could easily imagine speaking it multiple times per day for the rest of his life. “Amelia, my name is Titus —”
“Varg,” she finished for him. “I remember that part. What I don’t remember is how you came into my house, or why you’re in my room.” She looked down at her nightgown, wearing a frown. “I also don’t remember putting on this gown. I think I wore my white one.”
He nodded, hoping she would take the recitation of events well, rather than fly off the handle. It seemed obvious already that his mate had a passionate side, and he was certain that would translate to be just as passionate during lovemaking as it was during angry outbursts. “I arrived yesterday evening after my shea led me here. It’s been guiding me for years, and that’s what told me to stay with the armada rather than come with General Monash’s group, though I aligned with their viewpoint.”
She looked confused. “Look, Mr. Alien…Varg, I mean, I have a pounding headache, and I’ve lost a few days. Can we speed this up and get to the part that affects me?”
He let out a small chuckle, but quickly stifled it at her glare. “Of course, Amelia. I was part of the invading armada, and my shea warned me the ship would be shot down seconds before it happened. I was the only survivor, and I followed my shea’s guidance to find you here. When I arrived, there was no answer upon knocking at the door, and again my shea told me I had to find you. I came in to your home and discovered you near death. At that point, I administered a dose of nanotechnology before cleaning you and putting you in a fresh nightgown, because you were sweaty and very ill.”
Her eyes flashed. “You saw me naked? You just barged into my home and took off my clothes? What’s wrong with you?”
Her words, and the accusation underneath them, hurt, but he made no effort to hide his vulnerability. His shea told him he would have to be completely honest and open with her if he hoped to win her over. “I admit my actions were unusual and clearly out of the boundaries of human societal rules, but they came from a place of concern. If I hadn’t found you last night, you wouldn’t be alive this morning.”
She glared at him. “Yeah, because your people have unleashed their biological weapon on mine.”
He inclined his head. “Yes, but you must know that not all of my people share Emperor Aryk and Dr. Ha’s vision for the future. We don’t agree with what they’ve done, and we won’t support the harvesting of human females.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “You just told me you were part of the invading armada.”
He nodded again, holding back a sigh of impatience. He had to maintain a calm demeanor and not get frustrated. “Yes, but as I explained, my shea guided me to do so. I was about to board one of the ships planning to defect when I sensed I had to stay behind.”
She shook her head. “I must admit I’m not really up-to-date on all this alien stuff. I mostly stay here in my cabin and write. I followed the news, of course, but it’s been scant, and then I got sick, so I’m really out of touch.” She ran a hand through her hair, which was still frizzy, but looked much healthier than it had last night morning. “What is this shea stuff? Is like the mating flare? That’s what you call it, isn’t it? I heard something about it on the news.”
He nodded. “It’s related. Shea is an intuitive instinct that sometimes gives bits of precognition, I suppose you could say. It’s not definitive, and it doesn’t allow me to predict the future. It simply guides me to the best course of action. Like the mating flare, it originates from the latrael gland in the brain, but most Dazon males’ latrael glands have shrunk over the intervening years, since the Veluvians unleashed the weapon that rendered most Dazon females sterile and forced our society to completely change in order to survive.”
“So you all have shea?”
He shook his head. “A few generations ago, we did, but it seems to have withered and mostly died along with shrinkage of the gland. Some Dazon still experience the mating flare, but to have a fully developed sense of shea is rare.” He couldn’t screen his bitterness from his tone. “It has rendered me a science experiment my entire life, first as an infant and child, and then later as a soldier in the armada. I’ve been studied, probed, and forced to donate genetic material to create offspring I’ll never meet. It’s been more of a curse than a blessing, except it led me to you.”
Her expression softened slightly. “You’re really telling me the truth, aren’t you?”
He nodded, slightly offended she would think otherwise, but quickly reminding himself she didn’t know him yet. He hoped to change that. “I’m being completely forthright with you, Amelia. You are my mate, and I folded across the galaxy to find you. I’ve been through a crash landing and walked at least fifty miles in the past three days. I found you on the brink of death, but arrived in time to save you. I’m hoping what I’ve been through will encourage you to give me a chance to prove my sincerity. I’ve waited a lifetime for you, and I’ll wait even longer if I must, but I hope you’ll give me a chance.”
She let out a small sigh, looking confused. “It’s so much to take in, Titus. I’m definitely going to need time.”
He inclined his head, struggling to hide his disappointment. It was unrealistic to expect her to instantly embrace him. “Of course you will. I need to go to the Moon Consulate anyway. I have important information for General Monash and Commander Darvig. Perhaps when I return, you would allow me to spend time with you?”
Her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Wait, you’re going to the Moon? Are you going to fold there?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
She looked intrigued. “Did you know I’m a science fiction writer?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t even know your name until you told me it, my mate, and I’m not sure what a science fiction writer is.”
Amelia let out a delighted chuckle. “It means I write about aliens, imagined futures, and advanced technology in fictional settings. In
a way, you’d think I would have been better prepared for this sort of invasion, but it seemed too fantastical. To start with, I actually suspected it was the government involved in some kind of weird conspiracy to control the population, at least until everyone started getting sick.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Anyway, I’d love to come along with you to the Moon Consulate, if that’s allowed? I’d like to experience this folding technology and see what they’ve accomplished on the Moon. Is that all right?”
He couldn’t hide his excitement. “I would be pleased to have you join me, Amelia.”
Her eyes were also sparkling with excitement. “Oh good. I’m going to take a quick shower and get dressed, and then we can go.” She flashed an uncertain look at his left side, where most of his suit had burned away. “Do you have a spare one of those thingies?”
He shook his head. “My suit mechanism was damaged in the crash.”
She tilted her head, looking thoughtful. “I might have something that would fit you. I mean it’s going to be short and kind of tight, but it might work better than that uniform you’re almost wearing.”
A surge of jealousy shot through him, and his shoulder stiffened. “I have no wish to wear castoff clothing from one of your former partners.”
She grinned at him. “Are you jealous, Titus?”
Her tone had clearly been teasing, but he was completely serious when he responded. “Insanely so.”
Her expression softened, and she dropped the teasing tone. “The clothes belong to my brother, Jamaal. He spent last summer with me. He plays basketball, and while he’s still probably at least eight inches shorter than you, and fifty pounds lighter, maybe some of his sweat pants or shorts and T-shirts will work. Let me find some before I shower.”
He nodded, satisfied with her explanation. He had no problem wearing her brother’s clothing, but he couldn’t see donning clothing worn by a man who had experienced her body. The thought filled him with blinding rage, and it took several deep breaths to calm down. He knew the reaction was irrational, and he was certain Amelia must have had former partners, but he vowed then and there he didn’t want to know anything about them. He much preferred to think she was coming to him as untouched as he was going to her.