I tapped impatiently on the console.
“Unable to determine,” the computer announced.
“What the flark?” How could the computer not be able to tell which of these two females belonged to me? “Explain,” I ordered.
“Results verified. Unable to determine precise DNA match.”
“Computer, clarify: is either of these females a genetic reproductive match for Commander Lutro Dax?”
“Both females are within genetic match parameters,” the computer verified.
As we made a third pass over the outdoor seat, I stared at the two females in amazement, using the ship’s cam to zero in on each of them in turn.
This was amazing. Either of these females could be my mate? How could I possibly choose? Then I was struck with a brilliant idea.
I should take both of them.
It was not unheard of for the Drovekzian to take more than one mate, though it was slightly unusual.
Yes. Choosing both was definitely the better option. That way, the females would not feel required to do battle with one another for the honor of mating with me.
Pleased with my decision, I began the procedure for landing my transport.
The natural preserve was thickly wooded in this area, Earth’s strangely green plants springing up in an untamed tangle. However, a clearing had been created—perhaps some kind of walkway? It was barely wide enough to allow my ship enough room to land directly in front of my two new mates.
As the ship settled to the ground, I imagined their joy at discovering their new destiny. Smiling happily, I prepared to exit the ship. One last glance at the instrument panel, however, gave me pause.
A male of their species had just emerged from the thicket behind my two females. In his hand, he held some kind of artificial claw made of metal, and as I watched, he brandished it at my females.
This would not do.
With barely a thought, I allowed my beast to emerge, taking over my physical form.
I will save my mates from their attacker.
Certain that their gratitude would know no bounds, I pressed the floor panel to open the ship’s door and leaped out to save them.
Chapter Three
Nora
I don’t usually spill my guts to strangers in the park—or anywhere, for that matter. But the woman sitting on the bench with me was so kind that I found myself telling her everything—from losing my job to basically getting dumped at the altar. Or in the bathroom. Whatever.
“I am so sorry you had to deal with that,” she said.
“Thanks,” I sniffled, dabbing the tears from my eyes.
I had grown up hearing New Yorkers were inevitably brusque and rude, but this woman was more typical of my experience.
“Don’t move, or I’ll kill you both.” The voice came from behind us, and I froze.
Then again, not all New Yorkers are nice people.
I glanced behind me to find a pale man with dark hair wearing a hoodie and brandishing a wicked-looking knife.
I tried to judge how quickly I could escape. But in my bare feet and a wedding dress, I suspected my chances of escape were pretty slim.
An odd whirring noise coming from the path distracted me for a moment, but a glance showed me nothing out of the ordinary. My gaze flickered to the woman sitting on the bench with me. She wore running shoes and blue jeans. She might actually have a chance of getting away.
As I was looking at her, a green flash of… something… caught my attention and I whipped around to stare at the path in front of us. Out of nowhere—like literally, nowhere—a huge green beast of some kind flew over our heads, landing on the mugger and bowling him over backward.
“Run!” I shouted, shoving the other woman off the bench where she sat perfectly motionless.
She stumbled a few steps, then spun around to grab my hand. “Come on!”
I staggered behind her, trying to keep up. My bare feet pounded against the rough asphalt and I winced with every step. “You’ll be faster without me,” I told my new friend, gasping for breath. “Go—get help. I’ll be right behind you.”
She stared back over her shoulder with wide eyes, but at my urging, took off running without me.
When an enormous roar, like the sound of a lion on the Serengeti, went up behind us, her pace increased. Even if I’d had shoes on, I couldn’t have kept up with her.
I kept running, too.
Whatever that thing was behind us, I didn’t want to come face-to-face with it. As if the thought had conjured it, the attacking beast sailed over my head and landed lightly on the path in front of me. I stumbled to a stop, a ragged groan of terror escaping my throat.
What the fuck was this thing? I mean, I’d been close when I thought it roared like a lion. But it was actually more like a tiger.
A giant, bright green tiger with black stripes.
I stood stock-still in the path, and the neon tiger and I held each other’s gazes.
Inside, I scrambled wildly to try to remember what I knew about wild animals, especially the predator types. Was it better to hold their gaze, try to out-alpha them? Or should I drop his gaze, look down at the ground, and try to seem submissive?
We stood there for a moment that seemed to stretch out forever.
And I thought my life was fucked before.
At that thought, a tiny, hysterical giggle escaped me.
And then the tiger actually grinned back at me.
No, you idiot! a voice inside my head shouted. That’s not a smile. It’s baring its teeth. That’s a goddamn hungry green tiger.
Another hysterical snicker leaked out.
The tiger cocked its head and made a series of terrifyingly growly noises.
“Nice kitty.” My voice shook so hard the words barely came out. When I took a step back from it, I held out one hand as if telling a dog to stay—and both my legs and hands trembled so badly I was afraid I might fall down. “Good, giant kitty.” I took another step back. “You stay right there.”
The farther away I got from it, the less I shook.
That lasted about as long as it took for the tiger to begin stalking forward, keeping the same distance between us, but matching me step for step.
A sob clogged my throat. I tried to swallow it down. “You stay right there, and I going to keep moving away.”
Clearly, this giant kitty did not understand a word I was saying.
We continued that way, the green tiger matching me for several more steps, until we were even with the bench again.
A pile of black rags under the park bench caught my eye, and my gaze flicked over long enough to realize that I wasn’t seeing what I thought I was.
That was not a pile of black rags. It was the mangled body of the mugger, his black hoodie soaked with his own blood.
This time, the sob escaped.
“Oh,” I said, beginning to babble in my terror, hoping the sound of my voice would keep the animal from attacking, “you are not a very good kitty, are you? You are a very violent and dangerous cat. How am I going to get away from you?”
The animal cocked its head again, first one way, then the other.
“I wish you could understand me.” I let my voice fall into a singsong cadence, hoping it would soothe the savage beast before me. “I need to get away from you. I don’t know whether to hope other people show up or not. Oh, kitty, you are terrifying.”
My last word ended on a huff of the air, as I backed into something huge and solid behind me, knocking half the air out of my lungs.
“What the—” I took a quick glance behind me but saw nothing other than the path stretching into the rest of the park. There was definitely something solid behind me, though. With one hand, I reached back and tapped against it.
Yep. Something there. Something big and metal. I knocked against it once more to be sure.
Without turning away from the cat, I reached up over my head and felt behind me. Whatever it was, it was taller than I could reach. The tiger too
k another step toward me, and I began speaking aloud again, hoping to distract it. “I probably look like a deranged mime, don’t I? I guess I’m glad there’s no one else here to see me.”
The cat chuffed out something that sounded suspiciously like a laugh, then dropped to its haunches and began cleaning its paws.
Most likely cleaning blood off its claws.
That thought made my knees tremble again. I began inching sideways, hoping to go around whatever was blocking my way. But as soon as I did, the cat stood back up and growled, taking a menacing step toward me.
Great. I was in a standoff with a huge, green, angry tabby cat, and something invisible behind me was blocking my way out.
Not to mention a dead body lay in a pile under a bench a few yards away.
No one was ever going to believe I hadn’t had something to do with killing the mugger.
I let my head drop back against the invisible metal object with a thump.
My week kept going from bad to worse.
I had never been suicidal before, but part of me almost wanted to give up.
Maybe I should just let it end here.
Blowing out a breath, I closed my eyes. I opened them again only a second later to discover the giant tiger had taken that opportunity to move silently to stand directly in front of me.
Its hot breath brushed against me, and the white lace of my wedding dress fluttered. I didn’t know how big the thing blocking the path was. I had nowhere to go. And a monster was about to rip me to shreds, probably leaving me in a blood-soaked pile next to the mugger.
And I thought a guy with a knife was scary.
With a sob, I sank into a crouch, my back leaning against whatever was behind me, my arms wrapped around my knees, and my face tucked away so that I couldn’t see the death I felt coming for me.
So of course, that’s when a naked alien picked me up and carried me into his invisible spaceship.
Chapter Four
Dax
For a brief moment, when they ran, I considered chasing the faster of the two females. But as soon as I saw them in person, I knew without a doubt that the golden-haired curvy one in the lovely, flowing white garments belonged to me.
Mine, my inner beast growled, and I agreed.
I probably should have expected my mate to be frightened of my beast form. She had no way of knowing that a Drovekzian would never attack a female who posed no danger to him.
It also appeared that her people had no equivalent of our translation matrix, so even when I tried to tell her what was going on and calm her down, it didn’t work.
Keeping my distance apparently frightened her, as did moving toward her.
And I couldn’t help but snort in amusement at her words to me. I wasn’t entirely certain what a “kitty” was, but my translation matrix pulled the idea of a small household pet from her mind.
I might be willing to be her pet, but I was by no means small even among my own people, much less hers—and I was far from domesticated.
Her reaction to my ship suggested her people had no cloaking technology, either. No surprise there, since they were, after all, backward enough to be poisoning their own planet.
But what perplexed me more than anything else was her reaction to the death of her foe.
My translation matrix suggested that she found the site of his disembowelment both frightening and horrifying.
Did these people have no justice system?
Barbarians.
I decided to shift into my bipedal form in order to show her that I was no threat. But just as I did so, she dropped into the traditional submissive posture.
Perhaps these people are not so primitive after all.
Taking her submission as a sign of her willingness to accept me, I completed my shift, picked up her tiny form, and carried her into my ship.
Once inside, I hit the wall panel to close the door and set my new bride on her feet, delighted at her submission.
So the very last thing I expected was for my beautiful, curvy, accepting and submissive female to turn into a raging claarbeast.
As soon as her feet touched the ground, she leaped at the door, pounding on it and shouting for help.
“What the garlockian hells, woman?” I demanded, even though I knew she almost certainly couldn’t understand me.
She spun around and pressed her back against the door panel, apparently frightened by the sound of my voice.
I need to have her implanted with a translator immediately.
One thing was for sure, though—I was not letting her go back into that dying world full of males who attacked their own females in open daylight.
“Computer,” I instructed, “prepare a sedative appropriate for the female now on board.” Within seconds, the computer beeped and a nearby wall panel opened to present me with a medical-grade solution-injection device.
As soon as I plucked it out of the small recess in the wall, the female muttered to herself, “Oh, great. Now it has a gun.”
I glanced at the device in my hand. She believed this to be a weapon? This female thought I planned to harm her?
Alien people might have alien ways, but this was ridiculous. Under no circumstances would I ever harm any female. Especially not one I planned to make my mate. The sooner I could get her sedated and implanted with her own translation chip, the better off we would both be.
I took a step toward her, and she squeaked and jumped.
Shaking my head, I took another step, preparing to grab her if necessary to inject the sedative.
The foolish female actually took off running.
As ridiculous as it was for her to attempt to escape me in my own ship, I had no choice but to chase her. I was a more efficient hunter in my beast form, but I needed hands to inject her.
Giving chase seemed to only increase her terror, and she dashed down the nearest corridor without even bothering to check for control panels in the flooring. She hit the first one so hard that the entire ship’s hull turned transparent, allowing us to see what was going on outside the ship.
The female didn’t seem to realize this, however, and took the sudden view of the nature preserve outside as if it were an exit rather than merely a viewscreen.
She headed toward the nearest wall.
“Stop,” I called out after her. “You’ll run into—”
I didn’t get to finish the sentence before she hurtled headlong into the inner hull of the ship, slamming into it with a force that made me cringe in empathetic pain.
She bounced off the viewscreen with a yelp, and landed on her beautiful, curvy rear end.
She truly is terrified of me.
The thought was a sobering one. My poor mate had been so conditioned by the terrors of her own planet that she saw everything as a threat.
I would have to help her learn to feel safe.
But first, the translator.
She burst into sobbing tears as I moved to crouch beside her.
I held the medical device to one temple and spoke soothingly to her. “It’s all right, my sweetness.”
The sound of my voice only made her sob harder, though.
“Please don’t kill me,” she begged.
Kill her? Why on all the settled planets would my mate believe I planned to harm her?
Well, she would learn differently soon enough.
I activated the sedation by pulling the trigger on the medical device, and my mate yelped again at the sound of the click.
She slumped forward in apparent relief, but she still tried to get away even as the sedation took effect, dropping to her hands and knees and attempting to crawl away. I shook my head, saddened by how fearful she was.
What a terrible place her planet must be to live. Poisoned air, males who attacked females random, constant terror for one’s life. Even medicine frightened her. I frowned fiercely. Did they practice medical experimentation on their females? If so, the planet might need to be taken over and taught more civilized ways.
; When she realized how much better her life was going to be with me, she would undoubtedly be thrilled.
My mate fought the sedative as long as she could, still muttering about getting away as she slumped down to the floor.
Bending over, I gathered her gently in my arms.
“You’re safe now, my dear,” I murmured to her as I carried her off to the medbay to have her translation device installed so I could explain all of this to her properly.
Chapter Five
Nora
I woke up sometime later to the sound of a soothing male voice asking, “Do you feel better now?”
For a heartbeat, I did feel better, convinced that I had simply passed out somewhere—maybe even before I had seen William fucking Cynthia on my wedding day.
Maybe I had fainted at work and even Peter firing me had been part of a terrible nightmare.
Just a dream. A horrible, terrifying dream.
Then I opened my eyes.
The face that stared down at me was not human. In fact, it was bright green with black stripes and slanted cat’s eyes—also bright green.
Fuck my life.
At the sight of the cat-man’s face, I slid off the metal table-gurney-thingy I was on. I ended up crouched down at the end of the table opposite from him. “What am I doing here?”
Catman stood up to his full height and crossed his arms, tilting his head slightly as he stared at me peeking over the edge of the gurney. “I had my medbay install a new translation matrix for you.”
“A what?”
“A translation matrix. It allows you to understand what I’m saying. I don’t know why you didn’t have one installed at birth.”
“We don’t have those here.”
He looked shocked. “How do you communicate with other species?”
I snorted, resorting to sarcasm, as I often did when frightened. “You’re kidding, right? We can barely communicate with our own species—even the ones who speak our language.”
“You don’t have an official planetary language?” Catman stared around as if he could see all of Earth spread out before him. “What kind of backwater shithole did you send me to, Jalek?” he muttered.
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