Something else entirely.
“Come with me, young man,” Mom said, taking Braun’s burly arm. “If you are dating my daughter, I am going to ask you at least a thousand questions.”
Were we dating? We hadn’t gone anywhere but my apartment, and while we’d definitely gotten to know each other, it wasn’t dinner and a movie either. Not that I was going to share that with Mom. There were some things I kept secret.
“Don't forget the gadgets!” my father called over his shoulder as he followed Gramps, and we all laughed.
My mother and Braun were next, and he had to duck through the doorway.
I was the last inside, closing the door behind me, my heart bursting at the seams with happiness for the first time in so long it was difficult to remember. I’d had no idea how important it was for my family to meet Braun. For Braun to like them.
My mother went to the fridge and grabbed some things for lunch as I pulled out a chair at the kitchen table for Gramps. No matter how tired he might be, he wasn’t going to miss any discussion about space.
“Now, Braun, tell me everything about yourself,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as she put things on the counter.
I shook my head. “Mom, you can’t do that. He will take you literally.”
“Good.” Her raised brows let me know she meant business. I glanced at Braun, who looked to me for guidance. I pointed to a chair, and he sat down, which eased all our necks.
“Go ahead,” I told him. “They’ve never talked with an alien before.”
“You, Daughter, can begin by telling us where you met.”
“At work.”
“Ah, you are the Atlan warlord for the television show,” Mom said, snapping her fingers. Then she narrowed her eyes. “Staying at the hotel where my baby works?”
“Yes.”
I pulled a chair and sat close to Gramps so I could hold his frail hand and hoped, now that the chemotherapy was done, he could gain some weight and feel better. I looked up from our entwined fingers to find Braun watching me with a heat in his eyes that I recognized, but the tenderness there was new. I’d mentioned that Gramps was sick, and I was sure Braun could tell.
“Go ahead. Tell us everything. I want to know, too.”
And I did. I knew nothing about him other than the fact that he was an alien, he was very skilled in bed, and he’d fought in a war in outer space, been captured and tortured somehow and implanted with other alien stuff like those weird Star Trek Borg. And most of that I knew because I’d watched the promotions for the Bachelor Beast television show.
Although, as I now thought about it, I’d seen him naked multiple times and hadn’t noticed any weird computer parts. So if he had them, where were they? He looked totally, gorgeously normal to me. And he was supposed to turn into some kind of beast? I hadn’t seen that either, not with him. His voice had grown deeper and his face had seemed a bit wider once or twice—maybe—but that was it. So what was the big deal about this beast side of him? Was it like some kind of animal instinct?
I remembered watching as Warlord Wulf had turned into his beast when he’d torn across the set to get to his just-found mate, Olivia. Now he’d been a beast. But Braun had never been anything like that. He hadn’t grown a foot or lost his ability to speak well. It could also be that because I wasn’t his true mate, his beast hadn’t come out for me.
I felt myself frown and shoved the thought aside. Now wasn’t the time to think about that.
Braun cleared his throat, breaking me from my thoughts. I wanted to know everything about this man. No. Alien. He was an alien. And he wasn’t mine. He had a hotel floor full of beautiful, polished, perfect women to choose from. A petite, curvy, half-black Punjabi girl working as a maid to pay rent on a shithole, one-bedroom apartment needed to remember that.
But damn, looking at him, it was hard not to want more.
8
Braun
Surrounded by Angela’s family, inundated with questions, I should have been pleased.
Instead I felt as if I were drowning. I took a deep breath, tried to hide my nerves along with the beast that wanted me to run from this home. From these kind people who looked at me with open curiosity. Not because of integrations or the fact that I was the latest bachelor beast, but because I was from someplace foreign to them.
They wanted to know about my culture, my way of life. About me.
Perhaps that was why I was uncomfortable. I wasn’t used to being anything but an integrated warlord. Something to be fearful of. An oddity.
So I shared what I thought they would find interesting. I told them I was from Atlan, which they knew. I told them that I fought for the Coalition, which they also knew from the television show.
As I spoke, Angela’s mother, Michelle, placed food on the table while her father set out plates, silverware and glasses of water.
“How long were you a POW?” The elder, Jassa Kaur, was very clearly unwell. His body was too thin, even for a small human male. Angela had mentioned that she put money toward his medicine. I didn’t know how ill he was because a ReGen wand or a pod would solve whatever the elderly man had before he became this sickly. But his gaze was focused and intelligent, and he listened to everything I said with a level of interest I had never experienced before.
The fact that he had befriended a dangerous animal showed his character.
Humans were an oddly passionate people. War and death were accepted and even expected on my home planet. A male without a mate to tame his beast was ultimately executed when the fever overtook him. We learned young not to question these facts, nor place too much weight on any relationship except that with our mate.
“Well? How long?”
“Gramps, please. Leave him alone. This can’t be an easy topic for him. Remember, we are the aliens to him. We are the odd ones.” Angela leaned forward and looked up at me with sadness in her gaze. Or was that pity? I wanted neither from her.
“What is this P.O.W.?”
“Prisoner of war,” Angela clarified.
I nodded. “Ah, yes. Being a prisoner, I lost track of the days. Too many.”
Gramps nodded as if he understood. “How did you escape?”
“A Coalition ReCon Unit found me and brought me in.”
“Hospital?”
“Medical?” I asked, hoping my understanding of the language was sound. “Yes. For three days.”
The old man leaned forward with interest now. “Three days? That’s it?”
“The integrations that could be removed were extracted from my body, and I was placed in a ReGen pod to heal. I was unconscious for nearly two days. When I emerged from the pod, I was transported to The Colony.”
Michelle sat in the empty chair beside me and called to her mate. “Hari, he’s talking about gadgets and gizmos. Stop fussing with the ice maker and get over here.” Angela’s father had been busy in the food cooling machine called a refrigerator. Besides the quick food Angela had made us when I stayed with her, I had not seen a meal prepared by hand since I was a boy, before I entered training. The barracks used S-Gen machines to provide food for so many hungry warlords. But the items on the table were slices of what I guessed were meat and cheese, bowls of mixed items I didn’t recognize, and bottles of some kind. I had no idea what they were used for, but I assumed they contained food.
Hari hurried over and joined us. Michelle reached for him at once, her hand rubbing his shoulder in a gentle touch that he accepted as his due. I closed my eyes so Angela would not see the longing on my face for a touch such as this. I had been born for war, trained from a young age, hardened and taught to kill to protect my people. I regretted none of it. But now, with Angela so near, my beast needed her, needed to be accepted and soothed by our mate. To know the same touch from another to me.
The elder cleared his throat as he used a spoon to put some of the unidentified food on his plate. “You said the integrations that could be removed. You still have some of them?”
�
�Yes.” The reminder of my contamination and failure as a warrior erased all longing from my body, replacing it with anger. “I am considered contaminated by my people. The Coalition worlds do not want warriors with Hive integrations on their planets. We are considered too dangerous. So we live out our days on The Colony, mining and working for the rest of the Coalition Fleet.”
“Sounds like prison camp to me,” the old man said and used his metal drinking cup to bang on his pants where they covered his lower leg. I glanced around the table to see what he was doing. To my surprise, a metallic banging sound was the result.
“Titanium,” the older man explained. “Lost the leg in battle a long time ago. Can you beat that?” He was chuckling, which confused me and my beast. How was the loss of a limb amusing?
At my silence all four of the humans looked up expectantly. Angela went to the cabinet and returned with an odd-shaped package, like a sealed bag. She tugged at the top, and it opened easily. Reaching in, she pulled out yellow flat disks that were misshapen. When she put one in her mouth, it crunched. When she saw me eyeing the item, she took one from her plate and held it out to me.
I put it in my mouth, and it did, indeed, crunch loudly. The flavor was salty and greasy. “What is this?” I asked after swallowing.
“Potato chip,” Angela explained. She reached across the table and poured a few onto my plate.
Her grandfather cleared his throat, and I remembered his question. “Ah, you’re wondering what my war injuries are.”
The older man nodded; the others just waited patiently. Hari was eating a piece of the sliced meat, and Michelle was squirting something from one of the bottles onto her plate. It was bright yellow in color. I was curious about their food, and they were curious about me. I had a feeling I could tell them I did not wish to share, but they weren’t making me out to be an oddity. No, they were intelligent humans who wanted to know about me. About what I’d been through.
I realized that although I had fucked Angela more than once, I had been very careful not to show her my integrations. I’d been a coward, scared perhaps she would be afraid of them. Of me. Would find me distasteful or repulsive.
I’d been wrong.
Her grandfather leaned down and pulled at his pants leg, bunching the fabric in his hands to reveal the metal rod that had replaced the lower piece of his leg. “This is what the war gave me. And I was angry for a long time.”
“How did you defeat your rage?” Even as I asked the question, the beast within paced. He was angry all the time. Every moment of every day since I’d been born, he’d been fighting me. And his rage grew stronger with each passing hour. The reminder of what the Hive had done to me made my blood burn like acid as he fought to break free. It was a different sensation than my beast. The Hive had stolen something from me, and I would never get it back. I knew my voice had changed, but I needed an answer. “How did you forget your failure?”
“Failure?” He tapped his metallic leg again, the ringing of metal on metal loud in the sudden silence around us. “This is not failure, Son. I survived. Just like you did. I’m proud of you.” He leaned back and raised his glass to me in a very human salute I’d seen the females on The Colony perform. “And you can’t defeat the rage. You can’t suppress it. You can’t fight it. You have to accept it and call it friend. That fire is what kept you fighting, it kept you alive and it brought you here. My fire brought me home, back to my family. How is that a failure? It’s a bloody miracle, is what it is. A bloody miracle.”
Angela had scooped some of the mystery food onto my plate, but she put the spoon back in the bowl. “Pasta salad,” she said.
“Thank you,” I replied but paid the food no attention. I didn’t stop to think about my decision, nor did I consider the repercussions. I needed to show myself to my mate. To have her know all of me. What I’d become.
Lifting the shirt Angela had given me to wear, I pulled the fabric off over my head and placed the bunched-up shirt in my lap. Bare from the waist up, I turned around and presented my mate with my back… and the strange silver streaks that spread from my spinal column to disappear in the muscles that run up and down my back.
“Oh my God.” Angela’s voice was whisper soft, and I closed my eyes, not wanting to allow the heated tears I felt gathering to fall. I would not show such weakness. Not here, in front of her family.
Not ever.
The beast bellowed inside my mind, demanding to be set free, to release his fury. I clenched my fists and ignored him and the pain slicing through my skull, as I had for years. I did not lose control. Not for a moment. Not ever.
Not now, in front of these humans who were… special.
My beast was too strong. If I let him go, I might never regain control.
“That is fascinating.” Angela’s mother spoke with a clinical tone I’d come to recognize among medical personnel. “Can I? I don’t want to be rude, but do you mind?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Angela, not understanding the question. She looked up at me, and there were tears in her eyes. “She wants to touch them.”
I nodded my acceptance and turned back to stare at the water in the swimming pool. I had spent time in one recently, with Dr. Surnen’s mate, Mikki. I knew how to swim, but now was not the time for play.
A warm hand pressed to my spine and traced the ridges of both my bones and the Hive integrations that rose from my flesh. “What do they do?”
I answered clinically, the same way Dr. Surnen had told me what could—and could not—be removed from my body without killing me. “They are augmented feedback loops. The striations expand deep into the muscle fibers. I also have them throughout my buttocks, hips and thighs. They make my response time faster. My muscles are also augmented to take additional load.”
“So you are stronger and faster than you would be without them?” she asked.
“Yes. By a factor of three to four times.”
“That is some gadget.” Angela’s father whistled.
Everyone’s food was forgotten.
“And your eyes?” Angela asked the question, her voice soft as if afraid I would take offense. It was the only bit of integration that she’d seen.
“The silver ring is the result of an augmented visual system.”
“That means you would have had integrations directly in the optical centers of your brain.” Angela’s mother was making a statement, not asking a question.
I nodded. “Yes. As you can see, once the external integrations were taken out, the others could not be removed or altered without ending my life.” I spoke clearly, like a teacher lecturing students. “With spinal and brain implants, I was deemed a threat and sent to The Colony.”
“And this happens to all of you?” Angela’s hand traced the line of one silver streak on my back, and I held very still.
“No. Most of us die when the integrations are removed. I was lucky. Dr. Surnen is very skilled with Hive technology.”
“And this Hive, that’s who we’re fighting in outer space?” Angela’s father asked.
“Yes. For centuries.” I sighed and put my shirt back on before turning around. I met her grandfather’s gaze. “It has been a very long war.”
Angela’s grandfather stood and looked down at me. “You promise me you’ll look after our little girl?”
My mouth fell open. He’d surprised me. I’d expected the opposite of what he was giving, which was his approval.
I dipped my head. “I will protect her with my life.”
“Gramps!” Angela exclaimed, but I kept my eyes on her grandfather.
“Good. It has been an honor, soldier.” He raised a hand to his forehead in what I recognized as a human military salute. He lowered his hand and looked at his son. “I am tired, Hari. Help your father to his room, would you?”
“Of course.” Angela’s father rose quickly and moved to help his elderly father out of the room. They disappeared and I was left facing two females, my mate and her mother.
They
both stood as well, and Angela’s mother stepped forward, wrapped her arms around my shoulders and squeezed. With me sitting and her standing, our heights aligned better. “I’m hugging you; deal with it.”
Not wanting to remain seated while an elder female stood, I rose to my feet, and she released her hold because I’d become too tall. Angela laughed and I found my arms moving to embrace the small female who had brought my mate into the universe. I owed her a great debt.
She let go and was wiping tears from her cheeks. “I approve of this one.” The elder female winked an eye at me and disappeared down the hall.
The moment we were alone, Angela came around the table to me and jumped, throwing herself into my arms. I stepped back away from my chair. “I can’t believe all that. What you’ve been through, Braun. I just can’t.”
“Don’t think about it.” I did not want her to be unhappy or distressed by anything in life, but especially me.
She lifted her head from my shoulder and looked up into my face. I held her off the ground easily. She was so small I could have carried ten times the weight without effort. So small. Fragile. Female. So soft.
So powerful.
The beast settled the moment she was in my arms. Should anyone threaten her, hurt her… the resulting destruction would be catastrophic.
“I have to go to class soon,” she said. “Time to take you home.”
I kissed her, mindful of the window where I saw her mother watching us. Even with the audience, I could not resist tasting her. I was proud of myself for leaving my hands chastely clasped to her thighs. “The hotel is not my home, but there is something I must acquire there.”
She leaned her forehead against mine, and I did not want to move. Ever.
“Okay. I can’t miss school. I have to go. But I want you to come to my apartment after. Yes?”
She asked as if she doubted I’d join her. Nothing would stop me. “Of course. I will be there before nine, human time.”
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