Jessica's Mates: A Sci-fi Alien Romance (Brides of the Aashi Book 4)

by Belle Harper

  “No more distractions. Get us down safely.” Tomlee chuckled beside us on another tree.

  “I am very skilled at climbing trees. I wouldn’t let you drop, Jee-seka.” I laughed, and before I knew it we were on the ground. My muscles too sore to stand, I collapsed in a heap.

  “My hearts, why are you down here?” K’Tem swooped me up into his arms. I pulled him in for a kiss.

  “I wanted to see you. I wanted to sleep with my mates.” I was glad the moonlight made it easy to see. We would see the M’Mori coming… right? But K’Tem was just like Koh, only he had the guts to stand up to me.

  “You go up there, sleep where it is safe. Sanza and I will sleep below. This way, if anything happens, you will hear it and be able to move on swiftly.”

  I didn’t want this; I wanted my new family to be together as one. My heart was breaking for K’Tem. He fell in love with someone he shouldn’t and followed his heart. And now he might be killed by his own people. Because he betrayed them to save a whole world and the Aashi people.

  I choked out a sob. This was important now. I carried his child. I hadn’t stopped thinking about those words. I didn’t know his datapad could do that—look for life inside me. I wanted to scan Brooklyn and see how many she was really having. This could be such a useful tool to have. We could check the health of the babies.

  “I will protect your mate, Jessica.” Sanza came to stand beside K’Tem. He was so tall. And blue. It was interesting seeing the differences between the two of them, where Sanza could hide in the night, K’Tem’s whole chest glowed as bright as the night sky.

  “Cover your chest, please. I don’t want them finding you with fated marks.”

  K’Tem looked down and the look he gave me was cute, like he forgot they were there as he ran his fingers over the swirls absentmindedly.

  “I didn’t think of that, thank you, Jessica.” He kissed me again, and when he let go, Koh jumped up the tree with me, scaring the crap out of me as he rushed back up. I watched K’Tem put on a shirt to cover his glowing fated marks.

  “Do you wish to sleep beside Elle?” Tomlee asked. I looked over and saw she was lying against her mate, Marin. But it was like she was on a platform that had been built there.

  “We have room,” she offered and I agreed. If she was fine with my guys, I was with hers. It was Tomlee who sat with me. I was wrapped in his arms just as Elle was wrapped in Marin’s arms.

  “I’m exhausted and I haven’t even done anything but be carried. I kinda wish I could have slept while I was being carried, but too much jostling,” she told me as she yawned. I followed the yawn.

  “I’m feeling the same, but I don’t know how I will sleep knowing K’Tem is down there… I can’t lose him.”

  Elle reached her open palm over to me. I moved in Tomlee’s arms so I could reach out and hold her hand. She was supportive and caring, and knew I just needed her reassurance.

  After a long time and I still couldn’t sleep, I reached up and stroked Tomlee’s face. His face was so relaxed as I traced his brow line and down to his lips. I could feel his cock growing beneath me. I stopped and I could see the hint of his smile.

  “Don’t stop, it feels so good,” he almost purred to me. Dang… sleepy, horny Tomlee was hot.

  “Can you not fuck on this tree? I already have the fear we will all fall to our deaths,” Elle joked from beside me. I stifled my laugh.

  “The Aashi are like cats, they have nine lives and always land on their feet.” I had no idea if they were, but I wanted to play along with her joke of falling.

  “I’m really freaked out and I haven’t slept at all. Tell me a story… something funny so I can stop thinking about falling.”

  “Don’t worry, my love, we have you,” her mates both said in unison. But she still worried. I tried to think of a joke. Something to make her laugh.

  “Well… when the assholes kidnapped me, they wanted me to mate bond them.” Elle made a small sound of worry, but I shook it off. “Well, I kicked the closest one in the nuts. And that dumbass, Bezen, thought I had chosen that dude first to mate bond. He practically begged me to kick him in the dick and nuts.”

  She made a snorting and choking sound.

  “Wait… wait up. You kicked him in the nuts, and they thought that was mate bonding?” she asked, amused. I nodded, then realized she couldn’t see me.

  “I’m not joking. They actually lined up to be kicked in the nuts.” Now all the males around me started to laugh.

  “My mate, she is a sly one,” Tomlee said as he laughed more. I was crying so much from laughing. It helped with the distraction. I now wasn’t thinking too much about falling.

  The next thing I knew, it was sunny, and I was in Koh’s arms as he traveled with me through the trees.

  “You wake, my heart. Would you like something to eat?”

  I nodded, but first… I really needed to pee.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Koh

  I worried as much as Jee-seka did about K’Tem. He was my bond family now. I cared very much for him. We had been traveling a long time. It had been three days. We were closer now to the Goddess Arena.

  “Halt,” was called out through the trees, and I stopped, wavering on my tired legs. I was tired and hungry, as most of the clan was. I closed my eyes for a moment and I felt myself tilt a little. I corrected myself and stood as tall as I could, just resting for a moment.

  Jee-seka screamed, “Koh!” My eyes flashed down and I saw her wide eyes on my face. “Oh, Koh. You need to sit down. Do you need water?” I shook my head. I needed to keep my mate safe, and I could push through, even though my body wanted to stop and collapse for many days.

  Everyone felt the same, but we were so close to the Goddess Arena. I could feel it in my bones and the tension in the air. Tension…

  I looked up and saw what had made Vallyn call for us to all halt. The M’Mori ship was up ahead. More than one again. I listened to the males around me. So many whispered words, until one called out.

  “They have dropped more females. The clans are picking up more females in the Goddess Arena.” The chatter increased around us. How close were those males to see the M’Mori bring in more females… We needed to warn them about what the M’Mori were doing. Were the clans coming here to collect them? Would they travel with us, away from the lands we knew? Or would they stay?

  It hadn’t been a question for us. We would leave our clan lands because they were just the place we put our huts. The clans had been around for as long as time. They were lands that the Aashi of those clans were all raised in. But Clan Wolf, with the people that made our clan, that was home. We could live anywhere and it would feel like home with my clan around me.

  “I will take her.” Tomlee had wrapped his arms around Jee-seka. I nodded and let go of her, watching as he cradled her to his chest. Her legs had hurt too much after the first day in the same position. She couldn’t stand on her legs. We changed the way we carried after that, making sure to change her position throughout the day.

  We had to be careful now she was carrying our kit. We hadn’t spoken about it because I was waiting for a time when all of us would be together and we could celebrate our kit. K’Tem had said kit, and I knew most humans have only one kit. So, I knew there was one. One little kit for us to love and take care of. It made me more determined than ever to get my mate to the mountains, to safe lands.

  There was a loud roar and I heard a female screaming out. The males around us came to our side, their spears ready to protect Jee-seka. My body now awake and aware of what was around us.

  “Elle,” my mate called out to the screaming female. Then other females called out to her. Was she hurt? Injured? What was that sound?

  News broke through the trees that Sanza, the blue alien male, had charged through the woods, screaming to attack the M’Mori for killing and taking his people. K’Tem couldn’t get him to stop. He was unstoppable, and now we had been waiting. For what, I wasn’t sure. The M’M
ori ships had left, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t return.

  “We will camp below and wait for the males that were sent out to warn the clans. They shall return in a day,” Vallyn announced.

  I knew my Jee-seka was grateful to be able to urinate on the ground. She did not like that she was in the tree to pee. She wished to do more than urinate and told me she would wait for us to be on the ground to dig a hole. I understood that she preferred to be on foot, but we were not going to take a chance. Even if it was to relieve oneself.

  K’Tem greeted us when we found him. He pulled us all in for a hug, something that Aashi males didn’t do, but I liked it. I was happy to see him again. After all I had was him calling out to us, letting us know he was safe, and it helped Jee-seka sleep once she heard his voice.

  As we all collapsed on the ground together, wrapped up in our happy family, Jee-seka started to sing. This was not one of our songs. She didn’t know our songs, and we rarely sang. But her voice was soft and sweet on this warming day.

  Then other females joined in and they all sang. It was a song of love. It was beautiful and the whole clan sat silent as they listened. When it was all done, there were many words of praise. I didn’t know the females could do that. In all their time here, I had never heard them sing.

  “I need to go speak with Elle, she isn’t doing well. I think Sanza leaving has upset her.” We all let her go, knowing it was important for Jee-seka to comfort her friends.

  “Was Sanza her mate?” I didn’t understand why she would be more upset over his leaving than the rest of us.

  K’Tem shook his head. “I don’t know, only that he was very angry with the M’Mori and wanted to avenge the death of his family. I begged him to stay, that it would only result in his death also. But he wouldn’t listen. He was full of rage. I only hope he didn’t make it there before they left, that he will return to us soon.”

  I didn’t know Sanza well, not like K’Tem did, but I didn’t wish harm on him. He was part of Clan Wolf now.

  “We should go find him, return him,” Tomlee announced.

  Daku or Vallyn needed to send out a search party. I would gladly volunteer to find and return our blue clan member.

  That was, if he was still here.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Jessica

  Elle was crying with her mates. They held her tightly, stroking her hair and trying to comfort her, but she was inconsolable. When they saw Luna and I approach, they nodded for us to come. They knew she needed females to help her in that moment. Maybe she needed some girl talk. I guessed it would be hard to tell your mates you had a crush on someone who just left and could possibly not come back. They stood and moved away as we came to her.

  “Girl talk time,” Luna said as she sat beside Elle and wrapped her arm around her shoulder. Elle sniffled a few more times and wiped her eyes as I sat down on the opposite side and reached for her hand. Her eyes red and puffy from all the crying. I wiggled my toes in the soft, purple grass and hoped being on the ground would make everyone feel better.

  Elle had sang along with me and the others. Ed Sheeran always made me feel better in the past, and I didn’t know why I randomly started singing “Perfect,” and was surprised when the others knew it also. When we all started singing, I almost cried. It was just so seamless. Like something I had been missing for so long and I had just found it. It made me feel lighter, happier.

  Quinn almost bowled me over in a bear hug. I laughed. “You’re an amazing singer. We need to do concerts… Can I request songs?” I chuckled into her shoulder and pulled back to see her face. Her huge grin made me chuckle once again.

  “I’m not that good, and I don’t know much… I mostly listened to Ed. But we can all sing and have fun anytime. I would love that.” I really just wanted to cheer up Elle. I think she really liked Sanza, but by the way she was acting, maybe she liked him more than I suspected, like maybe he was her mate?

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Luna asked Elle, but when she shook her head, I looked around. We were all here, together. The six of us girls. And out there, another six girls were on their way to their clans… unprepared for the life they had come here for. I wanted to reach out and let them know we were here. Maybe they would come to us… God, I hoped they would.

  “Maybe… we can sing and the new girls will hear us? They might come to us?” It was probably a bad idea. I wasn’t the best at ideas. Quinn had so many and I just went with it all because they were always so good. She was smart. I wasn’t a leader, that was for sure. Hell, my last job was cleaning people’s offices. I had nothing to bring here other than how to throw out trash and vacuum.

  Everyone didn’t think it was a bad idea, and I was surprised. They actually thought it was genius after Daku shot us down at calling out to the new girls. They didn’t say anything about singing and let us do it before. Well, not let. They didn’t stop us was what I meant.

  “Well, I would like to have an all-out concert, but we need to jazz it up a bit. Can we have a more harmonized type of song? Like The Supremes do? Or do you all know ‘Please Mr. Postman’?” Hadley smiled at us, nodding. That was a great idea.

  “Oh… I know some of that one. Can you start singing it and maybe we can really blow these Aashi out of the water with it?” Brooklyn bounced beside me.

  “We can clap and take the different parts.” I laughed. I didn’t fully know this song but I couldn’t mess it up in front of the Aashi because they didn’t have a clue how it was supposed to go. It would be the “Wolf Girls” version.

  We practiced for about ten minutes while more males started getting closer to us, hearing us randomly here and there. But we didn’t sing the whole thing in front of them. We all wanted to surprise them.

  I actually knew more of the song than I thought. My grandmother used to listen to a lot of old songs, and when Hadley started singing, I knew enough to sing back up to her.

  The males knew something was going to happen soon as they started to sit down in front of us. Elle seemed distracted and she was even laughing. This was good, good for her and me. And everyone else. We had been traveling so long. We needed something good, and singing was something that had been missing from my everyday life and I never realized it until today.

  Luna had us all stand up in a row. I was between Elle and Brooklyn.

  “We should do a little dance move like this.” Elle placed her hands out in front and did a cute little shimmy and then swung her hips. I liked it and copied until we all started and the males in front all clapped when we stopped. Like that was the show.

  “We totally need to recreate the Pitch Perfect movies. That would be so much fun.” Quinn had this huge grin, and I watched her as she bounced around on her spot.

  “I haven’t seen those ones,” Luna said with a frown.

  “I will teach you it all. I have watched them a million times.” Quinn hugged her tightly.

  “Are you all ready for the Clan Wolf singers?” Luna called out. I could see Daku getting agitated at how loud she was. But he just stood frozen there, like he didn’t know how to say no to her. Hell, I didn’t think I could ever say no to Luna. She was a born leader.

  I saw my mates all in the front row now. They had all organized themselves like when we had the clan meeting days ago.

  “Alright, so far we have one number only. So be prepared for more in the future. We have a whole musical we will put on when we have practiced,” Quinn called out now.

  I shook my head but I couldn’t help the grin spreading across my face. I watched the others. They all had huge smiles. Why didn’t we think of this before? Maybe because I wasn’t into public speaking?

  But before I could think further on it, Hadley started and we were on. And all my nerves drifted away.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tomlee

  My mate had the voice of the Goddess. She could sing, and when all the females stood up, we all waited to hear them once again. Her huge grin made my stomach feel like
a bird was trapped in there and tickling me from the inside. My heart was full and happy.

  They sang all together, but not the same as before. This time it was different. All the girls sang a different part, and together it made this amazing sound. We all sat in awe as they moved their bodies to the words and tune. It was amazing.

  This must be a human custom again, one that I would love to see many more times. I knew their females liked to mate a lot, more than Aashi females did. But that was because our females only mated when in heat.

  I wondered if Jee-seka would want to continue mating now she had a kit within her. I had been so excited to hear I was to be a father. Something I never thought would happen. I had resigned myself to thinking I would be an uncle to Brooklyn’s kits. But I knew it wouldn’t be the same. Her kits would have five fathers as it was, all wanting to spend time with the kits, so I knew I wouldn’t get much time with them.

  I looked over to Makee and he signed to me that he was happy. I signed back to him, telling him how amazing our mates were. We were truly the most blessed males on all of Aarzyn.

  After they finished, they all bent their bodies in half by leaning forward. When they stood up, we all cheered. I couldn’t hold myself back. I jumped up and ran to her. I grabbed her and swung her around in my arms. Then, I realized what I had done and I placed her on the ground gently and held my hand to her belly, where she grew our kit.

  “I am so sorry, my love. I don’t know what came over me.” She laughed and kissed me.

  “You can’t hurt the kit from spinning me, but maybe don’t do it on an empty stomach. I need some food. Water too.” How could I forget the needs of my mate? She clearly hadn’t eaten in a long time.