Slag: Book Four in the Galaxy Pirates Alien Abduction Romance Series (Shifter)

by Alana Khan

  Khour and his henchmen have been chasing the pirates around the galaxy ever since. Maybe Thantose was right. A’Zul and I will be safer here.

  The males take off at a run after hearing Marcus’s comm. Now it’s just me and the big green guy on the stretcher.

  Seneca had A’Zul on a drip inserted into his arm. In addition to sedating him, it was filled with nutrients. It was removed right before they stretchered him off the ship. The medic told me it would wear off soon.

  “KJ?” A’Zul’s obviously awake, but his eyes are unfocused and he’s lying back as if he’s still weak.

  “Hey. I guess you’re wondering what happened to that nice clean cell you were in.”

  “I’m surprised I’m alive. If I were Thantose I would have shot me.”

  “Sextus did shoot you—with a stunner.” I’m at his side, relieved to see the muscle tone has returned to his face.

  He gazes around the old wooden barn. It’s sturdy and surprisingly clean, but nothing fancy.

  “Thantose was afraid you’d flail around and slice a hole in his hull. He decided everyone would be safer with you on a planet instead of a glorified tin can.”

  “He was right. Why are you here?” He’s scowling.

  “Because I’m with you, big guy. I thought we’d established that we’re a team.”

  “Can you unfasten these bindings?”

  I approach and touch the locks that are keyed to my biometrics. He sits up, rubbing his wrists.

  “Where are we?”

  After I explain where we are, he stands gingerly on the hay-strewn floor, then gives me a piercing gaze.

  “You should be on that ship. I don’t know what’s going on with me. I’m not safe.”

  I let him scold me for a few minutes, then tell him, “I knew you wouldn’t approve of my decision. I did it anyway. It’s too late to change things. Besides it turns out I might be safer here than on the ship.”

  After I explain about Daneur Khour, and A’Zul scolds me one more time for not staying in the safety of the ship, he sweeps me into his arms and hugs me.

  Has it been only three days without this? It feels like months. This huge male has crawled under my skin and into my heart. I press my lips to his pec and feel the reassuring rhythm of his heart.

  “Thantose did the right thing to stun me. I have no control over my shifts. You can’t trust me. I can’t even trust myself.” As if on cue, he flickers, his face looking like a palomino for the briefest moment, then he turns back into a humanoid male.

  His face is full of self-loathing. To distract him from that, I say, “Let’s explore Kallion.”

  “I don’t deserve you,” he says as he drops a kiss on the top of my head.

  “Perhaps,” I say as I shrug. “If you happen to turn into a horse you can give me a ride back to the barn. If you turn into a dragon you can fly me home.”

  “They have names, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “My stallion is Ozias, my dragon form is Dranii.”

  “Good to know,” I say with a smile. As they said in Alice in Wonderland—curiouser and curiouser.

  A’Zul

  She grabs my hand and heads away from the barn.

  “Brin says there’s a waterfall this way. Let’s see how you do. If you don’t feel up to it today, maybe we’ll explore there tomorrow.”

  “What did the medic say about my shifting?”

  “He knows nothing about it. He’s not familiar with your race. And there is little to no information about your people or culture in the Intergalactic Database. When he realized you were a shifter it made sense that your DNA kept shifting and your organs were stronger than he’d ever seen. We wonder if maybe it’s just that your inner shifter was suppressed for so long because of the radiation it needs to get its mojo back.”

  “Mo? Jo?”

  “Well, that isn’t exactly how he put it. He said a lot of medical words, but that’s what he meant.”

  We walk hand-in-hand for a while. “It reminds me of my planet, To’mah. It’s odd to see green grass, though.”

  “What color is your grass?”

  “Purple.”

  “What did you look like? Before?”

  The way she blurted that out so quickly, and the way her shoulders are hunched, as if she’s sorry she asked, tells me she’s wanted the answer for a long time.

  “I was golden, with long thick hair I usually wore in a braid.” I consider telling her I was considered handsome, but decide against it. Pride is frowned upon by my people. Besides, that’s a distant memory. We both know what I look like now.

  “I’ve seen you,” she says as she stops walking and yanks on my hand to pull me close.

  “How?”

  “When you were shifting the day all this started. I saw a golden male, the most handsome male I’ve ever seen. That’s your true form?”

  My heart hurts as painfully as if it was being squeezed in a dragon’s claw. I keep my features impassive until I pull her forward. When we’re walking and she can’t see my face, I feel it vibrating with . . . what? Hurt? Anger? Pain? All of those emotions and more swirl inside me.

  The picture I saw in our cabin’s mirror appears before me, mocking me. The most handsome male she’s ever seen looks nothing like me. Nothing. And it’s obvious I can’t shift back. I’ve lost so much.

  “A’Zul? Did I . . .? I fucked up, didn’t I?”

  “That was my true form,” I answer stiffly. Part of me wants to drag her into my arms and hold her to make things better, but nothing will fix this. “Let’s find the waterfall.” I make a path through thick green grasses.

  KJ

  I think I just told the big guy he’s ugly. No, I’m certain I did. Not only that, I told him he used to be gorgeous. No wonder he can’t bear to even glance at me right now.

  “I’m sorry. Sometimes shit comes out of my mouth before I can shut myself up.”

  “You don’t need to apologize. I think I looked better before too.”

  He pulls his hand from mine. When I turn to look, I see him shift right before my eyes. One moment he’s huge, green A’Zul, the next he’s that palomino again. He’s enormous, the size of a Clydesdale with the lines of an Arabian. Deep gold with blond mane and tail. Magnificent!

  What did he call him? Oz? He lifts his head to scent the air, his nose tipped to the blue, cloudless sky. Then he takes off at a run.

  I watch, a calm smile on my face, as he lopes through the tall grass. I’ve often wondered what it would feel like to be an animal. My two favorite things to imagine are being an eagle and a horse.

  When I’m an eagle I fantasize so clearly I can almost feel what it’s like to ride the air currents and spy the tiniest details down below with my sharp eyesight.

  When I’m a horse, I revel in the power of running like the wind. That must be what A’Zul is feeling now. The muscles in his hindquarters stretching, propelling him forward at greater speeds, the wind blowing through his long mane.

  When he runs out of sight, I worry he’ll get lost, then I become even more frightened when I wonder if he’s running away on purpose because of my verbal blunder a few minutes ago. I don’t know whether to try to follow after him, although I could never keep up, or if I should stand rooted where I am and wait for his return.

  It’s pretty here, with the landscape full of trees and running streams. It feels good to breathe air that wasn’t manufactured onboard a spaceship or filled with red sand. I wander to a large rock near the edge of the stream and sit on it, waiting for A’Zul to return.

  After a while, he appears over the rise of a small hillock and makes his way directly toward me. What a beautiful animal. He nudges me with his muzzle, then kneels with one front knee on the ground, the other stretched out in front of him.

  “An invitation?”

  It’s easy for me to climb onto his back and grab hold of his mane. It’s only when he rises to his full height that I realize it’s a long way to the ground and I’m not
a very good rider.

  He doesn’t run, though; he walks back in the direction he just came from.

  I’m not sure how much he can understand, but it’s an interesting opportunity to say what I want. He certainly can’t interrupt.

  “Neither of us asked to be stolen from our home planets,” I start without preamble. “I certainly never dreamed, not in my wildest imagination, that I’d fly in a spaceship or meet snake-like aliens who would slice me with their stiletto nails and throw me into a mine. This wasn’t my first choice for my life, not by a longshot.”

  He stops and pulls at a clump of particularly green grass, then ambles forward.

  “Every Earth girl grows up with a picture in mind of the male she wants to marry—to mate. And sorry, no one’s picture included a big green male from planet To’mah.” I don’t use the phrase he did, ‘with skin like a warty water animal’, although I can’t help but think it.

  “But life has a way of happening, A’Zul. I met you and was terrified of you. When you pulled out that gigantic cock and stroked it and splattered your come on me, I was horrified. And . . .” I know I shouldn't admit this, but I’m trying to be honest. “And so aroused I was dripping wet.”

  My palomino stops and turns his head to look at me, telling me that, at least at this moment, he understands every word I say.

  “My secret’s out.” I laugh. “So, no. I didn’t expect you or want you or dream about you in my fantasies. But I found you, and we saved each other. We’re a team. And, yeah, the golden male I got a glimpse of was hot as hell. And I mean that in the very best way. But you’re the male I’m falling for, so get used to it.”

  Suddenly I’m falling. I try to clutch onto the horse’s withers, but there’s not a horse under me anymore. Right before my ass hits the ground, A’Zul catches me. A great big green naked A’Zul.

  “You heard everything I said, right?” I ask, not sure if I want him to answer yes or no.

  “Every word. You did say falling, right?”

  A’Zul made a joke! I love it.

  “You shifted just so you could dump me on my ass?”

  “It would have been a good joke, but I have no control.”

  He leans and nuzzles my forehead with his, then murmurs into my ear, “Falling for me? That’s a good thing in your language, right?”

  “Well,” I say coyly, “only good if the fellow you’re falling for feels the same way.”

  “He does,” his voice has that rough, rumbly tone that makes me feel like we’re the only two people in the world. Which, in a way, we are.

  He gives me a swift kiss, then takes my hand and starts walking.

  “I saw the waterfall. You’re going to love it.”

  It’s odd how everything is so similar to Earth and yet so different. The grass is green, but a slightly different shade than home. There are wildflowers dotted everywhere, but like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

  The most noticeable thing, though, is the male at my side. He’s calmer than I’ve ever seen him. We’re safe here, and even though he can’t control his shifting abilities, he must feel good that I accept him as he is.

  I hear the waterfall, or water divot as Brin called it, before I see it. There’s something about the power of the thundering falls that fills me with awe. She told me there was a big surprise that was too fabulous to tell me about. She said I’d know it when I saw it.

  Well, I see it now.

  The falls itself is unimpressive. Instead of seeing water cascading down a mountain like on Earth, it’s massive amounts of water falling over a hillock that’s maybe fifteen feet high. The deep crevasse into the planet below, though, must go down a long way, maybe a mile, because the noise is deafening.

  All that water falling all that distance creates humid droplets forming into rainbows. There are dozens of rainbows arcing over the crevice, and dozens more in the chasm that plunges deep into the planet.

  “Beautiful,” I say as I edge nearer the precipice.

  “I knew you’d love this.”

  We walk close to the edge, still holding hands as we stare down.

  “There’s a rainbow down there that’s 360 degrees!” I exclaim. “Have you ever seen one like that?”

  “No.”

  After a while, we wander to a nearby hill and sit for a while. I glance at A’Zul and inventory his face. Now that I know him, that his presence is part of the fabric of my life, it’s hard to see him the way I did that first day in the horrible mine on Rhoid.

  He’s not a big green alien with angular features and pebbled skin, he’s my friend—my best friend. And my lover. He’s neither handsome nor ugly. He’s simply A’zul, the male who makes my life immeasurably better.

  “I want you,” I tell him levelly.

  “Not the golden male?” he asks. This is not an accusation, but comes from an insecure place. I understand, it’s my fault he has those insecurities.

  “I’d take that golden male in a heartbeat, A’zul, as long as this,” I tap my finger on his forehead, “was inside him.”

  I lean toward him and wait for his mouth to meet me halfway. And it does. His soft lips nibble mine as he presses me back onto the fragrant grasses and leans next to me, both of us facing each other on our hips.

  We’ve had sex dozens, maybe hundreds of times. There were the awkward fumblings in the dark between two different species who couldn’t communicate. There were the desperate, red-driven couplings in the cave that felt more compulsive than consensual. I can tell already that what’s happening here is going to be different.

  He’s stroking my side from shoulder to hip as if we have all the time in the world. Maybe he’s right, there’s nothing that will intrude here.

  He stops. There’s an urgency in his gaze as if he needs to tell me something right this second.

  “I dreamed of this KJ. In my private thoughts back on To’mah, my mate had golden hair like yours, and golden skin to match. I like that you’re not what I expected. You’re right, what’s in here,” he taps my forehead, “is more important than skin and bones. You saved my life as much as I saved yours. You came back for me and pulled me out of the mine. You chose to leave your people to come here with me. It speaks loudly to me. Will you be my mate?”

  My gaze flies to his. I had to double-check, but by the serious look on his face, the way his eyes don't flinch from mine, I know he means what he said.

  “Mate?”

  “Mate. To be with me forever. To do what we’ve done since the moment we met. To help each other even when it means personal sacrifice. To be honest even when it hurts. Yes, be my mate.”

  My heart tears in two. Everything he said is true. He beautifully described what we have. But he omitted the most important thing. Hot tears gather behind my eyes.

  He must see the sadness on my face because everything about him changes. His nose flares and the corners of his mouth turn down. Every muscle in his body hardens and he pulls away a few inches.

  “I understand. It was stupid of me to presume. I—”

  “Not stupid, A’Zul. What you said sounds wonderful, but there’s something missing.”

  “I understand, KJ. Your heart doesn’t beat for me like mine does for you. Your mind isn’t consumed by thoughts of me as mine is for you. You don’t dream of a thousand ways to ease my burdens like I do for you. You don’t wake up in the middle of the night just to look at my sleeping face to make certain there’s the smallest smile on it, and if there isn’t vow to the Gods to make tomorrow even better for you. I have these feelings for you, KJ. I wish you returned them, but I understand.”

  Oh my God, I’ve never seen a face so transformed by heartbreak before. He’s the picture of misery. He can’t even look me in the eyes.

  As he rolls away from me and attempts to rise, I grab his wrist and pull him toward me.

  “I do have those feelings for you A’Zul. I didn’t think you had them for me.”

  His head actually tips back in surprise, his gaze finding m
ine.

  “You talked about what we did for each other, but you didn’t mention your feelings, your heart.” I place my palm on his chest, over his beating heart. “But you just described them so beautifully. I just wanted to hear one word, but you gave me so many exquisite ones.”