PROTECTED BY THE ALIEN BODYGUARD

MATES OF THE KALUMA

ELLA MAVEN

ABOUT PROTECTED BY THE ALIEN BODYGUARD

I’ll earn her trust and then I’ll make her mine…

Mouse: I have no memory or what or who I am, all I know is that everyone and everything is out to hurt me. Hands slap, teeth bite, and boots kick. So even when I meet a big bronzed warrior with blue eyes whose hands are gentle and voice is kind, I don’t trust him. And when he starts showing up in my dreams, a part of me I long thought was dead awakens with a passion.

Cravus: When I’m hired to protect the small female on a cross-planet journey, I’m told she’s a new, unintelligent species. I can’t get close enough to her without her snapping her blunt teeth at me, but underneath the dirty hair and clean rags, I could swear she’s clever.

When a nasty attack has us on the run, I know the only way to keep ourselves alive is to get her to trust me. And only then do I learn she’s human and not only that—she’s my mate too.

Protect by the Alien Bodyguard is a Sci-Fi alien romance that features a big warrior with a heart of gold, and a heroine who’s been through a lot until she finally finds a soft place to land.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2021 by Ella Maven

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

Copyedited by Del’s Diabolical Editing

Cover design by Covers By Combs

First edition: September 2021

CONTENTS

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

CLAIMED BY THE ALIEN CHIEFTAIN

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Ella Maven

ONE

Cravus

“This one is harmless,” the Rogastix said, pointing at a furred beast cowering in the back corner of its cage. “Its former owner filed down all its teeth, so even if it snaps, it’s not going to do any damage.” He looked me up and down with a smarmy smirk. “Guess it would take a bigger animal to hurt you, huh?”

I just stared at him. Anything could cause pain if it felt threatened enough. Even a toothless rodent. Also, I had no desire to be friendly with this scum. The entire job, even though it was sanctioned by the Rinian Council, made my skin crawl. All these creatures had a purpose, even the warpel who had no eyes or ears and crawled along the bottom of his cage on tiny hairs. They’d all been rescued from abusive owners by the galaxy’s Rinian Council, but many were so traumatized, I wasn’t sure what kind of life they’d be able to lead moving forward. We’d be delivering them to the Council in the capital city of Haliya.

When I didn’t smile or answer back, the Rogastix swallowed thickly and walked along the platform of cages. Ahead of us, a few Kulks were working to hitch the load behind a hover truck for the upcoming trip. The Rogastix kept pointing out various creatures, letting me know which had bad temperaments and could potentially cause a problem.

I finally spoke up after being told the beak of a yihk was sharp enough to pierce even my toughened scales. “What is the purpose of this?”

The Rogastix paused and slowly turned on a heel to face me. “What?”

“I’m here to guard the shipment, not take care of them. Correct?”

His jaw flapped a moment before he nodded. “Correct.”

“So, the purpose?”

He sniffed and smoothed his braided jacket which was frayed in several places. “I thought you’d be interested.”

“I’m not,” I turned around and headed back down the aisle between the cages. Maybe the Kulks needed help with the hitch. The cages smelled, as feces buckets hadn’t been changed in what seemed like rotations.

I didn’t want to think about the last time any of these creatures had been bathed. They were fed, but it seemed like many didn’t have appetites as the bricks of gelled protein sat untouched on the floor of many cages.

A slight breeze blew through, giving me the scent of fresh air and another scent, something familiar, but also not. I stopped abruptly and turned my head. I thought the cage beside me was empty, but when I peered closer, a creature in the corner barely stirred. Long, dark, matted hair hung nearly to the floor, covering its face.

I caught the smell again, and I knew it came from this creature, who had covered itself with a large, raggedy scrap of fabric.

“Ah, this one,” the Rogastix spoke up behind me. “We’re not sure what it is. Tried to take care of all that hair, and it screamed so loudly, I swore my eardrums would rupture.” He wiggled a clawed finger in his ear.

I couldn’t see any paws or claws, just a trembling form huddled under a blanket. I crept closer, and the creature moved slightly. A green eye with a round pupil peered at me from between two matted chunks of hair, but as soon as it appeared, it was gone. I spotted a gelled protein bar near the creature, half-eaten. I’d had one before, and knew they tasted terrible. This creature had to be starving to attempt to eat it.

“I thought you weren’t interested?” The Rogastix’s slimy voice penetrated my thoughts.

I turned, only just now realizing I’d dropped to a crouch in front of this creature’s cage. Rising to my feet slowly, I glared at him but didn’t bother with a response.

“Horry!” a voice rang out from the side of the platform of cages.

“Coming!” The Rogastix called back. He went to pat me on the shoulder, but my narrowed eyes stopped him. He let out a nervous laugh. “I’m needed so, I’ll just … go take care of that.”

He trotted down the aisle and hopped off the end of the platform, leaving me alone with the cages and creatures.

The one in front of me hadn’t moved again, and something about its smell made my chest tight. I dug in my pack slung over my back, finding a pack of dried fruit and some jerky. I reached through the bars of the cage, and the creature, seeing I’d invaded its space, surged forward. I yanked my hand back just as small blunt teeth clacked together near the bars accompanied by a rumbling growl. Content its warning had been conveyed, it once again retreated to the back corner in a trembling ball of rags and hair.

I started at it, still unsure why I was drawn to this thing when I couldn’t even see it well. Moving quicker this time, I dropped the food right inside the front of the cage. “Chew it well,” I murmured as I stood up.

I wiped my hands together and forced myself to walk away. My job was not to care for these creatures, or form bonds with them, or anything else of the sort. I didn’t even need to see them. My only job was to accompany the truck as it traveled to the capital to make the delivery and make sure we weren’t raided by bandits.

Simple.

I had my morning star strapped to my back, because I was better in close combat. As a Kaluma, I had the ability to camouflage to my surroundings, rendering me invisible to enemies and preventing them from firing at me from a distance.

I stepped down onto the ground and ignored the way my boots felt in the long grass. Planet Gorsich wasn’t home, and I longed for the salty smell of the freshas drifting from the coast and the way the vines felt on my palms as I swung from my hut to gorge on the afternoon meal. I’d be home on Planet Torin as soon as this job was completed.

My friend and fellow Kaluma warrior Bosa had been happy to take on the off-planet jobs, and while I worried about his safety and lack of self-preservation, I had been glad I’d been able to stay at our settlement to help rebuild. But he arrived home from his latest mission injured and with a human mate. So now it was my turn to carry the burden, and I was happy to do it. That didn’t mean I didn’t miss home, though.

As if they knew I was thinking about it, the comm in my ear buzzed. I pressed on the button on my earlobe to answer the call and hadn’t gotten one word out before Bosa’s voice shouted in my ear. “Where are you?”

I understood that Gurla, the Kaluma female who usually took care of the job details, was busy with her pregnant mate, but leaving Bosa in charge had been a terrible idea. He was nosy, loud, and annoying. All on purpose. He’d been my friend since we were babes, but I still wanted to deck him upside the head often.

“Where do you think I am?” I answered with a sigh as I leaned against the side of the platform of cages to watch the Kulks work on the hitch.

“Cravus? Giving me attitude?” Bosa laughed. “Is someone homesick?”

I sniffed. “No, I’m fine. Just bored.”

“Gurla gave you an easy job to start with. Which is some bullshit if you ask me. My first job was tracking down a cool dozen Uripon thieves, and you get a cushy protection detail.”

“Bullshit?”

“I learned it from Karina.”

His human mate, who I actually really liked. I wasn’t sure how she put up with Bosa all the time, but she looked at him like he made the sun rise and fall. An odd ache in my chest made me wince, and I scratched at the scales there. “Well, Gurla likes me better than you.”

Bosa laughed again. He did that more now since he’d been home with his mate. “That’s the truth. Everyone does. Except for Karina.”

I heard a higher pitched voice in the background, and knew his mate was close by.

“Why did you call?” I asked.

“I can’t just check in to say hi?”

“It’s wasting my time.”

He snorted. “Wasting his time, he says,” Bosa muttered. “All right, well get in touch if you need anything.”

“I’ll see you when the job is completed, and I have secured the credits.”

“Right. Get home safe.”

“Always,” I answered before ending the call.

I kept my eyes on the Kulks as they fumbled around with their clunky armor. I never fully understood why they wore all of that, but then they weren’t fast or particularly skilled, so they needed all the protection they could get. For most species, they were hard to kill, but I’d taken a few out before and knew where all their armor weak points were. Mostly in the neck. I’d seen a few Drixonian warriors—allies of ours—use their spikes to cut right through the armor like it was paper.

Finally, a whistle went up, signaling the hover vehicle was attached and we were ready to leave. I hopped up onto a ledge of the cage platform and after a quick wave to the Rogastix who’d given me that sad tour earlier, I blanked. My scales clicked, turning to blend me into my surroundings, so I’d be invisible to oncoming attackers.

I couldn’t hold the blank indefinitely, but this trip wasn’t long. By the time I tired, we’d be at our destination, safe and sound. And then I could get home. Bosa was right, I had gotten the cushy job. A beginning of a smile curled my lips just as the platform jerked forward, and we were off.

Mouse

The big bronze warrior was gone. I could hear his deep voice outside, and although I didn’t know what he was saying, I at least knew he was gone.

He’d dropped something in my cage, and I slowly crept forward. Skags—a furred creature in the cell next to me, squawked with caution. He’d scared me at first, but now he was pretty much my only friend. He liked to pick the bugs out of my hair that made my scalp itch, while I scratched this spot on his back that he couldn’t reach with his paws.

I poked at the pile that looked like a bunch of small stones, until the scent reached my nose. The smell reminded me of something, but I couldn’t place it, just like I couldn’t remember anything. All I remembered of my life was in this cage. These rags. This hair in my face. I didn’t know my name or what I was, only that I didn’t look like anything I’d seen on this planet so far. I’d studied the face and eyes of my reflection on the rare times I’d been blessed with a bowl of water to drink. And I was wholly unlike anything.

But that smell… it was edible. I just knew it. I picked up one of the brown stone-like things and studied the texture. The claws on my hands were blunt and soft, not like most of the animals around me. Skags had sharp claws, but mine were pathetic. I didn’t seem to have much physical defenses, but I was intelligent, or at least I seemed to be.

My captors had given me some tests, and I’d apparently surprised them with my abilities just because I was able to open some metal contraptions. They had food inside—of course I was going to get inside even if it killed me.

The small pebble had a soft surface, and when I licked it, I found I liked the taste. I popped it in my mouth and chewed. The flavor was familiar, and I enjoyed it so much that I scarfed down more before I could stop myself. I was just so damn hungry and all I’d had to eat for what felt like thirty days were the gel bars they tossed in my dirty cage. I slipped Skags a few through the bars of our cages and he munched on them while sending out a soft purr. I scratched his ears, and he twitched his nose at me.

There were some other objects left, a few colored stones. I grabbed them and hid them in one of the folds of my blanket for later.

The air around me seemed to rumble, and I jerked my head up as Skags sent out a distress signal, just as we began to move. I didn’t know what was happening. I’d learned a few words from my captors, but they’d been talking fast lately, using words I didn’t know, and I hadn’t understood a single word that big bronze warrior had said.

I didn’t bother talking much anymore. I could form a few words in a language that my captors didn’t recognize, but sometimes my thoughts got jumbled, and the sequence of sounds didn’t come out right in a way that made sense.

Skags reached through the bars of his cage for me, and I scooted closer. We’d become comforts to each other. I liked his soft fur, and he liked… Well, I wasn’t sure why he liked me. He was long with a flexible body, but his claws were huge, as well as his eyes. His teeth could cut through my thin skin, but he’d never bitten me, not once. He didn’t bite the captors either, not after we saw what they did to a creature who bit so hard he drew blood. I shuddered at the memory.

Skags had six paws and a long tail with a barb on the end. When angry, he could flare out a flap of skin around his neck, making him appear twice his size, which I thought was a damn cool trick.

“Okay,” I said to Skags as he rubbed his head on my palm which I’d stuck through the bars. He let out another squeak as the wind rushed through our cages, whipping my hair around my face. While I liked hiding behind my hair, I longed for the day I could cut it. For some reason, I got the sense I used to keep my hair short.

Sometime.

Another life.

Or maybe this one... Before I’d lost my memory.

Because I knew enough to realize that— that I hadn’t always been a filthy mouse in a cage. I’d been something once.

Someone else.

Clean, well-fed, and happy.

But when? And how had I gotten here?

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end, making me feel like someone was watching me. I peeked through my hair at the other cages, but no one was paying attention to me. Slowly, I turned, and through a tear in the canvas covering our cages, I could have sworn I saw the blurred image of an eye. But in a flash, it was gone, and all that was visible was blue and purple trees rushing past as we tore over the ground.

Life seemed to get worse every time I was transported, so I didn’t have high hopes. I wished I could get Skag and I to safety. But I didn’t even know what safety was. Sometimes I wondered if I was safer in this cage than out there. Wherever there was.

I sighed and dropped my chin to my knees. For once, my belly had something different to gnaw on, and fatigue set in until my eyes closed and I drifted off, one hand still holding Skag’s paw.

“What’s my name?”

The bronze-scaled warrior hoisted me in the air and settled me on his lap. His big hands spanned my entire waist, his clawed thumbs touching my bellybutton. “You don’t know, little kotche?” His nose brushed mine, and I caught a whiff of his breath—like spiced vanilla.

“I want you to say it,” I bounced on his lap, and felt his cock hardening against me. His bright blue eyes flashed.

“Careful, kotche,” he murmured, his thumbs beginning to move lower. “We don’t have time right now.”

“Say my name,” I whispered, swiping my lips across his with a grin. “And then I’ll stop teasing.”

His chest rumbled with a kind laugh. “Well now I don’t know if I want you to stop teasing.”

I glanced over to the side and spotted a large warrior walking toward us—he had a spiked bat strapped to his back, and at his side was a creature with long dark hair and pale skin the texture of mine. She’s one of you, my mind told me.

His thumbs touched a spot between my legs that made me jerk and moan as a liquid heat spread to my limbs. “Kotche, your name is—”

Suddenly an explosion lit up the sky. The warrior and his mate who’d been walking toward us were suddenly gone. I whirled around, but the bronzed warrior was slipping away from me as if being tugged from behind. “No!” I cried out, grabbing for his hand. Our fingers locked, and he stared right into my soul with those fluorescent eyes like lasers. “Don’t let go of me. I know your name.”

I opened my eyes to chaos. Creatures all around me were screeching. The tarp covering our cages was in shreds, and I could see talons the size of my arm slicing into the fabric. Shouts echoed from outside as laser fire shot over our heads. One soared right past my head, and I caught the scent of my burning hair just as I saw the laser hit the creature in the cage across of me, killing it instantly.

Our cages were still being pulled across the ground, but not for long, as something seemed to hit a wheel and instantly we were airborne—and not in a good way. The cages, stacked on top of each other, toppled. Skags and I were on the bottom. I heard his squawk and watched as his eyes went round and panicked just as our cages smashed to the ground. I hit the side of mine, and I must have blacked out for a second, because when I came to, Skags was in my cage with me.

My head pounded, and my vision swam. Something warm and wet dripped down the side of my head. I tossed my matted hair out of my face to see Skags’ cage smashed a few feet away. Mine wasn’t in any better condition. Two bars had been wrenched from the top, providing a hole. Scooping up Skags, I threw myself through the bars, ignoring the pain when a jagged piece tore a hole in my side.

I tripped over my rags and hit the ground before telling myself to calm down and assess the situation. Glancing around, I saw nothing but smoke, laser, fire, bodies, and battle. Something had attacked our caravan.

Massive, winged creatures with scales and long tails circled the cages, and I watched in horror as they picked off my fellow captives one by one, flying away with them to … who knew where? I clutched Skags tighter, who thankfully had fallen silent, probably as shell-shocked as I was. The winged creatures were working with some others on the ground, large hulking things with bulbous eyes and V-shaped mouths.

A shriek caught my ears a little too late, and I felt a talon grasp the fabric at my back. “No!” I screeched, flailing as it sought to rise into the air with me. Its grip was faulty, and I dodged the creature’s other foot as it tried to grab for my head. A fang-lined mouth snapped at me, and I swung a fist at it, catching it in the side of the head. That only angered it, and I swore it was going in for the kill when a spiked ball slammed into the side of its face.

Immediately its grip on me loosened, and I dropped to the ground in a crouch, whirling around to find the bronzed alien, the one who’d given me food, the one who’d been in my dreams, standing over me. He was covered in a dark liquid and looked a bit unsteady on his feet. His eyes were feverishly bright. He spat out a few words, but I had no idea what he said, as his language was foreign to me. He reached for me, and for some reason, my brain told me to trust him. I slipped my hand in his and rose to my feet just as his body jolted.

I gasped as he swayed on his feet, and more slick, black fluid—his blood—poured down the side of his head. Oh no, had he been shot?

I reached for him just as he wobbled and then pitched forward. With a cry, I went down with him, his heavy body slamming on top of mine. Pinned beneath him, I squirmed and pushed, but there was no moving his big body, so I just concentrated on breathing. I could manage to pull some air into my lungs, and I could feel Skags wriggling in the folds of my blanket, so at least we were both alive. As for the warrior who saved me? I wasn’t so sure. I could feel his blood soaking through me, and I tried to listen if I could hear his heart or his breaths, but the battle sounds around me were still raging.

I went still, not having much of a choice and also feeling slightly protected by the big body on top of mine. Even in death, this warrior was still protecting me. I reached up and prodded his chin, thanking him silently for trying his best. I would rather lie here than be carried into the air by those winged things.

The laser fire eventually slowed, and all around us came the horrifying moans and cries of the wounded. Skags had gone mostly still, wedged between me and the warrior’s body. Footsteps sounded nearby, and I held my breath. Something shook the body above mine, and a few voices shouted commands, but they didn’t move him further.

The footsteps retreated. I listened to the rattles of cages and the occasional flapping of wings until silence reigned. Well, almost silence. Against my breastbone, I could feel the slight knock of the bronzed warrior’s heartbeat. His breath tickled the top of my head. He was alive, although not conscious. I heard another flap of wings and braced, but this wasn’t the scaled flying creatures. This was something smaller, with dimpled skin except for furred wings. A giant hooked beak pecked at the warrior’s shoulder, and I immediately went into defense mode.

“Yah!” I shouted, rocking my body until I was able to get an arm loose. I waved it at the scavenger. “Away!”

The creature only watched me with beady eyes set on either side of its head and pecked at the warrior again. Frustrated and pissed off, I grunted and wriggled and squirmed until I managed to extricate myself from under the warrior’s body. Weak with hunger, dying of thirst, and dizzy from the blow to my head, I tried to face off against our attacker which… now that I got a better look at it, was about the size of me. With a long neck, it towered over me, beak dripping with what I assumed was blood.

Skags charged it, his neck flaps unfurled, but the winged creature lashed out with a spurred foot. I just barely scooped Skags into my arms in time before he got a puncture to the chest. As the creature advanced on me, I glanced around helplessly for something to use. Spotting the warrior’s spiked ball weapon laying on the ground near his body, I lunged for it, and just narrowly avoided a stab to the back as I fell to my knees. My fingers closed around it, and I came up swinging, slamming it into the creature’s neck and effectively preventing it from snapping at me again. Or anyone.

I didn’t look at the creature’s body. I hated the violence, but despite my confusion about myself or this place, my survival instinct was strong. I glanced down at the warrior, who hadn’t moved. His back rose and fell with his deep breaths. Looking up, I could see more of those damn creatures circling overhead, and it would only be a matter of time before another dropped down. All around us lay bodies and the burning remains of the caravan. The smoke would draw attention. Someone would come soon, and I didn’t think that would bode well for me or Skags.

Shoving the weapon into the folds of my rags, I knelt down at the warrior’s side. After a lot of grunting, sweating, and cursing, I managed to roll him over onto his back. I took some time to get my breath back.

“Skags,” I rasped. He had been sniffing around, but at my call, he trotted over. “Help me.” I told him before taking the warrior’s wrists in each of my hands and tugging.

Skags got the clue quickly, the smart little thing, and got a good grip on the warrior’s pants with his teeth. He pulled with me, and although we made agonizingly slow progress, we finally made it to a tree line that provided some cover.

I thought repeatedly I could cover a whole lot more ground if I left the bronzed warrior, but I could still feel the food he’d left me in my pocket. Other than Skags, he’d been the first being on this planet to show me kindness. The image of him saving me from those winged creatures was burned into my brain.

I didn’t know what this was… this feeling that I had to do the right thing. I wasn’t sure any of my captors had that feeling, ever. I’d been kicked, bit, beaten, starved, and spat on. They didn’t care about me, but this warrior with his glowing blue eyes and deep calm voice made me want to do something kind. If it got me killed, then so be it.

I dragged him further into the forest, until my legs stopped working and I collapsed onto the ground. My elbows buckled, and I hit the dirt face first. Rolling onto my back, I coughed up dried leaves until Skags came over and ran his raspy tongue over my face.

Groaning, I dug in my pocket for the food the bronzed warrior had left me. Shoving the rest into my mouth, I barely chewed before swallowing. After that, I searched the warrior. I wasn’t any good to either of us without something to drink, and luckily he had a canteen on him. I drank as little as I dared, terrified we wouldn’t find another source of fresh water any time soon.

Then, I inspected the warrior. He had short white hair and swirls of white marks across his chest and neck. I touched them gingerly, but they were a part of him—a discoloration of his scales, but in a very distinct pattern. He wore a strap across his chest where he kept his weapon. I’d remembered seeing that when he’d been outside my cage. His belt held a plethora of things—freeze dried fruits, salted and cured meats, as well as a skin of water. I chewed a small bit of the meat and gave some to Skags. He also had sharp spikes on the caps of his shoulders in varying lengths, which looked like deadly weapons all on their own.

Assessing the warrior’s injuries, I determined he’d been hit in the head with laser fire. It hadn’t pierced his scalp, but it had taken off a large chunk of his ear. The hole there was clotted with blood, which was sticky and black.

I didn’t dare waste the water cleaning him, but I wished I had something to attend to his wounds. I continued to dig through his belt, finding a satchel of supplies, but none that were familiar to me.

Frustrated, since I wanted to make him as comfortable as possible, I dug a slight impression in the ground and settled him in there, hoping the dirt there was cooler. I didn’t like the heat of his skin when I touched him. What if he died in his sleep tonight?

Too tired to do much else, I curled up at his side and Skags nestled in with me. I needed to rest before I moved us again. We were under the cover of a dense bush with massive leaves, but this warrior was a bronze god who seemed to reflect the sun. Couldn’t he be more inconspicuous?

I looked up, seeing a glimmer of the sky through the trees, and waited for dark. The plus side? I wasn’t in a cage. And I’d die before anyone put me in one again.

TWO

MOUSE

I woke to the sound of moaning. Blinking my eyes, I saw nothing but darkness, until my pupils adjusted and could make out the vague shapes of leaves overhead. Skags was making his worried squeaks, so I shook the sleep from my eyes and pushed myself to a sitting position.

Next to me, the bronze alien was trembling. I immediately lurched to my knees and pressed my palm to his forehead. I hissed at the heat and shook out the sting on my palm.

“No die,” I murmured, smoothing my hand down his chest. His scales seemed to be moving, emitting small clicking noises that made the color shift and shimmer. The white marks on his chest and neck seemed to spark like lightning. His lips tensed and twitched, and few sounds fell off his tongue that could have been words or just cries of distress.

Goosebumps rose on my skin as I watched him helplessly. I couldn’t let him die. Already I felt a responsibility for him.

Grabbing his skin of water, I propped his head in my lap to angle him slightly upright. I screwed off the top and let a few drops of water slide into his mouth. He smacked his lips, and his throat worked as he swallowed. “Yes,” I said, smoothing a hand over his short hair. “Drink.”

I poured in more water, giving him time to swallow small gulps. After a while, he trembled less, and I hoped this was the break of his fever. Already his skin felt a little less hot. Skags nuzzled under the warrior’s hand and licked at his fingers.

Tomorrow I’d find more water. I’d get him clean. If he was still alive now, and he fought off this fever, then there was hope he’d come out of this.

Finally, he took a deep breath, his body shuddered, and then his muscles loosened. The lines in his brow smoothed out and his mouth went slack. I was worried for a minute he’d died, but I felt his heartbeat, strong and sure. His breaths were even, and his skin no longer felt hot to the touch. Content he’d make it another rotation, I closed my eyes and drifted off.

The next morning, I crouched near the pile of my current possessions. And none were actually mine. I was just temporarily borrowing them from the unconscious alien who was still alive and sleeping deeply.

What I had was a small pouch of food, a skin of water that was dangerously close to empty. A spiked ball weapon. A sharp knife, and a pouch containing various liquids and powders that were foreign to me. As for me, I only had the rags on my body, and those weren’t worth a damn thing.

“Water,” I said to Skags. “Find it.”

I covered the warrior as best as I could with some large leaves, making sure he had plenty of room to breathe, but that no one would stumble upon him. Then, with Skags at my feet, I went in search of water.

There were things I seemed to know, but I couldn’t remember how I knew them, like the sound and smell of clean, rushing water. Trees surrounded me, soaring high into the sky with their leaves protecting me from the harsh morning sun. The ground was covered with a greenish carpet of vegetation that felt nice to walk on. The warrior had thick shoes, and I wondered what those felt like. The only thing covering my feet were thin-soled, crudely-sewn shoes that didn’t provide much protection.

I made marks in the trees I passed so I could get back to my injured warrior. As much as I didn’t want to leave him, we’d all die unless we found more water. His skim wouldn’t last the day between the three of us.

Skags ran ahead with his nose in the air. He had a long snout with two large nostrils, and I’d found his sense of smell was excellent. He always knew when our one meal of the day was coming long before it arrived in our cages.

He stopped, sitting on his back four feet with his two front feet dangling in front of him.

“Skags?” I called.

And then he took off like a rocket.

“Hey!” I shouted, running after him. I knocked branches out of my way and got smacked in the face with a wet leaf or two before we broke out into a clearing, and I skidded to a halt.

Skags sat on the bank of a stream, his mouth stretched into a wide grin, proudly displaying his find. “Wow,” was all I managed to utter as I took in the clear water, babbling over rocks and sticks next to a large cliff that rose in front of me. Ledges and alcoves were etched into the side, and I knew right away that this was where we needed to be. I would get no joy out of dragging the warrior here, but it wasn’t too far. Here, I could clean him, clean myself, and maybe catch some live game for food. Here, we could heal.

With a happy cry, I raced to the bank and straight into the water. Skags let out a happy squawk and joined me, splashing around in the thigh-high water. He swam well, with his front, webbed paws easily keeping him on the surface. After I dunked my head under and gulped as much water as I could—as well as filling up the skim—I knew I couldn’t waste time getting the warrior here. The longer I waited, the hotter the day would get, and I couldn’t travel here in the dark.

With Skags at my side, we walked back to the warrior, who hadn’t moved. Thinking quickly, I knew I would have to fashion some sort of sling to lay him in that I could pull behind me easily. The only large piece of fabric I had was the blanket I covered myself with. All I wore underneath was a band across my breasts and a pair of ragged short pants. Using two large branches, I wrapped the fabric around them, creating a sling. Laying it flat, I rolled the warrior inside and then picked up two of the ends of the branches. The other two dragged on the ground, but it was much easier than dragging a whole body.

The progress was slow, tedious, and exhausting, but the promise of fresh water and shelter was enough to make me cover the ground quickly. When we reached the stream again, I dropped the sling to the floor with a groan and a triumphant yell.

After a quick snack and some more water, I carefully made a little trench near the bank of the stream for the warrior’s body. I removed his shoes, and marveled that he had similar feet to me. But I wasn’t… one of him. I didn’t think so at least. I didn’t have scales or white markings, or the spikes on my shoulders.

I left his pants on but unstrapped his weapons holder. Letting the water gently lap at his feet, I dismantled the sling and thoroughly scrubbed a strip of fabric to clean it. Content it was as free of dirt as possible, I went to work cleaning the warrior. He was covered in various cuts, but most had completely healed. His head was another story. Once I wiped away the dried blood, I was able to get a better look at his injury.

His ear was mostly shorn off, and the scales around it were warped and melted from what I assumed was the laser fire. He’d have a wicked scar, but I was hopeful he’d still have use of his ear. I was able to pour water on it and flush out the ear canal as best as I could. Wiping down the rest of his body, I hummed to myself.

I did that often, and I couldn’t remember why. It was some sort of rhythm and melody from my previous life, the one I could no longer recall. The sound soothed me, and the warrior, despite his unconscious state, seemed to like it too. His expression was relaxed, and when Skags sniffed at his hand, a few fingers twitched.

I sat back in a crouch with my hands on my knees, waiting to see if he’d wake up, but he stayed still and silent. I squinted up at the sun, feeling the heat bake my skin.

Speaking of getting clean… I hadn’t washed myself well. I’d merely done a little joy swim before leaving to get the warrior. I stood and waded into the shallow edge of the stream before taking off the rest of my clothes. My skin was red and itchy in some places, probably from my soiled clothes. So, I scrubbed them for a while before setting them out on a rock to dry. I had various bruises and a few cuts from my captor’s abuse. My head was still a little sore where I’d hit it, and I had a wicked scrape on my ribs from the broken cage bars. But I was alive, so was Skags, and so was the bronze warrior.

I waded in further, feeling freer than I ever had in my life. No one keeping me in a cage or hitting me. My hair hung in matted chunks around my shoulders. I hadn’t been able to keep it clean, and it stunk. With a small gasp, I remembered the warrior’s knife. After grabbing it from our supply pile, I began to hack at my hair. Skags watched with interest from his shaded spot on the bank as hunks of hair began to float away from me downstream. I sawed and sliced until all that was left of my hair was a short length all around my head—not as short as the bronze warrior’s but as close as I could get.

I tilted my face toward the sun. A weight had just been lifted off my shoulders, and I wasn’t sure much could bring down my mood now.

Slowly, I turned around to check on the warrior and froze in place when bright blue eyes stared right back at me.

Cravus

My feet were wet. I could feel liquid gently lapping at my bare toes, and qua was rushing somewhere, although it sounded far away and muffled. Why did it sound like I was underwater?

My head pounded something fierce, and my back ached. I tried to move my limbs, but they were stiff and protested my order. As I became more alert, my concern grew for my safety, and I forced my eyes open only to immediately slam them shut. The sun was bright, and direct. I could feel it baking my scales. I sought to blank, but I was in pain and too weak. Yerk, when had I eaten last?

I groaned and lifted a hand to my head to access my comm but when I reached for my earlobe, it wasn’t there. It wasn’t there. I patted the side of my head only to feel a mass of ruined scales and only a small part of my ear remaining. I groaned and opened my eyes again to small slits, letting them adjust to the sun before I opened them further. I was in a forest, on the bank of a stream. How did I get here? Then I remembered the ambush. The cudgels in the sky picking off the caged creatures. An army of Gattrix. The small creature I’d given food to had escaped its broken cage, and when a cudgel tried to pick it off, I’d killed it then… well, that was the last thing I remembered. I hoped the small creature had managed to get free or die a quick death.

I struggled to sit up on my elbows, confused how I got here, then went still at the sight before me. I wasn’t alone. Standing in the stream, back to me, stood a human. I’d recognize that flesh anywhere, so unlike any species I’d ever seen in my life. And then the human turned and looked at me with green eyes. I remembered that color—it had belonged to that small creature in the cage, the one with long hair and blunt teeth… “Yerk me,” I whispered. How had I not recognized that creature as human? And most importantly… female?

She was nude in the stream, her hair now hacked off, with small round breasts and beaded pink nipples. Curly dark hair sprouted from between her legs, and I caught a whiff of her scent—the same one I had smelled when she’d been in the cage, but then it had been hidden under stench. Now she smelled fresh, clean, and oh so good.

Then she opened her mouth and let out a vicious screech that felt like a dagger to my brain. She rushed over to the bank, my knife in her hand, and I was terrified she was going to plunge it into me, but instead she dropped it with a clatter on a pile of rocks and went to her knees at my side. Her small hands reached for me, touching my forehead, and prodding at the wreck of my ear.

Yerk, when she was this close my heart drummed in my chest, and my fingers itched to pick at the remaining strands of her hair. It was dark, but now that it was clean, I could see brighter stands in a dark red.

And she was… nude. Not a stitch of clothing on her, when before she’d been completely covered in rags. I sucked in a breath as my gaze dropped to her breasts. When she shifted closer, they moved, and my mouth watered.

“Okay?” she asked in a quiet, raspy voice.

I understood her since my translator implant—luckily installed on my intact ear—was updated with her language, thanks to Bosa’s mate. But she had no implant—nothing but the bare skin behind each of her small ears. I nodded, and her shoulders relaxed.

Why wasn’t she scared of me? I glanced to my right to see my boots sitting by me, placed neatly side by side. My supplies were laid out in an orderly pile.

I lifted my gaze again to meet hers, and even though I knew she couldn’t understand me, I still asked. “Did you bring me here?”

She only blinked at me, then whipped her head behind her to bark out a word I didn’t recognize. “Skags! Come meet.”

A small turret trotted over, and I vaguely recalled that it had been in the cage next to her. Had they both escaped the ambush? And then… saved me? I’d been shot from behind—I could still feel the heat of the burn—and that had been the last thing I remembered. I placed my hand on my body, finding that most of my cuts had been cleaned and were on their way to healing.

A furry ball hopped in my lap, and I jerked, remembering the turret. “This Skags,” the female said, patting his head. “My friend.”

Her words seemed limited, and I wondered what happened that she spoke like that. She was a tiny thing, smaller than Bosa’s Karina. How had she gone from snapping at me with her teeth like a feral animal to this—a peaceful scene on the bank of a stream with a pet?

“You saved me,” she murmured. “So, I saved you. Probably can’t understand me, but—”

I reached for her, and she flinched, but her eyes met mine. I saw the fear then—a quick flash—before I gentled my grip on her wrist and tried for a smile. “I can understand.” I nodded too.

Her head tilted, and she studied me for a moment. “Can you understand me?”

I showed her the implant behind my ear and nodded. Her eyes went wide for a moment. “But I can’t…”

I shook my head, and she seemed to deflate a moment, before nodding to herself. “Okay.”

I had to get her a translator implant, but that was probably the least of our worries right now. I had to figure out where we were and how to reach home to let them know I wasn’t dead. But up first—food. It was clear she’d been rationing our few supplies, and I had no idea how long I’d been unconscious. In fact, I was surprised I was still alive and not rotting out there on the ground, bleeding out from the laser fire or picked to death by scavengers. I had my eyes and fingers—it was nearly a miracle. Or actually, it was all this little human.

“Cravus,” I said, touching my chest. Then I pointed at her. You?”

“Name?” she inquired, and I was happy she seemed to be intuitive to my meaning. I nodded, eager to hear her name, but she only shrugged. “I don’t remember.”

I shot her a questioning look, and her lower lip trembled a moment before she looked downstream. “I only remember waking up in a cage. Being hit. Starved.” She swallowed.

Where had the council found her? Who had been her former captors? I wished I could ask her these questions. I hoped she wasn’t referring to the transport crew, because they were supposed to be her rescuers.

She went on. “I don’t remember… anything. What I am. Where I came from.”

I stared at her, barely able to believe what she was saying. Was my implant translating it wrong? But then she met my eyes with her round dark ones and repeated, “I don’t remember.”

“Human,” I said pointing at her. I spoke the word again, slowly. “Hyooo-munnn.”

“My name?”

I shook my head and pointed at myself. “Kaluma.” Then at her. “Human.”

“Human,” she whispered, and then her pupils flickered, a slight dilation, and she inhaled a quick breath. “That sounds… familiar.” She stared at her thin, short fingers as she said it again. “Human.”

I gave her some time, as I couldn’t imagine how yerking scary this was for her. But I had to admire her. Despite having no memory, she’d survived, saved me, and had a turret as a pet.

“They… my captors… called me Mouse.” Her shoulders jerked. “You can call me that too. For now.”

She began to talk in halting words, describing what happened back at the caravan. There’d been an attack and her cage was broken. How I’d saved her, and then when I was hit, I’d fallen on her, my body a shield. After fending off scavengers, she’d dragged me to the safety of the forest, then used a sling to pull me to fresh water.

I stared at her in amazement as she told her story. She easily could have left me. I wouldn’t have blamed her. She’d only known hurt and pain, but for me she’d shown kindness.

I felt weak, and knew I needed to get on my feet quickly. Now that I was awake, I’d take care of the female and her pet. There was no question—I didn’t care what the council had planned for her. I’d bring her home with me—she’d find a friend in Karina, and a safe place where she could either regain her memories or make new ones. She didn’t belong on this planet, poked and prodded at by the council as they figured out what to do with her.

I slowly rolled onto my side with a groan. Dizziness blurred my vision for a moment, and I shook my head to clear it. The female was right there at my side, her smalls hands gripping me like she could prevent me from falling.

“I got it,” I rumbled at her, but she only blinked at me and stayed there. When I managed to rise to my feet, with her still holding onto me, I glanced down to find her staring up at me with a shaky smile. “Good,” she rasped. “Standing.”

Yerk, I’d never seen a naked human female. I’d never looked twice at Bosa’s mate. I liked her, but that was mostly because of what she did for Bosa, my friend. This female… everything about her made my chest tight and my heart pound. Her scent invaded my nostrils, a spicy warmth that was both new and familiar. The bruises on her thin skin made my blood hot, and the gash on her ribs had to be painful.

She piled some food in my open palm—a few nuts and berries as well as the last piece of jerky. I needed to eat—it’d been so long since I had a full meal. After a sip of water, I pointed to the food and gathered my belt and dagger. I showed it to her, saying. “I’m going to go get us more food.” Then I pointed at the food and mimicked chewing. She bit her lip, studying me for a moment before saying. “More food?”

I nodded, and her lips twitched into a small, pretty smile. Of the few human women I’d seen in my life, I’d never found them attractive or even interesting. But this one… what was it about her? My matz shimmered, and I rubbed at the white markings on my chest. Her gaze dipped to them, and her small fingers brushed along one near my spiks on my shoulders. “Shiny,” she whispered with a little wrinkled nose.

I had to get out of here. I didn’t want to cover her up if she was enjoying her nude, clean, skin, but eventually we’d have to travel to populated areas, and a naked human would draw all kinds of attention.

I tugged a square out of my back pocket—she must have missed it when she searched through my supplies—and tore open a corner with my fang. The packaging dissolved, and the contents swelled as soon as it touched the air. It expanded until it was about the size of a blanket for me—for the human female it would make a nice cloak. I settled it on her shoulders, and she gripped it tightly. She seemed to like it, as she wiggled her fingers and said with a happy voice. “Soft.”

“I’ll be back after I get us some food,” I said.

Even though she didn’t know what I was saying, she nodded and sat down on the rock next to Skags, who had fallen asleep on his back, paws in the air and tongue hanging out of his mouth.

With my weapon strapped to my back and my knife in my hand, I set out through the forest. We needed meat, and I wanted to search the area of the caravan attack. I could still smell the smoldering remains of laser fire drifting in the air. Then after that, I’d have to convince the female we had to leave. We couldn’t stay here forever, the three of us. I had a home. A purpose. And I refused to let her stay on this planet on her own, not with her erased memories.

Also? I needed a name for her. I refused to call her the same name her captors did.

THREE

MOUSE

“Smell it,” he said, holding the fungus flat on his palm.

I leaned down and sniffed deeply, closing my eyes as I sorted through my memories. “Coffee.”

He cocked his head as he popped one of them in his mouth and chewed. “What’s that?”

“A drink. It’s black and bitter.”

He wrinkled his nose. “Sounds like medicine.”

“It’s not,” I laughed. “Well, it sort of is. It’s medicine I used to take every morning to wake me up.”

“How did that work?”

“It had a natural stimulant in it. I was hooked on it.”

He frowned. “That’s not good. Don’t rely on a substance like that.”

That only made me laugh harder. “But the smell is divine. I used to have people order the coffee scent from me when they didn’t even drink coffee.”

“What was your best-selling smell?” he asked.

“An original concoction. I called it Star-Crossed, and it was a spicy vanilla with some secret ingredients.”

“What were the secret ingredients?”

“I can’t tell you.”

With a playful growl, he plucked me off my seat and plopped me in his lap. His lips touched mine and I smelled it again—Star-Crossed.

I woke up with a jerk, the scent lingering in my nose, and my head spinning with weird visions I couldn’t place. Me blowing out a tiny flame flickering near a window while picking off small dots of a waxy material from my hands and a wooden table. Outside the window had been a large tree with tri-shaped leaves. Tall yellow flowers that stretched to the sky. Was that… was that my home?

But that scent. That scent had been there. And also here. That scent was his—Cravus’s. But that didn’t make sense. I wished I could understand him. He knew what I was—human—and maybe he knew where I was from, and how I got here. Could I go home? Would I even remember it if I was there?

In addition to the scent, I felt achy between my legs, and my breasts were heavy. Beneath the fabric I’d once again wrapped around my chest, my nipples were peaked and hard. What was this feeling, and why did I get it whenever I thought of him—the bronze warrior? Cravus.

In my dream, he’d kissed me. I’d known who I was. What I’d done in my previous life. And I’d been happy. The hollow feeling I’d had in my chest since waking up in a cage suddenly felt a little fuller.

Underneath the blanket he’d given me, I’d dressed again in my chest wrap and short pants. I stared down at them, trying to remember anything else I’d worn on my body. In my dream, I’d been… in a very long shirt that was cinched at the waist. Low cut on my breasts. I’d felt pretty. Alive. And like I wanted more of Cravus’s kisses. What would he think if he knew I was having these dreams about him?

Even now, I wondered if he thought I was a burden and what he thought the future would entail. Maybe I should let him off the hook and tell him I’d leave once he got back. He’d only been hired to protect me during the caravan, and now here he was, stuck with me just because he’d clobbered something that had tried to snatch me.

I hit my head a few times with the heel of my palm, trying to jog something loose in there. I didn’t know where I was, so how would I survive on my own with Skags? Anxiety began to set in, and my mind whirled with fleeting images which I couldn’t decipher. Were they from the past, the present, the future?

By the time I heard footsteps crashing through the trees nearby, I was losing it a bit, terrified of what was to come, and unsure how to protect myself or who to trust. When Cravus burst into the clearing lining the stream holding a bloodied thing over his shoulder, I screamed so loud I nearly toppled into the water.

He dropped his dead prey with a thud and rushed toward me, but I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to be approached. All I could see were the thick hands which had hurt me. Slapped me. Locked me in a cage. “No!” I shouted at him, scuttling away while Skags squawked with fright. “No, no, no. Please. Don’t touch. Just…”

He spoke words, but I didn’t understand them. They were kind and placating, but not much was penetrating the fog of my fear. Why couldn’t I get a handle on myself? My brain was fracturing into pieces as I whirled around, looking for an escape route—

Hands grabbed me, and I screamed again, and again, but the hands didn’t let up. I was pressed to a firm, warm chest, held there with a soft, yet unyielding grip. I couldn’t get away. My pieces had no way to fracture more. I could only remain in that position, breathing hard, heart pounding, as the broken bits of me slowly knitted back together.

My lungs seemed to let out an exhaustive breath and then calmed. I became aware of my surroundings again. The gentle babbling of the stream. The quiet rustling of the leaves in the breeze. Skags sniffing at my legs. And a big bronze warrior cradling me in his arms like I was precious. He spoke, and while I couldn’t understand the words, I was lulled by the rumbling deep tone and the vibration of his chest. My hands came up and I gripped his biceps. “So-sorry,” I gasped.

His hands flexed, an acknowledgement of my apology. But he didn’t let go or act irritated at my freak out. He stayed calm. In control.

I’d been so confident in my ability to leave, but now I realized how very much not equipped I was to handle all this strangeness on my own. I felt like a helpless newborn.

“I was going to leave,” I explained, speaking softly into his chest. “So, I didn’t burden you.”

His hands tightened a moment before he held me out at arm’s length and speared me with an intense gaze. He shook his head vehemently and uttered out one word fiercely which I took to mean, no. There was no point arguing, because he immediately turned and began to tend to the dead animal.

I stood there, shivering for a moment, warring with myself on whether I should push the issue or let it go. And part of me felt like I was a little too trusting of him, but everything about him called to me. He showed up in my dreams, kissing me and taking care of me. Would my mind really be that wrong about someone? Could I even trust myself?

I sat down, and Skags crawled in my lap, wet from his swim. I smoothed my hands down his wiry coat as he wriggled and sought to get comfortable. While Cravus had been gone, before I fell asleep, I’d managed to make the blanket he’d given me into a garment with a hood that made me feel more protected. For now, I pushed it off my head, running my hand over my short hair. It felt so good to have a clean scalp. Plucking at some flowers nearby, I fiddled with them while Cravus worked. He skinned the animal and cut off hunks of red meat. After that he made a small fire and slid strips of the meat onto sticks to cook it.

The smell filled the air, and I inhaled deeply. The smoke tickled my nose, and I sneezed just as an image hit me. Outdoors standing barefoot on green grass. A flowery fabric swirling around my legs. A female who looked like me stood nearby, her belly swollen and round. Everyone was laughing, and nearby a man—a human male—holding a cooking utensil stood over a big black square that smoked. And that smoke… it was similiar to what Cravus was cooking.

In a flash, the image was gone, and I wanted it back. I’d been happy there. Incredibly happy. Hopeful.

Cravus made a sound, and I came back to the present. His gaze was on my lap, and I looked down to see that I’d woven the stems of the flowers together in a circle. I stared at it a moment, unsure what I’d done, when my hands lifted of their own accord, and I placed the ring on my head. The flowers tickled my scalp and forehead, and I shimmied my shoulders at the feel, a small laugh escaping me.

“I don’t know what this is, but my fingers did it on their own,” I murmured. I went to take off the ring of flowers, but Cravus stopped me with a gentle touch on my palm. I stared at him, but his gaze was on my head before he finally met my eyes. “Toke sirrup,” he said, then tilted his lips in a soft smile.

Of course, I didn’t know what he meant, but he seemed to be telling me to leave it. And that smile… it caused that ache in my lower belly that I’d had in my dream. Right before he’d kissed me. A heated warmth that made me shift my legs. He inhaled sharply, and his pupils dilated a moment before he turned away from me quickly. He poked at the meat on the stick, almost viciously.

His profile was strong and powerful with a broad straight nose, full lips, and square jaw. The spikes on his shoulders looked wicked. I reached out to touch one, and the tip wasn’t razor-sharp to the touch, but I was sure it could do some damage with a little force. This was clearly an alien species meant to battle and fight. I wondered where the rest of his family was.

Were we close?

Would he take me to them?

I hated not being able to ask him questions. Well, I could ask him questions, but I wasn’t getting detailed answers. Skags had fallen asleep on my lap, and I scratched his ears.

For my own sake, I had to ask one question, and I hoped the answer was easy. “Can I trust you with my safety?”

He went still and then slowly turned on the balls of his feet where he crouched near the fire. The flames flickered in his fluorescent eyes before he gave me one firm nod.

And that had to be enough. He could have been lying, but my heart told me he wasn’t.

Cravus

She seemed ready to take flight at any moment, whether it was to run away or fly into pieces. The tears and trembles, I could handle. But if she ran… what right did I have to chase her? Sure, I wouldn’t get paid for this job, but as far as the Rinian Council was concerned, I was dead. And so was she.

I had no intention of delivering her to the council, not now I knew she was a human, even though I trusted the council. They had assured us that they’d ousted the council member—a Ubilque named Garquin—responsible for selling out Karina to her former captor. This transport was one of their amends, they said, in an effort to slow the trafficking so rampant in the Rinian Galaxy.

But this had gone all wrong. This female wasn’t like Karina, who’d managed to live on her own in the galaxy for several cycles while disguising herself. This human as vulnerable, innocent, and unaware of all the dangers. She had no memory.

When I’d killed the buril for our dinner, I’d first traveled back to the scene of the ambush. There had still been wreckage of the hover truck and the platform trailer. While most everything had been burned, I’d managed to recover a few first aid supplies and a few pieces of spare clothing for the female.

I watched her eat her meat, chewing hungrily and making small happy noises in her throat. The sound of her light laughter when she dropped the crown of blooms on her head would ring in my ears forever. Her fingers had worked deftly, quickly. She knew how to braid, even if she didn’t remember how she knew.

“Bloom,” I murmured.

She glanced up, tilting her head in a question as she paused mid-chew.

I plucked a bloom from the ground and pointed at the petals before pointing against her. “Bloom.”

She blinked, and then resumed chewing. “Bloom.” She jabbed her thumb at her chest.

That name fit her. I nodded, and a smile spread across her face. Her cheeks warmed. “I like.”

“Me too,” I said.

I didn’t want to stay where we were for too long. I couldn’t be sure there weren’t more roving bands of Gattrix looking for us. We needed supplies, more food, and most importantly—a way for Bloom and me to communicate. As determined as I was to take her home with me, I wanted to explain and at least give her some sort of choice, when she clearly hadn’t had one in a long time.

I packed up our things, and Bloom understood quickly we needed to leave. I watched her as she moved with agile steps. I wondered what she did on Earth, who she was loved by. I imagined a lot of people missed her—I could already tell her instincts were to care for others.

She’d saved my life, and she’d taken the turret under her wing, who clearly adored her. She talked to Skags often, and always shared her food to make sure he was well taken care of. I’d even seen her fashion a little brush out of a plant bur to tug through his fur.

Before taking on this mission, I’d studied a map of Gorsich closely. I couldn’t be sure of our exact location, but I had a general idea and where we were and where we needed to go. We traveled through the wooded area, using the trees as cover.

It took most of the rotation, and we stopped frequently for breaks, as Bloom had been in a cage for a long time and wasn’t used to walking this much. But she trudged on, committed to traveling on her own even though I offered to carry her on my back. I was thankful she had shoes, although they were council-issued—flat without much sole. On a few of our stops, she took them off and rubbed at white blisters on her small toes.

I knew we were close when the trees began to thin out, and hills rose on either side of us. When I saw the smoke of cooking fires floating above us, I sighed with relief.

Virzhat was less a town and more a place to hide, a series of tents and primitive structures nestled into the valley between the craggy cliffs of two mountains that had decided to get close, but not too close.

The terrain was nearly impossible to get to, the plant life was minimal, and it made sense why the ones who lived here chose this place—no one would come here willingly. Or even unwillingly. The Rinian Council probably left it alone as long as the residents kept quiet.

And it was the one place I knew I could show my face and obtain goods without drawing too much attention. Sure, I could blank, but I had to communicate to get what I needed, and that wasn’t possible camouflaged. Also, I had Bloom and Skags with me, so blanking wouldn’t do our group any good.

I could tell Bloom was tiring from our trek. She was skinny, without much muscle, probably from her time spent in a cage. I wondered what she looked like when she was healthy. I imagined round hips, and fuller breasts. Not that I had any opinion about the shape of her body, but I knew that the weight she carried right now was not enough, not even close, not when I could see her ribs and her muscle tone was too soft from her confinement.

Still, she kept up as best as she could. When we started down the dirt path toward the center of town, she stuffed Slags in her cloak, and pulled up her hood until only the lower half of her face was visible. I pushed up the fabric around her neck, effectively hiding her appearance. I hoped most would practice discretion at a place like this, but I couldn’t be too careful.

Usually, vendors flew flags to identify their species, but in Virzhat the scraps of fabric were solid nondescript colors only advertising their wares. They lined the entrance and called out to us in barked tones to check out their stalls. For a small settlement, the center of town was surprisingly busy. We drew attention as newcomers, and I tried to settle some nerves with a purchase. I had a few czens in my pockets, so I bought Bloom and I some fruits. She nibbled on a fleshy rishel while I finished mine in a few bites. While walking, I surveyed the place for someone who seemed to be comfortable here, a long-time resident, someone who knew things.

There was an odd collection of species here, but most of them were not a predatory species or warriors. Most were similar to what I saw in the cages transported to the Rinian Council—peaceful animals and sentient species who were easily manipulated and exploited. This was a hideout for them, a new start, and I could already tell my size and the weapon strapped to my back were not welcome.

I walked by a small building where a Uripon stood outside. A few others surrounded him, chatting in low tones, but when I drew closer, they scattered. He remained, watching me closer, his gaze shifting to Bloom as his horizontal pupils lengthened. He didn’t seem scared of me though, which was a good thing.

I stopped in front of him, and he clicked his beak at me, but otherwise remained still. Uripons were a nervous type, with hooves, greasy feathers, and a small skull.

“A Kaluma. A Kaluma. Well, I’ll be. A Kaluma. Haven’t seen one in ages.” He twittered the two sets of wings that grew from his back and ruffled his head plume at a nearby lurker. “Hey Rip, remember that big one that came through, oh, what was that, ten cycles ago? Yeah, yeah, you big ones. A Kaluma. Not a Drixonian. Not a Rogastix. A Kaluma.”

“You’ve seen one?” That got my attention. The only Kaluma I knew that had been off planet was… I shook my head. No way.

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Hmmmm. Maybe not. Maybe that wasn’t a Kaluma. You are. But not him. Maybe not.”

Bloom shifted closer to me, maybe unsure of his strange speech patterns.

“Have you been here long?” I asked him.

“Been here long? I’ve been here since the Gattrix raids. Remember those, Rip? The Gattrix raids.” He ruffled his plume again, and a ripple went down his back. “Nasty stuff, those raids. Nasty.”

I wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but Gattrix were a nasty insect-like species with a hard thorax and a venomous spit. Karina still bore a scar on her shoulder from one.

“Is there anyone here good with tech?” I asked slowly. “I’m looking for some comms possibly. Maybe a navigator.” I didn’t want any of that, but I also didn’t want to let on about what I actually needed.

“Tech? Ah tech. We all need tech. Navigator is good. Hard traveling out here. Don’t get many new ones. Mostly by word of mouth. Word of mouth to those that need us. Don’t like newcomers a lot, especially big ones with weapons.” He fluttered his wings with a clicked beak.

“Just looking to speak to someone about tech. Then we’ll be gone. We are peaceful.” I held my hands up, palms out, but I knew what I was and what I looked like. The Uripon didn’t look too convinced.

Suddenly the Rip lurker spoke up. “He’s got some. He’s the one to ask.”

“Who?” I said to him.

“Go away,” shouted the first Uripon, and Rip ducked out of sight. “Telling everyone his business. That’s his business. Not your business. His business.”

“Who?” I asked him this time.

The Uripon let out an angry squawk. “If you hurt, we hurt you. We have weapons. We can defend. Hurt you, big warrior. And this little one too.”

“I won’t hurt anyone,” I insisted.

He went into a series of annoyed shudders and trembles before pointing with a wingtip to a small, closed tent near the back edge of the settlement. “There. He has tech. Tons. But he can be nasty. Yells. Don’t mess. Don’t mess and don’t hurt.”

“No mess. No hurt.” I gave him a nod in deference for his help. “Thank you.”

I began to walk, nudging Bloom to fall in step beside me as the Uripon called after us. “No hurt and no mess!”

“He’s loud,” Bloom murmured. “And kept making the same noises over and over again.”

“They repeat themselves a lot,” I said, even though I knew she wouldn’t understand me. I hoped this he had a translator implant. I wanted to talk to Bloom more than anything.

The tent was quiet, a slight breeze flapping the edges of the stained, ripped fabric. Through a small slit, I saw movement inside, but when I pulled back the edge and stepped in, Bloom on my heels, no one was there. I gripped Bloom’s shoulder tightly in case we had to bolt. The tent was full of tables of dusty tech and wires. Something sparked on a tarp, and I got the impression the owner of this tent had just been working on it. “Hello?”

There was a moment of silence, and then a deep voice spoke from somewhere above me. “What do you want?”

There was something about the tone that didn’t seem… right. It didn’t seem… alive. I glanced around until I spotted a square structure in the corner of the back of the tent. The sound had been coming from there. Where was the tent’s owner?

“I want—”

From behind sounded a loud thump followed by a clatter. I turned to find Bloom had tripped over a wire on the floor and in doing so, her hood had fallen off and her face scarf had slipped down to her neck. She stared up at me with wide eyes as I pulled her to her feet and shoved the hood down back over her face. I whirled around, studying the tent, looking for any threats.

A second too late, I heard the click of laser gun cocking a second before a different voice—way different—growled from the back of the tent. “Don’t move.”

A figure appeared in the shadows of the tent, wearing a pair of pants, knee-high boots, and a tight shirt that stretched across her chest. The female, unmistakably human, wore a band to keep her full, dark curly hair off her face, and her skin was a few shades darker than Bloom’s. The laser gun she held in her hand didn’t waver, not once, and her full lips were pressed together while her brown eyes fired hatred at me.

She spoke again, the weapon trained on me. “The human stays here and you leave. Your other choice is a laser hole in your forehead. You decide because I don’t really care.”

FOUR

Bloom

She was going to shoot him. This human, who was one of me. And yet she wasn’t scared or trembling or weak. She stood strong and proud, arms corded with muscle and a stomach that had has many ridges as Cravus’s.

But she was going to shoot him.

“No.” The word whimpered from my throat on a weak squeak.

“It’s okay.” The woman’s jaw was tight, but I saw the slightest tremble in her lips. “I’m Zuri. And he can’t hurt you anymore. He’s not the first to try and won’t be the last. But I always win.”

“No.” I tried again, panic rising in my chest as I sought to breathe. Cravus hadn’t moved, standing still as stone at my side, his gaze never leaving Zuri’s hand. “Please, he’s not… doesn’t hurt… me.” I had been getting better at speaking, but now I couldn’t seem to put the right words together.

“Stockholm Syndrome is a thing, honey, and I’ll explain it all once this big fucker fucks off.”

I was crying now, hot tears spilling over my bottom lashes. “Please.”

Zuri stepped closer, her gun still on Cravus, and reached for me. “Come on.” Her finger snagged my cloak and tugged. “Come here. You’re safe now.”

But as soon as I let out a cry of distress, Cravus moved. Or more like… he didn’t move. He just disappeared. Poof. Vanished. Out of thin air.

“Fuck!” Zuri screeched and tossed me behind her. “Forgot about these invisible fucks.” Skags fell from my cloak with a squawk just as a table moved and Zuri fired off a shot. I heard a roar, unmistakably Cravus’s voice just as his form flickered until he stood in front of us, his arm leaking black blood, his expression a mask of fury.

“Gotcha,” Zuri sneered before aiming the gun again.

“No!” I screamed, surging out from behind her to throw myself in front of Cravus. “Don’t shoot him, please!”

“Bloom, hut!” he barked in his language followed by a few more gargled commands.

“I won’t shoot her, just you,” Zuri spat in response to him. “I’m a great shot, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

I went to my knees in front of Cravus, trembling so badly that my teeth chattered. “Please don’t hurt him. He saved me. Then I saved him. And we’ll keep saving each other.”

Confusion flickered over Zuri’s face for a brief second before she aimed again. “That’s nonsense. None of these assholes give a shit—”

“Please,” I stood up slowly, directly in front of Cravus who panted behind me, probably with pain and anger. “I don’t know why we’re here because I don’t understand his language, but I think it has something to do with me. Please just hear him out. Let him talk.” Skags raced over to cling to my leg. “We both need him. And want him.”

Her brows dipped, and her top teeth came out to chew at the corner of her lower lip. “He doesn’t hurt you?”

“No,” I said. “If he did, I would have let you shoot him.”

“He’s not holding something over you? Family? Another pet?”

I shook my head. “I don’t have anyone.”

Her eyes narrowed for a brief moment before she finally lowered the laser gun. Her gaze shifted to Cravus behind me. “So, what are you here for?”

He spoke a few words through gritted teeth, which I figured was more about being pissed off than in pain.

Zuri cursed softly under her breath and shook her head. “You’re right. It has to do with you. He wants you to have a translator implant. So you two can communicate.”

That was not what I expected. “What? Really? Do you have one?”

She studied both of us a moment before sighing heavily. “Yeah, I have one. Needs a little tweaking, so sit down. Take a load off.” She squinted at him. “You want something for your wound?”

He muttered a few things that sounded a lot like, “Fuck off.” In the end, he sat down on a chair and rummaged through his supplies before dabbing an ointment on his injury.

“Will he be okay?” I asked her as she dug through a pile of what looked like junk.

“Yeah, he’ll be fine. Just a graze. I meant to warn him, not kill him.”

Cravus remained silent, but his glare signified that he would have liked to give her a warning too. I sat down at his feet, where he handed me the canteen quietly and urged me to drink. When I handed it back to him, he declined.

I insisted, and he finally gave in, taking a few gulps before dribbling a bit in Skags’s mouth. When I turned, Zuri was watching us out of the corner of her eye, but she quickly looked away. “So, what’s your name?”

“Bloom. This is Cravus, and this is Skags.”

“Bloom?”

“Well, it was Mouse, but I don’t think Cravus liked it, so he calls me Bloom.”

“Mouse? Who named you Mouse?”

“My captors.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, drawing out the word. “What was your name on Earth?”

“Earth?”

She stared at me like I had three heads. “What name were you born with?”

“I don’t know.”

“What?” she nearly shrieked.

Cravus tensed next to me, but I placed a hand on his leg. He rasped out a few words to her that made her eyes go round. “I’m sorry, what? You were in a cage on the way to the Council?”

I explained to her all that I remembered, which wasn’t much. That I’d woken up in a cage, no memory of who or what I was. “Cravus told me I’m human.”

“Yeah, honey, you’re a human. And you speak American English like me. I’m from Philly. That ring any bells?”

I shook my head, and her expression darkened before she once again focused on the table in front of her. She had found a small disk and fiddled with it while holding a small gun-like object.

Finally, she announced that she was finished and dragged a chair over to where I sat on the floor. “You want a chair?” she asked.

I was pressed against Cravus’s massive thigh, which was where I felt safe. I shook my head.

Zuri’s hands went slack in her lap as she watched me. Her face finally softened, and she offered me a small smile. Something in me stirred. She was pretty; she had high cheekbones and a smooth forehead with big round eyes. Now that she wasn’t angry at me, I found her presence made me feel safe.

“This is going to hurt at first,” she said. “But just give it a moment, and the pain will go away. I promise. Okay?”

“Okay,” I murmured, not too nervous because I trusted her, and Cravus was here. His big palm settled on the back of my neck, warming the skin there. I smiled up at him, and he returned the smile, his eyes soft.

Zuri touched my ear, then my scalp, and I felt a cool metal touch the skin at the back of my ear. Suddenly, a sharp pain jabbed me, and I grimaced with a groan as something felt like it dug into my skull. But Zuri was right… as soon as the pain had come, it was gone, and while I felt a little dizzy, I was okay.

Zuri smiled at me. “All right?”

I nodded. “I’m all right.”

“Does it hurt?” Cravus’s deep voice filtered through the new device in my ear.

I lunged to my feet, hands immediately grasping the straps on his chest. “Cravus,” I gasped.

His eyes glowed fiercely as he nodded. “Bloom.”

“Talk,” I nearly shouted at him. “Say… words.”

His mouth opened, and for a moment, he seemed unable to say a word until he smiled and said, “I like your hair short.”

I couldn’t help myself. I burst into tears. Cravus immediately wrapped his arms around me and pressed me to his chest, where I sobbed. Being able to converse with someone—both Cravus and Zuri—made me feel like a person again. A, well, a human. “N-n-no one c-c-c-could under-understand me, and th-then you c-c-could, but I d-d-didn’t underst-stand y-you a-a-a-and—”

“Well, I could understand you,” he spoke into my hair. I could hear the humor in his voice. “Not so sure now with your face pressed against me while you’re crying.”

I laughed, which only made the tears come out faster until my face was a mess of tears and snot.

He swiped at them with his big thumbs. “It’s okay, Bloom. You can cry.”

The sobs of relief started again. It took a while for me to calm down, and Cravus held me through it while Zuri sat nearby, scratching Skags’s ears and watching us closely. When I had myself under control, I rubbed at my swollen eyes. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize.” Her face had lost all harshness, and now she only watched us with warmth. “I should apologize for shooting the big guy, but…” she shrugged. “You can’t be too sure here. And I would do it again if it meant making sure you were safe. I see now that I’m wrong.” She eyed Cravus. “You’re welcome for the warning shot instead of the kill shot.”

He seemed to have gotten over his anger. His posture was relaxed, and he ran a hand up and down my back where I was still perched in his lap. “You’re forgiven, and you did the right thing. You can’t be too sure.” He glanced around. “How’d you get here?”

Zuri tugged at the colorful band in her hair. “Eh, it’s a boring story.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “So, Bloom, do you remember anything? Anything at all?”

“From how I got here?”

“From home.”

“Sometimes smells remind me of things. When Cravus cooked meat the other day, I got a flashback to a time where I was in green grass, and a man was cooking. Everyone around me was happy. There was laughter. Drinks that made me warm.”

Zuri sighed. “You were probably remembering a party, and someone was grilling. Could have been anywhere in America. Anything else?”

“I dream a lot.” I bit my lip, not wanting to tell Cravus he appeared in them all the time, because that was weird. “There was a flame in one. I blew it out, like this.” I pursed my lips and huffed out a puff of breath. “There was something waxy on my hands.”

“A candle,” Zuri said. She shook her head. “Those are kind of generic memories. I wish I could jog your memory somehow. You don’t know what happened that made you lose it?”

I shook my head as she stood up and studied my scalp. Her fingers brushed through my short hair, and it tickled. “I don’t see any injuries to your scalp…” she pulled at a lock of hair above my ear. “What happened to your hair, honey?”

“It was matted really badly, and too long. I hacked it off with his knife.”

She grimaced. “Well, first things first. I’m giving you a proper haircut.”

Armed with a pair of scissors and some electric thing that buzzed, she went to work on my head, singing to herself as she went. When she was done, strands of dark hair in varying length littered the floor and my shoulders. She stepped back, eyeing me before making a loud exclamation. “How could I forget? A mirror. You probably don’t even remember what you look like.”

She grabbed a flat board and held it up to my face. Reflecting back at me was… me. I had round green eyes, a small nose, and a small mouth. My skin had brown dots scattered across the bridge of my nose and my cheeks. My hair was now a few inches long with a small sweep across the top of my forehead.

A small scar marred the skin at the corner of my left eye. I prodded it, wondering how it got there, but no memories came back to me. It seemed smells were what knocked memories loose in my head. I couldn’t say I found myself familiar, but then I wasn’t a stranger either. I felt… a whole lot of nothing looking at my face. I dropped the mirror into my lap, disappointed but trying not to show it.

“Bloom?” Cravus asked, tensing a bit as he sensed my mood.

“I’m okay. I just… don’t feel anything when I look at myself.”

He took the mirror from my hand and gave it back to Zuri. “Do you have anything that reminds you of smells from Earth she could try?”

Zuri scrunched her lips and glanced around her tent with her brows furrowed. “I can’t think of anything right now.”

He nodded. “If you think of anything, let us know. Do you think Bloom can get some rest?”

How did he know I was so drained? After the journey here, and all that talking, I felt like I was going to pass out.

Zuri set me up in her bed, which rested in a hidden panel in her tent, protected with alarms. She said no one in the settlement knew she was human, and she used a voice altering device to sound male.

Cravus remained in the main area of the tent with Skags while she pulled a blanket up to my chin. When she turned to walk away, I grabbed her hand. She turned with a raised eyebrow. “You okay?”

“Thank you, Zuri,” I said, holding her warm gaze. “I just met you and you’ve already done so much. You would have killed him to rescue me, wouldn’t you?”

She nodded with a tight jaw. “In a heartbeat. I wish I could do more for those of us in this galaxy but…” she shook her head. “I do what I can from here. Get some rest now and we’ll talk more.” She smiled and squeezed my hand before letting it go. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Cravus

Zuri returned from her sleep area where Bloom was now out of sight.

“Is she resting?” I asked.

She nodded. “Passed out almost right away.” She sank down in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, watching me. “You got the bleeding to stop?”

I nodded. “We heal fast.”

She shook her head with a snort. “Of course you do.” Her gaze strayed to where Bloom slept. “What do you plan to do with her?”

“I live in Torin, she’d be safe there—”

Another snort. “You can’t be serious. First you have to get her to a dock safely, which… good luck with that. Then travel to your planet safely, which, again, good luck with that. Then you’re telling me that the rest of your people are going to accept her?”

I resisted snapping at her. She wasn’t wrong. I didn’t have a solid plan on getting out of here. The shuttle arranged for me to return home was long gone. Still, I was a Kaluma, stubborn, and determined to protect the precious human at my side. I was confident I’d figure something out, even if I had to steal a cruiser and fly home myself. “You underestimate me.”

“Really? Because I could have killed you. And I’m a human. What if a load of Gattrix find you? Rogastix?”

I leveled her with a glare. “If you were anything but human, you would have been dead before you pulled the trigger.”

A muscle in her jaw twitched. I waited for her to argue, but instead she looked away with a sigh. “So that’s your plan then. To take her with you.”

That was my plan, but that was before Bloom had any sort of choice. Now… well, now she could choose to stay with one of her own kind, a human clearly capable of looking after both of them. Would she be happier here than with me? I did have one advantage, though. “We have another human female at our settlement.”

Zuri’s gaze shot to mine. “What?”

“One of our warriors found and saved a human female. They are mates.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Mates.” She spit out the word like it was bitter root.

“You don’t believe me?”

“No, I don’t. Humans don’t have mates or soul mates, or any of that.”

“You can’t deny the linyx bond that Karina and Bosa share.”

“Oh yeah?” She settled in for a fight. I could tell by the fire in her brown eyes. “Tell me more about this bond.”

“She has visuls of him.”

“Visuls?”

“Dreams.”

She fluttered her lips. “He appears in her dreams. Amazing. Incredible.” Her words were a direct contradiction to her flat tone. “That means nothing to me.”

“She can—”

A cry split the air, coming from Bloom’s sleeping area. We both leapt from our chairs, but I was quicker. Surging into the back of the tent, I found Bloom on the ground, twisted up in blankets, her face damp with sweat and her eyes squeezed shut. “Fight,” she whimpered. “You have to fight.”

I swept her stiff body into my arms, and with a gasp, her eyes shot open. Pupils blown wide, she seemed unable to focus until she blinked a few times and let out a shuddering breath. “Cravus,” she whispered, her muscles going lax. She rubbed at her eyes while I sat on the bed pallet with her on my lap. “What happened? Why are you in here?”

“You were yelling in your sleep,” Zuri said. “Are you in pain?”

“No,” Bloom shook her head. “I was…” her gaze shifted to me, and she studied my face for a moment. “I was dreaming.”

My breath left my lungs in a rush. I asked my next question with a slight tremble in my voice. “What did you dream about?”

Bloom’s eyes didn’t leave mine. “You.”

Zuri sighed. “Oh jeez, that’s not—”

“What about me?” I ignored the non-believer next to me. “What was I doing?”

Bloom swallowed, and I watched the muscles in her throat work. “I don’t really understand. We were surrounded by these shadowy figures. All I knew was I had to fight.” Her chest heaved, and her eyes went unfocused again, like she was remembering the panic.

I ran my palm over short hair. “It’s okay. It’s not real.” Which was a lie and a truth all at the same time. Karina had said her first visuls with Bosa were mixed with the past, present, and future. It wasn’t until they confirmed their bond that her visuls were clearer.

“It felt…” She stood up and reached for the canteen to drink. After taking a few gulps, she shook her head. “It felt so real. I don’t remember dreaming like that…”

I shot Zuri a look, and she curled a lip at me.

A soft rumble filled the small space, and Bloom’s hand went to her stomach. Laughing softly, she said, “Sorry, that was my stomach.”

“I’m hungry too,” Zuri backed up. “Give me a minute and I’ll get us something to eat.”

“Thank you,” Bloom said as Zuri disappeared to the front of the tent.

Bloom was silent for a moment, and I let her think. Finally, she turned to me. “What happened right before she shot you?”

I tilted my head. “What?”

“Right before Zuri shot you. You just… disappeared.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that she wasn’t aware of my abilities. “I can blank.”

“Blank?”

“My scales, they flip and camouflage me.”

Her brows rose into her hairline. “Really? But then why…why didn’t you stay, uh, blanked when Zuri shot you?”

“Blanking takes a lot of energy. If I get injured, I often cannot hold the blank. And with Zuri, I felt it was best to show myself.”

Her fingers fluttered lightly across my chest, and I had to force myself not to react to her touch. “Can you show me now?”

I blanked, which took mere moments, and the clicking of my scales filled the small space. With large eyes, Bloom reached out again, touching my arm. “So, you’re still there, just… impossible to see.” She squinted. “I think I can make out a blurry outline, but I wouldn’t notice it at all unless I knew you were sitting there.” She leaned back and released a long breath. “Wow, okay, please come back. I like when I can see you.”

With a chuckle, I returned to my visible form, and she smiled. “That’s better.”

I leaned forward. “Bloom, we need to talk about where we go from here.”

Skags jumped up onto the bed pallet and nuzzled under her arm. She scratched his ears. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you have options.” Even saying the word made my skin itch. I didn’t want to give her options at all. I wanted to scoop her up and bury her against me until we were home safe on Torin. I swallowed around the argument in my throat. “You can stay here with Zuri, or you can come home with me.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek as she scratched Skags’s ears. “What do you want me to do?”

The tent flap snapped, and Zuri marched in holding several platters. “It’s not about what he wants,” she said as she sat down next to Bloom and began to place heaping amounts of food on her plate. “It’s what you want. What do you want, Bloom?”

FIVE

Bloom

That felt like a trick question. How could I know what I wanted when I didn’t even know myself?

Cravus dropped his gaze to the floor, but I could see the tightness in his jaw. Zuri’s moved with quick jerks, which made me think she was irritated. “Are you annoyed with me?” I asked her.

She paused in the middle of scooping some sort of brown mash on my plate. Her shoulders slumped as she sighed. “No, I’m not annoyed with you.”

“Are you annoyed with Cravus?”

Zuri let out a short laugh. “No, I’m not annoyed with him either. I’m pissed about what happened to you. I hate that you don’t have your memories. Mine are all that keep me going on this planet…” She shook her head. “Anyway, I only want you to be happy. And if you stayed with me, maybe I could help you regain some memories. Or maybe not. But I’d try.”

She handed Cravus a plate, which he took without looking at her. Skags got his own little dish full of meat, which he munched on happily. I took a bite of the brown mash and found the taste pleasant.

“I wouldn’t be a burden to you?” I asked Zuri.

“No, honey. You wouldn’t be.”

“And if I decided to go with Cravus, would you be disappointed?”

Zuri reached out and squeezed my hand. “No, as long as it’s your decision.”

I took another bite and eyed Cravus, who had nearly cleared his plate already. His head was bent, and his shoulders were tensed. One thing I hadn’t told Cravus yet was that every time he appeared in my dreams, he told me that he knew who I was. He knew my name. And even though they were just dreams… they were so real, which made me believe if anyone could help me regain my memories, it was him. While I felt safe with Zuri, Cravus felt like home.

“Am I a burden to you?” I asked him.

His head shot up and he frowned. “Are you speaking to me?”

I nodded, and the blue of his eyes glowed fiercely. “Have I made you feel like you’re a burden?”

“No, but—”

“I’d like you to come with me, Bloom. I know your dreams might be just dreams to you, but to us Kaluma, it means something that I appear in them while you sleep. I want to take you to my home. There is another human female there with her Kaluma mate. I know I can take care of you there and keep you safe.”

Zuri hadn’t let go of my hand. She squeezed it again, and when I met her eyes, I expected to see disdain or censure, but all I got was a nod of understanding. “You choose what feels right,” she urged.

I felt horrible leaving Zuri, but the thought of Cravus walking out of this settlement without me sent my heart racing in a panic. “I have to go,” I whispered as tears pricked the back of my eyes. “I have to go with him. I feel like that’s what’s right. My dreams… They mean something. I know it.”

Zuri wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “I understand. And I’m glad you got to make your choice.”

“You can come with us—”

Zuri was already shaking her head with a smile. “I don’t think Cravus wants me to tagging along.”

My spine snapped straight in indignation. “He won’t mind.”

Cravus looked like he did, in fact, mind very much but he kept his mouth shut. Smart guy.

Zuri laughed. “He would mind, but even if he didn’t, I have made a name and purpose for myself on this planet, and here is where I will stay.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I am. Just know that if you’re ever on Gorsich, you can always count on me for help. I’m known as Hack, so just ask around for me.”

I nodded. “Got it.”

“Does that offer extend to me?” Cravus asked her with a slight smirk.

Zuri sniffed haughtily and poked at her food. “I guess so. But only in reparation for shooting you.”

Cravus smiled at me, and I held back a giggle. “I accept those reparations.”

“Well, that was all I was offering,” she muttered without looking at him.

This time, a laugh burst out of me, startling Skags. Zuri, her head still bent, smiled to herself.

We took a day to get some rest and eat. While Zuri had plenty of food stores, Cravus used some of his czens to purchase more supplies from a few vendors to replenish what we used. Zuri explained more about how she made a living, and I was amazed at her resourcefulness. While she didn’t talk much about how she came to this galaxy, she found a way to stay alive and support herself.

Known as Hack among the refugees of the planet, she supplied translation implants, comm devices, weapons, and anything else needed among the exploited species trying to return home or stay alive. Wanted by the Rinian Council, she moved around a lot, and said she would have to move from her current settlement soon.

She was adamant she didn’t want to return home with us, that she served a purpose here and wanted to fulfill it, no matter how dangerous it was.

We decided to leave the settlement when it was dark, so we sat in Zuri’s tent enjoying one last meal while we waited for the sun to go down. Zuri was telling a story about how she’d been nearly hijacked by a squad of Gattrix when Cravus, who was picking through a pile of what looked like junk on one of her tables, let out a bark of surprise.

Expression fierce, he thrust his hand in Zuri’s face. Between his fingers, he held a discolored disk. “Where did you get this?”

Zuri blinked at him. “Uh, not sure. I get all kinds of scrap from the occupants of this settlement in exchange for food. That’s a pile I haven’t sorted through yet. Why?”

His chest heaved, and I instinctively pressed a palm to his chest in an effort to calm him. His eyes lost a little of their scary glow when my fingers brushed his scales. Still, his teeth were gritted when he spoke again. “This is…” he pointed to his mangled ear. “My comm to home. I thought I lost it when I was shot during the transport ambush.”

Zuri studied him closely. “Your comm?”

“It was installed in my earlobe before it was shot off.”

She blew out a whistle. “That’s an unlucky shot.”

He studied it, pressing on it delicately before spitting out a curse. “It’s damaged.” He sank down in his chair. “If I could get a hold of them, they’d arrange passage home for us.”

Zuri held out her hand. “If it’s possible to be salvaged, I’m the one to do it. Hand it over and I’ll see what I can do.”

Cravus

Zuri settled a pair of magnifying glasses on her nose, turned on a light, and bent over a desk with the disk in front of her. She fiddled for a while, muttering to herself in a low voice while I watched her every move, feeling like I was going to come out of my skin.

Bloom drifted closer, until she settled onto her knees at my feet with her chest pressed against my calf. She seemed to like that position, and every time she looked up at me with those green eyes, a part of my soul settled. I ran a hand over her hair, wondering how Bosa felt when he realized he’d found his linyx. I was still unsure Bloom was my mate, but I couldn’t deny her visuls or the way she made me feel. So much of how we chose our mates was instinct, and all of mine were acutely attuned to her.

She folded her hands on my knee and propped her chin on them. “Tell me about your home.”

I knew what she was doing—taking my mind off Zuri tinkering with the comm device. While I still planned to get home without it, getting direction from Gurla or Bosa would make my mission a lot easier.

“Home,” I blew out a breath and closed my eyes. I could almost smell the popular weed the warriors liked to smoke. I could feel the weight of the tools in my hands as I worked in my weapons workshop. And I could see my friends—brash Bosa, too serious Sherif, and Karina’s smile. My father, whose mind was failing him, yet still greeted me with a proud smile every day. The twins Grego and Uthor who I’d promised new weapons to when I returned.

“We are in a rebuilding period as our previous pardux nearly drove us to extinction. It’s a long story but he went a little mad and forced all the females into a harem with him.”

Zuri was listening, because I heard her let out a little growl.

“It was a dark time for us. But when he was defeated by one of our allies, his son took over—Sherif—who is a childhood friend of mine. He’s…” I could feel the smile on my face. “A good leader. Fair. He was always meant to rule. While the effects of our former pardux’s rule can still be felt, we’re trying to rebuild. We have crops and livestock and live in the trees. The stars shine bright through the leaves. I miss the smell of the stream near our settlement and the laughter of the females. I miss Gurla who always snuck me treats because I’m her favorite other than her two mates.”

Bloom let out a small hum, and I opened my eyes to see her smiling up at me. “That sounds nice. What’s the other human woman like?”

“Karina is tough. She puts up with Bosa’s mouth, which runs a lot.”

“You think she’d like me?”

I cupped Bloom’s cheek. “She will absolutely like you.”

Her skin warmed my palm, and I both felt and heard the intake of her breath as she stared up at me with an expression that was quickly shifting from contentment to something more urgent. More heated. Her pupils flared, and I caught a whiff of her scent, that warm spice I’d first encountered when she’d been caged.

My cock pressed against the front of my pants, eager to play with the pretty human at my feet. And unless I was mistaken, she was aroused too.

She shifted on her knees, swallowing thickly just as her gaze dipped to my groin. Her eyes went wide, fear leaching into the lust, as she backed up slightly. I quickly bent over to cover the bulge. I reached for her and hated the way she flinched. “Bloom, it’s not… just ignore it.” What did I say to her? How did I make her see I wouldn’t hurt or force anything on her, most of all myself?

Her chest heaved, and I tried again, “Bloom—”

Suddenly a crackle rent the air, and Zuri let out a whoop of triumph. Fiddling with the knob of a machine in front of her, she beckoned me over. “The speaker on your comm is shot, but I hooked it up to this external one, and it should work…”

She tongued the corner of her lip as she concentrated. I strode over to her table, Bloom at my heels, to see she’d all but dissected my comm device.

More crackling filled the tent, and then a distinct voice filtered through the scratching noise. “Cra—us?”

The sound of my garbled name in Gurla’s voice made my legs weak. “It’s me. There was an ambush. I was shot and have recovered and missed the shuttle. How can I get transport home?”

For a moment, there was nothing but a staticky silence. I clenched my fists. “Can she hear me?” I asked Zuri.

“I think so,” she murmured, fiddling again with the knob just as Gurla’s voice came back. “Thank… so worried… didn’t hear from you…” A male’s voice boomed in the background, unmistakably Bosa’s, and it was a little hysterical. Gurla said something indecipherable, seemingly to him and then spoke again louder. “…compromised. Whatever you do… go to Council. I repeat… go to Council. Wait for… passage.”

The ambush made me concerned about moles in the council, but if Gurla confirmed they were still the safe option, I trusted her. “Go to the council?”

Her next few words were garbled before they became clearer again. “…Council. Be safe… home.”

The comm device sent out a spark, nearly singing Zuri’s arm, before falling completely silent. “Yerk!” I shouted, pounding my fist on the table.

Zuri worked with the comm more, but finally threw her hands in the air and tossed her glasses on the table. “I’m sorry. It’s done. Beyond all hope. Maybe I could fix this with a ton more supplies and about five days.”

I shook my head. “No, we don’t have that kind of time. We need to get moving now. Gurla said to go to the Rinian Council, so that’s where we’ll go.”

Zuri didn’t look convinced. “You think they can help?”

“We work for them. I was hired by them for this job, and it nearly killed me. The least they can do is get me home,” I grumbled.

“What about her?” she jerked her chin toward Bloom.

“They had rescued her from traffickers, so they’ll be happy she’s alive.” I didn’t want to say the next words, but they might be a good option. “Do you want to stay with Zuri until I can come get you?”

She shook her head immediately. “No, I’ll come with you.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m positive, Cravus. What if you need help? Who will save you?”

I opened my mouth to tell her I would save myself, but then I realized she’d already kept me alive twice. Maybe I did need her as much as she needed me. I nodded. “Okay then. Sun is down, so it’s time to go. We have a journey ahead of us.”

SIX

Bloom

Zuri leaned against the inside of her tent, just out of view, as Cravus slung our pack of supplies over his shoulder along with his weapon. With Zuri’s help, I’d fashioned a shoulder sling for Skags. Cravus warned the terrain we needed to cover wasn’t suitable for his small paws. She’d also given me better clothes—clean pants, a shirt, and a jacket as well as boots with thick soles.

“I appreciate all you did for us,” Cravus said to her.

She smiled. “Does that include shooting you?”

He shrugged. “Your instinct was to protect, and I can’t fault you for that. If you ever run into another Kaluma and need help, just mention my name.” He turned and then paused before glancing back at her. “When we first came into your tent, you mentioned that you forgot we could blank. How did you know?”

“I met one of you before.”

Cravus straightened immediately and drew closer to her. “You have? Bosa?”

She shook her head, and her expression went a little guarded. “Don’t know his name. Big guy like you. Older, I think. He looked liked he’d been through a lot.” She waved her hand in front of her face. “Old scars, new wounds, that kind of thing.”

His breathing sped up, and his fists clenched rhythmically. “How long ago was this? Did you speak to him? Where was he?”

Zuri shrugged. “It was a long time ago.”

“We haven’t traveled from our planet for many cycles, so that must be…” he grimaced. “Maybe not. Maybe it was a Kaluma from another settlement.” Shaking his head, he sent her a strained smile. “Never mind. Thank you again and stay safe.”

“You too.” Her long arms wrapped me in a hug, and I felt a soft kiss pressed to the top of my head. “If he does you dirty, remember, ask around for Hack. I’m only found if I want to be, and I’ll always want to be found by you.”

“Thank you,” I squeezed her back, cherishing her words. “You always have a home with us.”

“Good to know.” Gently shoving me away, she ruffled my hair and sniffed. I caught the slight shine to her eyes before she blinked it away. “See you soon, if it’s meant to be.”

I nodded, hoping it was meant to be. I didn’t want to think that this was the last time I’d see Zuri. As we walked out into the darkness, I glanced over my shoulder at her tent until it was just a small glowing dot on the horizon. After that, I focused on the journey to our destination.

The longer we walked, the darker it seemed to get, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me logically, but it was the truth. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face or where I was placing my feet. Cravus, with his supernatural blue eyes, was able to see better in the dark than I could. Eventually, he picked me up and carried me as we traversed the terrain.

I must have dozed off in his arms because the next time I opened my eyes, a visible strip of sunlight glowed above the horizon. Skags yawned in his sling and stretched out his paws, nosing into the air. I was sure he was hungry. I was, and certainly Cravus had to be. Wasn’t he tired?

I peered up at his face, but he didn’t look fatigued or worn down. He strode on ahead fresh as when we started out.

“Cravus?” I murmured, my voice scratchy from sleep. When he glanced down at me, his features softened immediately, eyes crinkling into a soft smile, and I felt warmth flood my blood at his expression. Had anyone in my life every looked at me like this? I couldn’t imagine I’d ever forget that.

“Sleep well?” He asked.

Surprisingly enough, it had been good sleep. “Yes, but don’t you need to rest?”

“I don’t, but we should eat.” He placed me on my feet, and I stretched out my legs before continuing to walk at his side. We munched on some dried meat Zuri had provided for us and sipped on some water.

I picked my way over the wet, rocky land of the valley. Large mountains rose on either side of us, and the stream to our left babbled softly. “Where are we?” I asked.

“In the Gorsich hills. We follow this stream, which eventually widens into a river and leads us right to Haliya, the capital of Gorsich the Rinian Council resides.”

“Do you know this area well?”

His gaze constantly scanned the area around us. “I studied the planet as much as I could, focusing on the land surrounding Haliya, so I know I’m on the right track, but I’m unsure of all the dangers associated with this land. We always have to worry about an ambush like the one that originally disrupted our transport.”

Nervous bumps rose on my arms, and I rubbed the skin there. “I see.”

“We also have to worry about the natural predators of this area. The cudgels—those winged creatures from the ambush—have clans around here and while they wouldn’t try to eat me, you’d be a delicacy. As well as upris, who would kill us for sport, and while I could fight a few off, if a whole family tried to take us on, I would fail.”

He said all of this so matter of fact, with no fear or tremble in his voice. Meanwhile, I wanted to curl into a ball. “Um, okay, I think I heard enough.”

He blinked at me; brow furrowed in confusion. “Did I say something wrong?”

“No,” I said quickly with a wave of my hands. “You were being thorough. That’s great. I’m just… not excited to hear about all the things that could kill me and clean their teeth with my bones.”

“Upris have hooked beaks instead of teeth.”

I took a deep breath in through my nose, so I didn’t snap at him. “That’s nice for them.”

“They are night hunters, so we should be able to relax now that the sun is up.”

I laughed a little hysterically. “Relax. Yes, sure. I’m super chill.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. “Do you trust me to protect you?”

That sobered me for a moment. I did trust him. He was extremely capable and hell, he could turn invisible. “Yes.”

He smiled. “Then let me do the worrying for the two of us.”

“You’re worried?” He didn’t seem like it at all.

His gaze dropped to me. “I’m in a constant state of awareness about our mortality.”

When he put it that way … I nodded. “That’s fair.”

His hand brushed mine, and before I knew it, he’d laced our fingers together, bringing them up between us so I would have felt like a child if it wasn’t for the heated look he gave me. “Just enjoy the view. We’re coming up to a mopew soon.”

“A mopew?”

His smile grew. “Lots of blooms.”

A few steps later, and the mountains on either side of us fell away. We came to a small ledge and stretched before us, down a small hill, was a massive flat plain covered in bright flowers, tall grasses, and leaves in every shape. “Oh. My.” I gasped. My eyes could barely take it all in. I swore I could have spent a year frolicking through this mopew, and I wouldn’t see every plant there was to see. “This is… why is there no one here?”

“Protected land,” he said. “There are mopew scattered all over the planet and must remain isolated. Penalties for violations are stiff. They provide breathable air for the planet. They also contain poisonous and venomous plants.”

I deflated. “So does that mean we can’t walk through them?”

“We cannot.”

I let out a sad groan.

“But… we will be.”

I perked up. “What? We will be? But you said—”

“Either side of this mopew is terrain that isn’t safe for either of us. We’re going through, but you cannot touch anything. I do not know what your biology would react to. I will cut us a path, and you stick behind me. Understand?”

I stared at the mopew, suddenly seeing fewer pretty flowers and more vines that threatened to choke me. Now that I paid more attention, the field was full of barbed stems, sticky leaves shiny with what I could only imagine was a poisonous oil. I swallowed thickly. “I understand.”

“We can do this.”

Cravus really was precious with his pep talks. “Yes, we can do this.”

We picked our way down the small rocky hill until we reached the edge of the mopew. Before entering, he wrapped a length of fabric around my mouth and nose and tied it at the back of my head. “Can you breathe?”

I nodded.

“That should filter any toxins. Keep it on, okay?”

I nodded again. “What about you?” My voice was muffled through the cloth.

“I’ll be fine.” He turned, jaw tight, and with his weapon, began slashing a path through the dense foliage. Everything looked so… beautiful. I wanted to touch the petals and sniff the flowers, but Cravus had given me direct orders. Hands to myself. Face masked. So, I stepped in his giant footsteps and kept on the narrow path he created for us.

Skags squirmed in his sling, and I thought maybe I should have let him out to pee before we began this trek. The mopew had seemed vast from above, but that was nothing like being in the thick of it. A vine seemed to reach for me, its thorns snagging on my arm. I let out a gasp just before Cravus sliced it in half with a small blade. A hissing whine released from the beheaded stalk, and I stared at it with wide eyes as it flailed before flopping onto the ground.

As if sensing the danger, more vines twisted and writhed among the flowers, but stayed away when Cravus let out a low growl.

What the hell? These plants seemed more animal than vegetation.

Slick leaves shimmered, their shiny surface shifting in a kaleidoscope of rainbow colors. I couldn’t look away, hypnotized by the colorful show. Reaching out my hand, I was a few inches away from touching the leaf when Cravus snatched my wrist and jerked me away.

“Bloom,” he barked, and I stared at him, feeling a little woozy.

“Hm?” I swayed a little on my feet.

“Yerk,” he cursed. “Stay with me. Don’t touch anything.”

“Okay,” I said with a loopy smile. I reached out and squeezed his biceps, feeling like I needed to touch. “You’re just so… big and meaty. I like it.”

He stared at me, before swearing again. I took a step forward just as Skags wiggled out of the sling and leapt to the ground. He took off like a shot into the dense foliage. I yanked down my face covering and inhaled deeply before shouting, “Skags! Come back!”

Too late, I realized my mistake. My head spun. My skin heated, and all the blood in my body seemed to rush south to pool in my core. I bent over, pressing a palm between my legs as a gush of warmth wet my pants. I moaned and tried to make my fingers work to ease the ache between my legs, but my hand wouldn’t work right. Everything was cramping up, and I blinked up at Cravus. He stared at me in horror. “Help,” I managed on a weak whisper. “I need… something.”

Another cramp hit me, and I felt a drop of liquid slide down my inner thigh. Cravus’s nostrils flared, and his lips parted. His chest heaved, and his fists clenched rhythmically. “Bloom, you’re… you need release.”

“Sure. Release.” I wasn’t sure what that meant. “Just help. I can’t…” my fingers wouldn’t work. My elbows seemed locked at my sides. “I can’t move.”

“Yerking aphrid.” He spat.

“Wh-what’s that?”

“It’s making you…” He swallowed heavily, and that was when I spotted the bulge in his pants. No, more than a bulge—a damn log. And was it pulsing? “It’s making you aroused.”

“Y-you too,” I stuttered out.

“No, I’m reacting to… you. Your scent. Driving me yerking wild.”

Another cramp twisted my entire right side and I cried out. “Please, Cravus!”

“I can’t… I don’t feel right touching you now. You’re not in your right mind—”

I launched myself at him, climbing him like a tree until I could wrap my arms around his neck. I pressed our foreheads together and panted against his lips while I ground myself into the hard ridges of his stomach. “Please. Take care of me, Cravus.”

With a defeated groan, he pressed our lips together. I clung to his shoulders, digging my nails into his scales as he grabbed my ass with one massive palm. His fingers kneaded me, but that wasn’t where I needed him. All the achy need was right between my legs, soaking my pants and his shirt as I sought relief that felt too far out of reach.

“I need to take care of you,” he murmured.

“T-too high. Lower me to your cock,” I panted against him.

He let out another pained moan. “No, I can’t.”

“Cravus,” I whined. “Please, I—”

“I’ll explain later, but I can’t do that.” He went down to his knees with me in his arms. “But I can do something else.” He unhooked my arms from around his neck, and I went into a panic.

“No! Don’t—”

“Shhhh,” he said with another kiss to my lips. “I know, Bloom. Trust me.”

He laid me down on the flattened path. All around me, flowers waved. Vines snaked. I stared up at them as I felt Cravus’s hands on my stomach. His lips pressed a kiss above my belly button before he lowered my pants. I watched as he pulled off my boots and then set them aside with my discarded clothes.

Just as another cramp hit me, he slung my legs over his massive shoulders. “Trust me, Bloom.” His mouth opened, and his long, dark blue tongue unfurled. There was a small hole on the very tip I hadn’t noticed until now. Slowly, that hole widened until the edges peeled back.

“Wh-what?” I whispered, just as he lowered his head and placed the hole of his tongue on the hardened nub of my clit. At first, I only felt a much-needed heat, and then the suction started.

His tongue undulated as he sucked and flicked my clit. I let out a scream that could probably be heard on his home planet. His fingers speared inside of me, and my inner walls rippled around the thick digits. I was a mindless thing thrusting against his face, gripping his head with my thighs, and tugging on the short strands of his white hair. All the while those fluorescent blue eyes held my gaze with a fierce heated lust.

“Cravus!” I called out, the earlier aching cramps now replaced by rollicking waves of pleasure, fluttering down my spine. My legs shook, my heart raced, and when he let out a rumbling moan that vibrated out to my every limb, I came on a silent cry.

My mouth opened, my back arched, but all I could do was ride the coil of relentless ecstasy. I vaguely saw Cravus finally lift his head and lick my wet slickness from his mouth, nose, and chin with that long tongue. I blinked at him, vision a little blurry, mind a muddled mess, and limbs completely useless. While I was a pile of sated human, Cravus was still strung tight. Every muscle was bunched, and the veins in his neck looked ready to pop.

I reached for him. “You can—”

He shook his head, shifting quickly out of my reach. Still on his knees, he shoved his pants down and pulled out his cock. He wrapped his fingers around the bronze shaft, which shimmered with the same white swirls that covered his chest and neck. The white lines pulsed, and my pussy clenched just thinking about what that would feel like inside of me.

Cravus was in pain, doubled over with one hand on the ground and the other stroking his cock with a tight fist. I managed to roll on my side and shift closer. His eyes were clenched shut, and he let out a long moan just as the skin on the dome of his cock flared out slowly like a blooming flower. I wondered if it was my eyes playing tricks again, but then it began to rotate—the head of his cock spun as his fist moved faster. The swirls on his chest and neck flashed like lightning, and when he came, white spurts of liquid burst forth from the edges of his cock cap, spraying his seed about two feet in every direction.

His fist slid off his cock, and he braced himself on both hands and knees while he caught his breath.

Only then did he turned to look at me, eyes half-lidded. “Mask on.” His voice was like gravel. “We need to get the yerk out of here before I can’t hold myself back.”

I could only nod dumbly just as Skags, the little shit, waltzed out from behind a flower with a blue-stained mouth, a fruit seed still stuck between two teeth. “This is all your fault,” I mumbled at him. But I couldn’t seem to find it in myself to be angry.

Cravus

I helped Bloom dress even though the scent of her slit was enough to harden my cock again in an instant. My whole body hurt, and my brain was muddled only with thoughts of throwing her on the ground and filling her with my seed until neither of us could move.

Her taste coated by tongue and throat, and I wanted to drink more, knowing I’d never be full of her. All I knew was that we had to get out of his mopew before the aphrid plant affected her again. I’d known as soon as her mask dropped, and she inhaled a lungful of the oily fragrance from its massive leaves that we were going to have a problem. A messy one.

The aphrid didn’t affect me like it affected her, but the smell of her arousal drove me near to insanity. While I’d had a few sexual encounters with Kaluma females, the nervous fumbling had never been like that. I’d been driven by single-minded need, and if I hadn’t released myself, I would have burst out of my skin. Even now, my cock was a solid pulsing length in my pants, threatening to act up again.

For once, I was grateful for Bosa’s oversharing when he smoked at night. He’d told me about the pleasure center for the human female, how to detonate their release. I hadn’t believed him, but when I’d taken off Bloom’s pants, that hard clit Bosa had talked about was right there, and yerk had she tasted good.

Bloom trotted behind me, her pale skin still flushed from her release, and her gait loose. She had a dazed look about her, and if her gaze strayed to my crotch one more time, I was going to lose it.

I wondered if there would ever be a time she came to me willingly. If she touched me because she wanted to. If she would invite me into her body. I shook my head as I slashed a path for us, Bloom at my heels. I wouldn’t ask. She’d been through enough. She chose to stay with me, but that didn’t mean she wanted to be my mate.

Were her dreams actually visuls or just… her memories of her past colliding with the present? It might be my own wishful thinking that she was my linyx. That we’d mate happily like Bosa and Karina. Bloom was with me now because she trusted me to keep her safe.

I didn’t stop as we came out the other side of the mopew, not until we were far enough that the pheromones of the aphrid were long gone. The ground was flat and grassy here, and I inhaled the scent of fresh air. A few rock formations were scattered around, and beyond that were the red sands of desert. This shortcut took us off course of the stream, which we’d meet up with later, on our way to Haliya, and while the way was treacherous, I didn’t want to risk the time it would take to follow the meandering stream. We’d need to rest before we encountered the desert. I squinted at the sky. The sun was about to go down, and that meant the desert predators would be up and about in the cooler air. We’d tackle that part of our journey tomorrow at sun-up. I was confident we’d reach Haliya in another two rotations if we kept this pace.

Behind me, Bloom shoved the mask off her face and collapsed onto the ground on her hands and knees. She shook her head rapidly, and when she lifted her head, I could see her eyes slowly coming back into focus as the aphrid lost its hold on her.

But her flushed color remained, and when our eyes met, the red seemed to deepen. She slowly stood as Skags hopped down from her sling and settled himself in the shade of a nearby rock. “I-I’m…” she bit the corner of her bottom lip. “I’m sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about.” Oh yerk, please. As much as I hadn’t wanted to touch her, it’d been the single best moment of my life. If she told me that she regretted it, or hated it…

“That won’t happen again,” she murmured as she rubbed at her forehead. “I’m so embarrassed.”

I clenched my jaw so tight that I heard my molars grate together. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“But you had to…” she waved a hand at the front of her pants. “And then you had to…” Next, she gestured at my still-hard cock. “All because I dropped my mask after you told me not to.”

I sank down on a rock. “It’s all right, Bloom.”

“Will you get in trouble back home? Do you have a mate?”

I took a moment to process her words, and then gently pulled her to stand in front of me I gripped her thin wrist. “Bloom, did you think I didn’t want to do that?”

She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “You said you didn’t want to.”

“I never said that. I said I couldn’t sit you on my cock.”

Her cheeks flushed again. “Right,” she whispered.

“Bloom, please look at me.”

Slowly her eyes drifted to mine, and I drew her closer until she stood between my legs, which didn’t help the situation with my cock. “I don’t have a mate. I haven’t desired one, content to work and fight for my Kaluma while others did their duty to repopulate. But I need to be very clear, that there is nothing I’d like more than to feel your tight body squeeze around my cock, to hear you scream my name, and to release my seed inside of you over and over again until you swell with my child. But I won’t do it until you ask.”

Her mouth dropped open, but no sound came out.

“You weren’t in your right mind back in the mopew—you were drugged by the aphrid plant, and I did what I knew would ease the ache. The aphrid plant did nothing for me. I had to take myself in hand because of how you smelled and tasted. Even now I can still feel you on my tongue and the way your tight heat squeezed my fingers.”

She still didn’t speak, only stared with wide eyes. Finally, she nodded. “Okay, I-I understand now. Thank you for your, uh, thorough explanation.”

I snorted a short laugh, and her face finally relaxed as her lips stretched into a smile. “So, it w-was okay? I grabbed your hair kind of hard.” She grimaced as she eyed my shoulders. “I think I scratched you too.”

“Next time, pull harder and scratch deeper.”

She let out a choked gasp before saying quickly. “Sure, I’ll, uh, do that.”

SEVEN

Bloom

Cravus handed me the hand-picked bouquet with a sheepish smile. “I wish I knew what a lily looks like.” I sat on a rock near a stream, me feet in the water.

I sniffed the flowers and couldn’t resist rubbing the soft, drooping petals. “This is close, actually.”

His face lit up. “Really?”

“Really,” said another human. I knew her—my mind told me she was my friend, but I’d never seen her before. She walked toward me with a warrior at her back—a smirking one with his long white hair in a braid. I knew him too.

“Hey there, Bloom.” She gave my arm a squeeze before sniffing my bouquet. “You two and flowers. You’re going to pick everything on this whole planet, I swear.”

“You want me to leave you some?” Cravus grinned.

“Karina prefers weapons over flowers, isn’t that right, kotche?” Her warrior mate said, squeezing her waist.

She beamed up at him. “That is correct.”

“Come on my little warrior, time for batting practice.” He hefted two spiked bats over his shoulder, one slightly smaller than the other. “See you for dinner,” he nodded at Cravus, and they walked off.

Cravus sat down next to me and draped his arm over my shoulders. I nuzzled into his chest, content, warm, and feeling oh so safe. “I’m so glad no one questioned that I prefer to be called Bloom.”

“And you can always change your mind.”

“I don’t think I will,” I murmured.

“You’re Bloom to me. But a part of you will always be Lily.”

I jerked awake as one word bubbled up from my throat, choking me until I spit it out into the dark sky. “Lily!”

Next to me, Cravus came alert immediately. “Bloom?”

“My name,” I choked out through the tears spilling down my cheeks. “It’s… Lily.”

I could barely see his face in the dark, but I could hear his heavy breathing. “You just remembered now?”

“You… you told me. In my dream.”

He let out a choked sound before drawing me into his arms. “Lily. This is good. Now you know.”

But it wasn’t good. Lily was just four letters. Two syllables. “No,” I sobbed against him. “That’s the problem. All I wanted was to remember my name. I had a dream when we first met where you told me that you knew my name, that if I stuck with you, you’d tell me. I thought that was all I needed to remember my life. But you told me and… nothing. It doesn’t matter. I’m not Lily. I’ll never be her. I’m just… this person with no memories, no nothing.” My voice gave out on me then as I cried into his chest, letting out the sorrow and anguish. I was a lost soul in a strange galaxy.

“You don’t have nothing,” he said softly when my sobs faded to whimpers. “You have me.”

I peered up at him, my eyes adjusting in the dark, to see his chest markings were shimmering again, making him glow. His eyes burned into mine. I sniffed. “But why do you want me? I don’t even know if I want myself because I have no past and no memories of who I am.”

A muscle in his jaw ticked, and I knew I was about to get a Cravus lecture. He speared me with a look so intense that it took my breath away. “You don’t need any of those. A name is just a name. The past is the past. They don’t matter because I know who you are. You’re a selfless female who instinctively protected a tiny turret despite not remembering kindness yourself. You saved me, a warrior who you didn’t know or were sure you could trust just because your conscience couldn’t leave me alone and dying on a battlefield.

“After all you’ve been through, tilting your face to the sun to feel its warmth still brings a smile to your face, and braiding a few flowers together and wearing them on your head makes you laugh. So even if you don’t know yourself, I’ll show you who you are, because I see you bright and clear, kotche. Bright and clear.”

The weight of despair ballooned into elation, so much I swore I was floating. The loneliness I’d felt since I woke up in a cage had withered to a tiny, barely-there ache in my heart. How could I still feel helpless when I had Cravus at my side? There was nothing wrong with asking for help, and so I’d take what he was offering. I’d get to know myself again. I would never be the same person I was before, even with all my memories back—not after what I’d gone through. I sniffed. “You really see me that way?”

“Yes,” he answered definitively.

I nodded, feeling a big weepy still but much more optimistic. “What does kotche mean?”

Confusion flickered across his face. “Where did you hear that?”

“You called me kotche just a minute ago.”

His mouth opened, and then he quickly shut it before dropping his gaze. “It, uh, it means mate.”

“Is that what you see me as?”

He reached for my hand. “I need you to understand something important. Us Kaluma can form linyx bonds. It doesn’t always happen with our mates, but usually the first sign of the bond forming is visuls. Visuls, as I understand it, are like your human dreams.”

“So, if I dream, it’s the sign of a bond forming?”

“No, it’s when you dream of… your mate.” He swallowed. “When you dream of me.”

He’d been in every dream since I first saw him outside my cage. “You’re in them all the time now.”

He inhaled a shuddering breath. “Once the bond is confirmed, your visuls will often tell the future. Right now, they are probably a mix of past and present.”

“Did this happen to the human you know with her mate?”

“Yes.”

I knew instinctively this was not a human thing. We formed emotional bonds, but they didn’t cause clairvoyance. “So how do we confirm the bond?”

He hesitated for a long moment before speaking again. “A full mating when I release my seed inside of you.”

I hadn’t expected that answer. I felt my mouth round into an O.

He gave me a small smile and continued. “That was why I had to be careful in the mopew. I couldn’t do that without your consent.”

“Yes, I appreciate that. I was a little out of my mind.”

“Because it wasn’t your choice to be here in this galaxy, to have this life, I’ve felt it was important to give you choices during your time with me. But Bloom, if we confirm the bond… you’ll have to stay with me—at least until one of us dies. Separation from each other will eventually drive us mad. The visuls will take over and we’ll have a hard time distinguishing what is real and what is not.”

My heart pounded, and goosebumps broke out on my arms. The finality of it felt a little too real. A little too much. I trusted him, but I didn’t fully trust myself to make the right decisions. “So, I could never return to Earth?”

“No,” he said on a pained rasp. “You wouldn’t be free to choose another mate…” he swallowed. “I’m the only male you met. Maybe someone else is who you want—”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t want anyone else.”

He didn’t bother to hide the obvious wash of relief washing over his face. “Okay, Bloom.”

I couldn’t explain why the idea of commitment made my chest tight. “I think I’m worried about losing myself completely. I’d just be Cravus’s human mate, former caged mouse.”

“Everyone will get to know you as I do. They’ll see you are your own person. If you can’t remember the goals for yourself that you once had, we’ll work on new goals. I promise I’ll give you room to grow and won’t stifle you.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll be a good mate to you, Bloom. But if you don’t choose to confirm our bond, I’ll still be by your side. I won’t leave you until you decide it’s time.”

Commitment might have made me nervous, but the idea of Cravus leaving me took my breath away. No, no way. “Do I have time to decide?”

“Yes.” I thought he’d elaborate, but his answer was short and to the point.

“Thank you for explaining it to me.”

“You’re in the dark about enough of your life. I want you to have as much information as you’re able going forward.”

He was a damn saint. “I appreciate it.”

“Let’s rest for now. Tomorrow we’ll get across the sands and then we are only a rotation or two away from Haliya.”

“And then we go to your home?”

He smiled. “It’s your home too.”

Cravus

We lay under the arch of a rock formation. Bloom at my side and Skags sleeping above our heads. The air was cool, which I appreciated on my heated skin since my proximity to Bloom was wreaking havoc on my body.

I had explained as much of the linyx bond as I could, but I wasn’t fully aware of all that it entailed when it came to the bond when shared between a human-Kaluma. The mind was a tricky thing, and her confusing, distressing visuls concerned me. Could the bond be halted here? Or once it had started, must it be confirmed or drive us both insane?

I wished I asked Bosa more questions, but I never thought I’d form any sort of bond with anyone—let alone a human. But he was home, unreachable, and probably worried about me. I imagined Karina was too. Gurla. Wensla. Sherif. I missed them too.

“You mentioned one time that your ex-pardux went mad,” Bloom said in a soft, sleepy voice. “What actually happened?”

This wasn’t anything I liked to talk about, but she had to know since she’d be joining me there. The choices of our ex-pardux, Varnex, unfortunately still lingered to this day, and would for many, many cycles to come.

“Our former leader lost his oldest son and wife, and in his grief, he made a lot of decisions that were not in the best interest of the settlement. He took all the unmated females for himself, regardless of their consent, and isolated us until we had no allies, no means of communication with the outside world. It happened gradually, and respect for our pardux is tantamount to the Kaluma, so resistance took too long to gain traction. I was young when it all began, but even when I was fully-grown and able to fight back, I didn’t. I believed in his delusions. It took an enemy turned ally to defeat our pardux—all over a human female actually—to finally break us free.”

Her eyes were wide and no longer sleepy. “I’m so very sorry.”

“I hated my part in it and carry the guilt with me. It’s one of the reasons I chose not to take a mate. I didn’t deserve one. I still don’t think I do.”

“You can’t change the past, but Cravus just like you see me… I see you. And the warrior you are now wouldn’t let that happen again.”

I touched her face, the skin soft beneath my calloused palm. “I think you had a big family who loved you, Bloom.”

Her lips parted on a soft gasp.

“I can tell that you were a wonderful daughter. A beloved sister. A caring friend. I’m sorry that your family is likely in pain over your disappearance, but I’m not sorry that I get to benefit from having you by my side.”

“Cravus,” she whispered, eyes filling. “Sometimes I’m glad I don’t remember them. It’s less painful.”

“You honor them,” I said. “Just know that who you are, the heart of you, hasn’t changed. They’d be proud of you.”

“What about your parents?” she asked.

“My mother passed away, and while my father is still alive, his mental state is fading. I grew up with Bosa and Sherif. They are like my brothers.”

“I’m eager to meet your brothers. And your father.”

“They’ll see you just as I do.”

“I hope,” she whispered.

Bloom

The sands were still cool from lack of sun at night, but the temperature was heating up fast. I was thankful for my short hair because I remembered how the dark mass of locks had been heavy and hot. I rubbed at the back of my neck, where sweat was already beginning to gather, and wrinkled my nose at the lungful of hot air I inhaled.

My foot caught on the edge of a peaked ridge of sand, and I stumbled. Curved into the sand was a giant S pattern, about as wide as Cravus was tall. At first, I contemplated that a breeze had made it, but the air was still, and that didn’t look like anything done naturally.

“A croyc made that mark.” Cravus said, pointing to large indents on the sand on either side of the S curve. “That’s where it digs in its spiked feet and pulls its body through the sand.”

I didn’t like the sound of any of that. A creature big enough to make this mark… I shuddered. Spiked feet and massive body? “Is it… dangerous?”

“Yes,” Cravus said. “Very.”

I looked up to the sky for patience before muttering, “You didn’t have to be so honest.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Can we, uh, walk far away from this thing?”

“It’s long buried in the sand now. They only hunt at night.”

Oh lovely, it was hunting. “Are there more things to be afraid of in this desert?”

“Yes, but most are nocturnal. It’s why I chose to make this portion of the journey in the day.”

Again, that only sort of eased my fears. I was not even close to an apex predator on this planet. In fact, just about everything seemed above me on the food chain. I stuck to Cravus’s back like glue as we kept walking. He constantly scanned the horizon, and walked with his weapon in his hand, not loaded on his back. He was ready to defend us, and I hoped he didn’t have to do that because I was really, really tired of seeing Cravus get hurt.

He reached into his pack and withdrew a fabric wrapped bundle. Pressing it into the palm of my hand, he gave me a quick nod. “Keep this out and ready.”

I unwrapped the bundle to find the small dagger I’d seen him use before. Well, it looked small in his hand. The blade was about the length of my forearm. “I won’t lose it.”

“It’s yours now,” he said.

“Are you sure?”

“There’s plenty more where that came from.” He straightened his shoulders and shot me a look over his shoulder. “That’s what I do at our settlement. Make weapons.”

“Really?” For some reason, that struck me as… well, really hot. I could just imagine him bent over a fire, plunging his blade into the flames and then beating it flat, while his muscles shifted beneath his torso streaked with soot and glistening with the water he used to cool the blade.

I ran my finger along the flat of the dagger, marveling at how well it was made. The handle was smooth and had a curved design in it I realized matched the white marks on his chest and neck. Matz, he had called them. And the spikes on his shoulders were spiks. I hadn’t asked yet about the marks on his cock…

Finding a grip on the blade that felt comfortable, even if the dagger was too big for my hand, I forged ahead. The sun was so bright now, it nearly blinded me, and I fashioned a sweatband out of the dagger’s fabric covering that gave me a little shadow over my brow. The cloak weighed me down and made me sweat, but I didn’t dare take it off and expose my skin to the sun’s rays.

As the day went on, the terrain began to change. Large rock formations rose out of the ground, some arching a building’s height over us, while others were low and flat. Spiked plants littered the landscape, and I eyed the sharp oily tips. Cravus warned me they were poisonous, but he didn’t have to tell me twice. I wasn’t coming within ten feet of those things.

We stopped for some food and drink, but the heat was getting to me. It looked like it was getting to Cravus too. While he didn’t sweat like me—he fluttered his scales like air vents—his eyes were brighter than normal, and his skin had darkened. He licked chapped lips and rubbed at his forehead before running a frustrated hand over his short hair. We sat in the shade of a series of rocks shaped like a triangle, although the one on top seemed about to topple over.

“Are you okay?” I handed him the canteen of water and urged him to drink more.

“This is taking longer than I expected,” he gritted his teeth. “We might have to find somewhere here to rest for the night. I don’t think we’ll make it to the edge of the sands by sundown. And we can’t be caught on this surface in the dark.”

I had images of that slithering croyc chasing me and shivered. “That sounds like a plan.”

“It’s not a good one. I would have preferred to be out of here.”

“Am I slowing you down?” I knew he had to take smaller steps so I could keep up.

He shook his head. “No, the sands stretch longer than I studied. Or maybe they’ve expanded since the map was made that I had.” He shook his head. “Either way, I’m going to find us somewhere we can be undiscovered. I’ll stay awake and guard too.”

“Cravus, you have to sleep too.”

“No, I don’t. As long as I’m not injured, I can stay up for many rotations if needed.”

Well, that must be nice. “If you’re sure.”

“Stay here. Keep your dagger ready. I’m going to look for a place for us that’s safe for the night.”

I nodded, although I was terrified to be alone. At least I had Skags. Cravus paused and then leaned in, pressing a kiss to my temple. “You’re all right, Bloom. Just scream if you need me. I’ll hear you.”

He strode off, and I peered out from behind the rocks to see him searching a cluster of arches and boulders. Sliding back into the shade, I scratched Skags’s ears as he snoozed in the sling on my chest. His little furry body was another layer of heat I didn’t need, but alone in the shadows, his presence was comforting.

I scooped up a handful of sand and let the red granules fall from between my fingers. The feel of it brought back a blurry memory and the faint smell of salt water. I closed my eyes. My toes in the sand. Collecting shells. The taste of coconuts and rum.

I opened my eyes and let out a sigh. No matter what memories I recalled, they felt like they belonged to someone else. Lily. But I was no longer that person, and I’d never be again. I’d been through life-altering experiences. Happy-go0lucky Lily with my toes in the sand… that wasn’t me.

But I still liked the feel of the sun on my face, and I enjoyed weaving the flower wreath. Those must be Lily, the Lily inside that was still present. How did I blend that with the Bloom I was now?

Suddenly a large shadow fell across the sand in front of me, and I let out a squeak before I looked up into the blue eyes of Cravus. He smiled. “Found us a spot. Ready?”

It was a trek there, and by the time we arrived, the sun was halfway hidden on the horizon, tinting the sky into streaks of orange and pink. Cravus had found us a little cave of sorts, and he rolled a boulder in front of the entrance with just enough room for us to slip through. “This should keep out any predators I can’t kill quickly,” he said, which actually made me grin.

After a quick meal, I fell into an exhausted sleep with Skags burrowed into my side.

My feet pounded the wet sand, and my lungs burned, but I couldn’t stop running. I had to keep going. “Bloom!” A deep voice called from behind me, but if I looked back, then I’d stop. Then I’d never know… I’d never know who she was.

“Bloom, come back!” the voice said again. “Kotche, please.”

Tears streamed down my face, and I sobbed as my steps faltered. “I have t-to,” I stuttered out. I could see a figure just ahead, long hair blowing in the breeze as the ocean waves crashed along the shore to my left. I reached for her. “Lily!”

But as soon as her face came into view, I realized she was crying too. Swiping at her cheeks, she shouted in an angry cry. “Why are you doing this? I don’t matter anymore. The you that matters is the you now.”

I fell to my knees just as she turned her head and vanished. I didn’t reach for her anymore. My hands fell in my lap, and I stared at them. These hands had done a lot in another life, but now… they scratched Skags’s ears. They touched Cravus’s face. They wove flower crowns.

“Bloom!” The voice called again, louder this time.

I turned around and smiled at Cravus. “I get it now.”

But he didn’t seem to care, his expression was thunder. “Bloom, run to me now!”

And that was when the sand swallowed me whole.

EIGHT

Cravus

I didn’t think I’d ever run that hard in my life, even when I heard that Bosa’s aircraft had crashed on our planet. I’d been standing outside our hiding spot for the night, Bloom and Skags asleep inside—or so I thought. She somehow slipped out past me… I’d figure it out later. What mattered now was getting her back to safety.

I called to her, and she turned around, an elated smile on her face just as the sand beneath her gave way. “Bloom!” I cried, diving onto the sand and grabbing her wrist just before she fell out of reach.

Her screams split the dark night, and I quickly yanked her out. She landed on my chest, and I fell onto my back, but I didn’t have time to celebrate because the sand beneath me was sinking too, the hole widening in a desert sinkhole. From beneath us, the ground rumbled, and a sound I never wanted to hear in my entire life bubbled up from the yawning hole. A screech. Teeth clicking. Black eyes surrounded by bright white pupils in a craggy face rose from the hole.

Bloom screamed again as the croyc’s tongue, forked and agile, flicked at us. I smelled the stink of its breath and curled my body just in time, so its venomous saliva sprayed my back and not Bloom.

Gritting my teeth against the pain, I hauled Bloom into my arms and took off across the sand. The croyc thrust itself out of the ground, blotting out the moon and stars before it collapsed on the ground on its belly. Spiked legs lined its rope-like body, and I heard the slicing plunge of them in the sand as it began to chase us.

Bloom was frozen in shock, eyes massive in her face as she stared over my shoulder at a predator that could take us both out with one clack of its mighty jaws. Its head was larger than me, and I knew it was licking its chops to have me for dinner.

Its hisses echoed in my ears, and its hot breath heated my back. Every screech sent my heart plummeting into my stomach, but I didn’t look back. I didn’t stop. All I had going for me was the slight head start. It would catch up to me soon. All I had to do was reach our rocky cave. The croyc wouldn’t be able to get inside.

“Cravus!” Bloom screeched just as I felt a downward gust of air. At the last minute, I turned and thrust up with my shoulder, catching my spiks on the delicate underside of the beast’s jaw. Its screech shook the ground, and its blood coated my back. I took off again at a dead sprint. I could see the rocks now. Almost there. Almost safe.

The croyc struck again, and I dodged at the last minute, but lost my balance. Falling onto my hip, I brought out my weapon. Standing tall as the croyc rallied for another attack, I shoved Bloom toward the rock. “Go get inside, now!”

She didn’t argue. Not a peep. She flung herself through the small opening just as the croyc went in for another kill strike. I dodged again just as I blanked.

The clicks of my scales renewed my confidence, and I didn’t miss the moment the croyc realized it had lost sight of its prey. It threw back its head on a mighty screech before righting its entire body frantically, no doubt looking for me.

I ran at the croyc and swung my weapon, once again striking it on the underside of its jaw where it was already injured. The pained scream hurt my ears, and I just narrowly avoided getting crushed by its head when it slammed it down into the sand. I didn’t hesitate and lifted the spiked tip of my weapon high above my head before bringing it down on the animal’s skull. I didn’t stop—pounding my weapon again and again until the croyc lay twitching in its death throes. My arms ached, my back stung, and my shoulder was in agony. I glanced to see one spik had broken off, the wound pulsing blood. I staggered and went down to one knee just as I could no longer hold the blank. My scales clicked, and from behind me, Bloom let out an inhuman wail.

“Stay inside,” I called, but it was too late. She was at my side, crying and tugging on me, dragging me toward our rock cave, which was a good thing. My legs weren’t working right, and my head spun. I stumbled inside and collapsed to my knees as she scrambled to renew our small fire. A small pool of water was in the back of the cave, and she wet strips of fabric to clean me up as I sat slumped against a rock, watching as the flames made shadows against the opposite wall. Skags skittered around me, rubbing his furry head against my hand.

“Sorry I got hurt,” I muttered.

“Shut up.” She was still crying as she fussed over me, cleaning my wounds and hissing over what I was sure were venom burns on my back. “This is all my fault. Shit, shit, shit.”

“Bloom, it’s okay—”

“It’s not okay!” she yelled. “I must have sleep-walked, but it was for a stupid reason. So stupid! I should have been focused on now. This. Instead, I was reaching for the past when the past doesn’t matter.”

I wasn’t able to fully focus on her words. “What are you saying?”

She sniffled. “I’m saying that I don’t care about Lily. Or my previous life. I care about what makes me happy now. What I want in this life on this planet because this is the one I am living now.” She let out a little sob as she swiped at a cut on my chest. “Instead you had to come into my dreams and yell at me. And now you’re hurt.”

“Sure, but now I get to go home and brag I killed a croyc. Do you know how jealous Bosa is going to be?”

Despite the tear tracks on her face, she let out a blurt of laughter before swiping her nose with the back of her hand. “Are you in a lot of pain?” She bundled her cloak into a ball. “Here, lay on this.”

“Bloom.” I laid a hand on her arm. “I’ll heal fast. I just need to rest for a while.”

With a set jaw and bright eyes, she nodded fiercely. “I’ll stay awake.”

“You don’t—”

“I can’t go back to sleep now.” She nibbled her lip. “I don’t want to go back to sleep.” With her dagger gripped in her hand, she crept to the front of the cave, Skags on her heels. “I’ll keep watch. You heal that big body of yours.”

I didn’t even get a chance to answer. My eyes closed and in moments I was out.

Bloom

Cravus’s arm tightened around my waist, and he exhaled roughly, his breath tickling my scalp.

I was wide awake. I wasn’t lying when I said I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I’d waited at the opening of the cave with a dagger for a long while, wrinkling my nose at the stink of the dead croyc. The body drew some attention from scavengers, but nothing invaded our space, focused solely on the easy pickings.

Eventually, the cold of the night got to me, and my fingers could barely grip the dagger anymore. So, I retreated to where Cravus slept on his side and pressed myself against his front. The sun was rising now, creeping across the floor of the cave inch by inch. Skags kept chasing the sliver of light, settling his furry body on the warmed rock.

I rolled over to check on Cravus’s injuries. He’d been right—his body healed fast. Already his damaged spik showed new growth, and his cuts were now mere scars instead of open wounds. I would never forget every injury he had sustained since I met him. From getting his ear shot off, to the laser fire, to his arm, and now all the battle wounds from fighting the croyc. He’d endured all that to protect me.

I no longer felt the empty hole in my chest and head from my lack of memories. Lily in my dreams told me to let her go and to focus on the present. I’d get to know myself as I was now. I’d set my sights on a future with Cravus.

His lips moved and his eyes blinked open slowly. They were unfocused and a little dull at first, but once he realized how close I was, he quickly grew alert. “Are you okay?”

“I’m great.”

He let out a groan and stretched his arms over his head before scratching at a few scars on his chest. “Any activity last night?”

“Quiet except for a few scavengers.”

He nodded. “I should have moved the carcass. Sorry about that.”

“Nothing was threatening.”

He rolled back onto his side and ran a hand down the side of my head. “Did you fall asleep?”

I mocked gasped. “What? Of course not. I was on duty, and I took it seriously.”

He laughed, a husky sound that made my core clench. “And now you’re laying with me, not that I’m complaining.”

“It was getting cold.”

“Oh, so you only use me for warmth?” His voice took on a mock petulant tone. “I see how it is.”

“Cravus?”

He rubbed at his eyes distractedly. “Yeah?”

I gripped his face, and he blinked at me. Words failed me in that moment as he watched me with sleep-roughened eyes. His fingers flexed around my waist, and I was acutely aware of how much larger he was than me. There were many times I had been able to tell that he’d had to work had to be gentle with me so he didn’t hurt me, from the way he gripped my hand as we walked to the way he hauled me into his arms. It had been evident last night when he’d bodily tossed me toward the cave entrance.

Even though it had taken my heart and head a little time to understand—my body had always known that I was attracted to Cravus. The way my blood heated when he looked at me, and the clench of my core when his hand clutched mine.

“Bloom?” he asked on a rasp.

I shifted closer and touched our lips together. The act must have surprised him, because for a moment he didn’t move, not until I angled my head and licked at the seam of his lips.

I couldn’t remember doing this before, but my body seemed to know as I arched my back and hooked a leg over his waist.

“Bloom,” he said again on a pained groan as his fingers dug into my hips.

His tongue sucked on mine, and I bucked into him, my desire rocketing from minor to full force in mere seconds. “Cravus.”

“Bloom, we—”

“I know,” I panted against his lips as I ground onto the bulge in his pants. “You explained it to me. This is me telling you that I want the bond with you.”

He swallowed. “What if you get your memories back, and you change your mind?”

I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. Those memories will be just that—memories. This is now. And I know in my heart if I had someone like you in my life, I wouldn’t forget you—cross-galaxy travel or not. I would never, ever forget you.”

His lips parted on a soft exhale, and it seemed like every bone in my body went liquid as he rolled me onto my back and stretched his body on top of mine, careful to hold his weight off my chest.

He kissed me again, deeply, licking into all the corners of my mouth as his fingers roved my body. He undressed me gently but efficiently, but I didn’t miss the way his hands shook as if he was holding himself back.

“You can let go,” I murmured, feeling a little out of my head with desire. “Give me all of you, Cravus.”

With a soft growl, he sat upright and pulled me into his lap. While I was naked, he still wore his pants, and the rough material rubbed on the inside of my legs. I squirmed as he flicked his tongue against my nipple before sucking the hard bead inside.

I threw back my head, and I felt the ghost of my long hair brush my back. I’d done this before—my body remembered, but the pulsing in my core, the constant ache of release felt wholly new somehow. It’d never been like this—I knew that with all my soul. It would never be like this with anyone but Cravus.

He tugged down the front of his pants, and I sucked in a breath at the sight of his hard cock. I’d seen it before but knowing now that this was going to go inside me in the very near future made it seem impossibly larger. The white lines snaking around his shaft rippled and pulsed. All I could think about was what that would feel like against my inner walls.

With his jaw clenched tight, he squeezed below the head of his cock until the color went a light gold. “I need to be inside of you before my cock cap flares too much. I’m sorry, Bloom. This is… too much for me. I spent all this time imagining what I’d do if you let me touch you, and now that your scent is already surrounding me, I can barely hang on.”

I lifted up on my knees and nudged his cock against my clit before sliding forward until he reached my entrance. “Take me, then.”

Growling, he slammed me down onto his cock, and I felt the full force of his strength as his massive head surged inside of me. I cried out at the sudden invasion while Cravus’s entire body shuddered. He pressed me against his chest, unmoving, while he heaved giant breaths. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I can’t—”

“It’s okay.” I wiggled my hips, marveling at the way his cock seemed to be alive inside of me, from the pulsing of his marks to the slowly rotating cock cap. The frills fluttered against my inner walls, and I whimpered. “Fuck, that feels good.”

He shuddered again, and his arms loosened from around me. The veins in his neck were livid. “I need to move, kotche.” His voice was so deep I could barely make out his words. “Let me move inside of you.”

“Move.” My voice was a squeak. “Please.”

His hips snapped up, and my breath left my lungs. At first, he was nothing but brute strength, slamming into me until I could barely see straight, but then he began thrust on a roll, his cock pistoning in and out of me on a rhythm that had me seeing stars. I could no longer control the words coming out of my mouth.

He let out another growl before spinning me on his cock, so my back was to his front, legs spread over his thighs. One hand at my throat, the other working my clit, he continued fucking me. His lips played with the rim of my ear before he nipped my lobe. “I’m so full,” I moaned as I reached back to grip his short hair.

“So pretty, my Bloom. Taking my cock like you were meant to.” The blunt edge of a claw prodded my clit and I cried out. “You like being full of me?”

“Oh fuck, yes.” My words were slurred, my tongue too thick in my mouth.

“I’ll always keep you full. Everyone will know that I keep my mate dripping with my seed.”

His words were like sparking currents directly to my clit.

“This is who you are, Bloom. You’re mine, just like I’m yours until the day I die.”

I bucked against his hand as a rod of pleasure slammed down my spine to explode in my core. I screamed, and Cravus growled. His cock seemed to swell inside of me, and the cock cap spun rapidly against my inner walls before I felt one more pulse of pressure before his hips stuttered.

He released inside of me, and I could feel the warmth of him filling me from the inside out until I glanced down to see the rest leaking out to spill down the root of his shaft and low-hanging bronze balls.

For a moment, neither of us moved. I turned and pressed my forehead against his neck as I sought to catch my breath. His matz colors shifted almost violently, glowing and pulsing across his scales.

His hand slid up to cradle my stomach. “Kotche,” he whispered, and that one word sent a shiver down my spine. I clenched around him, and he let out a gasp before slowly lifting me off his cock, which hadn’t seemed to soften much. I turned in his lap to face him. When he speared me with his intense eyes, I nearly lost my breath. “You honor me, Bloom. I admired you from the moment you snapped your teeth at me in your cage. I knew you were one of a kind. I knew our paths would cross again. I didn’t know we’d end up on the same path together, but I wouldn’t change it for anything.”

I fluttered my lips across his strong cheekbones. “I was terrified and alone except for Skags. I dreamt of you after we met, before the ambush.”

“You did? That soon?”

I nodded. “That soon. We were intimate. And you said you knew my name. There was another warrior there, and a human woman with him.”

“You probably dreamed of Bosa and Karina,” He smoothed the swoop of hair off my forehead. “You’ll meet them soon.”

“Are we almost at our destination?”

“Yes, another rotation or two and we should make it to the council to seek sanctuary and passage home.”

Instead of dreading each day, I suddenly felt like I was on the beginning of an adventure. Dangerous and scary, but full of orgasms at least. “So, we are bonded now?”

“You are my linyx.” He opened his mouth as if to say more but hesitated.

“What?”

“There is another possible side effect to our bond.”

That didn’t sound good. “Oh no. Am I going to grow scales? Is my hair going to fall out?”

He huffed a short laugh. “No. And I’m not sure it’s possible for all Kaluma and human linyx bonds but…” He blew out a breath and inhaled as if gearing up for a big reveal. “Karina can blank.”

I blinked at him. “What?”

“She can blank. Camouflage herself fully. Just like us.”

That was not what I expected him to say. “She can?”

“None of us knew it was possible, and she still can’t explain how she blanked the first time, but she did. I saw it with my own eyes. When her and Bosa escaped from her former captors and crash landed on our planet, Bosa was injured. She guarded over him, completely camouflaged.”

I glanced down at my hands and wiggled my fingers. “I have no idea how that’s possible.”

“We’re not sure either.”

“Will you be disappointed if I… can’t do that?”

He huffed. “Never. Don’t even think that. I just wanted you to be aware.”

“How do you blank?” I was going to think about this nonstop now.

“I just… do. It’s like moving a body part. My scales click over and that’s that.”

I frowned. “That doesn’t help me much. How can I tell my body to do something it’s never done?”

“Bloom don’t worry about it. I don’t want you to blank anyway.” His grin widened. “I like to see you at all times.”

I laughed. “Well, if you put it that way.”

His hands spanned my rib cage, and his thumbs rubbed the underside of my breasts. I sucked in a breath, feeling my core heat again and knowing that if we didn’t get some clothes on, we’d never leave. Already Skags sat with his back to us, but his ears were turned back, clearly annoyed we weren’t paying him any attention. “Cravus.”

He swallowed thickly. “Right, we should go.”

“Yes.”

He made no motion to get up and either did I. His jaw ground. “Right now.”

“Hmm mmm.” I leaned in and brushed our noses together.

With a groan he threw me on my back, and we most definitely did not leave the cave as early as we wanted to.

NINE

Bloom

“Sometimes I worry I’ll lose my memories again,” I confided to Cravus. “My recent ones. The ones of you.” We were tucked under a heavy fur, me laying on top of him with my head rested on his chest. His fingers ran up and down my spine.

“That won’t happen.” I could hear the frown in his voice.

I propped my chin on my fist to look at him and yes, his lips were turned down in a frown. “How do you know? Amnesia is a thing. Head injury, mental trauma. It can be caused buy a lot.”

He hesitated before speaking again. “Then we’ll start over again.”

My stomach fluttered. “What?”

He shrugged. “We’ll start again rebuilding what we have. Because I know you, Bloom. I’ll always know you.”

“Bloom?”

I shook my head out of my thoughts. Last night’s dream was so vivid, and I couldn’t understand why I had it. Would I lose my memories again? No matter what Cravus said, that would cause him great pain.

“Bloom?” he spoke again, louder this time.

I jerked to attention and rubbed my eyes. “Yeah, sorry.”

“Are you feeling okay?” He was frowning, but this one was full of concern.

I smiled at him. “I’m fine.”

A while back, we’d begun to see the buildings of Haliya dot the skyline, and with every step we drew closer. After finally taking our hands off each other in that cave, we’d enjoyed some grilled croyc before attacking the last leg of our journey. Cravus aid we’d arrive at the gates by nightfall.

“The Kaluma will have contacted the Council, so they should be expecting us.”

He was eager to get home. I could tell by how fast his strides were getting. I practically had to run to keep up with him. Skags had long retreated to his sling on my chest and slept peacefully while sweat dripped down my back.

“Do the Kaluma have aircraft to travel between planets?” I asked.

“We do, but usually the Council gives us passage—it’s included as a bonus when we get contracts for our missions.”

“And they’ll let me go home with you?”

He snorted. “I’d like to see them try to do anything else.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, their job was to find you a decent home anyway, and now they don’t have to pay your living expenses.”

“What does that mean?”

“When they arrange for a species to be rehomed, they pay their new owners for a period of time until they agree to your full-time care or send you back.”

I couldn’t help wrinkling my nose. “And I would have been… alone. Alone and scared and unsure of who or what I was…” I shuddered. “I don’t want that existence.”

He wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “And you won’t get it.”

The sun had just kissed the edge of the horizon when a dust cloud exited the gates of Haliya and made its way toward us.

“That must be the Council,” Cravus pointed out.

“Nice of them to come get us,” I murmured, watching the dust ball grow closer. I could just make out the silhouette of a vehicle. “You must be special.”

“We have a good relationship with the Council. Bosa worked for them for several cycles and never failed a job.”

“I’m looking forward to meeting Bosa.”

Cravus’s grin widened, and his eyes went a little distant. “He’ll be happy to meet you too.”

Cravus gripped my hand as the vehicle sped closer. We stopped when it came to a halt in front of us. I waved the sand dust out of my face and sputtered as the doors opened and a few massive, armored aliens with yellow eyes emerged. I took a step back, uncertain of these big furry creatures, but Cravus held me in place.

He stood tall and strong, chin lifted, as another creature slowly emerged. He was silver-furred and hunchbacked. His front fists dragged the ground, and his head was a concave disk. He had three holes below his neck, which opened to reveal teeth from over top a protruding lower lip. He was ugly, and a little scary, but Cravus didn’t waver.

“I want to again apologize for the behavior of my fellow Ubilque who was not honest with Bosa about his last mission. Garquin has been dealt with.” Cravus nodded, and only then did the Ubilque draw closer. His eyes, nearly in shadow, shifted to me. “Hello human, I’m Jukren.”

I nodded, my voice failing me. He didn’t need to know my name, did he? I just wanted to be somewhere alone with Cravus. I didn’t like all these eyes on me. But apparently, I was already dismissed, because Jukren immediately focused back on Cravus. “We have a new owner already lined up for her—”

“She’ll be coming with me.”

Jukren’s fur rippled down his back. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t have to pay us any living expenses. I’m keeping her. She’ll be going home with me. If I need to pay extra for her transport, I will.”

Jukren blinked at Cravus then turned to another Ubilque who was just now emerging from the car. “The Kaluma wants to take the human with him.”

They both stared at each other a moment, and unease slid under my skin like a splinter. Next to me, Cravus shifted his weight and his muscles tensed.

“Is there a problem?” he asked sharply.

The other Ubilque clapped his furred mits. “No, of course not. None at all. Please settle yourself in the back of the vehicle.”

“Are we heading to the docks now?” he asked.

“We learned of your impending arrival a little last minute, so we’ll need to have you spend the night in Haliya.”

Cravus’s nostrils flared, and I knew he didn’t like that answer. “We can just spend the night out here—”

“We insist.” The Ubilque’s mouths stretched into smiles that were more horrifying than reassuring.

Cravus’s jaw flexed, and then he nodded before pulling me along beside him. “We will accept your hospitality.”

He was so formal with them, and when he walked past, I noticed they backed up, clearly aware of his power and how he could harm them if he wished. As long as I had Cravus at my side, I knew everything would be okay, even if these creatures gave me the creeps. They were the good guys. I shouldn’t judge just because they weren’t cute and cuddly aliens. I kind of wanted to touch their fur, but I didn’t dare reach out, worried they’d bite my hand off with one of their mouths.

Cravus helped me inside first, and I settled into a backseat before he climbed in after me. Jukren leaned in as Cravus helped me get settled. I saw the flash of something shiny in his hand catch the light of the setting sun. My eyes met his, and this time, he wasn’t smiling. He lifted his hand and before I could get a shout out, he plunged a needle into the side of Cravus’s neck.

“No!” I screamed just as Cravus let out a roar that nearly blew out my ear drums. He threw himself out of the vehicle, but the Ubilque sidestepped out of the way, so Cravus hit the ground on all fours. His body swayed, and I lunged out after him, collapsing to the ground at his side as he began to foam at the mouth.

“What did you do?” I screeched at the Ubilques, who stood in front of us, backed by four of the armored guards. “What did you do?”

“He won’t die,” Jukren said calmly.

Cravus was convulsing, his eyes rolling back in his head, and I held onto him as his body shook. Through gritted teeth, I could just make out one word, repeated over and over again. “Bloom. Bloom. Bloom.”

“Then why did you do this? What’s going to happen to him?”

The Ubilque leaned down where I was on my knees, Cravus’s head in my lap. “The same thing that happened to you. We’re erasing his mind.”

I didn’t think. Rage ignited my blood. Pain and terror seized my heart. So, I attacked. I felt a blow on the side of my head, and my world went dark.

When I woke up, the first thing I saw in the dim light were bars. Metal bars. I gripped them and tugged, but they didn’t even rattle. I was back in a cage, somewhere I promised myself I’d never be again. My head pounded, and when I prodded my temple, my fingers scraped dried blood. What had happened? My brain was moving too sluggishly.

Desperation swamped me as I felt in the sling for Skags. Finding it empty, I scrambled on my hands and knees searching my cage for his furry body. “Skags?” I called out, and I heard his squawk in response. Peering through the bars of my cage, I found him in his own little cage nearby, peering at me as his whole body trembled in fright. “Skags,” I pressed my palm against my forehead in an attempt to hold back the tears. “Are you hurt?”

Of course, he couldn’t answer me, but I swore he knew what I asked, because he gave a little twirl in the cage to let me know all his limbs were working. His tail was pinned between his legs, a surefire sign he was terrified.

I glanced around, trying to determine where the heck we were. There were no lights—only a few flickering lanterns hanging off the stone walls. I got the impression we were underground, maybe in a basement. I blinked into the darkness, because I could see another cage a few feet away with a solid shape slumped inside.

Then everything came back to me at once. Meeting with the council members to get passage home, only for them to inject Cravus and tell me they were erasing his memories…

“Cravus!” I called out, but my voice was hoarse and broke on the second syllable. I could have killed for some water. I swallowed and tried again. “Cravus!” The shape didn’t move, but I could tell it was him. I gripped the bars and shook them as hard as I could until my shoulders ached. “Cravus!” I screamed.

Still, he didn’t move, and I couldn’t stop the tears now. But they were more than tears, this was a flood. A river of salty liquid running down my cheeks to drip off my chin. We’d been so close. He thought we were safe. I thought we were safe. And then this… why would they erase his memories and not mine? I had to have hope that whatever they used didn’t work. That it would only knock him out for a bit.

A door opened, and a bit of light spilled into the room before a dark figure shuffled inside. I swiped at my face as the creature stepped into the light of a lantern. Jukren watched me carefully, his disked head tilted. “Hello, human.”

I wished for a weapon. “You said he wouldn’t die.”

“And he’s not dead. He’s just sleeping. His body has a lot of work today to wipe out his memories.”

“How dare you, you evil bastard,” I hissed.

He hummed. “My implant isn’t translating those words for me. I assume they’re not nice.”

“Fuck you,” I spat.

“You might be in debt to him for saving your life, but there’s no need to be this hostile. You will be taken care of. We already got what we wanted out of you.”

I went still. “What?”

He settled his hands on his protruding stomach and thumped his skin with his fingers. “We have been working on a memory eraser for a very long time. You and all those creatures in the transport were our test subjects. Your anatomy was closest to the Kaluma, and it was effective on you.”

“I was just… I don’t get it. Why do you want to erase memories?”

“We want the Kaluma warriors working for us. None of this home transport business. We’ll leave some home to procreate but many of the warriors, like this one,” he pointed to Cravus’s form, “are unmated yet useful.”

“You fuckers.” The curses were just coming to me, like they’d been dormant until I became so angry I could barely see. Even now, the edges of my vision were tinged red, and my heart pounded so loudly, it could probably be heard on Earth, wherever that was. “I thought the Council was upstanding.”

“It was, but we have had… a little mutiny.” His mouths twitched happily. “Sympathizers for the exploited of the Rinian galaxy, like you human, are no longer in power. The Council will now see greater profits and power.”

“On the backs of warriors like Cravus?”

“Not everything is fair, human.”

“I hate you,” I whispered.

“I’m sure you do,” he said. “And you’ll probably hate your next owner too, but that’s not my problem.”

With one final look at Cravus, he walked out the door. I tore off my boot and made to throw it at him through the bars but thought better of it. I needed my footwear.

Slumping down into the corner of my cell, I curled my knees up to my chest and dropped my head. Alone, I cried. I still had hope he’d remember me, but if they injected him with whatever they’d used on me… I knew better than anyone how well it worked.

There was nothing in my cell. No food. No water. No place to relieve myself. Just a stone floor. Skags had been quiet, and I crawled to the front of the cage to get a better look at him. His head was bent, and his little jaws were moving, and that was when I realized he was gnawing on the lock of his cage. He wasn’t bolted like me but instead his small door was shut with some sort of tie. I gasped when a snapping sound echoed in the small room and his door swung open.

“Skags!” I whisper shouted, afraid someone was listening. With a squawk of excitement, he leapt down and scurried between the bars of my cage. As soon as my fingers touched his fur, I let out a sob and curled him into my arms. He wriggled happily while I soaked his back with my tears. “We’ve been through a lot, haven’t we?” I whispered to him. What plans did they have for him? I stroked his fur and rubbed his ears.

My mind drifted to the future I’d seen in my dreams—sleeping in Cravus’s bed, making friends with the other female human at the settlement, and just… being happy. Cravus had said my dreams could tell the future, but it didn’t look like that was going to be my future.

I stared at his slumped form, wishing he’d wake up and say my name, smile at me, call me his kotche. “Cravus,” I called out.

He didn’t move.

I cried for a while, cuddling Skags to my chest, until he grew tired of my whining and squirmed to get down. He scurried out of my cage and made his way over to Cravus. I could just barely make out his little body crawling over Cravus, nipping at his pants, and making his excited squeaks.

When Cravus didn’t wake up, a dejected Skags returned to my cell where he curled up next to me with a long sigh.

I checked the bolt of my cell, but there was no way for me to break it or budge it. I studied every inch of the room I could see, but nothing stuck out to me as a way for me to escape. I was starting to panic again when the door opened and Jukren walked in, this time with two other Ubilques and more of those furred armored guards with the yellow eyes.

“Wake him up,” he barked. The armored guards had lengthened sticks and used them to poke through the bars and prod Cravus.

For a moment, he was nothing but dead weight, but then he let out a little groan, and I rushed to the bars of my cage. “Cravus!” I called out. I wondered why they hadn’t gagged me. I could talk to Cravus now, and I could remind him of who I was. Stupid Ubilques. “Cravus!” I called again.

His eyes opened, the fluorescent blue glowing in the dim light of the room. He blinked and shook his head quickly as if clearing it. His hand gripped his short hair, which had grown longer during our journey.

“Crav—”

“Hello,” Jukren spoke, interrupting me. He walked to the side of Cravus’s cell. “How are you feeling.”

“Cravus!” I called out.

“Who is yelling?” Cravus murmured in a deep, scratchy voice.

My heart stopped. “Cravus,” I called again, my voice cracking. “It’s me, Bloom.”

“Do you know what that is, Warrior?” Jukren pointed to me with a claw.

Cravus’s head turned to me. Our eyes met. The blue flickered.

“I’m Bloom,” I choked out, feeling like I was bleeding out from the inside. “I’m your kotche.”

Cravus blinked slowly before turning back to Jukren. He answered with one word. “No.”

And my entire world fell apart. “No!” I screamed, my muscles giving out until I collapsed to the floor on all fours. “No!”

“Let’s run some tests,” I heard Jukren say, but I was too focused on getting my heart to pump and my lungs to inflate when suddenly the air seemed too thick to breathe. Cravus, the one who brought me back from the dead, who showed me who I was… didn’t remember me.

I watched through blurry eyes as they picked him up off the floor and marched him out of the room. He didn’t look back at me. Not once. He walked obediently with his head bent in a way I’d never seen him before. Subservient. Not a proud Kaluma warrior.

I choked out his name one more time before the door slammed shut, the sound like a laser shot. Surely, I was dying. The pain was indescribable. Skags was in a frenzy next to me, and while I thought I had cried all the tears I could before, that was nothing compared to the torrent I unleashed. All I could picture was his vacant blue eyes. My beautiful, strong, amazing Cravus…

“You promised!” I shouted into the empty room. “You said you’d always know me. You lied!”

But no one was there to respond to me. No one rushed back into the room to save me. It was just me and Skags, and those assholes taking Cravus somewhere doing who knew what…

I rubbed at my eyes, anger starting to take over my despair. No, this was not going to end here. Cravus had said that if I lost my memory again, then we’d start over. I couldn’t give up now. He might not know me anymore, but things had changed from when we first met.

Because now I knew myself again. I put my all into my family and relationships. I cared for others. I loved fiercely and most of all, I didn’t fucking give up. My skin tingled with renewed determination, and my blood flushed hot.

I reached for Skags and felt fur on my fingers but when I looked, Skags was sitting next to me. Alone. His fur matted down in the shape of my fingers, but my hand was… invisible?

I gasped shifting to my knees. I held my hands out in front of me, but I couldn’t see them. I was… “I blanked,” I whispered. “I’ve actually blanked.” It didn’t make sense, as I didn’t try it, but I couldn’t deny that I was in fact invisible.

“Skags,” I whispered, reaching for him. He was confused at first, but my touch was familiar. I tucked him against my body, and I crouched at the door of my cage. Now all I had to do was wait.

TEN

Cravus

“Who are you?”

I answered the way they told me. “Warrior.”

“And who is your maste?”

I looked straight into the round, flat face belonging to the one speaking to me. “You.”

His three mouths opened with gaping smiles. “Yes. Good job. At ease, warrior.”

I relaxed my shoulders from where I stood at attention. I couldn’t be sure how long we’d been in this room. A nagging tug in the back of my neck seemed to want to pull me toward the door, but I ignored it because my master told me to stay in place. A weapon sat on a table next to me, and it was familiar, so it must be mine. He told me I’d been hurt in battle, but I had no injuries except for my memory. He told me he’d help me remember.

He spoke to another of his species, and near the door stood two guards. If they worked for master too, then they were my allies, but I didn’t like the look of their yellow eyes. My fingers itched to touch my weapon, but I had to obey.

Master turned to me. “We need you to do one thing for us, Warrior. And then we’ll provide you food and rest.”

My stomach rumbled. Food sounded good. I nodded.

He picked up my weapon, which was a long stick with a spiked ball on the end. “There is a prisoner who caused many deaths. We have it caged, and we require you to end its life.”

This was an order, not a question. I nodded.

The mouths stretched into a smile. A bolt of pain streaked down my neck, and I flinched just as an image flashed in front of my eyes—a wreath of blooms. But just as quickly as it came, it was gone. I shook my head.

With the weapon pressed into my hand, they led me back down the hallway where I’d just been. The door opened and my Master walked inside first, but abruptly stopped. “Wha—where is she?”

He whirled around to face the two armored guards behind us. “Where is she?”

They looked around frantically, and I peered into the cage, remembering now the dark-haired, light-skinned creature that had been screeching when I first woke up. She wasn’t there, but the cage was bolted shut.

“Open it!” Master shouted. “Open the cage and check for holes or tunnels in the floor and walls.”

The other flat-faced master unlocked the cage door, and I waited, weapon on hand, while the armored guards raced past me. They entered the cage and searched the floor and walls with large paws. But it was empty.

I felt anger for my Master. How dare this prisoner escape? My lips curled back into a snarl just as I inhaled a scent—warm and spicy at the same time, it made my head spin. Something brushed my arm, a flutter of softness, and I glanced down as the floor seemed to blur. The scent flooded my nostrils and heated my blood. I groaned and went down on one knee as my temples pounded. My skull felt like it was going to crack open as images flashed relentlessly. One after another. Blooms. So many blooms. And then a face with green eyes. Cravus, she mouthed the word with pink lips. You know me.

“Warrior?” The Ubilque said.

I stood up and slammed my weapon into his face.

Bloom

I didn’t dare stay in the room, terrified that one of them would detect me or my body would involuntarily unblank. I brushed past a stoic and unmoving Cravus, determined not to cry, and dashed out of the room. Jukren had left the door open, so it was easy for me to slip out undetected.

Once outside, I had no idea where I was, and a long hallway stretched to my left and my right. Disoriented for a moment, I debated which direction to take. The stone floor looked more worn to the right, so I took a chance and sprinted that way. I heard a commotion behind me, and I knew it was them looking for me. I didn’t turn back, committed now to saving Cravus, Skags, and myself. This was who I was. I didn’t give up. I didn’t turn back. I went forward. Always forward. And I didn’t lose hope.

I sped past a few rooms, constantly checking to make sure I was still invisible. A distant voice caught my attention, and I finally came to a door that was ajar. I peeked inside to see a massive control panel with screens. A creature, similar to the ones who’d caged me back before I met Cravus, sat his legs propped up on the table in front of him, and he was speaking into a device attached to his mouth. He had gray hair and wore a ratty vest covered in medallions. His skin was a dull green, and he had long claws. His position was casual, but his voice was all business. “I’m sorry, we are doing everything we can looking for him.” Pause. “Yes, we understand he’s important to you, pardux, and we will continue our search.”

Pardux. Pardux. They had to be taking to a Kaluma. And from the sounds of it, it was Sherif, as he was the current pardux. My fingers curled into fists. This asshole was lying. They knew right where Cravus was. I needed to get on that comm. If I could talk to Cravus’s pardux, I could tell him the truth, and just maybe he’d get us the hell out of here. I glanced around for a weapon, anything, as the creature continued to babble into the comm.

Finding a pole propped up against the wall, I grabbed it, careful to make no noise, and crept closer to creature, who was facing away from me. Lifting the pole above my head, I let out a grunt as I slammed it down on top of his head. He cried out with a gurgle before whirling around to face me. I stared at his skull, which had a definite lump in it, and his one eye socket didn’t look so good. “Whaaaa—” he moaned, and made to stand, but his legs gave out. He crashed to the ground, coughed up some dark liquid, and went still.

My hands shook. I didn’t want to think about if I just killed someone. My breath came in stuttered pants as he lay unmoving. Panic bloomed in my chest as ice water flowed through my veins. “Shit,” I murmured to myself. “Shit, shit, shit.”

A voice crackled on the comm still attached to the creature’s voice. Feeling about a minute away from a meltdown, I bent down and jerked the device off the creature’s head. It was sticky with its blood, and I closed my eyes, ignoring the stain on my hands, as I attached the device to my head.

“Rogastix?” A deep voice boomed over the line. “Where are you?”

“Hi.” My voice was barely a whisper. I swallowed and tried again. “I’m Bloom, a human, and Cravus’s linyx. The Council is compromised by a mutiny. They…” My voice failed me.

Heavy breathing came over the line. “This is Sherif. Tell me what you know.”

So, I did. From the beginning, how they met us, injected Cravus, and caged us. How Cravus woke up with no memories. How I could blank. I tried to speak as fast as I could, and I was sure approximately half of what I said made no sense.

“We had suspicions that the Council had been compromised. We tried to tell Cravus, but the line wasn’t stable. I need you to travel to H-2 dock. We were already on our way there and should dock soon. Do you understand?”

I swallowed. “What about Cravus?”

“We will move to rescue him. For now, get yourself to the dock.” He rattled off directions because he knew where I was based on the comm location. “You can do it, Bloom. For Cravus.”

I nodded. “For Cravus.”

I dropped the comm back on the body beneath me, shuddering again at what I did, but knowing I had to move on. This wasn’t a game. I turned around and came face to face with the spiked ball of Cravus’s weapon swinging inches from my face. I let out a scream and dropped to a crouch.

ELEVEN

Cravus

My weapon slammed into the head of a Rogastix entering the room, but not before I heard a cry that sent my heart plummeting to my feet. I searched the room frantically. “Where are you? Bloom?”

There was a sharp intake of breath, and then the outline of a form flickered until a human female was present. “Bloom.” I nearly wept as I fell to the floor and gathered her in my arms. “I thought they took you somewhere. I searched everywhere—”

She slapped her palms on my cheeks, her eyes so wide they took up half her face. “Do you know who I am?”

I nodded, looking her right in the eyes. “You’re my Bloom. My kotche. And we’re going to get out of here and go home.”

A sob bubbled up from her throat, bucking her whole body but before she let the tears consumed her, she inhaled deeply and let out a long breath. “I’ll cry with relief later. Just how… were you faking it?”

I shook my head. “No, but it was only temporary. It only took your scent to remind me. To bring it all back.”

“You promised me in my dreams.” She sniffled. “You promised me you wouldn’t forget me, and I believed you. I also knew I had to help get us out of here. I blanked, Cravus. I don’t know how, but I did, and I snuck out. I came in here and overhead this guy…” She gestured vaguely to one of the two bodies on the floor. “Talking to your pardux, so I, um, hit him. I talked to Sherif. He said to get to H-2 dock because they were already on their way.”

I brushed her sweaty bangs off her forehead. Her hand was shaking, and she looked pale. This wasn’t my Bloom to commit violence, but she did what she had to do. For us. “You did good, kotche. I’m so proud of you.” She smiled through the tears, just as I heard some shouts from down the hall. “I need you to blank again. Can you do it?”

“I…” she frowned. “I don’t know. I’m still not sure what I did before. It just happened.”

“What were you thinking about?”

The shouts were closer.

“I was thinking about…” she jutted out her chin and set her jaw. “I was thinking that I knew myself, and I knew what I had to do.”

Suddenly her body flickered, and her eyes went wide a split second before she vanished. I grinned. “Good kotche.”

“Well damn,” came her disembodied voice.

I let the blank take over me. My scales clicked, and when a half dozen armored guards rushed down the hallway, they didn’t even glance inside the room we were in. I grabbed for Bloom’s hand, and it met mine. I tugged her after me as we left the room and ran down the hallway.

I knew where we were now. It’d taken a little studying, but I knew the scent of the coast when I smelled it. We weren’t near Haliya, so while the Council might have taken over, they were still committing their atrocities away from town at the nearby military encampment. Which meant the H-2 dock would not be far.

We were in one of the many bunkers, and while we climbed the ladder out of one of the many tunnels, sirens began to sound to announce our escape. They had to know the serum didn’t work on me. I still felt a little foggy, and I hoped my sense of direction held up, but I remembered Bloom. I remembered who and what I was. I remembered home. The rest would come later.

While I grew more confident of our escape with every passing moment, I became more and more fearful for what lay ahead. The Council had been completely compromised, which meant Haliya would fall, if it hadn’t already. The city, and this planet, were the hub of the Rinian Galaxy, and if its major city was home to exploiters, that meant bad news for the whole planetary system. It might be time to contact our Drixonian allies.

Once we reached the top of the ladder, we pulled ourselves out of the exit hatch to the surface of the coast. Bloom was still behind me—I could hear her breath and smell her scent, but even if I hadn’t, she gripped the waistband of my pants tightly.

I reached back for her, grabbing her hand, and surveyed the easiest route to H-2. We stood on top of a grassy hillside. To the left was a cliff leading into a churning sea and to the right were the many buildings housing a large portion of the Gorsich defense, made up largely of Kulks, a simple-minded battle species.

The terrain was rocky, cold, and windy. I could feel Bloom already shivering behind me, but she didn’t make a peep. I bent down. “On my back,” I urged quietly. We were alone now, but not far from rushing squadrons of troops. I thought she would protest but then I felt her cold hands on my neck, and her legs wrap around my waist. Skags squirmed between my back and her chest, and I smiled, knowing my Bloom would never leave him behind. I was grateful to him, too. He’d been there for her during the times I couldn’t.

With Bloom secured on my back, I took off on a steady run along the coast. I could just barely make out the looming black lines of the dock in the distance.

Knowing Sherif, he wasn’t content with their platitudes. He wanted to find me, so he’d do it himself. If they were already close, then they might beat us to the dock. I trusted my childhood friend and pardux with my life. I could also imagine how much Bosa was raging at the thought of the Ubilques attempting to yerk with us.

Soon the sound of the military installation grew dimmer as we placed some distance between us and them. With the adrenaline running through my veins, I felt like I could have held my blank for several rotations. I worried about Bloom, but every time I glanced down, I couldn’t see her legs, so I knew she was hanging in there. I was so damn proud of her.

I ran until my legs were nearly numb, until the wind had chilled even my tough skin, and I could hear Bloom’s teeth chattering in my ear. But the dock was close, and I pushed forward until the ground gave way to packed dirt and the stairs to the loading dock were within sight.

At first, I didn’t see anything except for some Council cruisers and cargo ships but Bloom pointed to the sky, and there in the distance I could see a tiny speck, growing larger with every moment.

Sherif would likely have gained permission to dock here, but with me escaping and them desperate to find me, the Council may have revoked his privileges. But I knew Sherif—he wouldn’t give a yerk. He’d dock for me and take any battle that came with it.

I glanced behind us, seeing a few dirt clouds gaining ground toward us. As suspected, they wanted to meet Sherif, or suspected I was here. While still blanked, I didn’t want to take any chances, so I ducked out of sight behind the dock’s solid loading stairs.

“We’ll hide here until Sherif docks,” I said to Bloom, gathering her in my arms where I crouched. Her skin was too cold for my liking, so I rubbed my hands on her arms to warm her up.

“I’m all ri-right,” she chattered.

“It’s cool on the coast. We’ll be on our ship soon, warm and safe.”

She pressed a cold hand to my chest in answer, and Skags gave a half-hearted squawk.

“They’re coming for us,” she whispered.

“They are most likely trying to halt Sherif from searching for us—” my voice trailed off as a horrible though occurred to me. “Wait, what if they... Oh yerk, what if they planned to draw Sherif here, and give him the same injection they gave me?”

“Sherif said he knew the Council was compromised. He’ll come prepared, I’m sure.”

I gritted my teeth. “If they harm my pardux…”

Bloom’s figure flickered, and then her pretty face came into view, inches from mine. Her green eyes held compassion and understanding. “We won’t let that happen. We didn’t come this far only to fail at the finish line.”

“What’s the finish line?”

She pressed her lips together in a small smile. “It’s one step away from succeeding.”

The engine roar of the Kaluma cruiser drew closer, and the hot air of the jets warmed my scalp. “Blank again, Bloom,” I murmured, pressing her to my chest. “Until I say so.”

She blanked, and we waited, listening to the cruiser dock and the engine power down. Just as the airlock hissed the cruiser door opened above us, the hover vehicles of the Council came to a stop near us. Boots thudded on the grates overhead, and I glanced up to see Sherif striding across the dock, the twin warriors Grego and Uthor at his back, as well as about a dozen Kaluma warriors. Sherif’s long white hair flowed down his back, and the rays of the sun glistened off his twin blades strapped to his back—blades I’d forged myself. Every Kaluma was armed. Bloom was right—Sherif had come prepared.

Kulks emerged from the vehicles behind a pair of Ubliques and another species I’d only ever heard of before, but never seen. In fact, I wasn’t sure they existed. The vizpek was an egg-laying species that produced asexually and heterosexually. This was a female, with two sets of piercing-studded mammaries. Her two arms were draped with a see-through fabric while her torso was legless—with a thin body that snaked across the ground. She also wore a crown of jeweled spikes, and an odd belt that seemed to highlight her cloaca. Three Ubilques—I killed the two who’d drugged me—shuffled behind the vizpek. I fisted my hands. So, this was the leader of whatever mutiny had been committed. The vizpek were an old species of Gorsich who had mostly gone extinct as the females had begun to prefer asexual reproduction over diversifying the gene pool. They’d been limited in their temperate tolerance and had to remain in the warmer areas of the planet. But something must have changed, because this one was evolved.

Sherif sensed the danger immediately—I could tell by the tight way he held himself. He didn’t mince words. “Has my warrior been found?”

The vizpek didn’t have a mouth, but rather a series of slits in her throat that fluttered in a humming voice that made my translator implant screech. “Apologies, pardux, but no.”

“Who are you?” He asked sharply. He wasn’t showing respect, and I had a feeling his patience ran out about five rotations ago.

“I am Drukil, newly appointed Rinian Galaxy Council Chief.”

“Newly appointed, huh?” Sherif stretched his spine with a slight lean back and folded his arms across his chest. “Who voted? I don’t remember getting the ballot.”

The Drukil narrowed her eyes, bulbous ones with horizontal pupils. “Must have gotten lost in transit. Again, my apologies. Please come with us to Haliya. We have a meal prepared and would love to have a talk about the council’s future plans.”

Sherif took one step forward and his warriors echoed his movements, but Drukil held up her hand. “Only the pardux, please.” Sherif’s brow lifted, and Drukil went on. “We can take them to the base along the coast for some rest.”

Oh yerk no. I imagined needles going into their necks. Grego and Uthor’s eyes glazing over…

I made to stand, but Bloom tugged on me. “Cravus, wait,” she whispered harshly.

The warrior in the back—a young quiet one named Ruvo—twitched as if he heard her. His hand, resting on a blade strapped to his waist, tightened. He let out a low whistle, and I hadn’t realized how much I missed the sound until I heard it. It was our alert system, and I knew Sherif heard him, when the muscles in his neck tensed.

“I’m not hungry,” Sherif announced loudly. “So, I think I’ll pass on that meal and conversation, and look for my warrior instead.”

“Stupid,” Drukil hissed.

The next sound I heard was even better—because it was the voices of a dozen Kaluma warriors screaming our war cry.

TWELVE

Bloom

I’d never heard a sound quite like the rising cries of the Kaluma as they all blanked in unison. It was the eeriest thing I’d ever seen. I could hear them holler, feel the thud of their boots down the dock stairs, practically smell their aggression, but I couldn’t see a damn thing.

“Stay here,” Cravus whispered in my ear, and then I felt a rush of air as he sped past me, surely entering the battle fray. His voice joined the others.

The Kulks seemed frozen in terror, unsure where to look as they blindly punched the air and aimed uselessly with their laser guns. Drukil let out a screech and in a blur—way too fast for my liking—she dove behind the wheel of a hover vehicle. The Ubilques rushed to join their leader, but only one made it inside before the hover vehicle sped off, leaving the Kulks and one Ubilque to face the oncoming mob of Kaluma.

Suddenly, a Kulk’s body jerked, and his throat opened—spraying blood as he gurgled a few last breaths. The rest panicked, turning and running, but it was too late. One after another was taken down. The fight wasn’t even fair, but I didn’t care. I wanted every one of them gone for what they did to me—and what they tried to do to the Kaluma.

When the Kulks lay dead and dying, only one Ubilque remained, one long arm twisted behind his back while he squirmed on the ground, bleeding from a head wound.

Sherif appeared in front of him, and a chorus of clicks followed as the rest of the Kaluma appeared as well. Cravus stood behind the Ubilque, holding his arm tightly. Sherif didn’t seem surprised, and I’d have to ask Cravus later how they were able to fight in battle without accidentally killing each other.

Sherif nodded solemnly at Cravus, who raised his hand to his chest with his thumb and forefinger out, the rest curled into a fist. Sherif took a step toward the Ubilque before crouching down on the balls of his feet. “If you answer me honestly, I’ll let you go.”

The Ubilque quivered his large lower lip. “I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care. Tell me what Drukil’s plan is.”

The Ubilque sniffed before darting his eyes to the large gathered of Kaluma behind Sherif, all standing at attention with blood-soaked weapons. He sniffed. “The ambush of the transport vehicle was planned.”

Sherif’s gaze darted to Cravus before once again focusing on the Ubilque. “What?”

“Drukil wanted a Kaluma. The plan was to injure him, and we’d arrive to collect him. We’d tell you he died doing his duties. But when we came to the scene—he wasn’t there.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth. Cravus’s gaze flicked to my hiding spot, and I could see the realization dawn. If I hadn’t dragged him away… if I hadn’t saved him…

Cravus’s grip tightened on the Ubilque, who let out a whine, but other than that he didn’t react.

“Dr-Drukil the vizpek wants a better army.” The Ubilque stuttered.

“What for?” Sherif asked.

The furred council member swallowed. “I don’t know.”

“You’re a Council member and you voted them in, but you don’t know?” Sherif growled.

“I’m not a high-ranking member!” He cried. “I’m not privy to all the information.”

“But yet you vote,” Sherif sneered.

“My elders said it was the right choice—”

Sherif snorted. “Your elders are yerking jokes.”

“Drukil isn’t the only vizpek. They’ve been growing and they aren’t what they used to be. You don’t understand the kind of choices we are being forced to make.”

“Then explain it!”

“I don’t know it all!” The Ubilque shouted back. “But the vizpek have something over us. That’s all I know!”

Sherif stood up and flicked a finger at Cravus, who let go of the Ubilque with a shove. He landed flat on his hands before peering up at the pardux. “C-can I leave?”

“Sure.” Sherif said, taking a step back.

The Ubilque stumbled to his feet, swaying slightly before shuffling away. He had reached the farthest enemy body when a stone-faced Kaluma stepped out from the back of the line. He notched a bow in his arrow, held it high, and sent it flying right into the back of the Ubilque. The point drove straight through his chest, and he let out a cry before falling to the ground. His body twitched a few times before he fell silent.

“I let you go,” Sherif murmured. “I didn’t say you’d get far.”

He turned to Cravus and pulled him against his chest. He palmed the back of Cravus’s head, and they conversed in low tones before Sherif stepped back. “Where is she?”

“Bloom.” Cravus’s voice called.

I stepped out from behind the stairs and let go of the blank I’d been holding all this time. I was dizzy for a moment, and when I came to, I found that all the Kaluma were making the same gesture Cravus had when he’d greeted Sherif—with their hands on their chests and only their thumbs and first fingers splayed. Even Sherif held the gesture.

I stared at them all with an open mouth until Sherif dropped his hand. “Thank you for rescuing my warrior, Bloom.”

My mouth went dry as I stared at the faces of the Kaluma who watched me with what could only be reverence. I nodded and swallowed around the lump in my throat. “H-he saved me first.”

“Come here, Bloom,” Cravus urged. I rushed to him and let him press me to his side.

Sherif watched us carefully. “I need a full briefing on everything that happened, but we first we have to leave before Drukil sends another army. We need time to research what she’s up to.”

“It’s time to contact the Drix,” Cravus said.

Sherif sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yes, yes, it is.” He turned to the Kaluma at his back. “Search the bodies and gather anything we can use. We leave in one yora to return to Torin.”

Every Kaluma let out a grunting sound in unison before scattering to pick over the dead bodies, efficiently gathering armor and weapons.

Sherif gestured toward the cruiser. “We have a healer on board. I want you checked out, fed, and rested.”

He turned without waiting for an answer to stomp up the stairs. Everything about him exuded leadership, and there was an undercurrent of genuine like and respect for his fellow warriors. I understood why Cravus liked him so much. As we followed his pardux, I looked over, catching Cravus with a slight smile on his face as he settled his gaze on Sherif’s back.

The Kaluma twins, who I learned were named Grego and Uthor, sat on either side of me, staring. They wore their hair long on one side and shaved on the other in mirror images of each other. They were shirtless, covered in blood, and still gripping their weapons.

In a chair a few feet away, Cravus sat talking to Sherif. He’d asked the twins to watch me, and they’d taken the instruction so damn literal. I tried to pretend like they weren’t staring, but it was just so… obvious. I cleared my throat. “So, uh, you guys had fun back there?” I cringed as soon as I said the words. Clearly, I needed to work on my small talk.

It didn’t really matter though, because they both nodded with a simultaneous, “Yes.”

I hadn’t expected such a quick and enthusiastic answer. “Oh, uh, okay.”

The Kaluma archer who’d taken down the Ubilque stood along the wall, staring straight ahead like a soldier. He hadn’t looked at me once. Now that I saw him a bit closer, he seemed to be younger—less lines on his face, and his body was still slimmer and less bulked with muscle. But he was tall, and I was sure he’d be a mammoth like Cravus once he filled out. His gaze flickered to me for a brief second, and he hitched his shoulders before resuming his concentrated wall studying.

At my side, Uthor—I was pretty sure that one was Uthor—seemed to shift closer. I eyed him, and he shrank back with his head bent like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. What was with these two?

“Grego. Uthor.” Cravus barked. The two immediately straightened. “Give her some space. You’re crowding her.”

They reluctantly moved their chairs back an inch each. In inch being generous. “Sorry, Cravus,” they murmured.

He rolled his eyes. “They do this to Karina, too. I promise they won’t harm you. They’re just a little fascinated with humans. And females.”

A door opened from a small annex on the cruiser and an alien stepped through that took my breath away. A female Kaluma—she had to be—with long white hair, golden bronze skin, and piercing blue eyes. I’d never seen cheekbones that high, and her figure was stunning, large breasts and hips with a rounded belly. My jaw dropped as she stepped closer to Cravus and gave him a small smile.

This was what he had at home, and he chose… me? I let out a panicked squeak, and everyone in the room turned to me. Skags, who was in the corner munching on a small rodent he had caught lurking around the docks, looked up with alarm.

I swallowed. “Uh, sorry. Just… felt a draft.” I faked a shiver. Cravus’s brow furrowed. “Come here, kotche.”

“No, it’s…” I couldn’t stop looking at the female, who only watched me with a pleasant expression. Nothing about her was outwardly threatening except for her gorgeous appearance and cheekbones that could cut glass. I’d never seen anything quite like her.

Sherif gestured to her. “Hara is one of our healer trainees. She was tending to another wounded and will now check Cravus.”

I nodded, still unable to take my eyes off her. I was a little bit jealous but maybe more than anything, I was fascinated. I hadn’t actually thought of the female Kaluma, as I’d been so focused on the excitement of another human there. Would they accept me? I had to be nice to this one so she didn’t go home and tell everyone what a pain I was. I cleared my throat and smiled, although it felt shaky. “Hi, I’m Bloom.”

“Nice to meet you.” She even had a gorgeous smile, because of course she did.

Her hands were gentle as she touched Cravus. My mate. My boyfriend. My future. But he didn’t seem to react other than to obey when she instructed him to tilt his head and keep his eyes open and do various physical tests like lift his arms. She didn’t talk much, and when she did, her voice was low and soft. I would have listened to her read a bedtime story, that was for sure.

Finally, she glided over to me—yes, she seemed to glide with perfect posture—and pulled a chair in front of me. She smiled. “And how do you feel?”

I felt like I wanted to bite Cravus to claim him, or maybe scratch her eyes out, and almost ask if she would be my best friend. I glanced around the cruiser, at Cravus and Sherif who were watching me expectantly, at the archer who remained facing the wall, and on Grego and Uthor who had seemed to shift closer again.

It was a lot. Maybe too much. And before I could help it, the tears began to flow, dripping down my cheeks as I sniffed and answered honestly, “I don’t know.”

Hara’s expression faltered as Cravus stood up to rush to my side, but she quickly lifted a hand. “Males, leave.”

The archer, as well as the twins, scurried from the room instantly. Cravus stopped short and stared at her. “What did you say?”

She turned and glanced at him over her shoulder with a level glare. “I said leave. You all are overwhelming her.”

Cravus jaw ticked. “I have taken care—”

“It’s okay,” I swiped at my eyes. “I think… I’d like some time with Hara.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but a flash of hurt crossed Cravus’s face. I smiled at him. “It’s not you. I just want to talk to another female for a bit.”

Sherif clapped a hand on Cravus’s back. “Let’s give them some time.”

Cravus blinked at me, and when I gave him a nod, he slowly turned and walked down a hallway with his pardux. He glanced back at me one last time before entering a room. When the door shut behind them, we were alone.

She took my hands in hers and squeezed them. “You can tell me anything or nothing. Just get out what you need to.”

So, I did. I sobbed into her shoulder and soft white hair, telling her how many emotions I’d gone through since arriving in this galaxy. From the lowest of lows in the cage to the highest of highs meeting Cravus.

“It’s hard to believe that we are safe,” I said after I stopped blubbering. “That we’re going to his home planet.” I blinked at her. “But now I have a whole other worry.”

She cocked her head. “What’s that?”

I waved my hands at her. “You!”

The poor thing was very confused. “Me?”

“Look at you! You’re beautiful! Do all Kaluma females look like you? I don’t understand why Cravus would want to mate outside the species...” I let my voice trail off as Hara smiled. It wasn’t a cocky smile, but one of knowing.

“Did he explain a little about our recent history?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“For a long time, the Kaluma females had no choices and no options. Now that Sherif is our pardux, the galaxy is…” her eyes went a bit distant as her smile grew. “Now it’s wide open. We can learn new skills. I was forced for a long time to mate…” she ducked her head and inhaled deeply. “I don’t want to choose a male just to procreate. I will find someone I feel a bond with, or I will remain unmated. This is my choice. As far as Cravus… he has chosen you as much as you have chosen him. Please be confident in your linyx bond, because that is the most solid and sacred relationship to the Kaluma.”

Now I felt a little stupid. “I’m sorry, I whispered

“Don’t be.” Her smile widened.

“You’re very kind. Thank you so much for letting me cry on your shoulder and be insecure for a moment.”

“I have learned we are powerful when we lift each other up.” Her voice was like a balm to my soul. “So, is there anything else I can do for you?”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Can you tell me what to expect when we get to Torin?”

She laughed and relaxed as if we were two girls having a drink. “I’d be happy to.”

Cravus

Sherif and I stood near the back of the cruiser as the crew readied the craft for launch. Bloom was back to her smiling self, talking to Hara in delighted tones. I was worried after her earlier display of emotion, but she’d assured me it was just a release of stress. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but if she said she was okay, then I had to believe her.

Sherif was staring out of one of the small port windows to watch for any oncoming attacks. “I think they will let us go,” he said. “They aren’t prepared for this. They thought they’d separate me from the crew and wipe us all out. So we might get to go home now, but if what the Ubilque said is true, then they aren’t done with us. Not even close.” He turned to me. “That human you met know anything about what’s going on?”

I’d told him as much as I could remember since I started this mission, including our run-in with Zuri. His eyes had glittered when I told him that she shot me, and I wasn’t sure if it was anger for me, or amusement.

“She didn’t seem aware, and when I mentioned seeking sanctuary with the Council, she didn’t protest.” I propped my hands on my hips. “Although she did mention one thing you should be aware of.”

Sherif crossed his arms over his chest and jutted out his pelvis in what I called his pardux stance. He hated it when I said that. “Oh?”

“She’s seen a Kaluma before.” Sherif went still, so still that I didn’t think he was breathing. I rushed to explain. “Look, I don’t think… I don’t think it’s him. There are other Kaluma settlements who we don’t often communication with.”

I could tell Sherif didn’t care about any of that. His mind was going, recalling the single even that changed his entire life and that of our settlement. If Kazel had never disappeared, if Varnex hadn’t lost his eldest son, then his wife, he might not have gone mad. He might have valued Sherif—the one son he had left. He might have been a great leader. So many what ifs.

“Where did she see him?”

“She couldn’t remember much of anything, just that she met him—”

Sherif turned and grabbed his blades off the table before strapped them to his back.

I gripped his chest harness. “Wait. Sherif—”

“I need to talk to her. I’ll make her remember.”

I gritted my teeth. “It doesn’t work like that.”

He whirled around, his eyes wild and turbulent. “Tell me all you know about her now while I pack my things.”

He stomped off down the hallway to his room, drawing attention from the crew, as well as Bloom, who watched me with wide eyes. I gave her a helpless look and she hopped up from her seat to follow me. “What’s going on?” she asked as we took off after Sherif.

“I told him what Zuri said, about meeting a Kaluma once, and he thinks it could be his missing brother.”

She frowned. “Aren’t there other Kalumas?”

“Yes,” I said in a low voice. “But Sherif will not leave any lead unexplored.”

When I entered his room, he was shoving items into a pack with jerky, efficient movements.

“This human isn’t like Bloom. She’s not like Karina either. She’ll probably shoot you on sight,” I warned.

He glanced up at me with a glare. “She can try.”

Bloom made a face. “Yikes. That’s a first meet I’d love to witness.”

“What’s her name?” he barked.

I told him everything I could—that her name was Zuri but she went by Hack, that she moved often. “She might be gone already.”

“Then I will find her,” he said, as if it was easy.

“She will not like to be tracked.”

Again, he glared at me, his nostrils flaring. “I don’t care.”

His pack was stuffed with warmer clothes, weapons, and food. He strapped a water skin on his waist and tied his hair back at the nape of his neck. After tossing the pack over his shoulder, he stepped to me. “I’m sorry, Cravus. But you know I have to do this.”

I did. I didn’t like it, but I did. “I can come—”

He cut me off immediately. “You will not. You will return home with your mate. You, Bosa, and Wensla will rule in my stead. Final word is Wensla’s, because Bosa is too impulsive and you’re going to be busy with your mate.”

I nodded, feeling sick to my stomach. “Pardux—”

“Don’t,” he rasped quickly, his lids fluttering. He hated it when Bosa and I used his title.

“We can’t lose you,” I murmured. “You know that, right?”

He swallowed, and I felt guilty for adding more weight to his shoulders. He would never stop searching for Kazel as long as he lived. I couldn’t say I blamed him. “I know. And you won’t lose me. I’ll return, hopefully with my brother.”

His voice faltered on the last word, and I knew how much this meant to him. I lifted my hand to my chest in the Kaluma gesture. “I will let everyone know at home about your mission.”

He nodded and swept past me. I heard him addressing the crew before the airlock hissed open. I closed my eyes and let my head fall between my shoulders. Bloom wrapped her arms around my waist, squeezing tightly. “I’m sorry.”

“He’s remaining behind on a hostile planet while we could be on the verge of war, but there is no way he can be talked about of it. He’s a great leader, but his brother has always been a weak spot for him.”

“I think Sherif will be just fine. Zuri won’t kill him without a warning shot first.”

I snorted. “He’s less tolerant than I am. I worry for both of them.”

She reached up and tugged on my chin until I lowered my head. She pressed a kiss to my lips. “Then we do what we can to ensure when Sherif returns, it’s to peace.”

I smiled. “I like how you think.”

The engines rumbled, vibrating the floor beneath our feet. “To home!” she shouted.

I hoisted her in the air, and she wrapped her legs around my waist. I kissed her again, harder this time, and then murmured against her lips. “To home, my Bloom.”

THIRTEEN

Bloom

Every time Cravus had mentioned home, a look came over his face that I envied. One of belonging, of knowing his roots, and I didn’t have that. But when I stepped onto the path of the Kaluma settlement, and large trees with massive trunks stretched to the sky before me, a settling feeling warmed my chest.

This was my home. This was where I belonged, and it was never more apparent than when a woman with long dark hair pulled back into a braid sprinted toward me, shouting and hollering, with her arms spread out.

She caught me up in a hug, and although I’d never met her, didn’t know a thing about her, I returned the hug, squeezing her tightly.

“You must be Karina,” I laughed as her breath warmed my neck.

She pulled back and grabbed my face, hers flushed and alight with excitement. “When Sherif told me Cravus was bringing home a human mate, I thought I was going to come out of my skin!”

A Kaluma stepped up behind her—the one from my dreams—with white hair shaved on the sides and braided in the back. He wore an amused expression. “She hasn’t talked about anything else since then. I’m sure you’re great, little female, but I’m already tired of you.”

Karina turned around and smacked on the arm, hard. “Apologize.”

He snorted and then met my eyes with glittering blue ones. “I’m not being serious. Nice to meet you. I’m Bosa.”

I nodded. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He exhaled loudly and raised his voice. “Yes, I’m sure. We all know this place can’t run without me.” He grinned and then stepped up to Cravus, his expression sobering slightly. “You had us worried, friend.”

“If it wasn’t for Bloom, I wouldn’t be here.”

“I can say the same,” I murmured.

Bosa peered over Cravus’s shoulder at the rest of the crew who were unloading the cruiser. “Where’s Sherif?”

I pressed my lips together as Karina craned her neck to look for the pardux. “He ignored us every time we tried to talk to him on our way here.”

Cravus swallowed. “He stayed behind.”

“What?” Bosa hollered so loud that Skags let out a squawk and flopped out of my sling. The Kaluma jumped back and raised his bat above his head. “What the yerk is that thing?”

“No!” I cried, diving on top of Skags, who trembled so badly that his bones were rattling. “He’s my friend!”

Bosa exhaled roughly and relaxed, lowering his bat. “Yerk me.”

I picked up Skags, who eyed Bosa with distrust.

“Can I pet him?” Karina asked.

“Yes, he’s very friendly.” I glanced at Bosa. “Usually.”

Karina laughed. “He has a way of bringing out the worst in everyone.”

“Hey!” Her mate protested.

While Karina scratched the ears of a now-calm Skags, Cravus explained why Sherif chose to remain behind. Bosa’s expression darkened with every word until his jaw was tight and his grip on his spiked bat was white-knuckled. “That’s a suicide mission. What’s he thinking?”

“You know what he’s thinking,” Cravus murmured.

“It’s not that I don’t want Kazel back too—”

“I know,” Cravus said. “I know. He does too. There was no talking him out of it though.”

“Do you think Drukil is going to act quickly?”

“We can’t be sure,” Cravus said. “But we need to get in touch with the Drixonians.”

“We’ll arrange a meeting. Maybe the females can get together.”

“Females?” I asked.

Karina gripped my hand, her smile big. “Their allies the Drixonians saved close to a dozen women. All mated.”

“What are the Drixonians like?”

Bosa curled his lip with distaste, while Cravus punched him. “The Drixonians are exactly who we’d want in a battle with the Council,” he explained.

“Are they… kind to their women?”

“Too kind,” Bosa muttered. “Those females walk all over them—”

“Excuse me?” Karina cocked a hip out and crossed her arms over her chest.

I didn’t miss the slight wave of panic that colored Bosa’s face. “Kotche—”

“Don’t act tough or we’ll see who has to sleep outside tonight. Cold and alone.”

He narrowed his eyes. “That means you’ll be cold and alone too without my cock to warm you—”

She slapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t you have warrior things to do?”

He blinked at her over her palm and shrugged his spiked shoulders. She dropped her hand with a roll of her eyes and linked her arm through mine. “Well, I’m going to give Bloom a tour. You two go…” she waved a hand. “…do whatever it is you need to do.”

“I would rather talk more about warming—”

“Bye!” she shouted over her shoulder. I waved to Cravus, who waved back with a smile before turning to once more converse with Bosa.

Karina turned and winked at me. “If Bosa ever gives you trouble, you let me know. He’s all talk. Well, he bites too, but only when I ask.” She tilted her head in thought. “Or if you’re a mortal enemy.”

“Makes sense,” I said, feeling a little overwhelmed. She seemed to sense my slight distress and patted my hand. “So what do you want to do first? I can give you a tour, or we can eat, or I can take you straight away to get clean and in a bed to rest.”

I glanced around, feeling strengthened by her kindness. “I’ve been stuck in a cruiser for too many days. I’d love to walk around.”

Her smile grew as she flung out her arm. “A tour it is!”

Round huts sat on fungus like pads jutting out from the large trees, leading up so high that I could barely make out some at the top. Vines hung in various positions, and I watched as members of the settlement hopped nimbly from fungi platforms and branches before sliding down the vines.

“Bosa and I are in that one,” she pointed to a hut with a spiked wreath on the door. “And that’s yours.” She pointed to a nearby hut, which was covered in orange and purple flowers.

My jaw dropped. “Is that…”

“Cravus asked us to decorate it. He said you like flowers. Wensla and Gurla helped me. You’ll meet them soon.”

I gasped. “He asked… you did…” I felt my eyes filling with tears and quickly swiped at them. “Why am I crying? How stupid—”

“Hey,” Karina turned me to face her. “You’re not stupid. I heard about what you’ve been though. You don’t… remember Earth, right?”

I shook my head. “Sometimes I get flashes, but… not really.”

“So, it’s understandable that having a home again is going to make you feel. A lot. So go ahead and feel.”

I sniffed. “I’m so happy you’re here. What did you do when you were the only human?”

She shrugged. “All the females were really kind and welcoming. And I keep Bosa in check, which is helpful to all of them since he’s a handful.”

I laughed. “I worried that they would be unwelcoming, that they would think I was stealing one of their men. But Hara assured me no one would treat me like that.”

“And she’s right,” Karina confirmed. “As long as it’s your choice to be with Cravus, then they are happy to have more feminine touches here, trust me. You know the history and what they went through with their last pardux, right?”

I nodded.

“Yeah, so most of them don’t even want mates, but they feel responsibility to choose and procreate. Us taking a few warriors out of the mating pool is a blessing to them.” She fingered my short hair. “They know what it’s like to feel unsafe, and so they are happy to provide us somewhere we can live freely.” She grinned. “They’re great cooks too. And they smoke a dried weed that is—” she whistled. “Better than anything I’ve ever had, you know what I mean?”

I stared at her.

She blinked at me. “You know, like pot?”

“Pot?”

She pursed her lips. “After dinner, honey. I’ll hook you up. I promise it’s all natural and will make you feel right at home.”

I just met her, but I trusted her. “Okay.”

The tour continued. She showed me the stream near the settlement where they bathed and washed clothes, the training arenas for the warriors, as well as the crop fields and livestock pens. Next, she pointed out the kitchens, dining areas, and healer building. “They’re self-sufficient here. It’s a mix of primitive living—kind of glamping to be honest—but yet they have space travel technology and rocket launchers.”

I wasn’t sure of everything she was talking about, but I nodded. “You like it here?”

She smiled at me, although I could tell it was tinged with sadness. “Do I miss Earth? My friends? Apple pie? Yeah, I do. But that’s not my life anymore. This is. Bosa is the love of my life, I have friends, and I’m learning a lot of skills on how to be productive. It’s rewarding, and I’m safe and loved.”

“It’s funny you say it like that. I don’t have my memories, but I had a dream, or a visul, I guess, where my old self told me that it was time to move on, that I am still me but adapting to a new environment and life.”

Karina patted my arm. “I’m so sorry about what happened to you, but I’m so very glad you met Cravus. I respect him so much. I bet you can help him forge weapons, if that sounds like fun to you.”

I hadn’t even thought about that. A bubble of excitement inflated my chest “Do you think I could?”

“I’m sure you could. He’d probably be happy to have you by his side all day.”

“I want to feel like I’m a part of the settlement here. I want to work.”

“And that’s fine but give yourself break. Take time to adjust. No one’s going to have you pulling weeds in the crop fields tomorrow.”

I laughed. “Okay, that’s fair.”

Karina gestured toward the kitchens. “It’s about mealtime. Wanna learn about the Kaluma cuisine?”

I smiled. “I’d love to.”

We munched on thin, cooked tubers that Karina said tasted like potato chips. My tongue seemed to remember the flavor and I couldn’t get enough.

“Here, eat some bupz too,” fussed Wensla, a Kaluma female I’d just met whose belly was round with a late-stage pregnancy. She sat next to Gurla, and it was clear the two were very much in love. Sitting nearby, whittling some wood with a knife, was the other mate in their triad, a male.

Wensla wasn’t the oldest female of the settlement, but she very much struck me as a leader. I remembered Sherif had said she was to be in charge in his absence, along with Bosa and Cravus, but he’d given Wensla the final word. I had expected her to be wary of me, and while she definitely studied me closely, she came across more like a concerned mother.

The way she treated me made my brain spin a little. I was pretty sure I’d had a mom like her—sensible, caring, and very protective of her own. I immediately liked Wensla. Gurla was younger, talkative, and I got the impression she could be trouble sometimes. She had a mischievous glint to her eyes.

“Wensla is always making sure we get our balanced meals,” she said with a giggle. “Don’t worry, we can sneak more tubers later.”

“I heard that,” Wensla murmured while she filled our plates. We sat at a long table in the dining building. Most of the warriors were finished eating, having gobbled up their food in no time, but the females sat around me giving me time to try the new foods. The smoked meat was incredible, and Karina boasted that she’d had a hand in changing up some of their spice recipes.

“Did you hear about Sherif?” Karina asked Wensla.

Her fingers faltered, and she swallowed thickly before resuming her plating. “Yes, I was informed as I’m now part of the leadership with Cravus.” She hesitated before adding in an annoyed tone. “And Bosa.”

If Karina noticed the tone, she took no offense. “Do you think he’ll find his brother?”

Wensla sighed and leaned back in her chair. Gurla rubbed her mate’s swollen stomach and then gripped her hand. “If Kazel is still alive, I believe Sherif will find him. It’s whether he’s still alive or not.”

“Sherif changed completely when he heard that Zuri had seen a Kaluma.”

“Zuri?” Gurla asked. “Who’s that?”

“A human we met.” I explained briefly about our first meeting, including that she’d shot Cravus.

Gurla’s eyes nearly bugged out of her head. “You’re telling me that Sherif is going to find her to get more information?”

“That was what he said.”

Gurla let out a loud whoop. “I would give up all my jewels to see that meeting.”

“Sherif is not as patient as Cravus, and he doesn’t have a human mate to protect.” Wensla said.

Karina was clearly concerned. “Will Zuri be okay?”

“He won’t hurt her,” Wensla said confidently.

“I’m more worried about him.” I crunched on a tuber chip.

Karina stared at me and then let out a loud peal of laughter. I joined in. In my heart of hearts, I hoped I hadn’t seen the last of Zuri, and I sent up a silent wish she would be okay… and that Sherif would survive their meeting as well.

“Is there anything we can help you with, with your memory?” Karina asked.

While I’d accepted the Bloom I was now, I wished I knew a little more about myself in the past, in case I was harboring some secret skill. “I’m not sure. Scents seem to jog my memory. I dream about… flickering flames, scents, and wax. Zuri mentioned candles. In one of my dreams I told Cravus that I developed a scent called Star-Crossed.” I felt my cheeks heat. “It smelled like him.”

“Maybe you made candles.” Karina said. She turned and straddled the bench where we sat. “We can ask the warriors for anything we can use and there are plenty of flowers and fruits we can extract scent oils from.”

My nose itched, in a good way. “I’d like that. I think my memories will return, bit my bit. And if they don’t…” I sighed and smiled. “It’s okay. I know who I am.”

Karina squeezed my hand. “That’s a great attitude.”

Although I’d gotten a lovely tour from Karina, Cravus insisted on walking me around after our last meal of the day before we went to sleep in his hut for the first time. We strolled down the main path settlement, and while I’d gotten out of smoking the weed that Karina had talked so fondly of, I could smell a sweet, grassy scent floating on the air. Several warriors puffed on pipes, relaxing in groups while a large fire burned toward the center of the village.

I’d briefly met Cravus’s father, who greeted us with a smile, but seemed to think Cravus was his late brother. I felt for my warrior mate, but he remained patient with his father and introduced me. The elder had told me I was pretty and then went back to smoking. Cravus said it helped him with his joint pain.

I gripped Cravus’s hand. “So, Karina mentioned that I could learn some skills to be useful here.”

He immediately frowned. “You don’t have to—”

“I know, I know. I can get settled first and I will. But I want something to do. I was wondering…” I swallowed. “I think I’m good with my hands. I want to help you make weapons.”

Cravus stopped short and stared at me with wide blue eyes. “What?”

“I want to help you make weapons. I want to learn what I can from you, and I thought I could maybe add a little flare like some designs on the handles or something.” I squinted up at him. “What do you think?”

“You want to learn how to make weapons?” He didn’t sound appalled, just surprised.

“Yeah, I get to learn something important, and I get to hang out with you while doing it.”

His face split into an ear-to-ear-grin. He picked me up and whirled me around. “I want nothing more than to show you what I do.” He brushed our noses together. “A few of the warriors have shown interest but get frustrated after a while. It’s slow, tedious, hard work.”

I pressed a quick kiss to his lips. “I can handle slow, tedious, and hard if you’re there.”

“A dagger with small blooms carved in the handle, maybe?”

“I think I can manage that.”

He dropped me back on the ground and took my hand. “Let me show you something.”

He led me down a path into a denser forested area. I walked along beside him, picking over large roots and fallen leaves until we came to a clearing. I looked up, and my breath left my lungs on a gasp. Before me lay a field of wildflowers, some massive blue petals the size of my head mixed with smaller green and white buds. I dropped his hand and stepped forward, reaching out to brush my fingers along a stem. I stopped short and turned to glance at him over my shoulder. “Are these…”

“Nothing poisonous,” he laughed. “You can touch.”

“Can I pick a few?”

“Yes, Bloom. You can.”

With a happy giggle, I carefully made a bouquet that I decided I would give to Karina even if it didn’t quite match her spiked decor. I found a pretty flower with wicked thorns to throw in her bundle. Next, I plopped myself down on the ground and began weaving a green and white flower crown for myself. I left a trail of pretty vines long in the back and placed it on my head before tilting my face back to the sun to catch some warmth.

When I opened my eyes, Cravus was crouched a few feet away, his eyes glowing.

“Thank you,” I said to him softly. “This place is beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said. “Welcome home, kotche.”

I grinned. “Glad to be here.”

Thank you so much for reading Protected by the Alien Bodyguard! Want a bonus scene where Cravus and Bloom make weapons together? Get it free HERE.

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What’s next? Sherif and Zuri’s story in

Claimed by the Alien Chieftain.

“She’s my match… in more ways than one.”

Sherif: Although my brother disappeared many cycles ago, I’ve never given up hope that he’s alive. I get word about a human who has seen him, but she’s evading me. When I finally come face to face with her, the situation becomes a whole lot more complicated, because I can’t deny the pull toward the female with the smart mouth. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’ll be by my side as I rule over my people.

Zuri: I heard about the Kaluma looking for me, and I’m not interested. No way. It’s bad enough he knows I’m human, but if he finds out the reason I’m free from my captors, he’ll surely lop my head off with his deadly blades.

But he’s hard to shake, and when we finally meet, I realize there’s a whole other problem—he’s claiming me as his mate, and I’m not sure I can resist.

Claimed by the Alien Bodyguard features a determined alien hero with alpha tendencies and a hacker heroine with deadly aim.

Read on for a sneak peak!

CLAIMED BY THE ALIEN CHIEFTAIN

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER One

Sherif

As my leg sank knee-deep in the snow drift, I sneered into the howling wind. “If this is a bad lead, someone is going to die.”

Ever since I got to this planet, it’d been one bad lead after another in attempt to find this yerking human. First it was visiting a small settlement only to find she hadn’t been there in many rotations. Then it was south to the reef, east to the cliffs, west to the mountains, and now I was heading north. Blasted, ball-freezing, yerking north.

I had only seen snow a few times in my life, back when we used to travel on our home planet of Torin, back before… well just before. Before life changed irreversibly. And this journey, this search, was my effort to get back the one thing I lost that I never gave up hope on.

The human had to know something, but first I was going to feed her some of the misery that I’d gone through tracking her to this icy wasteland. I adjusted my fur cloak, checking to be sure my shoulder spiks were poking through the gaps created for them and not poking holes in the garment. I shivered, an action I rarely did as my blood ran hotter than most.

Humans. I didn’t have much of an opinion on them since I had only met a few, and the ones I did meet were female. They were small. A little weak. Bosa and Cravus seemed enraptured by the ones they claimed as mates, but I found them both visually unappealing. Karina had some spirit to her, but she was rather disobedient. Bloom was very kind, but a little bland. Of course, I’d never say that to them, or to my friends, but as I stomped my way through the snow and rubbed my watering eyes, I decided I hated just about everyone I’d ever met. They all led me to this moment, and everything about it was terrible.

When I got my hands on this human, I was going to get all the information out of her that I needed, and then I’d wring her neck.

I’d been traipsing over flat plains with whipping winds for too long, and I sighed with relief when I spotted a treeline ahead. That should provide some shelter from the blowing snow stinging my face. As I drew closer, my gaze went up and up as I took in that massive trees, nearly as tall as the ones back home on Torin where we made our home. The trees along the perimeter didn’t have leaves like I was used to. When I came close, I reached out to finger the thin, hard needles. Densely packed, they hid the trunk from view, and it wasn’t until I stepped farther past the tree line that the appearance changed slightly. These trees were less dense with more leaf-like foliage. It was as if those on the outside took the brunt so the ones inside could prosper.

I hadn’t seen much life on my way here, but now I heard the steady squawk of some winged greers and the rustling of rodents along the undergrowth. The snow was still ankle-deep, as the trees didn’t provide enough cover to prevent the hard-falling stuff.

Supposedly the human had a refuge here. Of course, I hadn’t been able to ask for a human. No one knew she was a human. They only knew her as Hack, an unseen tech collector who could provide just about any goods needed. There were rumors she was a Drixonian, but I knew that wasn’t true, as that species was more than happy to show off. Some thought she was a Rogastix, but the kicker was they all didn’t know her as a she. Not like I did. But she’d shown herself to Cravus and his mate. She was, in fact, a human female.

I couldn’t imagine this was a fun place to hide out. Freezing, isolated. What did she eat? Irritated and thirsty, I spotted a fallen log and sank down on it, stretching my legs out in front of me, which felt more like ice blocks than functioning appendages.

After drinking as much as I dared from my small stash of water, I filled my skin with some clean snow to replenish my supply, then pulled some dried meat from a pouch on my belt and chewed slowly. I gazed up at the sun peeking through the trees. I could either rest and wait for the cover of night, or I could continue the rest of the way under full blank. While I didn’t think the human was dangerous, she had shot Cravus.

While munching, I caught movement in the corner of my eye. I immediately blanked, camouflaging myself against my background, and waited with baited breath.

A form, covered in a hooded fur cloak, strode through the snow. A sound drifted on the wind, deep and melodic. The creature was bipedal, and my heart sped up as I held out hope that this was the human I’d been searching for. I slowly rose and took a few steps closer. The form turned then, as if sensing my presence, and big round eyes stared right at me. As if they could see me.

My hands curled into fists as I fought the urge to shout in triumph. This was her. The human. Her skin was a shining bronze-brown a few shades darker than mine. From under her hood, I spotted the mass of dark curls, a colorful headband tied to tame it. She had a laser gun strapped to her chest, and a knife in her hand. A dead and bleeding furry body dangled from one hand.

I hesitated a beat, and it was a beat too late. She let out a loud, “Fuck!” and whipped the laser gun from her holster. Pointing it at me, she fired. I ducked and scented the smell of burnt fur as the heat singed by hood.

I let out a roar, unable to believe she’d managed to nearly shoot me when I was blanked. I might have been angry before, but now I was livid.

“Fuck you invisible assholes!” She hollered and took off on a dead sprint.

I ran after her, my longer legs easily eating up the distance. She was fast, but no match for me. I reached out, nearly snagging her hood when suddenly I felt a tug around my ankle, and then I was upside down.

Instincts kicked in and I went still as my body slowly spun. My ankle was clinched in a spiked trap, tied to a thick tree branch above me, and the only reason my foot hadn’t been hacked off was because of my tall, thick boots.

I slowly came to a stop to face the human I’d been chasing. Zuri. And by the looks of it, she was the reason I was in this predicament.

Her hood was down, hair framing her face in a mass of dark curls, and her chin was tilted in the air. The picture of defiance and confidence. Except she wasn’t able to calm her trembling fingers. She was scared of me, and she had every right to be.

“This is your trap?” I asked. I remained blanked, so she couldn’t see me, but she’d hear my voice.

“Yes,” she answered quickly.

“Cut me down.”

“No.” She crossed her arms over her chest to hide the evidence of her nerves.

I smiled, but I knew it wasn’t doing much to soften my look when she swallowed a visible gulp of fear. “Cut me down now and I’ll forgive you for this. Leave me here a moment longer, and there’ll be payback.”

She gritted her teeth. “Why do you think you’re able to make threats? You’re the one hanging by a chain from a tree. Not me.”

“You think I can’t get down from here?”

Her body swayed, like her instincts were telling her to run, but her pride was planting its feet. “I’m sure you can, but I’ll be gone before you do.”

She was wrong. My blades strapped to my back were made by Cravus, and they could slice through this chain like it was string. The only reason I hadn’t done it yet was because I wanted to see what this human would do. I found her. Now wasn’t the time for impulsive decisions.

“Don’t follow me,” she announced, jutting her chin even farther in the air. Her eyes darted around, probably seeking to make out my invisible outline.

“Why’s that?”

“I don’t know what you want, but I can’t help you. I want to be left alone, and this trap is child’s play compared to the rest of my defenses.”

And that was when my heart sped up, my head took a dizzying turn, and the most puzzling of all—I got a little hard. If this human thought a few obstacles would deter me, she had zero idea what she was up against. My prey was in sight. This was just a game now, and I always won.

“Well then you better run, human. Because I’ll be out of this trap before you can say—“

I didn’t even get to finish my sentence. She was already out of sight. I smiled to myself as I pulled one of my blades from my harness, curled up with my core muscles, and slashed through the chain. As I fell, I twisted to land on all fours in the snow, dropping the blank. I didn’t need to remain camouflaged anymore. She knew I was after her, and maybe part of me thought I should play fair. I could catch her with my entire body glowing. She had no idea what kind of tracker I was.

I dusted the snow off my clothes, rolled my ankle, and took off after the human. I’d have her in my hands by nightfall, and I was already imagining all the ways I’d make her pay for this hassle.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ella Maven is the pen name for a multi-published USA Today Bestselling author who decided to finally unleash the alien world that had been living in her head for years. (Is that weird? Probably). Her books feature dominant, possessive aliens who are absolutely devoted to their humans.

She lives on the East Coast with her completely normal husband and two spawn who sure seem alien some days.

ALSO BY ELLA MAVEN

Drixonian Warrior Series

Anna and Tark: The Alien’s Future (prequel)

Daz and Frankie: The Alien’s Ransom

Sax and Valerie: The Alien’s Escape.

Ward and Reba: The Alien’s Undoing

Miranda and Drak: The Alien’s Revenge

Gar and Naomi: The Alien’s Savior

Xavy and Tabitha: The Alien’s Challenge

Nero and Justine: The Alien’s Equal

Stolen Warrior Series

Rexor

Mikko

Fenix

Zecri

Mates of the Kaluma

Hunted by the Alien Assassin

Table of Contents

Title Page

About Protected by the Alien Bodyguard

Copyright

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

CLAIMED BY THE ALIEN CHIEFTAIN

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Ella Maven