Page 2 of 20% Stud 80% Muffin (Alien Fated Mates #1)

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Planet Tern…the not-too-distant future

M y long tail whipped the ground and splooshed into one of the many puddles that littered my hovery’s shop floor. Water dripped into scavenged buckets, and a narrow stream trickled into my nest. I hated sleeping above ground, but drowning in my nest would be infinitely worse.

“Blant.” I kicked a scrap of tin, which careened into the wall and remained stuck in the mud. “Not again.” I squeezed out the no-longer-fluffy tip of my tail.

How would I repair a fleet of hoverbikes when I couldn’t even keep the blanting rain out of my dwelling?

Without a hovery, there was no business and, more importantly, no profit. I glanced at the red light flashing on my wristport and cringed. The credits I had brought with me were long spent. Used to a life of luxury, I had no idea how to manage finances.

If the situation got any more dire, I might need to reconsider one of Raz’s many offers and move into my creepy neighbor’s guest room. Berating myself for the thought, I lifted my chin and banished the notion. Not in a million annums would I move in with an alpha, even if he was another species. Learning to swim sounded more fun. I shivered. What I needed was to establish myself as a quality hovic, and soon.

When I’d applied to be a hovic on Tern, I was informed that recolonization would be slow. I hadn’t cared. The promise of a fully equipped hovery and a personal dwelling in exchange for repairing the hovercrafts in Yurstille had been too enticing to question. Now, hindsight was all too clear. With no hovery or dwelling in sight, asking more questions earlier would have been more than appropriate.

My stomach still twisted every time I recalled my brother’s pleas. Bonic’s gaze had dropped away from mine with every mention of relocating to Tern. He hadn’t wanted me to leave Lorne, let alone move to the farthest outpost in the Reiner System. But in the end, he’d relented and supported my need for a fresh start.

If I was awarded the future contract for Tern’s enforcers, that would change everything. Their fleet of hoverbikes would require constant maintenance, and I knew from experience on my home planet that having the ear of law enforcers was a powerful weapon.

My neighbor’s green head poked through my doorless entry, all sharp-toothed grin. “Hey, hey, Mak. ”

I squeezed out the damp tip of my muddy tail again and pressed my lips into a smile of sorts. “Raz, how is your first crop of graneth?”

Raz’s toothy grin grew wider, and I shuddered at the number of teeth on display. “Like liquid gold.” His sharp talons stuck out from under his slicker and dug into the pink soil doubling as my floor. “It’s growing faster than I dreamed pos-s-sible. I can hardly believe the first harvest’s next week, and there is a queue to purchase.”

Raz was contracted by Yurstille, Tern’s first settlement, to cultivate grain. He was one of the lucky ones. He often reminded me of his warm and dry dwelling, built before the archbuilder had fallen from a ladder to his unhappy demise. Boastful credit signs all but shone in my neighbor’s eyes, and I couldn’t stop mine from rolling. Our daily encounters had grown tiring.

I’d left behind the alpha males of my home planet for a reason. And while I’d never encountered Raz’s species—Lizzards—before, that personality type was more familiar than the back of my blue hand.

Before I’d agreed to start a new life on Tern, I’d promised to stay as far away from alpha assholes as possible. My scars made it abundantly clear that I wouldn’t survive more of their love . Thank the goddess Sola Raz didn’t have the alpha pheromones that had blindly led me astray in the past.

“Will this rain ever stop?” I grumbled.

“Let’s hope not.” Raz’s voice rattled and dragged out the ‘s.’ “The heat from the Fires That Cleanse burned through the protective seed coating, and graneth is popping up everywhere thanks-s-s to the rain.”

Three weeks earlier, Tern hadn’t been peppered with tiny blue graneth flowers. If I weren’t forced to constantly shake water from my blue fur, I might’ve appreciated the rolling hills dotted with star-shaped blooms springing from pink soil. With the first graneth harvested, starving to death could be removed from my list of worries while waiting for the newly arrived archbuilder to build my dwelling and hovery .

I peered through one of the many gaps in the tin sheets that formed my walls. The rolling hills were coming alive with plants, and I still found it impossible to believe that a thriving city had stood here less than one annum ago.

My fingers worked through a knot in my mane. “Can you believe there’s nothing left? No wonder people are afraid to recolonize here.”

Raz’s long jaw snapped resolutely. “It’s-s-s working out fine for me. If the medic team had arrived on time and saved the citizens of Tern, they wouldn’t have had to deploy the Fires That Cleanse.”

Led by my brother, Lorne had recently aided planet Hotner. Legions of refugee Lizzards—Raz likely one of them—sought new homes. Bonic had cautioned me about Lizzards, who were renowned for valuing profit above all else, but learning this secondhand was worlds different than hearing it straight from the source. A coldness that had nothing to do with the rain worked through me, and my tail stood as stiff as a flagpole.

“You’re joking, right? Hundreds of thousands of people died, and all organic matter on the planet was destroyed.” The electric green flames had burned everything in their path. The video footage had haunted my dreams so much that I deleted the download.

Raz flicked his wrist as if swatting at a pesky bug. “It’s all a natural c-c-cycle of life.”

My omega inclinations leaned toward being the voice of reason, but they walked a tightrope-thin line right now. I wanted to lay into him for his callous disregard for life, but this was my new neighbor. And although he didn’t have the pheromones, his behavior was all alpha. Treading carefully around alphas was the bane of every omega’s existence.

Who knew how many annums I might have to live next to this scaly asshat?

“I would like to be the first to offer you a breakfast of graneth cakes-s-s come new week,” Raz proclaimed, not quite a question. His taloned toes inched toward me, and his forked tongue scented the air.

I backed up right into a puddle .

What the blant is he scenting?

My tail wound around my calf, a comfort among the quiver that plucked at my nerves. A familiar alert to stay away rang strong and clear—an alpha warning system. The same internal warning that had driven me to the Reiner System in the first place. Nothing had quieted the alarm more than moving as far away from my home planet as possible, but alphas lived everywhere.

As much as I would’ve loved a good breakfast that didn’t come from a ration wrapper or my makeshift kitchen, there was no way I trusted Raz enough to accept his offer. My wristport chimed.

Appointment with the archbuilder: new week at seven suns

My tail unwound from where it hugged my calf. I wanted to hop on the spot but held back. I couldn’t wait to talk about my dwelling plans.

I flashed my wristport at Raz. “Looks like I’m already booked.”

Thank the goddess Sola.

I sighed. A meeting with the new archbuilder at last. My unfortunate reality couldn’t be kept from my brother much longer, as overprotective as he was. Omegas were always protected by the alphas in their families until a complete bond with their soul-linked was made. He would board the next shuttle to Tern if he knew my living situation required me to scour the wastelands for parts to repair the few hovercrafts that did come my way. And if he knew my slipshod hovery also acted as my dwelling…

“Another time then, Makir?” Raz’s voice rattled as he hissed out my name. “I’ll leave you to your”—he looked around with open disdain—“hovery?”

I wasn’t aware my shoulders had tensed until they slumped after his departure. My table tilted as I rested my elbows on it, scanning my dwelling. The walls were riddled with so many holes that they could’ve been the grounds of a blaster battle. The new archbuilder had his work cut out for him.

Under a drip-free corner stood a makeshift table covered in drawings for my dwelling and hovery. My now-dry tail bounced behind me as I added storage compartments and extra hover bays to run by the archbuilder. All set for new week, I hovered my wristport over the drawings and scanned the imagery with a smile on my lips.

With one problem solved, the next reared its ugly head.

I peeked through the holes in my wall, searching for Raz. All clear. I settled on my hovercraft and flew out through a gap I hadn’t had the supplies to patch yet. My earlier encounter with my neighbor had left me on edge. For the first time in my life, I was not under the care of an alpha. My brother couldn’t protect me here.

The images of Tern pre-cleanse flashed before my eyes, the wreckage below me transforming into what once was. Towering buildings with hovercrafts swirling around spiky pyramid-shaped roofs. The former hive-like world had been reduced to rubble.

As I searched the wreckage for a flat enough place to land, I planned how to win over a few enforcer friends. A twisted ankle tromping through the wastelands would be worth the risk for the protection I coveted.

The remnants of buildings, hovercrafts and daily life formed a treacherous maze of sharp-edged caves and collapsed arches as far as the eye could see. The wastelands.

I laced up the thick-soled boots Bonic had gifted me. They muffled my steps as I picked my way through the twisted piles of wreckage. Today’s mission to salvage material for windshields was part of my plan to win the contract to repair the enforcers’ hoverbikes and make an impression. Every market weekend, they complained about the extreme cold encountered in the Starry Mountains on their patrols. I could earn their favor if I outfitted their hoverbikes to protect them from the frigid temperatures.

A warm breeze lifted my damp mane off my shoulders. The honeyed scent of graneth blossoms filled the air alongside the odd chirp of the woodskies. It transported me back to my youth, when Bonic and I would set traps in the rocky outcroppings for bush-tailed monties and listen to the chirps on the hillside around us. We’d held the prize for the most monties trapped five years in a row and had won a hefty pile of credits each time. We’d used them to buy our first hoverbike.

Post Fires That Cleanse, crawling through the wastelands was like crawling through a graveyard. I stood and kicked through the remains. Pots were buried in warped steel beams, curled by the extreme heat of the Fires. Massive fan blades draped in wires and broken concrete mesh littered the ground.

When half a buried hovercraft came into view, my heart skipped—it was like winning the lottery. I stuffed my backpack with the smallest of its parts and noted the coordinates to return to on my wristport.

My boot-clad toe caught on a wire loop, throwing my weight to the left and landing me on my ass. “Blant!” My tail twinged when a jagged edge cut into it from below before I could jerk it away. I quickly sealed it with the healing energy from the suction buried in the tip of my tail and resolved to be more careful.

My wristport pinged—almost out of range. Trapped out here, I’d be all on my own. My squished tail righted itself with a swish, and when I pried my thick boot from under the wire, the motion dislodged a metal panel, revealing thick sheets of lamar. A contented purr rumbled in my chest.

On Lorne, lamar covered the openings on walls that allowed light in. Thin, transparent and lightweight, and most importantly, it stood up to the seasonal windstorms that had blasted my former dwelling for months. Nothing could be more perfect for hoverbike shield fabrication.

I jumped on the spot, grinning for half a second before grabbing my tail and stilling it. A glance over my shoulder ensured there were no witnesses to my youngling-like behavior.

I’m the only idiot salvaging in this mess.

I straightened my shoulders and jumped one more time for good measure, finally free from the restrictive decorum my parents expected. A lightness I hadn’t felt since my departure ballooned in my lungs, and I walked back to my hovercraft with a spring in my step, planning out how to extract my bounty .

The archbuilder would undoubtedly agree that lamar could be incorporated into my living quarters and hovery. It let in natural light—every archbuilder’s dream. At least, it worked that way on Lorne. My tail twirled all the way home as I mentally added lamar into my drawings for our upcoming meeting.