Page 13 of 80% Beef 20% Cake (Alien Fated Mates #2)

13

S traddling my idling hovee above the wastelands, I relished the quiet. Even the dorat was content allowing me to stroke her tail. A woodskie flew overhead, wings whispering through the sky. After a solid week of diverting hellsna, the peaceful moment refueled my exhausted state.

A com from Hill disrupted my sunbathing. “Protector JayJay, the mantu diversion’s complete. The hellsna have been successfully rerouted away from town.” If Hill were a trainee on Yagras, I would recommend he be fast-tracked to the elite guard.

“Excellent work—” A swarm of starbugs shot through my engine intake, jerking me to the side, cutting off my response.

I tightened my grip on the hovee’s handlebars as I spiraled out of control. Dizzy from the force of the spin, the ground hurtled toward me.

“Caught in downdraft turbulence,” I called out to my team over the com, jamming my foot through the gears, trying to decelerate. The thrusters made a concerning grinding sound before locking up entirely. “Can’t regain control.”

Hill’s voice wobbled through the com. “You’re breaking up, Protector. Repeat.”

The hovee spun faster, forcing my thighs to loosen where I clung to the saddle. I slid backward, guts churning. Where was a blanting clearing when you needed one? The wastelands were a spiraling blur. “Bailing in three. Will relay coordinates.”

Three, two, one…

On a hope and a prayer, I jumped. With my knees tucked to my chin, I plummeted through the air. Any number of things in the wastelands might skewer me if I landed poorly. My back slammed into the cold, wet ground and air fled from my lungs. Black consumed me.

“Protector JayJay, status update requested.” A distant voice crackled behind my ear. “Repeat. Protector, are you okay?” Hill’s voice faded away.

“JayJay?” Hill’s incessant coms penetrated the black.

When I groaned and tentatively stretched, a sharp pain shot across the back of my head. On instinct, I palmed the spot. Unsurprisingly, my hand came back bloody. I tore a strip off my tunic. Wincing, I tied it around my head.

Blanting bugs! “JayJay here. Jump complete. Meet at the wastelands’ rendezvous point.”

I sat in the puddle I’d crashed into a moment longer, the water seeping into my clothes. At least the cold dimmed the ache. The walk to the rendezvous point would be an exercise in torture. The blanting lunal plant grew like a weed covering everything, and from the moment I stood and limped forward, it tangled around my ankles, snaring me with every step.

The dorat pounced through the wreckage beside me, her four paws like springs. Her tail brushed over my calf in greeting. Thank the goddess Sola, she’d landed unscathed. Sometimes, being tiny paid off. Fiercely independent, I never knew when she’d show herself. The dorat reminded me of Ginger and how she didn’t cower when threatened. Even though my obligation to protect Ginger had ended, I still couldn’t keep her off my mind.

I leaned against the skeletal remains of a high rise to catch my breath. The broken buildings surrounding me were all that remained of the old colony, but I’d seen images where they’d once soared across the skyline. I pulled off a lunal weed where it looped through the toe of my boot. Though the Fires That Cleanse had been deployed to eradicate the entire planet of a plague by incinerating everything organic, the weed thrived. Among the ashes piled around twisted rebar and wire mesh, I smiled at the light blue graneth flower bud swaying in the breeze.

Though my head hammered worse than it did after a night of drinking whiskey with my building crew, the need to protect Tern’s colonizers from this new threat stirred a fire deep in my belly. Each rotation, we lured the beasts away from town with larger bait, but it was becoming more difficult. The mutated worms were anticipating our moves.

Saluda swept in, hovering beside me. “Need a lift, Protector?” The cocky young Drack’s undented hoverbike was a testament to his superior flying skills.

My mind suddenly shifted to the joy on Ginger’s face as she raced around the track under TeyTey’s guidance. Ginger would give Saluda a match he would remember.

“You seem to have lost your hoverbike.” Saluda smirked. His purple scales ruffled when he offered me a hand.

I winced as I landed behind him on the saddle, my leg still not recovered from where I’d ground it to a pulp against the volcano last week. A moment later, the dorat’s soft paws settled in my lap, and I sighed when she let me smooth my hand up to her head, petting her. She blended with my tattered clothes, invisible to anyone but me.

My large hand dwarfed Saluda’s much smaller shoulder, where I squeezed it. “Nice work out there.” Then I opened my com to Hill. “Report back to Sisip at the west entrance and rest up.”

Saluda landed near my upside-down hovee. I stifled a groan as I bent to turn the ignition. The engine stuttered and jerked, spraying Saluda in greasy starbug remains, and I laughed. A piercing pain had me clutching my rib cage.

“You think that’s funny, huh?” Smoke shot from his nostrils as he jumped out of the way. “I think the team needs to know you let little itty bitty bugs crash you. That’s what I think will be funny.” Saluda smeared goopy guts over his jacket, grinning while making the mess worse. “Blant, I didn’t think anything smelled worse than hellsna breath.”

I told Saluda to report to Sisip and waved him off. Favoring my sore leg, I slowly repositioned it over the seat and adjusted the footrest. A few more dings decorated the hovee’s silver housing, but it got me in the air.

If it lightened the mood, Saluda could embarrass me all he wanted, though Makir shouldn’t have to deal with my carelessness. I’d clean out the engine. A wet nose nudged my hand and pulled me from my thoughts, where I hovered above the wasteland’s wreckage.

“We need that bloodroot fungus, little dorat.” I ran my hand over her soft spine, adjusted the bandage on my head and massaged my leg. “Let’s get some food and sleep.”

I was chasing sundown when I parked my battered hovee in the temporary bay and blew the sticky guts out with a blower wand. Makir was a genius when it came to patching up the fleet. They may not have looked any prettier when finished, but they sure moved fast. I had complete confidence that my hovee would be tuned to perfection the next time it went out. As I limped to the lift tube, I hoped to reach my room before a new catastrophe kept me from bed.

The lift tube shot up the side of the volcano to the entrance. Before it opened, the dorat leaped to the ground, preparing to escape to our little private cave, and I braced for the barrage ahead.

“Protector JayJay, great work as usual,” Efred exclaimed as he stepped into the lift, passing me. I smoothed out my limping gait and moved into the lobby. Judging by the effortless way his scales tucked into his body, he was no longer in pain and would soon be out of his sling.

“You’ll be back out there in no time.” I mentally added him back into my team’s rotation.

D’Rasma and D’Argon slapped me on the back, sending jolts of pain through my ribs as I moved through the upper cave lobby. Bathed in orange, light licked over the black volcanic rock like flames.

The brothers’ sharp-toothed Boola grins beamed at me, and D’Rasma’s eyes sparkled when he said, “Have a good sleep, Protector.”

“Protector JayJay, we’ve got them exactly where we want them, right?” another young enforcer called out, darting down the tunnel, likely to relay a message. The thick volcanic rock blocked coms in the lower cavern.

“One hundred percent.” What else could I tell the fresh-faced Boola?

“Give the male a break.” D’irk held out a hot drink for me, then cleared the way to a quiet corner away from the main lobby that had been transformed into a command center. “You look like a heap of mantu dung.”

“Feel like it too.” I didn’t need to pretend with D’irk, but morale needed to be maintained for anyone passing by, so I forced my battered body to stand tall. Hot javae warmed my insides, and I took another long sip. “Where’s Sisip?”

“I sent her to bed,” D’irk replied.

“Good male. She’s no good to us if she burns out.”

D’irk’s expression remained flat, but the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Great, you’ll understand when I keep you grounded tomorrow.”

“That’s not—”

He spoke over me when I went to protest. “Now go clean up and eat. And for the goddess Sola’s sake, go to the infirmary tomorrow. Sisip will brief you at mid-rotation.”

Then, before I could say another word, he pointed toward the long passage that tunneled to the volcano’s humid center.

The kitchen was empty. I sighed, relieved at no longer having to hide my weariness, as I limped to one of a dozen tables Geo had built, piled high with graneth puffs and mantu sandwiches and some sort of tinga dish. My mouth watered at the sight. With a sandwich between my teeth and a second in my pocket, I shuffled to my room without bumping into another soul. The shower I needed would have to wait until tomorrow because my leg grew stiffer with every step.

As I slid the door open, the aroma of the most beautiful tree on Yagras, the linnea, filled my nose. But linnea didn’t grow here.

I must’ve hit my head harder than I thought. The scrape on my scalp had crusted over where I rubbed it.

Not sure whether she would eat it, I set the second sandwich near the door for the dorat. In moments, my ruined clothes landed in a heap. Sighing, I poured a few trumpet flowers of water over my head and body. The liquid absorbed into the soft moss under my feet. Through the warm orange glow of the cave, I trudged, bleary-eyed, to my beckoning blankets.

The dorat paced over the quilted fabric, lit up like a fiber-optic display, bits of sandwich hanging from her whiskers. I smiled, happy to have done something for her for a change. She arched her back as if affronted at having to wait for me.

I dropped to a crouch, my throbbing leg making itself known, when the scent of my favorite flower from home hit me like a laser blaster, weakening my knees. “Ginger?”

The dorat arched her back and bared her teeth before camouflaging. Her wordless message was clear. Who the blant’s in my bed?

Ginger shot up at the sound of my voice. Her silky white hair fanned over her shoulders. Blant, there went my stupid loud voice, startling her again.

“Ugh, I didn’t mean to fall asleep in your bed.” She planted her face in her palms.

A warmth I was beginning to associate with her presence spread through me. But what in Sola’s blazes was she doing in my bed?

“Why are you here?” After a week, her scent had just started to fade from the cave, and now I’d be back to rolling up in Ginger-saturated blankets, waking from impossible dreams.

Horrified, her gaze caught mine as she lifted her head. “You don’t know why I’m here?” Then her eyes lingered on my chest and dropped lower and lower, freezing as her jaw dropped open.

“Nope”—she crawled backward on her elbows until she met the wall—“nuh-uh, no way! This is never going to work.”

Her gaze locked on my stiffening coil, and I cupped it with my hands, reaching for a long tunic. “Shhh…calm down,” I soothed. Was she afraid of my nudity? “I thought I was alone.” My right side throbbed as I pulled it over my head. Everything hurt. Weariness ate at me. I couldn’t think.

As if a light had switched on inside her, Ginger lurched toward me on the bouncy moss. “Why didn’t you say you were injured?” The blanket dropped, exposing pale legs. The curve of her bum under her silky pink underlayer drew me in like the flashing firebird’s tailfeathers called to its mate. She dipped a cloth into one of the trumpet-shaped flowers.

My stomach flipped as I watched her. “I’m fine.”

Her tiny fingers, the nails covered in chipped paint, wrapped around my wrist, sending the elephant charms jingling as she lowered me to the bed. Her brow furrowed, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching out and smoothing the space between her eyes with one finger.

“Quit being a goof.” She swatted my hand away from her forehead, but her lips had turned up when I touched her. She liked it.

I moaned when she guided a warm cloth over the long gouge on my head.

“Lay down.” She dragged the fabric over the length of my thigh, setting every nerve on fire as she pushed the edge of my tunic up. My coil stiffened, lifting the cloth further. No amount of thinking of hellsna and starbug guts would stop my erection now, so I succumbed. Ginger would have to deal with it.

Warm water combined with her soft touch lulled me into an almost drugged state. My eyelids slid shut, and when cool fingers massaged salve over my body, the tension from every sore muscle melted away.

“I didn’t think anything could harm you” was the last thing I heard before I drifted to sleep.

Much too soon, a loud screech jerked me awake. The dorat had one paw planted in the center of Ginger’s chest. Her fur glittered, each of her long hairs strobed with the colors of the rainbow.

“Get it off,” Ginger whisper-shouted, so close that her lips nearly brushed mine. Her hair drifted over my arm in a silken waterfall. My hand had found her belly during the night, and I shifted it to her hip, my soft coil hardening against her side.

A deep rumble stirred in my chest. Even if my body still ached, waking up with Ginger in my arms filled me with contentment. Below that satisfaction, bone-deep desire waited with bated breath.

“She won’t hurt you, Ginger. This dorat has claimed me, and she doesn’t show herself to many. You’re special.” I smoothed my hand down the dorat’s spine, and she strutted from Ginger’s hips to my chest, where she kneaded my pectoral muscles.

“Dorat…is that her name?” Ginger asked, more awed than scared now. Her eyes flicked between my chest and the dorat, as if equally captivated by both.

The dorat tossed its head and narrowed its eyes.

“No, that is her kind. She has no name.”

Color bled back into Ginger’s pale cheeks, flooding them with a pretty pink. “So, she’s your pet?”

The dorat jumped off my chest, snapped her tail in Ginger’s direction and camouflaged into the room’s background.

I laughed. The deep boom filled the small cave. “Dorat aren’t pets. They come and go as they please. This one has been an invaluable guardian this week. She has saved my ass multiple times.”

Ginger groaned and massaged a muscle spasm in her thigh before rubbing her eyes. Dark crescents shadowed them, and her cheeks appeared more hollowed. Her frailness angered me.

“Why aren’t you taking your medication?” She did a terrible job of taking care of herself. “Hasn’t Geo sent you to the medic?” I stood and slipped my last pair of ragged pants back on. Maybe the next runner to Yurstille could stop by the market and purchase a new pair.

Ginger’s glassy eyes lingered on my legs as I drew my pants up, and I couldn’t help but slow down and flex my thighs. I grunted when two hard points appeared beneath her thin shirt.

She tossed her head in the same way as the dorat. “What…? I am taking my meds.”

“Get dressed. You need to eat,” I growled, tearing my eyes away from her enticing mounds, dismissing the heat that built under my skin. The way her eyes roved over my body did things to me.

My gaze flicked toward a pile of bags shoved against the wall and remained fixed there. Those aren’t my things.

“You can’t stay here.” I wouldn’t be able to function with Ginger in my space. I opened her suitcase and threw some clothes in her direction. “It’s too…” Distracting. “It’s not safe.”

Ginger huffed, blowing the black section of hair above her eyes toward the domed roof of the cave. “Look, King Kong”—her eyes sparked—“believe me when I say, if my life didn’t depend on it, there’s no way in hell I’d be here.”

“What the blant do you mean?”

She side-eyed me while she wrapped some type of twisty green tunic around her and removed her tank top from beneath it in a talented flurry of hands weaving in and out of arm holes. Then she sheathed her legs in a sleek, stretchy substance I’d never seen before and slicked bloodroot-fungus red cream across her lips. All this in the time it took me to gulp down one lungful of air.

Dressed, she stormed from my room toward the kitchen. I staggered at the stabbing pain in my leg, but soon my longer stride caught hers, and I took the lead.

“Your life is at risk? From the hellsna?” I asked her mirror-bright lips.

“I can’t believe Geo did this to me.” Her hostile gaze burned a hole in my untied boots before scanning up my body and landing between my eyes. “I thought he worked it out with you.”

“You need protection from Geo?” That didn’t seem right. “I’ll have you know you’re safe with me, even from Geo. My reaction time is renowned on Yagras.” I inhaled, and pain shot through my rib cage, but I kept it off my face. I’ve just been a little off my game lately. The elephants on my wrists chimed as I clamped my arm to my side.

A group of enforcers eating their lunch looked toward us as our argument carried into the kitchen. Makir’s head turned, his blue mane braided neatly to his scalp. Extra lighting, strung through the dangling vines, lit the lush cavern and the tables below.

One moment she was tending my wounds and admiring my body, the next she’d extended her jungle cat claws. What had I said? “So you’re here because you need protection from Geo?”

Ginger and Makir shared looks, his confused, hers irate. She placed three large tinga on her tray and nothing else and marched to the farthest empty table. Makir excused himself from the Nacer across from him and hurried to join her, nodding at me to sit with them. After placing a much more sensible assortment of food on my tray and saying a brisk good morning to everyone who dared make eye contact, I plunked down on the bench across from Ginger.

Makir’s blue tail whipped about. Ginger’s deliberate eye contact with the wall screamed, ‘Do not speak to me.’

“You’re acting like a youngling.” Makir looked from Ginger to the string of lights above, as if he were wishing on a star.

My fists clenched at my sides, and I jumped to Ginger’s defense. “I don’t know how younglings behave on Lorne, Makir, but I assume you are aware of whatever your mate has done to send Ginger here and that you’re responsible for delivering a female to the front line and putting her at risk.”

Ginger sighed and flung her long hair over her shoulder.

Both Makir and I ignored Ginger’s antics.

“Blant, and I thought Geo was stubborn,” Makir mumbled. “Ginger, you need to tell him. He has it all wrong.” Makir’s words coaxed and calmed, his omega sensibilities hard at work, and the soft fluff of his tail brushed down her arm.

I bit into a strip of mantu and placed two on Ginger’s tray, then tapped some hiti mushroom I’d dried and crushed to a powder into her water. She needed protein and fat. “Yes, somebody, please tell me what in the name of Sola is going on.”

“Fine.” Ginger’s hesitant gaze captured mine for half a breath before it darted away. “My disease has progressed to the point that I can no longer return to Earth.”

The tinga I held slipped from my fingers. “What?!”

She took a long drink of hiti dusted water, blinking before a reassuring squeeze from Makir’s tail encouraged her to continue. “Dr. Ten has found a case similar to mine where a Rock Dweller’s bodily fluids increased red blood cell production.”

“Bodily fluids?” I balked.

“Semen,” Makir stated simply, but his eyes urged me to understand.

A chorus of throat-clearing coughs and shuffling trays sounded behind me, yet no one left the eating area. Lucky for me, banishment had stripped me of my pride over an annum ago.

“You need Rock Dweller semen?” My voice wavered, unrecognizable.

Ginger’s shoulders slumped and her claws retracted. I preferred my spitting-mad jungle cat over this defeated female. Whatever she was about to say caused her so much stress. I itched to wrap her in my arms. She clutched the tray in front of her with a white-knuckled grip.

With a cautious finger, I traced over one tight knuckle.

Her swamp-colored eyes lifted. “It has to be done the old-fashioned way so the hormone can penetrate and allow the amino acid in.”

My fingers drummed my pants, and my right leg shook like I was a youngling who needed to relieve his bladder. I thanked Sola for the table, hiding my nerves. What language is she speaking?

Makir, ever the peacemaker, spelled it out for me. “You and Ginger must join intimately with each other. She needs your seed.”

I exhaled, deflating my bruised ribs. Sign me up to fight hellsna any rotation over this. How would my heart survive?