Page 35 of Alien Prince’s Fake Bride (The Tentacle Throne #1)

Umbra stares at the leaf with intense focus.

“I’m trying to be careful.” For a long moment, nothing happens.

Then, the leaf begins to vibrate, shaking so violently it looks like it’s caught in a tiny earthquake.

Finally, it tears itself free from my finger and shoots upwards, spiraling wildly.

It flies past my head, narrowly missing my ear.

“Well,” Umbra says with a wry twist to her mouth, “at least it went up.”

I nod, secretly impressed by her raw Syntrix power. And worried. Will it even be possible to control that? “True. You certainly have lift. We just need to work on the ‘where to’ part.” I pick up another twig. “One more time. A gentle nudge. Across the fire.”

Umbra clenches her jaw in concentration. The twig shudders. It rises about a finger’s width, hovers for a tense moment, then abruptly spins in place like a tiny propeller before falling into the fire.

“It’s harder than it looks!” she exclaims, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “A part of me is scared of using too much power. Maybe I should just stick to throwing things with my actual hands. At least I have some control over those.”

“You have unusual power, Umbra,” I tell her.

“Untamed, yes. You’re not used to it. We just need to find the right reins.

” I pick up the twig again and place it carefully near her hand.

“Try feeling it with your hand first. Understand its weight, its texture. Then try to replicate that feeling with your Syntrix. As if your mind is your hand. Don’t let the Syntrix run off on its own.

Keep control of it, like you do your hand. ”

Umbra looks at the twig, a determined set to her jaw.

This time, the twig trembles less violently.

Slowly, almost hesitantly, it lifts from the ground.

It wavers, but it’s moving sideways. It inches its way across the fire ring, a tiny, hesitant journey.

Finally, it reaches the other side and gently settles onto the cool earth.

A satisfied smile spreads across Umbra’s features. “ I did it!”

“Well done,” I say, genuine warmth spreading through me. This might not be hopeless. “See? You have control now. Let’s try something else…” I look around for a new object.

There’s a little tug at one of my tendrils, and my head snaps around instinctively. There’s nobody there, just the trees. And Umbra.

“Did you just touch me?”

Umbra looks innocently away. “Maybe.”

I adjust my position. “All right, do it again. Maybe it’s easier to practice on something that’s attached to me.”

This time she uses Syntrix to take hold of two of my tendrils, pulling them apart and away from my head. It’s a strange feeling, but not unpleasant.

“This is easier,” Umbra says, concentrating. “I can sense all of you and then just grab a part of you.” She twists the two tendrils together and releases them.

“That’s interesting,” I growl. “I should tell you that it’s considered bad manners to touch someone else like this, with Syntrix or without— hmm. Right.”

She ignores me and pulls two tendrils from either side of my head together on top, then ties them in a simple knot. “Now you look so cute! You were saying?”

I reach up and undo the knot. “I said, it’s not the kind of thing we do— good grief.”

She runs her Syntrix presence down my forehead. It feels the way a child’s finger would, clumsy and searching. “But it’s good practice. And surely those rules don’t apply to your wife. Oh, sorry! Was that your eye?”

I rub the eye she poked. “It was. No, of course a couple in love will often touch each other like this— I see.”

Her Syntrix touches the tip of my nose. “Boop,” she says. “Boop. I can feel the softness through the Syntrix. But not the texture, which is weird.”

“It’s normal skin texture,” I tell her, part annoyed and part happy that she’s got this much control. “Now if we can continue the actual training?—”

Her Syntrix thread goes into my mouth while I speak, pulling at my lower lip. “It should feel warm and wet, but it doesn’t. Does it feel good to you? ” She lets go of my lip.

“‘Good’ is not the word I would use,” I tell her as her Syntrix takes hold of all my tendrils at the same time and twists them together on top of my head.

She concentrates, her pink little tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth. “You can keep them like that when you’re not using them! They’re completely out of the way now. And you look adorable.” She puts a hand to her forehead. “Oh damn. I’m dizzy. What was in those emergency rations?”

She does act like she had a drink too many, but we haven’t actually drunk much since we came to this planet.

I grab the empty pack of rations, but there’s no list of ingredients.

“Probably they added some stimulants to keep any escape survivors energetic and optimistic,” I take a guess.

“And it was meant for large Khavgren legionnaires, not Earth women half our size.”

“ That’s common practice,” Bellatriz says from her sheath.

“ The thinking is that crewmembers who have just had to escape from their spaceship will be mentally shaken and possibly injured. The rations are meant as both nutrition and a pick-me-up. Most Khavgrens wouldn’t notice much, except their mood would stay mostly cheerful.

Umbra isn’t used to our drugs, I suspect. ”

Umbra scoots closer and puts a little hand on my shoulder.

“Okay. But. Hear me out. What if everything we eat has those things in it and we just don’t notice because it’s not much?

But this time they made it more! It’s nice, though.

Thank you for the drugs. There’s more, right?

Oh, you untied the tentacles? Didn’t you like it? Wait, I’ll do it again.”

“We won’t eat more of that right now,” I tell her while she playfully pulls and yanks at my tendrils with her clumsy Syntrix control.

“Tomorrow, we’ll eat much less of it. Wait here, I’ll go and pick some fruits.

Scream if anything happens.” I get to my feet, partly to get away from Umbra’s Syntrix thread before she annoys me for real.

“I’m not a screamer,” Umbra assures me. “I know I screamed a little when that dinosaur wanted to eat me, but you can’t judge me based on that. He had claws!”

“I’m not judging,” I assure her as I walk off to where I saw some fruits earlier. “I hope that won’t last much longer,” I mutter. “In that mood, she might run off or start to sing. Should I go back and tie her up?”

“ She seems happy enough,” Bellatriz says. “ She won’t run away. She’s afraid of the monsters here, and she should be.”

I return with a handful of alien fruits. “They don’t smell too bad. Do you want to try?”

Umbra holds out one hand. “Sure. Let the survival expert check this out. Wouldn’t want you to get poisoned.

” She tries to grab the fruit out of my hand using Syntrix, but she uses too much force.

The fruit shoots out of my hand and makes a graceful arc and lands somewhere in the dark, outside the flickering light from the fire.

Umbra howls with laughter. “The look on your face!”

Immediately there’s an angry growl coming from where it landed.