Page 4 of Hunted By Khor (Alien Mate Hunt #1)

The thought dominates everything else—the heat building with the climbing sun, the obsidian sand that's already found new ways into my boots, the ache in muscles that spent the night clenched against fear.

My lips are cracked enough to taste blood when I lick them.

The protein bars from my emergency kit taste like chalk and require precious saliva to choke down.

But it's the tonic working through my system that makes everything worse.

What started as simple thirst has become something more complex—a need that goes beyond water.

My body feels wrong in ways the briefing never mentioned.

Hypersensitive. Every breeze against my skin sends signals I don't want to interpret.

Three hours of walking, following another convenient path through the dunes. This one leads toward the sound of water—not the distant crash of waves, but the smaller sounds of flow over rock. A stream maybe, or a spring.

The smart move would be to approach carefully, scout for threats, verify the source before committing. Instead I stumble forward, driven by a desperation that's both physical and something else. Something the alien scent lingering in yesterday's shelter awakened in me.

The spring sits in a natural depression, surrounded by plants I don't recognize. They have thick, waxy leaves that catch light like metal but bend and sway like living things. As I watch, one snaps shut around a flying insect, trapping it with obvious predatory intent.

Carnivorous vegetation. Perfect.

But the water is clear, bubbling up from underground through volcanic rock worn smooth as glass. It smells clean—no sulfur, no chemical tang. Just water. I can see all the way to the bottom, maybe six feet down. No lurking predators. No obvious traps.

Except for the fact that it exists at all. A perfect oasis exactly where someone dying of thirst would need it. Located at the end of another conveniently worn path.

I'm being herded. Again.

But thirst doesn't care about tactics. I kneel at the edge, careful to avoid the carnivorous plants, and cup water in my shaking hands.

The first sip is everything I hoped—cool, clean, tasting of minerals rather than the sulfur that taints everything else on this planet.

I drink deeply, then splash water over my face and neck.

The relief is immediate. But there's something else, a tingling where the water touches my skin. Not unpleasant, just... different. Like the water itself carries some kind of charge.

“ Thermal vent connected to deep aquifers. ”

I fall backward, scrambling away from the voice that came from the water itself. But there's nowhere to go. The depression's walls are steep, designed to funnel visitors to exactly this spot.

He rises from the spring like something from a fever dream.

Seven feet of crimson-scaled predator, water streaming from muscle that shouldn't exist on any humanoid frame.

The scales aren't uniform—smaller and more flexible across joints, larger and more rigid over vital areas.

His head is elongated, neck longer than human proportions should allow.

When he tilts it to study me, vertebrae I can't see create angles that would snap a human spine.

But it's his eyes that hold me frozen. Yellow-orange, with pupils that dilate as he takes in my scent. Completely alien, yet somehow expressive in ways that translate across species barriers.

“ The coloration is bacteria. Harmless to drink. Good for digestion. ”

He speaks English—no, the translator is working, turning his guttural sounds into words I understand. But hearing him speak anything at all breaks something loose in my chest. Predators don't make conversation. They don't explain local geology while rising naked from hidden pools.

“You speak English.”

“ The translator works both ways, little female. ” He steps fully from the water, and I see all of him now.

The ridge of spines that runs from skull to the base of a tail I hadn't noticed before.

Arms too long, ending in hands with too many joints in the fingers.

And between his legs... anatomy that makes the briefing materials suddenly, horrifically relevant.

Both breeding organs are partially emerged from internal sheaths, responding to my proximity. The larger one shows the ridged structure they warned us about. The smaller one pulses with patterns of light beneath translucent skin.

My body responds without permission. Heat pools low in my belly, and I have to press my thighs together against the sudden wetness that has nothing to do with spring water.

“ They never tell you much, do they? ” He approaches slowly, each step calculated not to appear threatening while remaining absolutely predatory. “ Makes the hunt more interesting when prey doesn't understand the rules. ”

“Prey.” I spit the word, trying to find anger instead of the attraction that makes no logical sense.

“ Currently? Yes. ” He settles into a crouch just out of my reach, as if he knows exactly how far I might lunge with my pathetic knife. “ Eventually? My mate. The one I've been waiting for. ”

“How many females have you hunted?” The question emerges without conscious thought.

“ You're my first. The only one whose scent made my pleasure cock respond. ” He indicates the smaller organ, still pulsing with those hypnotic light patterns. “ Perfect genetic compatibility happens rarely. I knew you were mine from the moment you arrived. ”

The casual certainty in his voice does something to my nervous system that I don't want to examine. Instead, I focus on the practical. “That's impossible. You couldn't know?—”

“ Chemical markers. Pheromone compatibility. Your scent tells me everything I need to know about genetic viability. ” His nostrils flare slightly. “ And right now it tells me you're responding to mine. ”

He's right, and we both know it. The spring water still dripping from his scales carries his scent directly to me. Alien musk that should repel but instead draws something primal from deep in my transformed biology.

“ For now, you run. You learn. You let the tonic complete its work. ” He begins backing toward the water. “ Eventually, you'll understand what your body already knows. ”

“Which is?”

He slips beneath the surface until only his eyes show above the water line. Reptilian. Patient. Absolutely certain of the outcome.

“ That running is just the prelude to being caught. ”

Then he's gone, vanishing into water that's suddenly still as glass. As if he was never there at all.

I sit beside the spring for a long time, trying to process what just happened. A conversation with my hunter. An alien male who claims genetic compatibility like it's established science. My own body's traitorous response to something that should terrify me.

But underneath the fear and confusion, one thought keeps circling back.

He didn't take me. Could have, easily. I'm alone, exhausted, armed with a toy knife and surrounded by walls I can't climb quickly. He could have claimed me in seconds.

Instead, he chose to talk. To let me drink from his water source. To give me information I didn't have.

That feels important, though I'm not sure why.

The water tastes the same when I drink again, but now I'm aware of the mineral content, the trace elements that might be changing me in ways I don't understand. The tonic was just the beginning. Everything on this planet is designed to transform human biology.

Including the spring water. Including my hunter's proximity.

Including whatever's happening to me right now as I sit here, no longer thinking of him as an “it” but as a “him.” As someone with motivations and patience and rules I don't yet understand.

Someone who's giving me exactly enough time to become what he needs me to be.

The realization should horrify me. Instead, it fills me with something that might be anticipation.

I refill my water containers and leave the spring. But as I walk away, I can feel eyes tracking my movement. Somewhere beneath that still surface, he's watching.

Letting me go. For now.