Page 13 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

CHAPTER TEN

Liv

H er name is Penny, the dead girl. I vaguely remember having a conversation with her back on the ship before everything went to hell. I think she said she was excited about starting her new life on Alpha Colony. I think I thought she was a na?ve idiot.

God, I feel shitty about that now.

Khadija lets me know what happened - how they were all sitting around talking when the cat creatures came from nowhere.

They pounced on the group so fast they barely had time to scramble to their feet.

Everyone panicked. Ran in different directions.

Even Khadija did at first. It was just bad luck, she says, that Penny was the one the cats followed. That she was the one they picked off.

My gorge rises. I want to be sick. I want to cry. But I can’t do either of those things. Instead, I go over to Lorna, who is being tended to by one of the aliens, Grace hovering next to her, a worried look on her face.

“Is he hurting you?” I ask, watching as he wraps bands of leather around two sticks, Lorna’s arm sandwiched between them. He binds her arm tight, I suspect so it won’t be able to move when he’s done.

“No,” Lorna says. “Not now. He gave me this drink. It’s made the pain ease off. I feel a lot better.”

She holds up a canteen with her spare hand. She looks a little flushed still, but she’s no longer sweating, the sickliness she’s been clouded by for days not as thick. I look to Grace. She shrugs.

“She would have died if we didn’t do something, and it was beyond my training,” she says, a hint of panic in her voice. “We have to trust he knows what he’s doing.”

There’s something about the calm way that he works, his tail flicking gently from side to side behind him as his hands repeat the wrapping motion, that makes me think he does.

He glances up at me, eyes full of warmth, and gives me something like a smile.

It’s not the hot, possessive grin that my guy gives me - more brotherly. Kind.

My guy. Fuck.

I look over in the direction of the escape pod where he’s talking with one of his other friends.

They seem very interested in the pod, ducking inside it.

It’s difficult for them - both of them so tall they have to stoop low.

I wonder what they’re talking about - whether they’re looking for our supplies, for things to take.

They’ll be disappointed. We have nothing.

He promised he would come for me, that he would save me. I thought it was a fantasy, a creation of my mind. But he’s real.

What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?

“What happened to Ellie?” Khadija asks, approaching me again.

I jump at her words, blushing as I turn to her.

I feel ridiculous. And ridiculously on edge.

It’s like my whole body is tuned in to his.

My guy. I don’t even know his name. Is he going to expect me to continue where we left off in our dreams?

Because I definitely only let that happen because I didn’t think it was real.

He’s every bit as huge and attractive in real life, but it’s different.

In the dream, I was in charge. At least, I thought I was.

Out here… He could demand anything of me. Take anything from me.

A little part of me doesn’t even mind the idea. That’s what terrifies me the most.

“Liv?” Khadija says.

I jump again, startled back into the present and my friend’s raised eyebrows.

“Are you okay?” Khadija asks.

“Ellie ran off into the trees,” I say. “One of the… aliens went after her. I tried to go after her, but the other alien guy made me come back.”

“Made you?” Khadija says. She grips my arm, lowers her voice. “He hurt you?”

“No.” I shake my head, though I’m pretty sure my confusion, my inner tumult comes out in my tone, which probably makes my ‘no’ very unconvincing. “I think he was concerned about attracting more predators,” I continue. “He kept asking me to be quiet.”

“Asking? He can speak English?”

I shake my head. “By asking, I mean he put his hand over my mouth. But gently. He didn’t hurt me.”

I’d tried my best to hurt him, to scratch and claw my way out of his arms. Because being pressed up against him just brought me back to all those moments in my dreams, my arms bound, his body over mine.

I’d felt him responding to me, the thick bar of his cock at my back, and damn it, I’d wanted to grind back against it, to let his hands wander all over me.

I am wrong in the head. The crash landing of the escape pod has knocked all the sense out of me.

“Do you think we’re safe with these guys?” Khadija asks, a note of worry in her voice. “They’re a lot bigger than we are. They fought off those creatures without any trouble. I don’t think…”

“I don’t think they mean us any harm,” I say, cutting across her.

I’m not sure why I’m so convinced of this.

Maybe it’s the way the grouchy looking one watches the trees as if daring them to move, as if he’d take on whatever poured out from between them to protect us.

Perhaps it’s the way the younger one is tending to Lorna’s injury with such sure hands, calm and professional, despite not even being the same species.

“They’ve not done anything to hurt any of us,” I say.

“Yet,” Khadija says, her eyes flicking to the sky.

I know what she’s thinking. Night is about to arrive, the sky darkening as the sun dips below the horizon.

One of the two aliens who look very alike - brothers perhaps - is working with my guy to put up some sort of tent, while the other brother skins the cat carcasses and spits them.

The grumpy one speaks briefly to my guy, then takes off in to the trees.

The young one has finished tending to Lorna and stands watch at the edge of our little group.

They’ve done nothing but be helpful so far, but will there be an expectation of payment? I know they don’t find us repulsive to look at. Quite apart from the iron rod of my guy’s cock pressed against my back earlier, the others look at our little group with a sort of hungry longing.

I wonder if any of the other girls dreamed of these guys. Somehow, I don’t think so. None of the remaining aliens seem drawn to any one of the women in particular. None except my guy, who only has eyes for me.

And the one who chased after Ellie. He’d blitzed past me into the trees without a second glance. He hadn’t been chasing after us. He’d been chasing after her.

She’d mentioned bad dreams. She’d said she’d not wanted to go to sleep. I assumed nightmares, but what if it wasn’t a nightmare exactly? Just something so strange she couldn’t explain it. Couldn’t deal with it. And now the subject of those dreams is chasing her through the trees.

God, I hope she’s okay. Hope she doesn’t do anything drastic. She hadn’t exactly been rational when she’d run away towards the forest. Panicked. Not by the sight of the aliens in general, but by the sight of one in particular. It made perfect sense.

And I’d missed my chance to let her know it wasn’t just her, that it was me, too. Maybe she wouldn’t have been so afraid if she knew she wasn’t alone in it. But I’d just dismissed it as not real, as some weird little side effect of all the trauma.

I look round at the other girls. Like Khadija, they glance anxiously at the setting sun.

The night brings terrors for a few of them.

Dreams of crashing, dying. They’re anxious always, but tonight it will be heightened.

And I’m the only one who can do anything about it.

I never asked to be a leader, but right now, I know that’s what I’ve got to be.

“Khadija, this is going to sound really weird, but I need you to trust me and do as I say.”

“Okay?” Khadija says

“I need to talk to the alien leader guy.”

“That’s great, Liv, but in case you hadn’t noticed, they don’t speak our language.”

I resist rolling my eyes. “I said it would sound weird. Do you trust me?”

Khadija looks like she doesn’t want to, but eventually she says, “Yes.”

“I can talk to him. But I need to be asleep to do it.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “We’re like linked.

Psychically or something. I don’t understand it, but I can speak to him in dreams and he understands me just fine.

If I can go to sleep, with him-” I cringe, realising how that sounds “-at the same time as him, I can have a conversation with him. Figure out what they want.”

“You’re psychically linked to an alien, and you didn’t think to mention this before now?” Khadija’s eyes blaze.

“Well, I didn’t think it was real,” I say, shrugging. “You think if I’d known he was real and coming to find us that I wouldn’t have given you the heads up?”

Khadija studies me, but I see the moment she relents, softening slightly. “Okay, so you can talk to him. Find out whether they intend to murder and eat us? Or worse.”

“I don’t think they’re going to murder us,” I say.

I don’t think they’re going to rape us either.

If that was on the agenda, I’m sure they’d have got straight to it.

Besides, my guy has delighted in pleasuring me over and over without taking anything for himself.

Nothing about him has given me bad vibes.

But I can’t exactly say that to Khadija.

I don’t think the ‘I didn’t think it was real’ excuse will fly when it comes to why I let him lick my pussy.

Khadija sighs. “What do you need me to do?”

“I need you to keep the situation calm and in control while I go and have a little cat nap for half an hour,” I say. “Think you can do that?”

“I’ve got your back, Liv, and I’ll do what I can, but you might be asking the impossible there,” Khadija says, but she picks up her spear and gestures for me to lead the way.