Chapter 7
Juni stood outside the door to the main room, hand wrapped around the handle. She’d hardly slept. Every time she’d closed her eyes, she was back at those hot springs. Watching him rise from the water. Heat crawled up her neck.
Get it together. Just walk in there like a normal person who definitely didn’t spend half the night fantasizing about their alien host.
The handle turned under her grip before she could lose her nerve. The door swung open, and there he was.
Goraath stood at the counter with his back to her, broad shoulders shifting as he poured kasta.
Morning light streamed through the window, catching the silver threads in his dark hair.
His shirt sleeves were rolled up, revealing forearms corded with muscle.
Heat hit her cheeks as she remembered how those arms had felt wrapped around her yesterday.
The kasta smelled bitter and perfect, cutting through the lingering scent of bacon or whatever he’d cooked earlier. Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten since yesterday.
“Morning.” The word was raspy with sleep, or lack of it, scraping past a throat that felt like it was lined with swallowed gravel.
He turned, and his amber eyes found hers.
“You’re up early.” His tone was neutral, but something flickered in his eyes. Knowledge maybe. Or amusement…
“Ranch schedule.” She forced herself to move, crossing to the cabinet where the mugs lived. Her legs felt unsteady, like she’d run ten miles instead of just walking down a hallway. “Early bird gets the... whatever passes for worms out here.”
She reached for a mug, grateful her hands didn’t shake. The kasta pot sat between them, steam curling up from its spout in lazy spirals. She had to move closer to him to reach it. Had to step into that sphere of warmth that radiated from his body.
God. He smelled so good. Don’t moan… she ordered herself firmly. Don’t you dare fucking moan.
Her hand shook when she lifted the pot. Just a small tremor, but he tracked it. Of course he did. The man, alien, whatever, missed nothing. She had to concentrate on not splashing herself with jot kasta.
“Sleep well?” He asked casually, reaching past her for his own mug. The movement brought him close enough that she felt the heat of him along her side. Close enough that if she turned even slightly, they’d be pressed together.
Heat flooding from her chest up to her hairline in a wave that was had to be visible from space. Her grip tightened on the mug until her knuckles went white.
“Yeah… Fine.”
She fumbled with the sugar. Added too much. The silence stretched until it was thick and suffocating.
“You look flushed.” He tilted his head and his nostrils flared again. “Your scent is...”
He paused, a different light in his eyes than she’d seen before.
“Different,” he finished. “More intense.”
The mug slipped in her grip. Kasta sloshed, and she set it down before she burned herself.
“I’m… not feeling the best. I probably need some air,” she mumbled, already backing toward the door.
“Juniper.”
She stopped at the threshold, frozen. She couldn’t look back.
“I thought I’d help with morning chores,” she said to the door frame. “Earn my keep. I saw those feed supplies that need moving, and—”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to.” She cut him off, hand already on the door handle. “Fresh air. Physical activity. Good for... everything.”
Silence. She felt his gaze on her back but then the door closed behind her with a soft click and she was free.
The cold air was sharp in her lungs as she stepped away from the house.
Sharp enough to steal her breath. Standing on the porch for a moment, she gulped down air that tasted of frost and just…
alienness. This place didn’t smell like Earth, not one bit.
It was fresher, no pollution in the air.
She could see why the Lathar had put a colony here.
She grabbed work gloves from the pile by the door in the barn, the leather worn soft from use. Goraath’s gloves. They were way too big for her but she pulled them on anyway.
The ranch spread out before her in the growing light. The krulaati were visible in the distance, massive shapes moving slowly through the purple grass that grew in the lower pastures. Pausing for a moment, she nibbled at her lower lip for a moment.
She’d said she’d help with the chores, but she had no idea what they actually were.
Her gaze fell on a dark shape at this end of the pasture.
Okay… animals needed water, so she could check the water troughs.
And she’d seen Goraath feeding them. Okay, water and food for hairy beasties.
She could do that. It was simple work, physical work, and exactly what she needed to burn off this restless energy that made her skin feel electric.
The feed bags were stacked in the storage shed fifty yards from the main house. She’d seen Goraath haul them like they weighed nothing. The first one she grabbed almost took her to her knees. Oh shit, that was heavy.
She hefted it onto her shoulder, with a grunt and set off. The walk to the edge of the field where the feeders were seemed a marathon, but she managed it, emptying one sack into each feeder.
By the third trip, sweat rolled down her spine despite the cold, her shoulders burned, and her legs had started to shake. But it was good. Clean pain that had nothing to do with desire or embarrassment or the way her body went liquid every time she thought about Goraath’s eyes.
By the fifth trip, her shirt was soaked through.
She stripped off her outer jacket, letting the cold air hit her damp skin.
It should have cooled her down. Should have helped.
But all she could think about was how Goraath would smell the sweat on her.
Would human sweat gross him out? He didn’t seem to like much about her, so it probably would.
She was so focused that she’d crossed the low fence without thinking, was maybe fifty yards into the field heading for the last feeder when the ground started to vibrate under her feet. It was subtle at first, just a tremor, but then it grew stronger. Rhythmic. Like thunder in the distance.
She looked up from the bag she’d been dragging, and her blood turned to ice.
Something had spooked the krulaati and now the herd of a hundred, each massive body the size of a small flyer, was charging.
Toward her.
Stood in the middle of an open field with nowhere to go.
Dust rose, a cloud that obscured the morning light and turned the world into a haze. She dropped the feed bag, spinning to gauge the distance to the fence line. The fence was a hundred yards, maybe more away.
Shit. She’d never make it.
She ran anyway. The instant was desperate, and primal. But her boots skittered on a patch of loose gravel. She went down hard, knees and palms scraping against stone.
The impact knocked the wind out of her, and for a precious second, she couldn’t move… couldn’t breathe. Could only lie there as the thunder got louder, closer.
She pushed up. Her hands slipped, wouldn’t hold her weight. Blood made the gravel slick under her palms. When she looked up, the lead krulaati was close enough that she could see its eyes, wide and white-rimmed with panic as it foamed at the mouth… massive muscles bunching under its hide.
Time didn’t slow. That was something that only happened in holo-movies. In fact, time did the opposite. It shattered and sped up, into fragments of sound and images that her brain couldn’t process quickly enough.
There was dust in her eyes, in her mouth, coating her throat like paste. The ground shook so hard her vision blurred, turned the approaching wall of flesh and hooves into something out of a nightmare.
She couldn’t move.
The lead krulaati was almost on her. Close enough that she could see individual hairs on its legs, and the mud caked between its hooves. Hooves that were the size of dinner plates and would crush her skull like paper… would turn her ribs to powder, and her spine to fragments.
She was going to die alone on an alien ranch a thousand light-years from home.
The lead krulaati reared up, hooves slashing through the air above her. A scream tore from her throat and she squeezed her eyes shut.
Hopefully it would be quick…
The crash came through the kitchen window like thunder.
Goraath’s hand froze on the pot handle, morning porridge bubbling forgotten on the stove. That wasn’t just the krulaati moving. That was—
Juni’s scream cut through the morning air.
He was already moving before his brain caught up, the pot clattering across the stove as he slammed through the back door. The screen banged against the wall hard enough to crack the frame. He didn’t care.
The sight that met him turned his blood to ice.
She was down. In the dirt, maybe thirty yards from the fence in the krulaati pen. And the herd was coming straight for her.
Everything else disappeared. The house behind him, the fields stretching golden in the morning sun, the dust already rising like smoke. All he could see was her small form trying to scramble backward. Trying to get up. Failing.
And thirty tons of panicked muscle bearing down on her.
The distance between them might as well have been miles. Time stretched and compressed at the same time… he saw every detail with crystal clarity. The lead bull’s eyes rolling white with panic. Juni’s face, pale under the dirt, eyes wide. The way her movements were jerky, desperate.
She was going to die right in front of him.
No.
His body remembered things his mind had tried to forget.
The sprint that ate distance like it was nothing.
The way muscles could move when death was on the line, when failure meant losing everything.
His legs pumped, driving him forward faster than he’d moved in years.
The peaceful farmer he’d tried to become fell away like old paint, revealing what had always been underneath.