Chapter 29
I sat in the flying car with the Boy Toy’s mom.
Zale had left me there after growling something privately to the other alien. She didn’t say anything to me; she just stared out the window.
I watched Zale from the window as he headed over to a troop carrier.
I recognized the large group of cat elves I had seen in the physical training level of the skyscraper as they huddled around him.
They all wore matching uniforms that consisted of a white base layered with gold, black, and red accents.
They were ornate.
Zale loaded into the troop carrier, and it lifted up.
Our car took off soon after, following it.
There was nothing to stop my mind from tumbling as I rewound and replayed that moment when he told me he was going to leave me.
I buried my face in my hands.
I can't believe I kept pushing coffee on him.
What a ridiculous way to try to avoid a conversation I didn’t want to have.
I should have let him say goodbye.
I should have at least tried to hear what he was trying to say to me rather than retreating to my defensive technique of changing the topic and pretending that the conversation wasn’t happening.
I just didn’t want to acknowledge that I was going to lose him, that he was going to leave me behind here and go off to wherever he had to be.
I was foolish for thinking a few days together and one incredible night meant that he wanted me forever.
One thought burned in my chest, painful like a wound that had never properly healed.
I was an idiot for thinking I could sleep with a guy that quickly, and he’d still want me, even if he literally just said he did.
He clearly had a lot of power so he likely said that kind of crap to women all the time so he could keep them strung along until he got bored with them.
An alien man with command like him could probably have his pick of sexy cat alien women who could give him little cute litters of cubs or whatever type of babies they had.
I was just a fun, exotic, risk free bang.
Can’t knock up the alien, so why not go for it?
I pushed that thought to the side, refusing to hold on to it.
That thought was toxic and not true. It might be true for some guys, but it wasn’t for all of them, and it was not fair for me to hold on to it, especially for an alien. Maybe these guys mated for life or something. Maybe they didn’t do casual at all.
I didn’t know. I hadn’t talked to him about the details of what he meant.
I had talked about freakin coffee.
What if he wanted to have a long-distance relationship?
What if he wanted to take me with him?
Or what if he wanted to say thanks for the bang, so long forever?
That last one was why I kept trying to get him to talk about coffee, of all things. I didn’t fool him. He had to have known I wanted to avoid the conversation. I wasn’t subtle.
I just didn’t want to hurt anymore.
I just wanted it to work out for once.
I took a shuddering breath as that truth flitted through me.
So now, instead of getting to say goodbye to a man whose absence was already a weight on my heart and making it hard for me to breathe, I was sitting here, not knowing why he was leaving me.
Not knowing why he was leaving me behind.
I’d known him for such a short time. It shouldn’t hurt.
I should be able to let him go easily.
But I didn’t want to.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to keep the tears in as I sucked in another shuddering breath and let them slip out anyway.
These feelings shouldn’t be here. I was tougher than this.
I had thought my heart was a hard rock in my chest, a shriveled ball calloused by blow after blow.
There was no rich soil for it to grow in.
There was just moment after moment, man after man, who showed me that they hated me just because I was a woman.
No one loved me for who I was.
I had met liar after liar, and my heart compressed with every interaction.
Zale couldn’t lie to me when he couldn’t speak to me.
There were no promises, no commitments.
There was only a box full of severed heads.
I shook my own head at that.
What a thing to fall for.
He had shown me that he was vicious, brutal, and an outright murderer. He also showed me he would give me what I needed, whether it was a bag of take-out or a trip to a private shooting range.
Those things weren’t small.
Nothing about him was small.
I shifted in my seat.
I was still sore.
I loved it, and I didn’t want to let go of him.
I rubbed my face in my hands.
He saved my life, and all I could talk about was coffee.
“I’m the worst,” I groaned.
“Your friend will be okay,” the Boy Toy’s mom said, offering a response to whatever she thought was going on in my head.
Apparently, she thought I was worried about Arnina.
I lifted my face from my wet hands to see her looking at me.
“My son could kill an entire pack of sabaxls by himself. He will protect his mate and keep her safe.”
Her tail lashed hard on the word mate, giving me a hint to the weird emphasis she put on it.
Wait, was Arnina in danger?
“What is a sabaxl?” I typed into the translator tablet.
“It’s better if you don’t know that,” she said, then turned to look out the window.
Conversation over, apparently.
Whatever, this catty wench kidnapped us. She opened the door to conversation, and too bad if she wanted to shut it down. No way I was backing down now.
“What does being a mate mean? Is it like a long-term thing or what?” I typed. I didn’t want to ask someone else’s mom about casual hookups, so hopefully, she’d offer that cultural info on her own.
“Mate is a term for the one you will create and raise young with,” she replied, still staring out the window while her tail spasmed.
“My son, the soon to be King of the second largest economy in the Empire, has decided to have half breeds as his heirs! The fool is making his life harder than it needs to be. He doesn’t even know if the Emperor will accept half breeds in line for the throne! ”
What.
The.
Fuck.
“Half breeds?” I typed out slowly, my hand trembling as I found the keys that spelled out the words I needed to understand. “You mean our two species can have children together?”
Oh damn, I had not thought that was a possibility.
Of course, that was a possibility.
These were bipedal elf-like aliens, not squids or some shit like that. We clearly had some sort of genetic similarities, and our pieces clearly fit together in a way that was highly encouraging to keep smashing them together more.
The biology lined up, so why wouldn’t the result of it?
“Yes,” she replied succinctly. “The osae have spoken, apparently. Your species is a highly compatible match. It isn’t guaranteed, of course. We will know for certain when they complete their mating and conception is confirmed.”
All of a sudden the weight on my chest lightened.
Now his behavior the other night made sense.
The stuff that Arnina had said made sense.
These aliens were trying to make sure we were all in agreement on what came after banging.
Zale had tried to cool things off last night. I plowed through his minor resistance like a wildfire through tinder, igniting him so that his minor hesitation turned into full commitment to the act of blowing my freaking mind.
Was the act of mating something serious with his species?
What if he tried to slow us down for that reason?
What if that was what he wanted to talk about?
What if he was worried about pregnancy?
If he was, he didn’t stay worried about it for very long.
He was totally gung ho to go for gold.
He didn’t even try to pull out.
My mind flashed back to how his osae wrapped around us, keeping us locked together.
Maybe he couldn’t.
For a moment, my heart was filled with a sudden, golden joy.
A cute little baby with tiny pointed ears and a little tail, and a mate who would slaughter anyone who looked at us twice.
He could take care of me, take care of us.
I would have the family that I always wanted, that I tried to make out of friends to fill the gaps in my heart left by my own flesh and blood.
I would give my child everything that had been withheld from me.
My child would be wanted and loved and cherished.
But he had just told me he was ditching me.
That he was leaving me.
That sunwarm feeling of wanting something so special faded.
If he knocked me up, I’d be a single mom stuck on an alien planet.
A smile drifted across my face, my tears nothing more than dried salt on my cheeks.
I’d be a single mom with a BFF who was hooking up with a King.
No matter my issues with Arnina, I knew at least that she never took offense at anything I said.
She liked me for me. As long as I didn’t piss off her Boy Toy, we would be fine.
It wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t alone.
I was going to be okay.
I really wished I had heard him out.
Maybe he had a plan for every possibility, even this one, and wanted to talk it out with me. But I couldn’t talk to him right now, he wasn’t here.
However, I could now have conversations with these aliens.
I didn’t have to get the information I needed from Zale directly and risk my budding heart shattering into a million pieces where he could watch it break.
Even better, if I had some info that he didn’t know I knew, it would let me test him later to make sure he wasn’t a liar like all of the human men.
“Do you know if Zale has a mate?” I typed it out.
“Who?” she replied.
“The black-haired one that put me in the car,” I typed. “He talked to you right before we took off.”
“Zale,” she scoffed. “Of course he would use a commoner name.”
“Does he have a mate?” I pressed.
“Zale hasn’t even looked at a woman since his first mate died.” She tapped her claws on her crossed forearms. “He has rejected even trying to see if any match will work.”
I hesitated at that. He had been married before?
“So he doesn’t have anyone he is interested in?” I typed.