Chapter 29 #2
She glanced at me, her eyes sharp.
“He would never touch you,” she snapped. “His choice of a mate will be scrutinized heavily.”
“Bitch he already did,” I typed. “He touched me in ways you don’t want to know about.”
I erased the word bitch and then had the device play out the message.
Her eyes widened, and her ears both faced fully forward.
She shifted in her seat, making several rapid fire gestures that weirded me out because I recognized them.
Shock, intense focus, excitement - they radiated in my mind as the chip took my visual input and let me understand what she was deliberately letting me see.
Zale had been so still on the ship.
He had barely moved at all, barely let anything show.
He hadn’t let me see how he was feeling, not to this extent.
Or, at the very least, he hadn’t telegraphed it like she was doing.
“You mated with him?” she asked, holding up one hand to make a circle with her pointer and thumb. She held up her other hand and pushed one extended finger through the circle.
Well, that made it clear exactly what she was asking.
She wanted me to confirm I boned him.
Why was she so excited about that?
“Yes,” I typed. “Why are you so into that?”
“Because it changes everything for my son,” she hissed.
What did my nightly activities have to do with her son?
The car came to a stop, and she stared momentarily out the window, then launched into action, unstrapping herself and practically throwing herself out of the vehicle.
I followed after and stopped dead in my tracks right outside the car as I took in the sight in front of me.
There were two massive corpses on the ground.
I could see wings, teeth, and claws.
Those were dinosaurs. Dead dinosaurs.
Blood pooled around jagged wounds ripped into the corpses' flesh, ragged and torn - as if they had been clawed by a more vicious predator. But what could take on an oversized flying velociraptor?
I dragged my eyes away from the carnage to watch the Boy Toy’s mom talk to Arnina, her entire body communicating urgency. There was another alien standing nearby who I recognized - Yreta. A handful of humans and horned aliens stood around the mangled corpses, studying them in amazement.
The troop carrier was nowhere in sight.
Where had Zale not Zale gone?
I pulled my attention back to my friend.
Arnina herself looked a little shell-shocked.
I jogged over to them just as the cat elf woman grabbed Arnina’s shoulders.
"You will have to claim the mate's right to protection. The hearing will be live streamed, so they won't be able to ignore you. Will you do that?" she sang at Arnina.
"Yes," Arnina said, her words firm.
"I will take you," Yreta added.
"I'm going, too!" I interjected, causing Arnina to turn and see me for the first time.
"How did you get here?" She gasped.
"I hitched a ride with this rich bitch when she freaked out about a sabaxl break out at the zoo," I shrugged. "What the fuck is that anyway? A giant mutated chicken?"
"That looks like a chicken to you?" She gawked.
Oh girl, I was making a joke.
She was clearly in a place where she needed jokes.
"Have you ever seen a chicken?" I asked. "They're tiny raptors."
"You must go now," the Boy Toy’s mom said.
Arnina grabbed her hand.
"What is your name?" she sang.
I blinked at the strangeness of having my translator chip translate another human singing in the alien cat elf language. What was their species called anyway? I really should learn names for things and people and stuff rather than coming up with my own entertaining descriptors.
Or whatever.
Cat elf, Boy Toy, and the rest of the labels were fun, and it wasn’t like anyone else could see into my head.
Thank goodness for that.
I totally needed to stay away from any telepathic aliens.
I focused back on my friend. Neen was getting good at learning the alien's language if she was able to full on sing questions. It made me feel a little guilty. If I had put in the time she had - would I be able to sing simple sentences like that?
I sighed.
Probably not, given that even singing a basic word in English was already so difficult. Being tone-deaf in a society that communicated in song wasn’t ideal. I also wasn’t trying very hard. Or at all.
"Aurroura," the Boy Toy's mom replied, then pushed Arnina towards the car. "Now go."
I trailed after her.
Off to go help the Boy Toy!
"We're staying here!" Tiffany called out.
I glanced over at the small group of humans and horned aliens that had been on the other side of the corpse pile when I arrived...
“Lorelei, you should go with them…” Arnina said. “If something goes wrong, you can just leave.”
That was actually really sweet.
She was giving me an out.
“Fuck that shit, bitch.” I tossed my hair. “You think I’m going to abandon you, like, ever? Let’s go rescue the kind of guy who desperately wants to bang your brains out, but holds back on pressuring you during an unfair power dynamic. Come on. Those kinds of guys you gotta keep around.”
I had pressured Zale while I was on the weaker side of our power dynamic - was that bad?
Gah, I wished I would stop doubting, fearing, and overthinking things. Every time I had a moment, my brain twisted itself up in knots. I needed to stay focused on what was around me to stop it from going on wild rides off into the supernova sunset.
I needed to focus on the present moment.
I took a deep breath.
“I… ok, wow,” Arnina replied.
Now that she knew I had her back, maybe she would remember that time she didn’t have mine.
She really owed me a proper apology.
Then again, I hadn’t told her the full story either.
“Don’t leave this moon without us!” I called out to Tiffany.
“You got it!” Tiffany said. “We will meet you back at the ship!”
"Only if we survive disrupting the ruling power!" Arnina called out.
I settled into the seat, and as I strapped myself in, Zale climbed in next to me.
I fidgeted as the flying car took off.