Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Lila
“You crazy bitch,” Tirrian growls as he’s helped off the shuttle by Cerise. He looks pale and sickly after our wonky descent into the Fluxx shuttle station.
I just smirk and give him a little finger wave before turning it around and giving him the one finger salute.
If he’s going to continue to be an asshole to me, then why should I play nice?
He growls, and smoke blows from his nose, but he holds his glamour.
I fully expected him to dragon out on me, so I’ve got to respect his control.
Caspian insisted I wait until the shuttle emptied. People who are picking up passengers will be in half or shifted form, and he wants me to stay as safe as possible. Eventually, when he gives me the all clear, I give Bubby a kiss on the cheek and thank him.
“I’ll be here for your return trip. Caspian will let me know when you want to return,” he tells me.
“But don’t you have people on Skarr waiting for you to return?” I ask, and he shakes his head, his eyes taking on a sad glint.
“No. I lost my family in an accident when I was in my final year of college. Your father and mother were all the family I had until I lost them too. I have nothing but an empty, dusty house to go home to, so staying in a hotel in Fluxx and enjoying some of the local hospitality is no hardship.”
Poor Bubby. Being Skarrian blows, and not being able to form meaningful sexually fulfilled relationships with people unless you want to bond with them sucks.
“You have no one you want to bond with?” I ask, and he shakes his head as his eyes glisten with tears.
“No. I wanted to court your mother and was going to ask her the next time we returned to Earth. Your dad was all for it and had encouraged me to start earlier, but I made a commitment to your grandpas and had a contract for a few years. I’m sure they would have let me out, but I wanted to save enough money so I could contribute to our family.
By the time we returned, though, they were gone.
My heart broke, and I haven’t been able to look again. Maybe it’s time though.”
“Over twenty years is a long time to be alone,” I tell him gently. “I’m sure my parents wouldn’t have wanted you to be alone for so long.”
“I haven’t been alone, but you get sick of one or two night stands fairly quickly,” he replies ruefully. “Cas, you know how to get a hold of me. Have fun.” He quickly waves and departs the shuttle, leaving Cas and me alone. I hear him speak to someone outside.
“Who is that?” I ask, and Cas beams.
“My parents are here to pick us up. It’s about an hour drive to our place. Come on.” He tugs on my hand excitedly, so I hurry to keep up with him.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, and I guess I was a little stupid, but the two people waiting for us look to be the same age as my grandpas—how someone looks isn’t a good judge of age in space.
Both of them are wearing their human forms. The woman is short and curvy with purple hair and the same blue eyes as Cas, and she’s grinning widely. The man is almost the spitting image of Cas, with blue hair and a cheeky grin, but he has a finer build than my hulking gorgeous octoman.
“Mom! Dad!” he calls, and the short woman bounces up and down on the spot in excitement.
“Cassie, come and give your mama a hug.” She holds her arms out wide and is practically lost in her son’s embrace. “Oh, I’ve missed you so much.” She sobs and squeezes him tight until he grunts.
“Mira, be gentle with our son. You don’t want to pop him.” The man rubs his mate’s back, cautioning her. She releases Cas, and his father just as quickly takes her place. They exchange manly hugs and back slaps.
Once they part, Cas turns and holds out his hand, gesturing me forward.
“Mom, Dad, I want you to meet my mate, Lila. Lila, this is Mira and Murphy, my parents.” I don’t even get a chance to say hello before I’m also being enveloped in hugs.
The two of them hug me together in a three-way hug that sends my senses into overdrive.
They smell like Caspian, coconuts and ocean breezes, and their hugs are warm and inviting.
I melt into the two of them, and a huge wave of relief causes me to sag.
I didn’t know what to expect, since I haven’t had much luck with a lot of the people on the ship, but knowing that they are friendly and excited for Cas is a huge relief.
They both pull back, and Cas’s mom looks me up and down. “Goddess, you are beautiful. I can see why Cassie’s kraken mated you. Mine probably would have done the same thing.” She winks, and Murphy chuckles.
Caspian groans and pulls me away from his mother. “Mom, stop flirting with my mate. She has a kraken too, and she’s a horny, kinky beast, so she may just take you up on the offer.”
I can feel my kraken inside. She thinks Cas’s mom is pretty, but she isn’t inclined that way. She doesn’t have the time for someone if they don’t have a cock.
“Nope, my kraken and I are in agreement. We are sausage lovers and will not be swayed by a pretty taco, but I am flattered,” I interject, adding to the weirdest conversation I’ve had to date, and that’s saying something. I never thought I’d be turning down an offer from one of my mates’ parents.
Mira waves a hand. “Oh, no worries. Ignore me, it’s almost breeding season and my kraken is horny as fuck.”
“Breeding season?” I ask, looking between my mate and his parents. Caspian winces, and Murphy frowns.
“Have you not explained how being a shifter works?”
“Not really. A lot has happened since we’ve been mated, and I haven’t really gotten around to explaining everything.”
“Come on, let’s get to our vehicle and get comfortable, and then I’ll explain on the way home.
” Mira grabs my hand as Murphy and Caspian pick up our luggage.
They drag me through a now deserted shuttle port and outside to a vehicle that’s parked next to a curb.
So far, Fluxx is very Earth-like, but the buildings look a little more futuristic, as does the vehicle.
This one looks like a minivan crossed with a Lamborghini—big but with long, sleek lines.
It doesn’t have tires, so I guess it must work on some kind of hover technology.
Cas and Murphy load our luggage into the trunk as Mira and I shuffle into the back. There are three rows of seating back here, but I guess when you have as many kids as they do, then you need the space. Cas and his dad get into the front, and then we are off.
“All shifters have breeding seasons. It’s when unmated males and females vie for mates and mated couples.
They tend to seclude themselves away for a while if they plan on having kids.
It usually lasts a couple of weeks, and it’s a frenzy of sex.
For krakens, it’s about domination and strength.
Murphy will have to convince my kraken he is worthy of her, and only then will she allow him to implant her with his eggs. ”
“How often does this happen?” I stammer, wondering if I’m about to be permanently pregnant for the rest of my life. I don’t know how I feel about that.
“Oh, every six months.” Mira must see me pale, because she pats my hand.
“Oh no, dear, you don’t have to let them implant their eggs either.
Look at us. Cassie’s clutch was the last time I let Murphy implant his eggs.
Since then, he just expels them into the current.
It’s not a big deal, and they understand that we can’t be constantly pregnant.
It just makes them try harder next time. ” She winks, and Cas groans.
“Mom,” he whines like a teenager. “I do not need a visual of your sex life.”
“Pfft, everyone does it, son. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, and your mother is rather good at it, if I must say so myself.”
Mira preens, and Murphy winks at her in the mirror as the smell of ocean breeze and coconut floods the vehicle.
“Oh my god, is that what I do too?” I ask Cas in horror, and he turns to look at me.
“Yes, whenever you’re horny, and it’s often. You smell like rain after a long, hot dry spell and freshly baked bread.”
Huh! Now that is a weird combination.
I must have said it out loud, because Cas shakes his head. “Nope, it makes my mouth water, and it hasn’t escaped my notice that other shifters are affected by it too.”
My mind goes to Silac and the way his nostrils always flare around me. I thought it was a snake thing, but maybe it’s a Lila thing. “Do I smell like that to everyone?”
“No. Different races will scent you differently,” Mira explains, and I wonder what I smell like to my other mates. I must remember to ask.
“Is the mating dome ready?” Cas asks his father as I watch Fluxx pass through the window, but I soon lose interest in favor of the question.
“Mating dome?” I lean forward between the two chairs and raise an eyebrow at my mate.
“Damn it, Cassie. Why doesn’t she know any of this?” Mira scolds her son, and Cas shrugs sheepishly.
“It all happened rather fast. Neither of us were planning on the babies coming so quickly, but Lila’s body has undergone so many changes in a short period of time, the Celestians are insisting that we hurry the pregnancy along, for both her sake and the babies’.”
“More grandbabies! I can’t wait.” Mira claps her hands enthusiastically. “I’m just sad they won’t be born in our home waters.”
I feel a pang of guilt, but before I can say anything, Murphy does.
“Now stop it, Mira. You’ve been lucky enough to be there for the birth of quite a few of them, so missing out on it this time is not an issue.”
“But Cassie is my favorite child.” It’s her turn to whine like a teenager, and Cas and Murphy snort in unison.
“Only because I’m here right now. If it were Malik or one of the others, you would say the same thing,” Cas teases his mother, and she shrugs her shoulders unapologetically.
“The breeding dome is where all of our children have brought their mates to either activate their pregnancy or spend their breeding time together. It is an underwater dwelling. Only two of our children—three now that Cas has you—have kraken mates. The others are different shifters or even different species. Because all my children are krakens, they get the urge to mate underwater, but not all of their mates can survive that, so the dome helps facilitate the need to be underwater while giving them a safe, secure, and comfortable place to mate and breed,” Murphy explains.
“But I can shift, so we can swim, right?”
Cas’s cheeks turn pink with his blush. “Yes, you can, but I like the idea of recreating our first time when you couldn’t shift,” he says quietly, and there is no way the other two didn’t hear it, but they have enough grace to pretend not to, even if Mira’s smile tells us all we need to know.
My mate is so sweet. I can’t say I don’t want the same thing, since it was hot as fuck. “That sounds wonderful.” I put my hand on his shoulder and give it a squeeze. He reaches up, and we spend the rest of the trip holding hands.
“We’ll have a lovely dinner together and get to know one another a little better, and then the two of you can escape into the ocean,” Mira tells me as the vehicle slows to a stop in front of a large, split-level building.
It’s similar to houses on Earth, but the building materials look metallic, so it shimmers in the daylight.
During the drive, Murphy told me that like Skarr, Fluxx has two moons that influence the color of the ocean.
Their moons put off a green light, of all things, so the ocean looks green when you’re viewing it, but like Earth’s, the water is clear when you swim in it.
Fluxx and Skarr also share the same sun, so the days and nights mirror each other, just opposite.
When it’s night in Fluxx, it’s day in Skarr, and vice versa.
“That sounds great. Thanks, Mom.” Cas opens my door and helps me out of the car, and I get a good look around their front yard.
There isn’t much of a garden, just a lot of scrub and succulent plants, as well as fine gravel covering the ground.
It’s much like coastal areas all over Earth, where the harsh environment of the ocean makes growing things more difficult.
I feel a bead of sweat develop under the collar of my shirt.
It’s hot out here, and the fresh sea air is a balm against my skin after the controlled environment of the ship in space.
I lift my face up to the sun and just absorb it for a moment before taking in a deep breath and slowly releasing it. God, I missed this.
Cas presses a kiss against my temple. “Come on, let’s go inside, and I’ll show you the views on the other side.”
The house looks like it’s built into a slope, and sure enough, when we get inside, there is a living area and a corridor. “Those are all of our bedrooms on the bottom level. Dad will have put our stuff in my room. The main living areas are up here.”
He leads me up a large set of stairs, and my mouth drops open in awe as we get to the top. The top part of the house is sitting on a cliff, and as Cas and I move through an area, I don’t pay any attention to it because the view out of the glass back wall of the house is incredible.
Stretched out below us is the ocean. Cas steps up to the glass wall, and just when I expect him to hit something solid, he steps right through it.
Tugging my hand, he makes me go with him, and I cringe as I step through it, but it dissolves on contact.
There is a large deck out here with patio furniture dotted around it.
We move across it until we get to the railing, and I look down.
The deck hangs out farther than the cliff in a feat of engineering ingenuity, and there is a direct drop into the green water below.
It’s crystal clear and calm today, and I can see large shadows swimming below.
“Whoa. This is incredible, but please tell me I don’t need to jump off the balcony to get to the water.” I shudder with the thought, and Caspian chuckles.
“No, there is an inner elevator that goes down to that rocky outcrop there.” He points out a gap in the cliff face below us, and I sigh with relief. “Mom used it when she was pregnant too.”
“Lila, Cassie, dinner is ready,” Mira calls from inside. A pang of disappointment rolls through me, and I look longingly at the water as my kraken pushes her consciousness forward.
Mate now, she demands, and I feel my eyes flick back and forth.
“Hang in there, love. You need a good meal for your strength before we get started. Spend this time with my family, and I promise I will make it up to you,” Cas coos to my kraken who settles back down, satisfied with his response.
She’s eager to get started on the mating ritual despite my own nerves.