Some Assembly Required #2
The landing was smooth, or as smooth as anything could be when you were strapped into a seat built for someone three feet taller than you, your feet dangling in the air, watching an alien world rush up to meet you through a viewport the size of a small car.
Keth had rigged a harness for me that mostly worked, padding the gaps with folded blankets so I didn't rattle around too much.
When we touched down, he unstrapped me himself. His hands were gentle, careful with the buckles, and I let him, because my own hands were shaking too hard to manage.
"Stay close to me," he said.
"I wasn't planning to wander off."
"No." His eyes met mine, and there was an edge in them I hadn't seen before. "I mean stay close. Within arm's reach. Do not let anyone come between us."
"Why?"
His jaw tightened. "Because your scent is very strong now. And there will be others."
Right. The other alphas. The ones who would fight over me if I wasn't claimed.
I swallowed hard and nodded.
The ramp lowered, and we stepped out into a new world.
The first thing that hit me was the smell.
Rich and complex and completely alien: green growing things, damp earth, something sharp and mineral underneath. And layered over everything, the scent of them. The Khorreth. Dozens of them, maybe hundreds, their individual scents blending into a wall of musk and warmth that made my head spin.
The second thing that hit me was the scale.
Everything was enormous.
The landing port was a vast open space, easily the size of three football pitches laid end to end.
The buildings rising around it were massive, their doorways built for beings half again my height, their windows set well above where a human's head would reach.
The Khorreth moving through the space were–
I stopped walking. Keth's hand settled on my back, warm and steady, and I leaned into it without thinking.
They were huge. All of them. Eight feet, nine feet, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, their horns catching the light.
They moved through the port with the easy confidence of beings who had never once had to worry about being small, and every one of them turned to look at me as we passed.
Somewhere in the crowd I caught the word Keth had taught me, passed from mouth to mouth in that low rumbling tongue. Peritan. Peritan.
I came up to the middle of Keth's chest. Some of the young ones in the crowd – half-grown, gangly, still shy of their full height – already stood taller than me, staring with unabashed curiosity. I was a novelty. A spectacle.
A target.
"Keep walking," Keth murmured. His hand pressed more firmly against my back, urging me forward. "Don't meet their eyes."
I kept my gaze fixed on the ground ahead of me and walked.
The checkpoint was a bottleneck in the port's main thoroughfare, a narrow passage flanked by what I assumed were officials, their horns banded with metal that might have been rank insignia. We had to slow to pass through, and that was when it happened.
Another alpha stepped too close.
I didn't see him coming. One moment there was empty space beside me, the next a wall of fur and muscle and flaring nostrils, and a voice saying something in Khorreth that the translator couldn't catch in time.
Keth moved.
I didn't track it. One moment he was beside me, his hand on my back. The next he was between us, his body blocking the other alpha completely, a sound coming from his chest that I felt more than heard. Low, rumbling. A warning.
The other alpha backed off.
Keth's hand found my back again, steering me forward through the checkpoint, and his tail lashed behind him in short, sharp arcs. Agitated. Furious, maybe. I could smell it on him now, a sharpness under the warmth, metallic and hot.
"That's going to happen a lot, isn't it?" I said.
"Yes."
"Brilliant."
We cleared the checkpoint, and I let out a breath I hadn't realised I was holding. The crowd thinned a little on the other side, the press of bodies easing, and I thought – stupidly – that the worst was over.
Then the heat hit.
It came out of nowhere. One moment I was walking, trying to keep pace with Keth's longer stride. The next, a wave of warmth rolled through me from the base of my spine to the top of my skull, so intense my vision blurred at the edges.
My knees buckled.
Keth caught me. Of course he did. His arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me against his side, and the contact sent another wave through me, pleasure this time, sharp and bright, radiating out from everywhere his body touched mine.
"Mara."
His voice sounded strange. Far away. I was burning up from the inside, my skin too tight, my breasts aching with that full, heavy pressure, and between my legs…
I locked my knees. Forced myself upright.
"I'm fine," I managed. "I just–"
His head snapped up, his eyes going wide.
"You're not fine," he said. "Your scent–" His arm tightened around me. "We need to go to the dwelling. Now."
His voice. The urgency in it. I heard it through the haze settling over my brain, through the warmth that was fast becoming something else entirely, and I thought: This is it. This is the heat he warned me about.
Then I stopped thinking much at all.