My Alien Beast (Draci Alien 3)

When he gets back in, I ask him how we’re going to get more food if he can’t fly. He gives me the silent treatment, and we go the rest of the day without talking. Super.

The next day, after a night on the couch while he slept in the bed very much alone, he tries again with his whole convince-me-to-be-his-mate thing.

“All right, so consider your friends your family. Don’t you want to be like your family, then? If I impregnate you, you will be transformed as they are. You will gain wings. You will have a kit as they do. Would this not bring you closer together with them? You will be of a like kind.”

We have just finished what I’m generously terming “brunch,” after dining on one of the boxes of old spaghetti left in the cupboards. I don’t know who lived in this cabin before First got hold of it. Part of me hopes he just found a cabin in the middle of nowhere that looked “empty” and one day the real owners will pop up and I’ll be rescued… That is, if First doesn’t roast them over an open fire before I can get to them, grab a cell phone off them, and tell them to run for cover.

I can’t imagine how he would have arranged to buy the cabin legally, but then apparently there’re Draci interacting with and making deals with the upper echelons of our government. So who’s to say there’s not some in First’s Resistance who aren’t good in real estate? He can’t be the only one they’ve tried the process on to graft into a human body.

I peer at First, narrowing my eyes. “But you said you couldn’t guarantee my friends’ safety, just their kids. Are you saying something different now? Would you keep my friends safe if I mated with you?”

First seems taken aback. I don’t think he expected me to bargain with him. And frankly, neither did I… But what if…

He leans forwards. “And if I did? Guarantee their safety? If I guaranteed you could all live together in peace and raise your kits safely?”

“Could you guarantee Shak and Ezo’s safety, too? Because if—”

“You ask too much,” First barks, pushing back from the table, then standing and glaring down at me. “Any female should be weeping in gratitude at the honor I am offering, but you! You put conditions and try to make me crawl before you until I am nothing.”

“Me?!” I stand up too, completely infuriated. “I’m the one making you crawl? Hey pal, I had a perfectly good life. I was doing meaningful work.” That I got fired from right before you showed up, but that’s neither here nor there. “I had a life. I had purpose… And you just— You just come in and think you can—” I wave a hand angrily up and down at him. “You think you can just take over and start dictating as if you have any right to me!”

“I do have rights,” he roars.

I scoff and cross my arms over my chest, my most familiar posture when I’m with First. “How do you figure that?”

“Because you’re mine. And I’m offering you what any sane female creature should want, regardless of species. I’m offering you status, and privilege, and a place at my side. I even bent my neck to you and said I would care for your family. But is that enough for you? Of course not. You must chop off my manliness as well!”

“Every word out of your mouth is an insult. Can you just stop and listen to yourself for a minute? And for once would you just be honest with both of us? I’m not any of those things you just said. Because when you call me yours, it’s exactly that.”

I wave an angry hand. “You consider me a possession to be owned. No more than a chessboard piece to get you closer to winning. I’m nothing to you, in reality. I lived my whole life as nothing to my father except an item to parade out on occasion when I was useful and then to be abandoned without a thought. Flattered with promises while I’m useful—you’ll save my friends, but kill their husbands so that there will be poison between us. No thank you. That’s monstrous. I won’t have a part in it.”

“So what would you ask of me?” he demands, throwing his arms up, his wings lifting slightly with the movement, making him cringe in pain. He grits his teeth through it. “Shakshaacac seeks my death. I fled when my mother was killed because help of escape was offered and I was no fool. To stay would have meant my death. Perhaps that idea pleases you. If I had died then, you would not find yourself locked in with a monster.”