Her Brutal Alien (Alien Overlords)

“Someone is on the way,” I tell Tix when I’m done talking to the royal operator.

“Not that massive blue prick, I hope.”

“No. It will be someone safe.”

“Is there anyone safe in the palace?” I notice that Tix is taking all the snacks from the bar and shoving them into her pockets. She does this every day. Every day they replace it, but she still believes in the scarcity.

Half an hour or so later, there’s a knock at the door. I open it, because Tix has decided it is better if she hides in the bath.

“Hello, Margaret,” Tyvian says.

I feel inordinately guilty whenever I look at this korabi’s neck. He was terribly wounded on my account, and then I was dumped back on him when Tusk and I could no longer tolerate one another. Now he is the one who is coming to save me from my unplanned pregnancy out of wedlock.

“Thank you for coming,” I say. “I’m very sorry to have to contact you. I wish someone else could be…”

“Inconvenienced?” He winks, softening what might have been an insult.

“I’ve got a few things to bring with me,” I say. “I've been making some clothes for the locals. And I have a person.”

“Please tell me you have not shacked up with a human male…”

“No. Let me show you. Come in, please.”

He enters the room, which is made to human scale and therefore makes him look massive, even moreso than usual. Tyvian deserves so much better than anything he has ever gotten. I hope he finds happiness one day.

“Tix, come out. The nicest korabi you’ve ever known is here. You’re not in any danger.”

“I better not be,” the bath says. “There’s a lack of weapons here. Can you kill someone with soap? There has to be a way.”

“A human female,” Tyvian says. “You found a friend.”

“I found something,” I say, reaching into the bath to try to urge Tix out. I know she is afraid of korabi. Most of the humans who once identified as scum are. “Just don’t make any sudden moves. She’s flighty.”

Tix emerges from the bath slowly and cautiously, her eyes wide and scared. I know there’s a real chance she’s going to pull some kind of weapon on him. I hope she doesn’t.

“Tyvian, this is Tix.”

Tyvian is staring at her with an enamored expression.

“I’m from Megaris, so don’t fuzk with me,” she announces.

“You’re adorable,” he says.

“You fuzkin’ liar.” She blushes bright pink, so much she almost matches her hair. “Margaret can’t keep anything down,” she explains. “She needs a doctor to give her something to stop being sick.”

“Yes. Let’s get Margaret back to the palace.”

“Tix comes with me,” I say. “She needs protection too.”

“I don’t need protection,” she says. “But I’ll come with you, seeing as you asked nicely.”

Seventeen

Margaret

And that is how I end up back where I started. In Tyvian’s dungeon, a willing prisoner feeling incredibly ill. The doctor has given me medication to repress some of the nausea, but it is not a perfect fix.

Curled up in a nest of blankets on the couch, I hear the locked door to my luxurious dungeon swing open.

“Tyvian? I need more…”

“Not Tyvian.”

I know that voice.

I sit bolt upright, shocked and horrified at how I look. I have not brushed or done my hair. I am wearing not a lick of makeup. I have been sick multiple times this morning, in spite of the medication.

Tusk looks as perfect and impenetrable as ever. His big, blue body looms over me in that muscular way it has, his golden eyes drinking me in, the dark fall of his hair plaited over each of his shoulders. I have not felt anything remotely like arousal in almost a month, but looking at him, I am suddenly absolutely charged with it.

This is a very different meeting than the last one we had. He looks much more put together, a great deal calmer. He looks as he did when I first fell in love with him, in complete control of himself and everybody else.

“Why are you here?”

“I made amends with Rath,” he says. “And I have come to be mate to you, and father to your infant.”

Tears well in my eyes. “You weren’t supposed to know about that! It makes it less real when you know about it.”

“I know about everything,” he sighs. “Even when I try my best not to, it comes knocking on my door and tells me to my face.”

“Tyvian told you?”

“Of course he did. He’s weak. And pathetic. And…” he trails off as my expression falls. “And very nice,” he finishes, somewhat lamely.

He sits down beside me and brushes a strand of sweaty hair off my brow. “I love you, Margaret. I want to give you everything you have ever wanted. I may fail at times. I am not a good korabi. I am a vicious, lethal, remorseless, brutal…”