Chapter 6

Mama was on camera weeping and wailing about how the Norlons had stolen her baby. Swear to god, she'd never called me her baby before in my life.

The monitor we were looking at showed five different news stations playing footage of her, and every single one of them had the wrong information on their banners. Stealing babies? Abducting children? Child sex trafficking? I covered my mouth and stared, at a complete loss over how willing some folks were to believe the worst without checking even one fact. No wonder the big black wolf guy had demanded to know how old I was.

Oh, and there was Halbert putting his arm around Mama—who wasn't really crying because her face was totally dry. He started in on how the Norlons were brainwashing the innocent and stealing the young. I wanted to hit him when he referred to me as Mama's baby boy, but other than that, I had no idea what to do.

I looked up at Ghosha beside me. I took a breath to ask him what I should do, but my brain stalled for a second when the scent of male musk hit me hard again. I was still sporting a semi so some of that scent might be me, but it was real strong when I got close to Ghosha. Did he just always smell like sex? Or was he as into me as I was into him? I had an easier time believing the first option.

Though if Ghosha was going to do the training he'd mentioned, I'd be a hundred percent into that.

"How would you feel about being interviewed," Ghosha asked me, "by a member of the press?"

It took me a minute to figure out what he was talking about. "Somebody wants to interview me?"

"We can get someone to interview you."

"Oh, to like…set the record straight?"

He nodded and did a wiggle thing with his nose that made his white whiskers sort of wave at me. It was the most adorable thing! I had such an urge to pet him but stuffed my hands into my jeans pockets instead.

"Excellent," the wolf guy said behind us. "Find Owen. I'm sure he can help with that."

"My thoughts exactly." Ghosha accepted the tablet-looking device that Layleen handed him.

She was nice. Motherly, like Mama used to be when I was young. Took no shit from Ghosha, that was for sure. I'd thought maybe they were a couple, but she'd mentioned murdering her husband for knocking her up, so I knew she didn't mean Ghosha. I'd read about how something or other about their bodies only let them have kids with another of their exact kind. Which just meant there couldn't be any tiger/bunny hybrid babies—though how fricking cute would that be?

I refocused when I heard Ghosha talking to someone on his tablet. A guy about my age or so with big blue eyes was saying to meet him in a conference room and he'd get in touch with PBS News. I'd secretly watched them during the assassination attempt and again when the bomb went off.

Wait a minute, was the wolf guy Prince Alam? And was Owen the son of the bomber? The prince was mated to a former cop, and Owen could destroy folks like Halbert with a single sentence. I suddenly felt like I was meeting the stars of my favorite TV show, and my palms got all sweaty.

Since I probably should've bowed or something to the prince, I turned around only to be spun back again by Ghosha. "This way," he said and left his big hand gripping the base of my neck. Swear to god, I was pretty sure he could've ringed my throat like a collar with his long fingers. There went the scent of sex filling the air again. I greedily breathed it in and let Ghosha guide me down the corridors.

As the inside of a spaceship went, I guessed this one was pretty basic. Boring, really. Like more functional than fancy for sure since the walls were gray and the floors were a darker gray tile. Was there a slight squish to the tiles? They felt padded beneath my feet and?—

Shittin' fuck, I wasn't really distracting myself much at all from the sex on legs beside me by taking in the decor. The ship could be clear plastic letting me see Earth rotating below me and Ghosha would still be front and center in my awareness.

I was going to go on camera with a damn boner.

"Here we are," Ghosha said before he opened a door for us.

We walked into a place that was set up like a little newsroom. In front of a navy blue wall was a curved gray desk like a reporter would sit behind with chairs on either side for guests. There were skinny little cameras on stands, all kinds of lights pointed toward the desk, and mics hanging from the ceiling like spiders. The one human and four Norlons in the room stopped what they were doing and looked our way.

I gulped. Maybe I couldn't do this. Looking up at Ghosha, I was about to change my mind when his thumb brushed against the sensitive skin of my throat while he gazed back at me. I so wanted him to lean down and kiss me. I licked my lips and watched his golden eyes follow my tongue.

"Squire?"

I jumped about a foot and looked to find Owen coming over.

"Hi, I'm Owen," he said with a hand out.

I shook his hand. "Hey. Hi."

Ghosha's grip on my neck fell away, and I watched with concern as he went to stand beside the doors like he was trying to get out of the way. I wanted him to hover instead, give me his strength and steadiness.

"Come on over here," Owen said before leading me to one of those guest chairs. He went around to the host's chair. "So we found some footage of you walking across the roof to get to the shuttle, smiling and waving down at the crowd. I suggest we show it and talk about who you were waving at and what you felt in that moment. Okay?"

"Um, yeah, okay." I couldn't help flicking a glance toward Ghosha.

"Hey," Owen said, "how about we practice first?"

I nodded enthusiastically.

He pushed on a section of the desktop, and it opened to let a screen slide out. "And just so you know, I'm trying really hard not to puke right now, too."

That made me laugh. I wasn't even sure it was funny but laughing chilled me out a little bit. It might've helped Owen, too, since he blushed and grinned at me.

"I'm going to do this like I would if the cameras were live," Owen said, "but nothing's on yet."

I sat up straighter so I wasn't slouching and was glad that at least the horror of public speaking had taken care of my boner. "I'm ready."

Owen looked toward the cameras and smiled. "Thanks so much, Doug. I'm here with Squire Landry, who is the first human accepted into the sex worker program."

Since he looked at me, I gave a nod to the camera and did my best to smile as well.

"Let's get right to the point," Owen said and gestured at his monitor. "Other news networks are saying you've been abducted against your will, but this is you leaving Earth, right?"

I watched myself walk across the roof of the convention center, looking pleased as hell even from the weird up-from-the-ground angle of whatever camera had filmed me. Smiling, I had waved down at the crowd, and then led the way onto the shuttle, Ghosha following close behind me.

I got distracted watching that, turned on by seeing the size of him looming over me.

Owen asked, "Who did you wave at there?"

I cleared my throat and refocused. "I was, uh, waving at my mother, Virginia Landry. Saying goodbye."

"Did she know you applied to the program?"

"Oh, yeah," I said with a snort. "She and her pastor wanted me to join up and spy on the Norlons. They thought I'd get something bad that they could use to rile up the Humans First folks." I glanced at Ghosha and couldn't help grinning. "But Ghosha found the recording thing they put on me and broke it. He totally freed me from all that hate and wrongness."

Ghosha smiled back at me, and something about the way he looked at me made me fidget and blush.

"Your mother is a member of Humans First?" Owen asked with a frown.

"Yeah, most of the town is actually. It's…real bad there." I gestured at the monitor. "All those news people are giving them a chance to spread their lies now. She ain't sad to see me go. She's just embarrassed and mad that I'm doing it for real. I won't…" I gulped and ducked my head, a pulse of homesickness hitting me in the gut. "I won't ever be able to go home."

There was a beat of silence before Owen reached over and squeezed my shoulder. "I'm so sorry, Squire. I know how that feels."

I gave Owen a grateful smile. We had wrong-headed parents in common, and I felt a little less alone.

"Let's nip this in the bud now," he said. "How old are you?"

"Twenty-two."

"Not underage then."

"And not a baby," I said with a roll of my eyes.

"Definitely not." Owen chuckled and held out a hand. "Thanks very much for letting us set the record straight and meet the first accepted member of the sex worker program."

I shook his hand. "Yeah, of course."

"Okay, that's everything then," Owen said. "How'd it feel?"

"Pretty good? I don't think I messed up anything."

He bit his bottom lip for a second before he said, "I lied when I said we weren't recording because we did record the whole thing. Would you be okay if we shared that with PBS News?"

"Oh, uh… Are you sure it's good enough?" I wasn't upset about the trick because I probably would've done a shit job of it all if I'd known they were filming me.

"You were great," he said, and I believed him.

"Okay then. I'm kinda glad I don't have to do it again," I said with a relieved laugh.

He covered his mouth and gave a little burp. "Me, too."

I couldn't help laughing more as Layleen came over and gave Owen a glass of something. He sipped it gratefully, and Layleen took my hand and led me over to Ghosha.

"They're going to air the segment as is," she said to him. "Why don't the two of you go to your quarters and have a talk?"

I shivered all over when she put my hand in Ghosha's and the smooth pads of his fingers closed around my skin. His hands were no different than mine—except for the backs being covered in fur—but all I could think of was a cat's toe beans. I nearly looked to see if the palms of his hands were pink, but thought maybe that might be rude and, lord, I didn't want to upset this amazing person.

Ghosha looked worried, and I couldn't imagine why. "We do have much to discuss," he said and kept hold of my hand.

I hoped real hard that he meant we'd discuss getting naked. And there went my dick again.