Chapter 8

CHAPTER

EIGHT

ARKAN

"What do you mean, yours?" The little female seems positively stunned.

My pride bruises as though she is the white beast of terror and not the tiny female that appeals to all my senses. "I won you in battle. You are mine now."

"Like… to take care of," she says slowly, her eyes narrowed.

I do not like this look.

"Of course I will take care of you," I scoff. "You bear my life debt, and now I bear yours, and soon you will bear our children on your wide birthing hips."

She sputters, no coherent words coming out, and I grin.

My little Maggie must be beyond words, so pleased is she with my joyous news.

"Life debt? Debt?" she all but screams, and I glance back at her, startled by her vociferousness.

"Yes. You protected me, killed for me, without even knowing who I was." I pause, considering. "Or what I was. Or my name." I lick my lips, because maybe this is, in fact, an extenuating circumstance.

But even my flagging Zerinian honor has not fallen so far. I stand straighter in the knowledge that I am in the moral right, and fix her with a piercing look.

Or try, at least, as it is hard to be piercing and maintain the moral high ground when your chosen mate appears to be in agony at the idea of said mating.

Exasperated, I sigh, the spikes on my arms lengthening as I ponder our predicament.

"I'm not—I'm not some Vegas gambling prize or some—" Her breath hisses out of her as she stands, the white hell beast squawking loudly in distress as she begins to pace. She throws her hands in the air. "Or some life-debtor's prison, Charles Dickens."

She crosses her arms over her breasts again, and my gaze falls to those luscious curves. How I long to feel them in my hands, to taste the pink tips of them?—

"Don't look at me like that! I said Charles Dickens, not Charles Dickens-me-down," she yells. Her foot stomps, so great is her agitation.

My spines bristle again, and my tail goes erect behind me in affronted confusion. "My name is Arkan," I tell her gently. "Not CharlezDickenz'MeDown."

Frowning, I puzzle over her. Her cheeks are flushed pink, her eyes sparkling. Perhaps she is still in the thrall of the Kryger poison.

Shrugging one shoulder, I resolve to scan her for additional medical abnormalities as soon as we are at a safer distance from the bulk of the Kryger cargo and prison ship.

The little female continues to rant about this CharlezDickenz character. I tune out the heated diatribe against the provocations of what must have been her former lover's debts as I tend to the many warning alarms on the ship's control system.

"Kryger," I mutter under my breath, disdain curling my lip into a sneer as I flick through the ship's logs. Maintenance issues on the fuel system. Warnings about the atmospheric regulator's filters. Problems with the life support system.

I pause on that one, the female's rant far from over, and read over the ship's report on the life support system.

"Hmm." I raise an eyebrow. It's not good news.

Terrible news, even.

But I've lived through being captured and poisoned by the Kryger, and if I can do that and find a life-debt mate as pretty as this little female, then we can survive this. Together.

"What?" Maggie says, slipping next to me. The heat from her body, the mere idea of slipping my cock into it—is enough to make my balls ache all over again with need.

I can hardly think straight thanks to these balls and my hard cock.

"What's wrong?" she insists, her eyes narrowed. She tilts her head adorably, her smooth forehead furrowing.

"I do not wish to worry you," I say hesitantly.

Her frown deepens into an expression of deep disapproval. "Oh, now you worry about disappointing me? Not when you claim that we both owe each other a life debt, which, by the way, should just cancel out, right?"

"Cancel out?" I repeat, not understanding. My tail swishes behind me in agitation.

"Yeah, you know, like—" She smashes her hands together.

I raise an eyebrow, then scratch one of my horns. "You want to… combine with me?" I hazard a guess. "You want me to fuck you now?" My curiosity turns to desire.

A strangled noise comes out of her. "No! I mean, you know—" She balls up one hand, and smashes the fist into the palm of the other.

"You want to be fisted," I guess. "That seems uncomfortable, but if this is the way of your people?—"

"Stop!" she shrieks. "Canceled! One negates the other. You owed me a debt, then I owed you a debt, now no one owes a debt! Canceled. Negated. No debt."

My spikes all stand on end, and a low growl reverberates in my chest. "There is none of this canceling of life debts."

The very concept makes my stomach turn uncomfortably. "I do not care what your mating was like with CharlezDickenz'MeDown. We have earned each other, little female."

She gasps as my tail wraps around her ankle, tugging at her hard until she's forced to step closer to me. I catch her chin in my hand and hold it until she finally meets my gaze.

"You are mine now, female." I try to gentle my tone because this one is very spirited, I can tell. "I knew from the moment you murdered the Kryger."

"It was self-defense."

"Why would that change anything?" I tilt my head, a laugh cascading out of me. "You killed him all the same. And now I have killed for you, and thus we have saved each other, and that is the way these things go."

"The way these things go?" she asks softly, her long lashes fluttering.

Ah, she is so beautiful, this strange little creature.

I nod, wanting to taste her lips, her small pink tongue, rub my hands over her odd hornless head. I step closer.

"The way these things go?" she repeats, and I narrow my eyes at her. "In my world, the way these things go is you don't get abducted by aliens and then paired up with the huge alien you landed in a cell with," she yells, her eyes blazing. "In my world, you don't just accrue life debts that are solved by fucking each other!"

Her chest heaves with the force of her fury, and I can't help but stare at her pretty breasts again.

She snaps her fingers. "Eyes up here, buddy."

"My name isn't Buddy, or CharlezDickenz'MeDown," I tell her patiently. A bit sadly too, because if she cannot remember this important detail, I fear perhaps she will not be the best mate for me.

Her eyes go wide, and then she pinches the top of her nose before inhaling slowly.

"You don't accrue debt on your planet?" I add, because I can hardly wrap my mind around that.

"Not life debts, not like?—"

"So what kind of debt?" I interrupt, sensing an opening. "Your debt is just easily dissolved?"

"No, ugh, no, but people don't go into debt for helping people…" Her nose scrunches, and she is simply adorable as she attempts to pontificate on her barbaric species. "I mean, maybe they do, but you don't marry or mate or whatever the person who holds your debt, unless maybe they worked for the organization that—" She huffs out an irritated breath.

Amused, I smile down at her.

"Are you troubled by the idea of mating me?" I ask slowly, trying to come to the crux of whatever it is that irritates her so greatly. "My cock and lensla are more than adequate, and I assure you that I will learn how to make you come satisfactorily."

The mere thought of those things makes precum spill from the tip of my cock, my lensla hardening, activating already.

Her breathing turns heavy, and the scent of her arousal tells me it isn't the mating act itself that bothers her.

"I would be a good mate for you, little Maggie," I tell her, frowning.

"I don't belong in space," she says, her lower lip wobbling.

My frown deepens. "You are still mated to this CharlezDickenz'MeDown?"

Guilt nearly takes me to my knees. I grip the control console, overwhelmed with the surging emotion. She is already mated. She has been taken by another male, then shoved into space by the Kryger, her life ripped away, and here I am, trying to make it worse by making her mine?—

"No," she says, sniffling.

"No?" I slowly tear my eyes away from where my hands have caused hairline cracks across the command console. "No, you are not mated? There is no male in your life? No young? No family?"

A drop of liquid rolls down her cheek. "Just my grandma and sister. And the chickens." She jerks her head towards the terrifying white beast sleeping in a huddle against the wall.

Her small, pale hand brushes the liquid off her cheek.

I squint at the silvery water trail on her face. "Is this how your species comes?"

My eyebrows rise in disbelief at the strange moisture.

"No," she sniffs again, brushing another drop of liquid from her face. She blinks up at me, her eyes glistening with that same wetness. A laugh huffs out of her, the corners of her mouth lifting into a gentle smile so lovely it makes my heart ache. "No, of course not. These are tears. I'm crying. It's normal when a human is sad, or excited, or scared, or…" She frowns again, the smile disappearing like a moon slowly covered by a cloud. "It's just normal."

"Oh. So you do not come from your eyes." My knees nearly buckle in relief. "You do not come from your eyeballs and you do not have a mate to make your eyeballs c-cry," I stumble over the unfamiliar word, "in excitement."

"I'm not excited right now." She sniffs again, more eye water—tears—dripping down the angle of her cheekbone. "I'm sad. I can't go home. My grandmother needs me, my sister is going to be worried sick. And now you're saying we have to be mates. And I'm hungry," she wails, her chest suddenly hiccupping as the rate of water from her eyes increases.

I stare at her, at a complete loss.

Do I comfort her? Is she asking for comfort? What if her eye water—tears, I mentally correct myself—gets worse should I attempt to comfort her?

What if it gets worse if I do not try?

That settles it.

My tail wraps around her ankle and I step closer to her, closing the distance between us.

Cautiously, I put my arms around her, holding her the way I remember my mother doing to me when I was young, before I became a soldier, so many, many years ago.

Her arms immediately circle around me, her entire body melting into mine. I squeeze my eyes shut with the effort of not embarrassing myself by groaning with the need firing through me. She does not want to discuss our shared life debt, the hand that fate has dealt us. My Maggie does not wish to think of the future.

So I will provide her with comfort in the present.

I soak in the heat of her lush body, the delicate musk of her skin, and the incomparable feel of her against me. I know I need to be patient to allow her to adjust to her new reality.

The reality of a future…

With me.