Chapter 7

Rurik takes me into the market and buys me some shoes that are modified for my feet on-site, these beautiful leather boots that are smaller versions of the ones on his own feet.

“I must return to the Embassy to address some concerns, but you are not required to join me.” He hesitates, and I sense a wealth of secrets that need to be shared. I almost put my hands on his chest, kiss his chin, and ask him to tell me. But not today. Tomorrow, I’ll be that girl. Today, I see Abraxas.

My heart aches so fiercely that I press the heel of my hand against my sternum. Rurik notices and says nothing.

“Feel free to explore at your leisure. As I have said before, you are not a prisoner, princess.” Rurik touches the side of my face and then turns to leave. Zero, Connor, and Avril slip past him to join me. The first thing the latter does is look down at my shoes.

“You better not have dumped those heels; they were the only ones in the entire market. And they were the right size for you. That’s a miracle in and of itself.”

I turn to look at her as Zero scans the crowd for disturbances and Connor looks like he’s trying not to have a violent panic attack. Zero’s creepy as hell. If I were planning to assassinate the Imperial Princess, I’d think twice when I saw the disturbed young woman with the red eyes and the bow-shaped antennae.

“You know that you’re the worst lady-in-waiting in the history of life, right?” I ask Avril, and she sighs with relief.

“So you guys are finally talking? That’s great. Are you in love with him yet? I hear it happens instantly for basically every other Vestalis couple. You’re literally the only one who’s ever resisted that celestial magic.” She sounds a little jealous. A lot jealous. Green with envy.

“What? Did you want to be the princess? I’d gladly switch places.” I’m looking around now for a place to get a drink. There should be plenty of bars around here, right?

“If only I were so lucky. Who doesn’t dream of unquenchable passion?” Avril follows my gaze and notices him at the same time that I do. “Oh, hell no.” She grabs my arm and tries to drag me away, but Officer Hyt has already spotted us.

He waltzes right through the crowd, people skirting out of his way but turning to graze him with hungry looks. And when I say ‘people’, I mean creatures with six arms, four-legged beasts, and plenty of those green hulking people like Trevor and his twin.

“Howdy there, ladies.” Hyt tips his hat as Avril steps between us, batting her hand at his companion as it tries to fly forward to greet me. He frowns at her and uses his tentacles to snag his pet. “Got a problem there, human medic woman?”

“Yeah, I do have a problem.” She points back at me as Connor sidles up to us, looking pale. “This girl is betrothed, and you are a serious creep.”

Hyt lifts a brow and looks past her to me.

“I’m a creep?” he asks me, like we weren’t both there yesterday, equal participants. “Well, I’ll be damned. First I’m hearing of that. I’m on patrol. I have every right to walk around this station. More than that, it’s my job.” He shoves Avril gently out of the way and then looks over at Connor. “Are you alright, human male? You don’t look so good.”

“That …” Connor points in the direction of a slug monster and … Well, it’s not just a slug monster this time. It’s the slug monster, with the lawyer’s leg sticking out of its mouth. I recognize the atrocious pattern of the ugly Gucci loafers he spent half the fundraiser bragging about.

“Shit.” Hyt uses one of his tentacles to snag a six-shooter pistol from a strap on his back. He lifts his weapon above the crowd and everyone freezes. I jump when he fires, hitting the slug creature in the head. Or what I think is its head. Whatever it is, the monster slumps to the floor of the hallway and people resume their business like they didn’t just see something get shot. Hyt blows the smoke from his pistol—no joke—and tucks it away. “Takes the Mollusca months to properly digest. Looks like it was having trouble with the clothing.”

Hyt waltzes over to the body, tails swaying, ass on display.

Avril chokes and blushes before turning away. Zero stares and licks her lips. Connor is the only intelligent one amongst us who pays more attention to the dead slug and the corpse that Hyt tugs out of its mouth. The lawyer’s leg is intact, complete with shoe. But that’s about it. No great loss, but it’s still humbling to see what’s left of a fellow human being.

Officer Hyt looks particularly distraught as he stares at the remains.

I push back the others and move over to stand beside him.

“If it makes you feel better, he was dead within minutes of us arriving on Jungryuk. I think.” Not sure how long I was passed out before I came to, but it can’t have been all that long. “Also, he was a jerk. He grabbed my ass without permission.”

That catches Hyt’s attention. He looks over at me, and I feel like he’s about to say something private, maybe something about what’s going on between us. I look back, but as Avril approaches, all he does is smile.

“Don’t forget about that delivery.” He picks up the lawyer’s leg in his arms, uses his tails to collect the slug thing’s body, and heads down the hallway.

“That was very nearly one of us,” Avril whispers, and Connor exhales harshly.

“Should we get a drink?” I look over at them, and they both nod. “Yep. Thought so.”

It takes over an hour to find a bar that serves alcohol that humans can consume. And we only know that’s the case because a Vestalis ambassador actually shows up from the embassy to help us locate one.

When we get there … it’s full of humans. Packed with them. There are easily dozens.

My mouth drops open.

“Oh thank God.” Avril rushes into the room and taps the first person she sees on the shoulder. They turn around and hug her like they’ve known her forever. The crowd realizes that a new face has shown up in their bar and all eyes turn in her direction before making their way over to me and Connor.

I wonder how many of them have fucked aliens? I think, and then I figure I can just ask. We’ve been abducted, all of us here, against our will. One day, we were normal people doing normal things living normal lives and then … this. An alien bar on a space station that’s connected to a water-covered planet full of pornographic tentacle foxes. There’s no such thing as propriety anymore.

“Eve, come here and listen to this.” Avril puts her arm around me and starts pointing at people. “Portland, Tualatin, McMinnville, Albany, Ashland, Eugene, Marcola, Grants Pass.”

“Interesting names,” I remark, but I’m being an ass. I see what she’s saying. All of these people are from Oregon. Specifically, all of these people are from the I-5 corridor in Oregon. That’s … unique. Perhaps it’s that extra-special dash of Pacific Northwest strangeness that attracts alien kidnappers.

Avril gives me an annoyed look. In fact, she looks at me the way I look at Tabbi Kat. That’s a sobering thought.

“There are three clusters in here: Western Oregon, Paris, and Singapore.” Avril gestures with her hand at the group. She’s certainly discovered plenty of information in a very quick time period. “I’m going to mingle and see how much gossip I can gather while I’m here.” She slips into the crowd, Connor tagging along, and leaves me alone by a table full of men. Looking around, I actually see far more men in the room than women.

Zero hovers close enough to be a proper bodyguard, but doesn’t talk to or pay attention to anyone else.

“Have a seat,” a guy says, patting the chair between him and his buddy. “The food here is the best on the station. It’s the only stuff I can eat without getting sick.”

“Thanks.” I take the chair and realize that not a single man at the table is wearing a shirt. “What happened to your clothes?” I ask, and one of them laughs. He gives me a little wink as he leans in, putting his elbows on the table.

“We all dance for the same club; you might call these our uniforms.” He gestures at the low-slung pants each man has on. They’re all incredibly ripped, tall, handsome, probably the cream of the crop when it comes to alien aesthetics. I bet the rest were eaten.

“You should come by sometime,” says another, leaning over and smiling at me with beautiful blue eyes, dimples, and soft blond hair. I look back at him and realize that he’s one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever seen in my life.

I’m not attracted to him. And he’s exactly my type. I’m surrounded by Magic Mike dancers, and I don’t feel a thing. Nothing. My brain and body are broken for alien peen. My heart is broken for a dragon alien batwing monster thing. Oh, Abraxas.

I spend a couple of hours chatting with the guys, getting to know them, but only because it feels good to talk to other humans. There’s nothing there for me, no interest, not even when I’m asked by Blondie if I’d like to come to his ‘apartment’ (whatever that means here) to hang out later. Guess he isn’t aware that I’m the next queen, eh? It’s not like the humans haven’t noticed the Vestalis guards chilling in the hallway, they just haven’t made the connection to me, and I haven’t offered an explanation.

I politely excuse myself, wandering out of the bar to find Hyt waiting for me beside the entrance. He’s leaning back against the wall, hat tipped forward over his head, tentacle tails dancing gently against the floor around his legs. Zero follows at a distance, ever vigilant.

“Is that medic girl distracted?” Hyt moves his hat off of one eye to stare at me. My gaze drifts down to the sleek, exaggerated expanse of muscle and skin stretched out before me. His flesh is blue and white right now with fine, soft scales whose edges aren’t quite visible unless the light hits them just right. A tiny piece of loincloth over a very fascinating part of him. His companion chirps at me, but doesn’t land on me this time, looking properly shamed and maybe a little resentful, too. I feel bad for the tiny pink octopus.

I look back to find its master wearing a bemused half-smirk.

One tentacle slings forward, popping out a single bubble from its sucker. It pops near my face, and I jump. The smell hits me right away, and I feel soothed. Clearheaded. Calm. Aroused.

“You liked that, didn’t you?” Hyt seems genuinely curious, but then he shakes his head suddenly. “No. Shit. Where’s the medic? Your cargo came in early, and I need you there now.” He gives me a telling look, and the entire world goes still.

Abraxas.

“Let’s go.” I snag his arm and start walking before he reaches out with his tails, lifts me off the floor, and turns me to face the opposite direction.

“This way, Eve.” He calls me by name which is nice, snatching my wrist and taking me back to the restricted sector. Zero follows, but he turns to her at the doorway and blocks her entrance. “I’ll take it from here. The prince will agree to it.”

A pregnant pause follows before Zero’s eyes flash red and she gives a single, decisive nod that doesn’t quite match up with her usual mannerisms. Not that I’ve known her very long, but … that nod feels like it belongs to Rurik and, whether I like it or not, the prince is someone that I understand perfectly.

The door slams shut, and Hyt turns away, gliding down the hall in his boots faster than I can keep up.

“Is there a reason that we’re—”

The smell hits me then. His smell. I would know it anywhere, that wild twist of apex predator and male, of dark scales and demon tongues and violet venom.

I don’t have to ask why we’re running.

I run faster.

Rurik appears in the hallway, but I dart past him in my haste to get to the source of that smell.

If I don’t go to Abraxas, he’ll come to me and he won’t care how he gets there, who he kills, or what trouble he gets himself into on the way.

I’m panting as I skid to a stop outside another doorway. I don’t have to know where I am in the station itself to know that I’m in the right place.

Hyt sweeps up beside me with Rurik following behind, slamming his palm onto a screen beside the door and whispering in my ear.

“We’ll wait in the cruiser for now.” He steps back as the first door hisses open, and then he guides me to a second one, letting me into a large hallway and then leaving me there by myself.

I can feel Abraxas coming like a storm.

There’s a pressure change. My skin gets hot. My entire body aches so badly that I stumble and fall to my knees outside his door. I’m alone now, and he knows it, and the door should be opening soon, and—

It begins to slide open, and I see him. His wing-hand darts out, clawed digits curling around the edge of the door, and he crumples the metal like paper to one side. I hear Hyt groaning from the other room.

“Female.”

Abraxas is on me in a second, pinning me to the floor underneath him, using his wing-hands to shove up the ribbon-like bands of my dress. He props himself on a palm, using his other hand to push my underwear aside. He doesn’t even take the time to rip them.

My back arches as I groan, pressing my breasts up and into him. All around me, there’s his scent. Wild. Woods. Musk. Male. Fertility. Sex. His pleasure rod is thick and swollen and so slick that it slips right in, all the way to the base. His taut, heavy sack slams against my butt as his second dick—the mating one—rubs between my cheeks and strokes my rear opening.

A gasp barely has time to leave my lips before he’s shoving his tongue down my throat, almost literally. His spine is arched, tail thrashing, tongue ravishing my lips, jaw, throat. Then he’s back to sliding it against my own tongue.

Energy arcs through me, a rush of relief and vitality that makes me feel damn near invincible. He growls at me as he fucks, snarls and hisses, and I realize that I can’t understand a word he’s saying. Well. Just the one. Female.

Guess this fancy-pants translator sucks ass, too.

I miss the pink one.

“Harder, more,” I groan, clawing at him, dragging him against me, gasping with pleasure when he uses his wing-hands to shred what little there is of this stupid dress. “More, more, more.”

He can’t understand me either, and that’s what makes it so delicious.

What reason do we even have to talk right now?

His teeth sink into my shoulder, but it isn’t an illicit invitation to come play like it is with Rurik. It isn’t a spreading warmth and some celestial understanding, it’s a possession. Abraxas owns me as he fucks me, and I realize that that is a fact that will never change. No matter where we are in the universe, we belong to one another.

Abraxas does not take his time with me. He slams me into the metal floor of Hyt’s ship so hard that my ass cheeks are bruised. He comes with a world-ending sound, something feared by anything lesser than him in the food chain. Which is everything. Everyone and everything should be scared of that sound.

Except for me.

He is mine, and that’s that.

We lie there panting for the full fifteen or so minutes it takes to separate. I can feel the blood vessels between his body and mine, transferring fluids, connecting us together again. We can’t talk because neither of us can understand each other, but he rises up to look down at me, his eyes like amethyst crystals in a face made of shadows.

For a minute there, his lips are closed and he’s more darkness than not.

He grins, and his mouth splits his face entirely in half, flashing all of those dagger-sized teeth.

There’s a sharp pinch as he switches his pleasure rod out for his mating rod. We start all over again, his wing-hands on my tits, his right hand roaming the skin on my waist, finding those pesky panties and rending them to shreds.

As he fucks, his pleasure rod thickens and swells yet again, bumping my clit as he slides it between my folds. All over me, his sticky pheromones transfer to my bare skin. My belly. My breasts. My ass cheeks as his ball sack slaps me like a hard spank.

Fuck.

The orgasm is wicked, almost painful. I’m screaming, for sure. Used to being able to make whatever sounds I want in the jungle. Hopefully, Officer Hyt’s police cruiser spaceship thing is soundproof.

My body rebels against my brain, and I short-circuit, nails clawing at Abraxas’ ebony skin until I’m completely spent and turning into a puddle beneath him. When I blink through the white stars in my vision, I realize that he’s orgasmed again, too. His balls are pumping seed into me as I lie on my back naked, legs spread, completely and utterly at peace, drowning in bliss. We’re knotted together now, stuck like this, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

“Abraxas … I missed you, too.”

He snarls at me, nuzzling my neck and stroking the outside of my leg with his tail. When he’s finished seeding me, he pulls out and licks the side of my face. Cleans the sweat from my tits. Tries to move between my legs to—

“Wait, wait.” I cover my swollen, happily fucked cunt with my hands. “Not yet. I’ll literally die.”

“Stubborn,” he growls out in English, and then he draws his cocks back into his body, hefts me up with his tail, straps me to his back, and rises to two feet. When he approaches the door leading into the front of the ship, Hyt very quickly opens it and puts up two hands.

“Don’t you dare crumple another door in my cruiser. How the fuck am I supposed to explain that damage?”

Abraxas ducks to pass through the door and then squats down in front of him. He’s at his smallest size right now (probably for ease of transport or lack of vaults to bathe in), but small is a relative term. He’s taller than both of the other males in the room with us.

My dragon alien mate drops his horned head, violet light pulsing brightly, and then taps at the side of his head where his earhole is. His lips ripple open on a snarl.

“Why not?” Hyt asks, like he actually understands what Abraxas is saying. Hyt then turns to Rurik and gives him a look. “Did you purposely leave the Aspis language off of her translator?”

“My parents will know if I install that language, and since they already know she is an Aspis’ former mate, I cannot install it and risk our lives.” He reaches into a pocket on his jacket and produces a pair of small, slim translators in pastel pink.

My eye twitches. More Cartian tech, eh?

Rurik attempts to pass the translator over, but Hyt snatches it with a tentacle tail and closes the distance between Abraxas and the prince without taking a step forward.

I grab both translators, put one on Abraxas, and then slip the other onto my own head.

“Which one of these dickless males should I eat first?” he snarls, and even his translated voice is barely human, more rolling growls and biting snarls than I even thought possible. He sounds like a demon with a double voice. It’s layers of pure vocal hell. “Or does it matter?” His clawed hands reach out, but I grab onto the base of his wings and whisper in his ear.

“Don’t touch them. If you do, we’re fucked.”

Abraxas grins and draws his wings back, creating a comfortable cocoon on either side of me. I relax my nude body against his.

“Yes, I know. But I have no greater desire—save mating you—than to kill them, to see their blood spattered on these walls, to watch them squirm and writhe until they take their last, gasping breaths.”

Ah. Erm. No wonder Hyt was nervous to be around this guy.

Pride swells my chest.

Until Rurik looks at me and we do the whole star-crossed lover thing again.

“Please don’t kill them,” I whisper, shame coloring my voice. My happy hormones are going wild right now, and I feel the best I’ve felt in days, but … I’m confused, too. “More than just we’re fucked, I don’t want them dead.”

My mate considers this and then sighs, looking at the two other males in the room with a deep regret.

“I will not kill you—for now. But I can smell that the both of you have tried to mate with my female. That is an unforgivable sin and not one that I will forget in the future.”

Rurik has the balls to narrow his eyes and step forward, antennae flared out to either side of his head in a match to Abraxas’ horns.

“You knew she was my mate when you took her from the market. This entire situation is a problem that you have brought on yourself.”

“You test your fate,” Abraxas’ words echo, that strange double voice as his growls twist into the sounds from the translator. He laughs then, his mouth wide, teeth flashing. “Such bravery in such a cowardly race. I will eat you quickly to spare you the pain of it.”

“Let me just put this out there: I am on y’all’s sides.” Hyt sighs, the sound of a man that knows he’s gotten himself into trouble, that he should and could dig himself out of it, but knows that he’s not going to. He puts a hand on his chest, right over that burn scar. Now that I’m really looking at it, I can see the World Station in its shape. Two circles, one shaded like the planet Yaoh, and the other a mess of curves and lines like an armillary sphere. “We all care what happens to the human woman, don’t we? Let’s not start a fight in my cruiser that ends with all four of us dead.” Hyt pauses and plants his hands on his hips. “Though I did fucking warn you against coming here—on multiple occasions.”

His companion escapes the safety of his hat and dives right for me.

“Abraxas, don’t.” I practically growl the words out as the little pet chirps angrily at him, spreading bubbles.

“You’re fucking embarrassing, you know that?” Hyt snarls, snatching the creature up in one of his tails. He tucks it behind his back and out of sight, likely catching the look on Abraxas’ face. I can’t see it exactly, but I can tell even from behind him that his monster mouth is split in half in a terrifying scowl.

“This female makes her own choices,” Abraxas says, finally putting me down on the ground with his tail around my waist. It’s only once my feet hit the floor that I’m reminded how naked I am.

Both Rurik and Hyt look at me in such a way that it’s impossible to forget.

I’m wearing my new leather boots, mussy sex hair, and Abraxas’ wetness between my legs. He uses one of his wings to block my body from view, keeping his attention on the other two males.

“Choice is sometimes an illusion, perhaps a luxury.” Rurik doesn’t give the Aspis any space, not even when Abraxas lowers his head down like he’s considering the price he’d pay for biting the Imperial Prince’s off. I don’t think about my experience with the Aspis female. Nope. No time for another panic attack. “You cannot take her and run away to live happily ever after.” Rurik ruffles his wings, adding his spicy scent to Abraxas’ muskiness. Please Officer Hyt, no pheromone bubbles just now.

Hyt takes a step back, crossing his arms and purposely averting those strange but beautiful eyes of his. His jaw, though, is clenched tight. I can see his wild teeth from here.

“I am aware of this,” Abraxas states, sitting back on his haunches. He tucks me in close against him, and I feel my eyes close on instinct. There’s nowhere I’d rather be. When Rurik quite literally beamed me and the den up into his ship, I was certain that I’d never see Abraxas again.

And I’m only seeing him now because Officer Hyt and Prince Rurik are genuinely good people. Aliens. Genuinely good aliens. I force myself to open my eyes and look at them both.

“If I could release Eve from her duties, I would.” Rurik returns my stare, and even cuddled up against my mate, I feel the pull between us. “If you kill me now, my parents will hunt you to the edges of the Noctuida and beyond. They will destroy Earth. They will destroy Jungryuk. They will destroy Yaoh.”

Hyt curses and rubs at his face with a tentacle, like he’s tired and overburdened. I feel immediately sorry for getting him involved in my intergalactic space drama shit.

“I understand that.” Abraxas is angry—roiling with fury more like—but he doesn’t move to attack or kill either man. I know that his instincts demand he do it, but he’s smarter than basic instinct. Anytime he’d wanted, he could’ve mated me. He could’ve forced himself on me to save his own life. He didn’t. That takes massive self-control, to give up one’s life out of respect and love for someone else’s wishes. He’s an incredible man. Male. Dragon thing. “But you will have ultimate power when you are king. You will bring me to your ship to be with my female.”

“You’ll hate it there,” I whisper, but Abraxas offers me a warning look that tells me how full of shit I really am. I know what he’s going through because I’ve been there. I didn’t want to live the rest of my life in the jungles of Jungryuk, as freeing and wonderful as that experience was. I wanted to see my family again, to go home. But I chose him over all of that, and I know he’d do the same for me.

In the whole of the universe, where we most belong is with each other.

“I have already made that promise. Again and again and again.” Rurik closes his eyes and looks away, his wings shrouding him from behind like a beautiful white cloak. “The princess need but see me to the throne, and keep me fed, and I will move entire star systems for her happiness.” His lips curve up in an angry scowl, and I wonder if he’s thinking how different everything would’ve been if he’d picked me up from the market first.

I’d probably be in love with him by now.

Instead, he’s an unwilling villain, a man without the luxury of choice.

“Get out.” Abraxas uses his head and horns to indicate the door. “Do not dream of returning here until tomorrow.”

“Uh, this is my fuckin’ ship,” Hyt says, and then Abraxas turns to look at him, and he sighs, holding up all nine tentacle tails, suckers facing out in supplication to the angry dragon on his ship. “Goddamn it, I am regretting signing myself up for this mess.” He’s cursing under his breath as he takes off, yanking his screeching companion along behind him in a mess of pearly bubbles.

One pops and fills the room with his scent, and I almost choke on it.

The doors open and then slam shut.

Rurik hesitates.

“I will see you at the first solar hour.” He holds up a hand to indicate a screen on the wall, one that’s filled with a mess of numbers and symbols and letters that I can’t understand. “When the round face on that clock reaches the topmost line.”

I see what he’s referring to, squinting my eyes at the device. I have no idea how much time that means I have with Abraxas. However much it’s going to be, it won’t be enough.

“That gives you approximately twelve Earth hours, or a quarter of a Jungyrukian day.” Rurik meets my eyes one last time before he turns and leaves the ship.

He doesn’t have to do this, give me time with Abraxas. He has all of the power now, the way that Abraxas once did, and yet he isn’t forcing me into anything more than he has to. Already, I’ve embarrassed him in front of his parents. His court. His people. Every sentient being in the whole of the Noctuida. Ugh.

I turn to Abraxas, and all of those thoughts flee my head.

If it weren’t for Abraxas, Rurik and I would have a very different relationship.

“I didn’t want to like him …” I start, guilt swamping me. Abraxas reaches out with a wing-hand and strokes his knuckles down the side of my face before burying them in my hair. He lowers his head and tugs me against him, so that my forehead is pressed against his, just beneath his horns.

“I am not angry with you, tiny female.”

“I let him put his fingers inside of me.” I feel like my ex, Mack, confessing to fucking the girl he took home from his creative writing class. They screwed one another and read each other’s half-baked sci-fi stories for an entire night. And he told me after that it was just a quickie fling. Please. I’m never dating another guy in a master’s program ever again—especially not a guy studying creative writing. I guess I’m never dating another guy again, period. I’m an alien smut slut now, just like Jane.

Wait. Alien … smut … slut. A.S.S. My acronym is A.S.S. I am an A.S.S.

She’s going to tease me mercilessly for this.

“I am not angry with you, tiny female,” he repeats, a growl creeping into his voice.

“Not just once, but twice. Earlier today even.” I’m breathing hard, waiting for a reaction, but all I get is another snarled repeat of the same sentence.

“I am not angry with you, tiny female.” He draws back, luminescing prettily across the steel walls and sterile furniture. Abraxas is a wild thing that doesn’t belong in space. Somehow, we’re going to have to make this work. “A Vestalis mate bond is notoriously strong.”

I throw my arms around him, and he wraps both his wings and his arms around me in return. I’ve never been so relieved or happy to see another person in my whole life. This is where I’m meant to be.

“And the Sucker Tail?” His grumble shakes my whole body, down to the bones, and I cringe. But I don’t stop hugging him.

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. Rurik—the Vestalis prince—was pissing me off, telling me what to do, saying I needed a chaperone and all this other stupid shit. I just …” I trail off, but it feels like I’m being dishonest, so I keep going. Even I don’t fully understand my actions with Officer Hyt. “He’s attractive, and he’s nice, and he never wears clothes …”

“You did not believe we would see each other again; you were afraid.” Abraxas’ voice is surprisingly soft. For somebody who’s just found out that his mate has cheated on him, he’s remarkably calm, too. “I failed to protect you when it mattered most.”

“You were out hunting,” I tell him, pulling back so that I can see his face. His mouth has disappeared into the darkness of his expression. He blames himself for what happened. “The Vestalis have a planet-destroying megaship and an armada. What could you have possibly done?”

“I could have kept my female by my side that day, knowing that he was searching for you. It was an oversight on my part, leaving you alone in the den.” Abraxas’ expression kindles into something fierce, and then I’m on my back again with him caging my body against the floor. I notice that he uses the mating rod again this time, but I’m not complaining. It’s my favorite of his cocks, but only by a hair.

“If you’d been in the den with me, it wouldn’t have changed a thing,” I tell him when we lay together afterward. He’s curled on his side, and I’m tucked up in a ball against him, burrowing into his hot skin and the chuffing sounds he makes as he sniffs my hair. Can he smell Rurik’s pheromones? He said as much already, but I’m still embarrassed and ashamed.

Neither of those emotions come easily or frequently to me. I once broke up with a guy two minutes before we jumped out of an airplane on our very first skydiving lesson. I don’t get shy, and I don’t feel guilty.

Until now.

Maybe I never cared enough about anyone I dated before?

I sure as hell care now.

“Actually, if you’d been in the den, you might be dead. It was better this way.”

“Being separated from my mate is its own sort of death.” He takes me by the shoulders with his wing-hands and moves me so that he can look into my eyes again. The spikes down his back and tail lift in agitation, dripping venom to the floor. He grasps my face with his other hands, holding me tightly as he peers into my eyes. “You do not trust me enough, female.”

“I trust you more than I trust myself,” I blurt, but he lifts the edge of his lip in a warning growl.

“If we are separated, we will die. You do not have to believe the legend that our deaths will be caused by broken hearts, but it is true nonetheless. It is without fail. Never once.” He shudders all over, eyes closing briefly. “Tell me you have not felt the effects.”

He waits in silence, eyes closed, and my mind … goes back to my dizziness. Feeling sluggish. Tired.

“I passed out today …” I hedge, and those eyes of his, purple and blue and gold, open to stare at me. His pupils dilate as he waits for me to elaborate. It takes me three tries to find the words. “You’re right. I’ve felt like shit, the last two days especially.”

I haven’t been on Rurik’s ship to gouge lines into my table, but I think we’re on day four of being separated.

“While it is different for every mated pair, I have seen deaths as early as seven Jungrukian days.” Abraxas exhales and sits up, more like a dragon and less like a man, tail tucked around the pair of us, keeping me close. “We cannot wait for that pompous fool to take the throne. You will die first, and I will follow shortly.” He cocks his head, and I fidget with my hands under the intensity of that stare. “My spirit will trail yours through the dirt, and we will inhabit new bodies. But I do not wish to seek and find you again. It was difficult enough to woo you in this life.”

My entire face is bright red and hot to the touch, but I pretend like I’ve got some chill left in me.

“In a week, Officer Hyt can arrange for us to see each other again. I was …” I trail off because the plan I made isn’t feasible, and I know that. There are too many reasons not to go through with it. Not the least of which is because I don’t want Rurik to die. “I was going to run away, find you, and we were going to hide until the prince starved to death. But … what if he’s right? What if his parents chase us down and kill way more people than just you and me?” I don’t let myself feel the grief that’s waiting on the horizon for me. I’m not wasting my time missing Abraxas while I’m still with him. “We’ll have to meet up then and …” I look him over, and he offers me a terribly naughty smirk in response. “It’s the mating, isn’t it? When we fuck, we’re like, refreshed or something?”

“It is the mating,” he agrees in a purr, dragging me to him again. We’re going to spend all night having sex, I know that. But first, we should probably get through this conversation.

“We meet up in seven days, and then we plan our next rendezvous.” I never thought to ask Rurik how long it’ll be before he takes the throne, but that seems like pretty damn useful information right now. Fucking Avril. I bet she was supposed to teach me that shit, too.

“Seven days is too risky; it must be sooner.”

“But the wedding is tomorrow, and we’ll be back on the ship.” I give Abraxas a look. “You have no idea how creepy that place is. There are veins and, like, meat all over the walls. The king can see everything that happens on the ship. He can control everything that happens. Oh, and his wife is a gigantic millipede monster.”

Abraxas waits for my words to process in his translator.

“A millipede?” he asks, and it takes a minute for the information to register properly. “Ah, yes. The queen.” His lip curls again in disgust. “She comes from a violent, war-hungry species. It is said that the king of the Noctuida is only as good as his mate. It is her heart that guides the direction the court will take.”

That … doesn’t bode well. I don’t think I have an exceptional heart. I have a very, very human heart. Fickle. Prone to conflicting emotions. Selfish. I can be extremely selfish.

That makes me nervous.

But surely you can’t be any worse than a war-hungry millipede, right Eve? Give yourself some credit.

“We won’t be able to see each other until we get to the rendezvous spot.” I can hold out for seven days, can’t I? But something about that timeline makes me very, very nervous.

Abraxas considers that while another issue prods guiltily at my heart, one that’s much more selfish but also one that I can’t control.

“He’s going … when I mate with him …” I can barely finish as Abraxas refocuses his attention on me. “I can’t get out of mating with him, Abraxas. There’s no way for me to avoid it.”

“I am aware,” he replies, his entire body prickling with violence. His scales ruffle like the hair of an angry cat, and the claws in his knuckles emerge to scrape across the floor, drawing metal ribbons up. I slap him away from doing that. Poor Officer Hyt. He already has a ruined door to worry about. He doesn’t need gouges in the floor of his ship. It’s probably going to smell like alien dragon sex for a while in here, and I’m sorry-not-sorry about that.

“When we mate, all of my eggs”—I gesture at my belly—“they’ll have his DNA. Like, I won’t ever be able to have a baby that isn’t related to Rurik.” The thought isn’t as horrifying as it was yesterday, but I’m still frustrated. “Even if … you’re right and somehow, you got me pregnant, he’ll take over the fertilized embryo, too.”

“He will not,” Abraxas snarls, mouth rippling, teeth flashing. He snatches my face again and brings me close. “Do not fear. I have seeded you, and my child will remain my child.”

“I only get to have sons,” I add, because I’m pretty salty about that. I always wanted a daughter.

“If the child was to be female, she will remain female. He cannot change that.” Abraxas makes this horrible groaning sound that has me worried for his health, snatching me up in his tail and dragging me down the hallway to the room he was in when I first arrived.

The room is small, and I think there might’ve once been a bed—Officer Hyt’s bed—taking up the majority of the space. It’s been blanketed with furs and hides, evening the small room into one, big, cushy nest. Abraxas takes me in there and holds me close to him, licking my cheek to clean a stray tear off. I hadn’t even realized that one had fallen.

“I have evaluated the issues facing us quite extensively,” he growls. “While I was in the pirate’s ship with your sister-human, Jane.” Aww. He remembers that I called Jane my sister? I honestly don’t believe I could love anybody more than I love Abraxas. I need to tell him that. Tonight is about making sure he understands that implicitly. “On the voyage to get here. Right now. My desire is to slaughter the prince and eat him, but I know the outcome will be poor. If we wish to continue on in this life, and we wish to meet our child, we must make sacrifices.”

“Nothing in this life is free or easy. To get something worthwhile, one must give something up in return.” I’m quoting Abraxas’ words back to him, and he knows it. He offers me what amounts to the Aspis version of a smile.

“I do not wish to waste my brief time with you. We do not ever know when our time with the one we love will be cut short. This moment here is the most precious of all, and we should treasure it.”

I’ve got full-on tears now, but I’m not crying. I swear.

Abraxas leans down, sweeping that long, sinuous tongue of his over my mouth.

A sound, like rain, hits the glass window on the opposite wall, and I jump. Fear fills my throat and chokes the words out of me, but Abraxas—as inexperienced in space travel as I am—simply glances back to look. Tiny meteors, like gold sparks, hit the window and tumble down the glass. They patter on the roof of the space cruiser, and my vision blurs.

This ship isn’t inside the station; it’s just stuck to it. The doorways are connected, but there’s nothing around us but space, space, and more space. What if it detaches? What if—

“Come here, my female.” He lets out a rolling growl that sounds like a chuckle through the translator. “It is a harmless meteor shower; you needn’t be afraid.” He draws me in again, curling his body around mine. I press my cheek to his scaled chest and close my eyes, stroking my fingers down his hard belly.

There’s so much more we could talk about, so much more that needs to be said. But for now, I’m content to hold him, to appreciate him, to imagine that we’re in the den in the rain, that it’s just him and me, forever.

The air around us heats and the tension between our bodies stretches and tugs, pulls on our heartstrings and encourages more intimate acts than a simple hug. I gently pull away and encourage Abraxas to lean back against the wall, wings spread out and curled around the edges of the room. There’s not enough space in here for him. He dominates it effortlessly. Consumes it.

I get down on my knees, sliding my fingers over the smooth, flatness of his groin. He watches me, the purple spirals on his horns, on his hands, on his chest and belly, warming an otherwise dim and unremarkable place with violet light. When my fingertips catch on a loose fold of skin, I probe one inside and find him slick and wet, a hard nub pushing back against me.

Oh my God. I haven’t had the opportunity to explore his body like this, and I’m not about to miss the chance. When I withdraw my hand, he snarls at me, snatching my wrist with his tail. I don’t move, waiting for him to release me. It takes a couple of minutes of us staring one another down before he relents and gives in.

“You wish to take charge of this encounter?” he asks me, like he’s truly baffled. “I was under the impression that my female liked to be fucked.”

I swallow hard at his words—he’s not wrong—but I want a chance to play, too.

“I do like to be fucked,” I admit with another annoying blush staining my cheeks. “But I also want to make you feel good.”

“I promise you, female, that I feel quite good when I’m rutting you against the ground, when my seed is pumping into your womb, when you are slicking your hot channels over my cocks.” He reaches out for me, but I give him a warning look.

My fingers dip between my legs, gathering my own wetness—and plenty of his, too—and I make myself slippery before I touch him again. My fingertips glide over his black scaled body, finding that opening in his skin and dipping inside.

Abraxas groans, the sound so primal and so male that it doesn’t come through the translator at all but for static. It’s too pure a sound, too basic in the best possible way. I’ve only been on the ship and the station for a handful of days, but God, I missed this. I missed the basic, easy, primal way in which Abraxas lives his life. Sex and hot food and sleep and warm water in a quiet hot spring pool. That’s all he needs to be happy.

My fingertip strokes the head of his shaft until it pushes back at me hard enough that it unfurls from inside of him, splitting his dark skin open with the tip. I fist him as best I can with my left hand, using my right to tease his mating rod in a similar fashion.

“I bet an Aspis female can’t do this,” I whisper smugly, and he snarls in agreement. One of his wing-hands fists in my hair and puts a firm but painless pressure on my scalp.

“Do not ever worry that your human nature is not enough for me. It drew me in, and it holds me. Female, you are the one I waited my entire life to meet. I did not choose hastily or in desperation; I chose you because you were right.”

A moan escapes my own lips this time, accompanied by the almost violent protrusion of his mating rod from inside his body. My fingers continue to probe inside of him, cupping his sack in my palm and drawing it out to hang, half-emptied but rapidly plumping as I watch. Damn. Abraxas is virile as fuck. Maybe there’s truth to his idea that I’m already pregnant, that somehow his seed is impervious to a hostile Vestalis takeover?

The meteor shower continues on, hot embers tumbling over the glass and turning the endless darkness a brilliant, blazing gold.

Everything is sticky now. His sack and its purple luminescence. My fingers. His shafts.

I snag one cock in each hand and then lean down, putting my lips near the bead of liquid at the tip of his mating rod.

“Female.” He grabs my hair harder, and I lift my eyes to look up at him. “What is this?” He sounds suspicious which is funny as hell to me.

“It’s a human thing. It’s called a blow job. Trust me: you’ll like it.” I pause and then correct myself. “You’ll love it.”

Abraxas doesn’t appear convinced.

“These rods are for mating, not for eating,” he tells me with all due seriousness, and I snort a laugh. “I would never consider allowing an Aspis female to put her mouth anywhere near my rods. They would be bitten off and swallowed.”

“Good thing I’m not an Aspis female then, huh? Besides, you did it to me.” I slick my tongue over the head of his mating rod, and he releases a snarl that shakes the entire ship. The sound is wild, completely primal, and it knots my insides with a nervous flutter. My cunt pulses and squeezes on emptiness, wishing that he’d fill me. Praying that he does. Knowing I’m going to at least give this blow job thing a go first.

I’m not an oral sex girl; I don’t like to give it. That’s more Jane’s deal. I think she even prefers giving over receiving. But not me.

This is the first time I have ever wanted to go down on a guy, and he just so happens to be a gigantic alien dragon with two penises. Go figure.

With my right hand, I stroke and pet and squeeze his upper cock while my left hand takes over the lower one. I’ve never jerked off or sucked a guy with two dicks, so this is a learning experience for me, too.

“Explain to me why I should not just shove you over and take you in both holes?” Abraxas isn’t threatening me or being an ass: he’s serious. Well, he wants an answer? I’ll give it to him.

I don’t know that I can fit him in my mouth, so I don’t bother trying. Instead, I use my tongue as a tool, exploring the unfamiliar shape of his cock, pausing only to blow gentle puffs of air against the slickness.

His entire body goes still.

Using my right thumb, I brush up against his head, offering delicate, finessed strokes. The less like an Aspis I can behave right now, the better. I want to show him what a human being is capable of. My tongue might not be as long as his, but it’s soft and warm and wet. I slick it liberally up and down the length of him, pausing with my mouth pressed against his body to lay a kiss beside his shaft. On his belly. On the tip of his pleasure rod.

Abraxas purrs at me, relaxing his body, clawed wing-hand digging into my hair. He massages my scalp as I move my mouth from one shaft to the other, teasing and licking and tasting until he’s dripping. Liquid pools on the length of both rods, hot and sweet and musky. I like the taste. It’s like a drug, making my muscles quiver, budding my nipples until they hurt, drawing my breath in and out in ragged, dirty bursts.

When I try to steal a hand away to touch myself, Abraxas catches my wrist with his tail and puts it back.

“I will take care of you, female.” His tail slips between my legs, spines flattened so as not to hurt me. The tip of it dips into my folds but doesn’t enter me, stroking me up to hiccuping gasps that I release against his shafts as I kiss and nibble, scraping his skin with my teeth.

“Shit.” I’m fumbling now, finding it harder and harder to pleasure him as he pets me into submission with his tail between my legs. Looking up, I find his gaze firmly locked on me, pupils blown wide, horns glowing. He doesn’t have the upper hand just yet.

I know something else that an Aspis female cannot do.

Using both hands, I grab my breasts and I capture his lower cock between them. His mouth splits his face in half, and he jerks my head back with a wing-hand, diving his tongue between my lips. There’s plenty of lube for me to slide my breasts up and down his shaft, working him up to a frenzy. His sack pulses with bright light, taut and swollen and ready to spill inside of me again.

His tail retreats and wraps my waist, pulling me up suddenly and bringing us face-to-face.

“Delicious, little human.” He pushes me onto his mating rod, using his tail to lift me up and down, sliding himself all the way in before pulling all the way out. He teases me with the tip against my folds before bringing me down on his hardness again. Again. Again. The next time he lifts me up, he brings my breasts close to his face, swirling his tongue around them, squeezing them with the strength in it, gliding the appendage along my nipples like a hot, wet ribbon. His pleasure rod is dripping between us, nice and hard, offering perfect friction for my clit.

He keeps this position going long enough that I feel my body tense up on the verge of a climax.

“I’m .. I’m coming,” I pant out, and he growls at me in response. Abraxas grabs hold of my waist with his hands, replacing his tail, and tucks me up against him. The move causes his dick to slip out of me, and I gasp in surprise. I have no idea what he’s doing until—

His tail thrusts into my pussy as I dig my nails into his skin, a scream breaking out of me that echoes around the silent ship. My sounds mix with my mate’s, blend in with the meteor shower outside the window. Sweaty. Gold and purple light. So many stars.

And just when I think it can’t get any weirder or more alien, he lifts his spines, slowly and carefully. It doesn’t hurt, but the rigid rake of them against my insides breaks my entire brain. The orgasm is painful and messy, and I can’t breathe for the duration of it. My blood goes wild, like maybe the venom he’s just injected me with is quickening my every sense. I can see better, smell better, hear better. Adrenaline surges through me, bright and hot.

“Now,” he begins, laying me down on the furs on my back. “I will finish myself inside of you.” He covers me with his massive form—his smallest form—hands pinning my wrists while he caresses my curves with his wing-hands. “I will seed you so thoroughly that you will have no worries when you bed the prince.”

His mating rod slips into my pulsing pussy, working the swollen folds with a rapid-fire frenzy that has me writhing. I don’t know how many times it’s possible to come without dying, but I think I’m about to find out.

“Give me a daughter,” I mumble drunkenly, and he laughs, the sound of a beast.

“It’s already been done, female.”

Wing-hands on my breasts, pleasure rod against my clit, pheromones poisoning my skin. It’s no wonder that I come one, two, three more times. He empties his sack into me first, knots me, and then switches to his other shaft. When he finishes with that one, and our bodies lock together on the inside, I feel his heartbeat through those tiny blood vessels.

“Do not be afraid, female,” he murmurs, spine curved, head tucked up against my neck. The shadow he casts on the wall is one of a bow-backed demon with a grudge. A smile tilts my lips. “In the end, it will be you, me, and our child. Everything else is inconsequential.”

I want to believe him. I believe that he believes that. But … I don’t know if that’s how things are going to turn out. So I say nothing, wrap my arms around him, and enjoy the time we have left together.

I can’t find any paper or pens in Officer Hyt’s ship—nothing so incredibly prehistoric around here—but I desperately want to get a message back to Jane. I don’t dare touch any of the techy gadgets. I’m sure there’s something in here that I could use to record a quick video, but what if I bump something and the ship dislodges from the station and we get sucked into Yaoh’s gravity field and—

I whirl around to see Abraxas watching me with a predator’s eyes. He smiles, but a smile on his face is not the same as it is on other faces. It’s an event. It’s a deadly chasm. It’s a threat and a promise both.

“Your sister-human, Jane, is amusing,” he tells me as I plant my hands on my hips and spot a cabinet that I haven’t looked in yet. I walk over and open the door, finding a series of belts on a hook. There are like twelve varieties of the belts I’ve seen Hyt wear, each with varying amounts of loincloth attached to them. Huh. In another cabinet, I find a whole pegboard full of cowboy hats. A third drawer reveals … My mind goes blank. There’s a masturbator and some lube. And when I say ‘masturbator’, I mean one of those fake vaginas that serves as the dude-version of a dildo. Guys mount the silicone and they—

I close the drawer.

“She didn’t tell you any embarrassing stories about me, did she?” I can already feel my eyebrow twitching. Jane knows all my stories. She knows everything about me. Whatever Abraxas wanted to know, she’ll have told him. It’s not that she’s a bad secret keeper, but she’ll have known after meeting my mate that he’s the one. And since he’s the one, a filter isn’t necessary.

Abraxas comes for me, curling his body around mine. I bite back a gasp, wrapping my hands around his tail. Now that I’ve had it inside of me, felt those venom-tipped spikes teasing my pussy, I want more. I want to experiment all night, see the things we could do to each other. For example, Abraxas has that sort of spiked mane for hair, but it’s nothing like what I’ve got. What if I laid him down and dragged my silky strands along his body?

“She told me many interesting tales, but mostly, she was concerned for you. I assured her that the Vestalis prince would not hurt you. A Vestalis mate-bond is heady, addictive, and parasitic.” He snaps that last word off his tongue, and I feel a little sad.

I feel sad for Rurik because even if the insta-love stuff is overpowering, he didn’t choose it. It’s a part of his biology. As far as I can tell, he’s trying to make things right.

“What’s a copulatory plug?” I’m trying to change the subject here, but I also really want to know.

My mate chuckles, unfurling himself and moving like a blur of shadow as he sweeps around me on all fours, circling me. Hunting me. And holy hell, I want to be caught.

However … my sweetly fucked cunt needs a small break.

“A copulatory plug. Ah. Yes, I could smell the sex on them both. Your sister-human has mated the Yaena. When he finds a female that he wishes to breed, he leaves a mess of fluid inside her that prevents other males from mating her.”

Oh dear. I mean, that’s pretty much what Officer Hyt told me, but … Jane is going to be pissed. She’s not a commitment type of girl either. And a copulatory plug? What a weird, archaic sounding thing. I know that, like, lemurs and spider monkeys and shit have them. Spiders. Reptiles. Rats. Ew.

“What the fuck is a Yaena?” I’m trying to imagine what sort of alien Jane might’ve fucked. Seeing as I’ve gotten down and dirty with a dragon, a moth, and a tentacle fox, I can scarcely imagine. Hopefully it’s not something gross. I’ve never been good at pretending to like Jane’s boyfriends and vice versa. Seems like she got along well enough with Abraxas though. That’s a relief.

“An upright creature with much fur and sharp teeth,” Abraxas supplies easily, sitting down on the ground behind me. “If you wish to speak to Jane, tell me your message and I will remember it.”

“Thanks, but no thanks. I want to give her a message directly from me, not filtered through my mate. She’d hate that.”

We both pause at the sound of a doorbell.

“Knock-knock.” The door whooshes open and Hyt appears, half-naked as always and pulling a cart behind him. He turns, flashing me his tight ass, tails wafting around like underwater kelp, and then drags the cart into the ship. The door closes automatically behind him. “A whole star-load of meat, and now I have to figure out some way to explain to my mother that I’m not bringing it home to feed the family.”

He releases the cart with a sigh, hands on his hips, and gives Abraxas a dirty look. My mate offers an easy but menacing response.

“Your services would have been appreciated had you not thought to breed my female in my absence.”

Both Hyt and I have the common decency to cringe.

“Yeah, well, you’re expensive to feed.” He clasps both his hands and a pair of tentacles together in prayer. “May the Dead Kings bless me with a future pay raise.”

“Hey.” I’m wearing one of Hyt’s belts that I found in his room, paired with a strap that I think is used to cart guns around but which also manages to cover my breasts. It was the best I could do, and I felt like maybe it’d be nice not to be naked in case something came up. It’s only when Hyt turns to look at me directly that he seems to notice the outfit. His gaze fixates on the clothing before lifting reluctantly to my face. Abraxas snarls in warning, but I give him a look. “Do you have any pens or paper lying around that I could use to write a note to Jane? Maybe a phone or a tablet to record a video?”

“Pen and paper?” he repeats, like I’ve just asked him for use of a gramophone. Hyt uses a tentacle to push his hat down over his eyes for a minute in thought. “Very rare, very expensive items. As far as a video? I don’t know that we should get the Imperial Princess on camera wearing a police officer’s clothes and smelling like sex with an Aspis.”

“Videos don’t record smells,” I argue, and he tucks his hat firmly back in place, giving me a look.

“Maybe not on Earth, but here they do.” He waves his tentacles dismissively as my jaw hangs open in shock. Smell-o-vision? Literally. I don’t think that’s doing anybody any favors to be honest. “I’ll track back to the bookstore, see what I can do. Maybe you can write in the margins of somethin’? A pen would be easier to track down than blank sheets of paper.”

“Buy one of the two copies of Twilight from the human section. Jane’ll love that.” I’m grinning now, imagining scribbling down a message for my bestie in a young adult vampire novel on a space station while wearing … a Falopex’s clothes. “Also, I’m really sorry, but I have to admit that I went through your drawers and found your … proclivities.”

Hyt looks down at the drawer that I’m pointing at, and then back to me. I don’t know what a Falopex pussy looks like, but I’m guessing it’s not oh, say, peach-colored like my own skin and darkened with curly black hair. This guy’s into human beings in particular, isn’t he?

His eyes track down to the gouges on his floor, and his mouth flattens into a line. His companion is nowhere to be seen which is probably a good thing. If Hyt does have a thing for me, and his pet reacts to that thing, then Abraxas is going to lose his temper. I get the feeling that he’s just barely resisting the urge to kill the officer right now.

“You have lingered long enough, and your eyes linger further still,” Abraxas’ voice is a low, but powerful warning.

Hyt points at me, wetting his lips as his eyes drop to my half-covered breasts beneath the leather strap, and then flicker back up to my face.

“Don’t touch anymore of my goddamn stuff. Don’t open my drawers. Don’t look in my cabinets. Humans, holy hell, what nuisances.” He stands up with another whistle and backtracks for the door, giving Abraxas a wide berth. “I’ll be back.”

He exits quickly, cowboy boots loud on the metal floors before the doors slide shut once more.

“He is a strange Sucker Tail,” Abraxas remarks, using his tail to remove the cover on the wagon. It’s full of raw meat. He grins. “But I bid you seek him out in the market because he is soft on humans. All of Jungryuk knows it.” Another pause. “That, and he is the only officer on the entire planet.”

Huh. For a guy whose father is the chief of police, you’d think he’d get a cushier gig. Trying to wrangle the hellhole that is the black market all by your lonesome? That can’t be easy. I feel a small pang for Officer Hyt, and I wish him well in his search for a wife.

I can’t be her.

Not even if he likes me that way.

I’ve already got one more male in my life than I know what to do with.

I turn to Abraxas. There’s nothing to make a fire in here, and even if there were, it probably isn’t a good idea. I refuse to do anything that might dislodge this ship from its dock.

Fortunately, Hyt returns before Abraxas can force raw sweetbreads down my throat.

“Here.” He tosses a copy of Twilight onto the floor, digs into a pouch on his belt for a pen, and then drops a paper bag beside it. “Write your letter, leave it on my desk, and eat your damn dinner. It’s human-safe food so don’t worry.”

I just stare up at him from my position against Abraxas’ side, cuddled close to my mate while he eats. The cop and I look at each other, and it’s not like when I look at Rurik, but it’s … something. Like, maybe we should’ve been friends in another life. Our personalities mesh so damn well. I have a feeling that we’ve got similar senses of humor, too.

“Why are you helping me?” I ask, and even Abraxas goes still to listen to his answer.

Hyt’s face shutters, takes on that cold cast I saw when I accused him of being a bad cop. Horrible move on my part. Clearly, he already had an idea of where Connor was, and a plan in place to go get him.

“My sister, the human one I told you about. Well.” He sighs and wraps his tentacle tails around himself suddenly, like he needs the comfort, a cloud of soft blue wafting in front of his nearly naked body. “She had a little sister—a real sister—that I couldn’t save because I was following rules and protocol.” Hyt turns a vibrant, neon pink. He makes himself smile at me, but there’s no warmth in it. I wonder if he learned to smile from his sister? “So I don’t follow rules and protocol very often. And I don’t abandon humans, no matter how much of a pain in the ass they are.”

He gives Abraxas a look, stares at the crumpled door, the ruined floor, and then he takes his leave.

I check the brown bag he brought me and find … something. It looks like a giant pink dumpling in a box, big enough that I need two hands to hold it. But it smells good, and there’s a cute Falopex logo on the box lid. I take a bite, finding ground meat mixed with flower petals. It tastes herby, slightly sweet, a bit tangy.

“This is good,” I murmur in surprise, looking over to see Abraxas with the edge of his lip lifted.

“I do not like other males feeding my female,” he snarls, and my eyes go wide. I hadn’t considered Hyt’s gesture in that way, but now that Abraxas has mentioned it, that makes sense. I put the dumpling back in the box and then turn to him, pointing at my mouth.

“Alright, go ahead. Shove some raw meat between my lips.” I freeze. Did Abraxas pick up on that innuendo? He must because his scowl turns into a violent yet arousing smile.

“I did not catch this meat either; there is little recourse for me here unless I wish to hunt creatures in a space station.” He doesn’t sound entirely opposed … Abraxas uses his tail to gesture at the dumpling. “Eat, my female. This is but a brief blip in a very long life together. One day, we will lie together in our new den and we will look upon this moment with fond farewell.”

I exhale, pushing my hair back from my face. Abraxas is bestial, feral, but he’s also oddly poetic and introspective. I can’t believe I ever questioned that aspect of him. A smile teases my lips when I remember our first meeting, his big shadowy body in my face, lips pulled back and teeth bared, and me screaming the word ‘fuck’.

“I wonder what this meat is?” I ask, when let’s be honest, I knew better.

“It is lab-grown meat.” Abraxas grumbles and shakes his head, turning back to his own meal.

Right. Lab-grown meat. I can’t decide if that’s a really awesome thing or a really creepy one. Whatever.

The food is good; the company is better.

“You came to the stars for me,” I whisper, lying on my back beside Abraxas, naked and freshly fucked. I can see the diamond-studded sky outside the window, but it doesn’t bother me right now. I tell myself it’s nighttime, and that our view is simply that of a night sky and not of endless space and freezing cold and no oxygen and blackholes.

“Female, I would go anywhere for you,” Abraxas says simply, his body curled around mine protectively, tail entwined with my legs, his arms around me, his wings draped like blankets. It’s so easy to relax into him, to pretend like we’re back on his planet in his den.

Tomorrow, I’m marrying Rurik. I’m fucking Rurik. I’m—

I put a hand over my belly.

“You’re that confident about your seed, huh?” I know I’ve already asked about this, but I can’t seem to let it go. Abraxas wants a child; it doesn’t seem fair that he should lose the chance. It definitely isn’t fair that I’m going to sleep with somebody else. If he were doing the same thing, I wouldn’t be so calm about it.

“I am certain,” he replies, and when I look over, I see that his eyes are closed. I reach up and run my hand along one of his horns, collecting sticky pheromones on my skin. He lifts the corner of his lip in the Aspis version of a smirk. “The Vestalis have been without a planet for too long, wandering the stars and relying on their gadgets. They will not know what to do with me. They will not know what to do with you. They will not be able to test and scan and monitor our child.”

I’ve heard over and over how Aspis can scramble tech. I wonder how that happened? Like, did they have to evolve that ability to escape the prying eyes of the Vestalis and the Cartians? I don’t respond or ask. I just lie there and enjoy his warm body and his smell and the way my cunt fists tight when I lick some of that stickiness off my hands.

Abraxas’ eyes are both open now. I can feel his tail twitching, muscles tensing. He’s going to mate me again, but we both knew that already.

“I know you have mated other males before me, but I did not think you would mate any males after me.” He lifts his head up, using one of his wing-hands for support. “However, even if we were not fated to go to the dirt together”—his terminology for until death do us part—“there is no obstacle that could keep us from being together.” He leans down and chuffs my hair, and I almost start crying again. Damn it. I am sappy when I’m in love. Gross. It’s pretty clear to me though that I’ve never been in love before now. “You are the one I have chosen, Eve.”

I turn toward him, loving how easily I melt against his chest, like I was born to fit there, and he was born to hold me.

“There are many reasons for mating,” Abraxas continues, using long fingers to touch my hair. “Power. Offspring. Joining territories. Attraction. But there is only one noble cause that carries through the stars and follows the soul’s journey into the next life.” He leans down toward me and growls the word. “And that is love.”

Uhhhh.

My brain is broken.

“I don’t want to marry Rurik tomorrow,” I whisper, and in that moment, I believe it. In that moment, I’m sad. In that moment, I just want Abraxas and our den and a daughter that splits worlds by sharing our DNA.

“I know, and for that, I am so very sorry.” Abraxas tucks me beneath him, and I spread my legs, desperate to feel him inside of me again. As many times as we can get, I want to meld with him until it’s impossible to see where I end and he begins. “I am an unworthy male who does not deserve the love of such a sweet, small female.”

“If only he hadn’t licked my blood …” The words fade away, but that’s fate. I went to Tabbi Kat’s because Jane needed a favor. We were abducted. I was bleeding. I’m lucky to be alive. And now that Rurik’s life depends on my own? I can’t abandon him. We have to play the cards we’ve been dealt.

“If.” Abraxas laughs, and the sound shakes the whole ship. “That is a useless word designed by creatures with too much free time on their hands. If does not change a thing, and if does not propel the future. You need to learn to talk less, my female.” He uses his tail to steal my translator, setting it aside along with his own.

Only when we’ve lost the ability to talk does it feel like we’ve finally found the truest way to communicate with each other. Only then does it feel like I understand him perfectly.