Page 3 of Resisting the Alien Rider

Garrek’s vest was open at the front, and I could see the way his abdominal muscles contracted, like I’d just poked him in a ticklish place. His gaze sliced down to my crotch with something that seemed an awful lot to me like inquisitive suspicion. As if it had never occurred to him that a human female might actually have to urinate at some point during the day.

Probably a good thing this one didn’t request a bride…

She’d have a hell of a lot of work to do, that’s for sure.

Would need the patience of a saint.

“I’ll be right back,” I said, turning and hustling away into the trees.

2

GARREK

When Magnolia had said my name, it had been like someone had fastened reins to my tail or my spine or my skull and yanked. Like there was no other option but for me to wheel my body around mid-stride and barrel back towards her. Like I was no longer in control of anything, least of all myself.

She’d said it quietly, uncertainly, like my name had been a question.

I’d wanted to answer it for her.

I’d wanted her never to have asked it at all.

Because now it was batting around in my head. An unwelcome echo. The lilting human softness of her voice wrapped around the rocky syllables of my name was a study in contrasts I somehow felt wholly unprepared for.

I did not like being unprepared, but by this point in my life I was resignedly used to it.

I’d been unprepared for the consequences ofstanding over my father’s lifeless body while a young Oaken shook, white-eyed and silent, behind me. I’d been unprepared for my half-feral convict-ward Killian being dumped in my lap.

I’d been unprepared for Magnolia. This human female who made irritating, unnamed emotions simmer inside me until they boiled over and spilled out of my eyes like the glowing oil of mutinous lanterns. Lanterns someone should have tossed into a black creek or a river long ago, because blast it all to Zabria and back, they were bound to give away my position any day now.

What that position was?

Who the blazes knew.

What I did know, though, was that I’d been charged with getting Magnolia safely to Oaken, and I planned to do it.

Starting with making sure she didn’t snap her skinny human neck or step on an ardu serpent while trying to find a place to piss in the woods.

Sighing through gritted fangs, I followed her.

It did not take me long to find her. My ears picked up on her presence immediately. Shadows cloaked her, but I could tell that she’d positioned herself beyond a wide, gnarled tree trunk ahead. Faint rustling told me clothing was being removed, and I did not like the way my heart momentarily seemed to stop beating at that thought.

That would be just my luck, I supposed. To get so far out here, close to three days’ ride from the warden’s, and die in this inky snarl of woods, leavingKillian and Magnolia and the animals to fend for themselves.

Killian would likely be able to take care of her,I reasoned. He was an unpredictable child, more violent at times than a hissing genka, but he was clever. He had the skills to survive, many of which I’d taught him but several he’d brought here himself. And while he seemed mostly to tolerate me, he already adored Magnolia.

Still. I would have appreciated it if my heart maintained a more predictable rhythm. One compatible with not dying. Just because Killian could probably keep himself and Magnolia and maybe even the animals alive didn’t mean he’d be able to get her to her groom.

That’s what I was going to do.

I owed Oaken that much.

A gentle sound, like a stream of cool rain hitting rock, shook me from morbid thoughts of my own death and what might happen after. An uncomfortable heat began to creep beneath my hide. Chest tight, I shifted from boot to boot, unsure where to look even though Magnolia was not even in my sights.

She made the act of pissing sound pretty. How was that even possible?

I’d let her urinate on me if she wanted to.

I jerked as if slapped by the foulness of that sudden and unwelcome thought. It had come seemingly from nowhere, but clearly had originated in the putrid recesses of my own brain. I could blame no one else for the perversion of it.

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