Page 4 of Loved By the Alien King
My usual excitement over maps fizzed up inside me as I studied the ones on the walls. They all said Klio-3, but that must’ve been an error. A big one. None of these were accurate. They all showed rocky terrain rather than the mysterious jungle and the crystal-clear sea.
Even the large paper map—be still, my hearts—revealed a Klio-3 that didn’t actually exist.
What the hell was going on here?
I didn’t do this often, but I used my AI programming in my clone/Faid brain. I’d used it to hack into Nera’s ship for control so she couldn’t land here. I’d also used it to check that the snakes in the ocean that had bitten Nera really were poisonous.
So, lately, I guess I’d been using it a lot.
But I just wanted to make sure Klio-3 was the planet I was really on, or if it was the humans who didn’t know where they were.
It turned out humans were also terrible at geography. According to the databases my AI searched within seconds, Klio-3 was a jungle and ocean planet. Period.
Were these humans…okay?
While I was at it, I also searched for photos and the name of Nera’s ex so I knew whose tongue I’d be ripping out later.
When I found him, a bitter, acidic taste coated my mouth. He looked cold and boring and not at all able to keep up with Nera’s humor and brilliance.
The picture of him in my mind grew legs and arms as he opened the door and walked into the room. It washim. Not just the photo but the real him, here with me now.
“Captain Mike Early,” I growled, low and lethal. “We meet at last.”
Chapter three
Nera
Achokedscreamtorefrom my mouth. My knees collapsed, and I went down hard, catching myself with my hands. The daggers still gripped in my palms clattered against the stone floor. My eyes welled with tears and blurred Rain as she rose from the couch and started toward me.
She was going to kill me. Just like she had my little Lucy.
Wasting no time, I picked up both daggers and hurled them at her at once.
She caught them midair, one in each hand, not even flinching, not even hesitating her steps as she continued toward me.
I brought out a gun from my waistband, not mine, but someone else’s I’d stolen from the weapons table after escaping the cornucopia, and emptied all the rounds into her. The bullets bounced off of her synthetic skin like they were nothing but children’s toys.
Panic seized me by the throat. I had nothing left to use against her. She’d taken everything from me.
I shook with violence and vengeance, with wrath and murder. A wail that had been building inside me since I’d arrived finally tore free. Even I could hear it, a monster inside my own head forged from the fucking Faid kneeling down in front of me.
“Nera,” Rain said softly when I drew in a ragged breath. Tears striped her pale cheeks, coursing from her bright-blue eyes, and she shook her head. “You can’t hurt me.”
“I will find a way.” My voice sounded like I’d scraped it raw. I glared at her, my back arched while on all fours, a feral beast ready to pounce and kill. “Believe me.”
“I do. But Nera, you’re in danger, and I don’t know how long I can keep protecting you.”
“Protectingme,” I spat. “You bring me to a re-creation of my house, after what you did to me, and you tell me you’re protecting me? Get the fuck out with that bullshit, Rain.”
“There are no birds on this island, and yet you had bird poop on your shoulder. Remember?”
I huffed an exasperated breath. “We’re going to talk about poop now? How about telling me why you stole my entire living room when you ran away from Earth. Or why you’re here in the first place.”
“I didn’t steal it. After you left, I bought it virtually in Mike’s garage sale.”
“And the chair where you left her, Rain?” I shouted.
Bile scorched my tongue at the thought of that awful memory. I rubbed my eyes in order to dig it out, just like I’d done unsuccessfully over the last ten years. I couldn’t even bring myself to look in that direction, across from the couch, the ghost of a recliner that had sat catty-corner to the TV, in this mad mimicry of my living room.
