Page 55 of The Alien Reindeer's Bounty
“I’ve been in situations where I’ve had to shoot people, but I have never intentionally killed anyone. I aim for the shoulder or the leg.”
She held his gaze to judge the veracity of his statement. Eventually, she nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he said. He could let the subject rest and move on, but she wanted to know, and he felt the need to tell her everything.
Everything.
“In the military, I was in combat,” he said. “I know I injured many people. Some may have died. I do not know. At the time, I didn’t care.” He had been a bundle of fury and rage. The military had been interested in his bond to a lesser species, speculating that the hormones necessary for the bond gave him an edge in battle. His commanding officers sent him into a high-risk situation with little oversight, just an objective.
If the bond gave him an advantage, it was the desire to return to his mate. Returning to his true home kept him alive when he otherwise would have succumbed to injuries.
“I needed to survive, to go home,” he said.
He pushed her hair back and tucked it behind her ears.
“Any other secrets?” she asked. “A secret family? Secret identity?”
“Just one.” He tilted his head back and flexed that mental muscle. A sharp pinch of pain and his antlers sprouted.
Odessa
Holy fuck.
Holy.
Fuck.
“Mads—” She didn’t know what to say and repeated his name, because the man she loved just grew a set of antlers like it was no big deal. A memory of standing in the forest with the boy wearing antlers came rushing back. “When we were kids… that wasn’t a headband.”
“No.”
Without thinking, she reached out to touch them, but drew her hand back. “This whole time… What are you?”
Hurt flashed in his eyes. “I am reilendeer. I was born on a planet called Reilen.”
Alien. He was an alien.
“So not from Norway?” She winced. People who say there are no stupid questions have obviously never asked a really dumb question.
“Never been, actually,” he said.
“But you look so human.”
“Do I?” His golden-brown eyes fixed on her. The iris crowded the whites of his eyes and shifted to a deeper blue.
Well, not at the moment.
“What was that?”
“I’m able to see into more light spectra than you. My eyes reflect blue light waves when this happens.”
“I thought I imagined that,” she murmured, remembering all the times the light played tricks and turned his eyes from brown to blue. “Who else is a, you know, alien?” She could barely say the words.
“My father and my uncle.”
“That’s all?”
“All that I know of.”
