Page 51 of Alien Desire
“I’ve brought you some food,” he says with a sigh, “and the pet some too.”
“You’re not coming in.”
“I understand,” he says, his usual calmness returned. “I’ll leave it by the door.”
I listen for his retreating footsteps, wanting to make sure he’s not lurking about out there ready to grab me and tie me up ready for the spaceship. It’s a risk, but one I’m going to have to take because I am starving. My stomach is still empty from my vomiting earlier.
Stalking to the door, I climb over my bed barrier and rest my ear to the wall. I can’t hear him, so carefully I dismantle the barricade, draw back the bolt and creak open the door.
I can’t see him either, only a tray with a dish of food for me and one for Fluffy. Fluffy whines behind me, clearly knowing what’s coming and quickly I grab the tray and bring it back inside the room, speedily replacing the beds so Tor can’t follow me in.
Then Fluffy and I eat together in the dark.
Chapter twenty - Tor
The Omega is displeased with me. I know this because for the last two days she has refused to emerge from the sleeping bay and won’t let me enter. She won’t speak with me either.
At first this petulance annoyed me. I contacted my planet for the good of her health and that of our child. We do not know if her body is capable of carrying a Gryton child. This pregnancy could be dangerous for her and the baby. She needs immediate medical care. I do not understand why she is being so unreasonable.
While I was willing to let her have her way before, I can’t do that now. Not when her life could be at risk. I cannot lose her.
No, she’s coming back with me, where I will claim her and she will be my Omega. Why I ever considered deviating from the original plan, I don’t know. There is a reason why things are the way they are on Astia and have been for centuries and centuries. I am a simpleton for ever considering forging a different path.
However, I am beginning to understand that Emma is far more stubborn than I realised. Foolishly, I’d imagined this tantrum of hers would last a few hours and then we would return to our usual pattern, enjoying one another’s company and bodies. But I have not set eyes on her, let alone touched her, for two whole days.
My father wouldn’t put up with such disobedience from an Omega. He’d either break down the door and drag her out, or refuse to have food served until hunger forced her out instead.
I can do neither. And so, weakling that I am, I dutifully leave food for her and that stupid pet — the one she is happy to see — at her door three times a day, just to ensure she won’t waste away.
My annoyance with her has shrivelled, and as the hours have passed, it is loneliness that fills its place. I miss Emma. I miss her smiles and her kisses and wrapping her in my arms. Two days. It is ridiculous. She and the sensual things she has shown me are drugs indeed, and my body and mind are suffering the withdrawals.
I did not enjoy the solo mission my father sent me on. I missed my kin. Discovering Emma on this planet provided the companionship I craved. Being banished back to my own company is a cruelty I find hard to bear.
To distract myself, I send messages backward and forward to Gryton.
My father appears relieved to find that I am alive. Apparently, search parties were sent to find me but everyone had been left baffled by my sudden disappearance and no trace of my ship could be found or detected.
‘I believe I have discovered a third universe,’ I write him. ‘The star systems here are unfamiliar.’
My father is excited by this news. He praises me in ways he never has before. My chances of being announced his heir have obviously greatly improved. No doubt my father is imagining the untold wealth that a new undiscovered universe will bring him.
He sets his physicists and navigators to work calculating how to reach me.
I wonder if he will come himself to collect me. He will want to be one of the first to enter the new universe. And so I’m surprised when he writes to tell me he will send one of his advisers, Lord Bryn — a fierce old Gryton I have known since my childhood. There is unrest in the Eastern lands and my father wishes to remain to quell the uprising.
I don’t tell my father about the Omega yet. I will wait to do that once I am back on Astia. There will be many questions and I want my allies around me when I make it known she is mine and carrying my child.
The last thing I want is for my father’s forces to steal her away before we’ve even made it home. Lord Bryn was given an Omega by my father as reward for his loyalty, but the illness affected her too and they have no children. Will this make him more pliable to my plight?
The messages to my father fill some time but not enough and I am restless and depressed without my Omega. It is a deep, heavy feeling which presses down on my shoulders and my chest, as if a great weight has been placed there that I cannot shift.
I speak with my closest allies; my half-brother Zyam and my best friend Strax.
‘So you got lost,’ Zyam mocks in his message to me. ‘You always were hopeless at reading a map.’
‘I was not lost,’ I write back even though this is not strictly true. ‘But my communications equipment was damaged in the crash and it took me some time to repair it and send a message.’
‘Tor, the great pilot, crashed?!’ It is another tease. He knows perfectly well I am one of the best pilots on Astia. ‘And you always were hopeless at electronics too — although I had no idea you werethatbad. It’s been months! When you didn’t send an SOS, we all thought you were dead.’
