Page 21 of His Human to Charm

My mind is slow. I know this is because of how much I have put my body through in the last few days. Still, it takes me much too long to realize what I am seeing when the door finally opens.

There is only one male left in the building. He is small, still young, his face bruised and swollen, and blood covers his tunic. My mate, my sweet Alice, is positioned in front of him, a blade in her small human hand, holding it up as she bares her teeth at me. Tears stain her cheeks, but she does not touch them as she continues guarding the young male.

I growl deep in my chest, a threatening sound for the male behind her, who is trembling in fear already. I take a step closer, and my Alice pushes the young further behind her, biting her teeth in my direction.

“Mate.” The word sounds angry as I say it, but it is the only thing I can think to say.

Alice thinks I am a danger to her right now, but she is not afraid of me like she has been for many days before being taken from me. No, she is not fearful of me at all. She is angry at me. Protecting this young from me. Her features soften when she hears me call her mate, but she does not lower her blade and keeps her teeth bared to me as though she is a mother guarding her own young against a terrible beast.

“My mate.”

Alice narrows her eyes at me, unsure of what I am trying to say. I just want her to know she is mine, and I am hers. I have found her now. Everything is okay now because we have one another. We are together, and everything will be okay.

“Mate,” Alice says the word so quietly I almost do not hear it over the sound of the beating in my chest.

The word takes all the air from me. All of the pain in my body comes to the forefront of my mind. There is no threat here for my mate. They have both been dealt with. She is safe, or safe as can be until I can get her back in the tribe.

I fall to my knees, realizing I’m kneeling in a pool of my own blood. As my eyes fall from my mate’s ferocious little face to my body, I see the deep gashes from where the male tried to free himself before I killed him. I feel the hunger in my stomach, the burn in my throat from not having water for so long. Exhaustion tugs at my body like the goddess calling me back to her embrace. No matter how badly I wish to stay awake, to inspect my mate’s body to make sure she is unhurt, I am being forced to slumber.

My body hits the stone floor of the safety building, and the last thing I remember before darkness takes over is the feel of my mate’s hands on my face. The feeling of her turning my gaze up to hers. The worried look in her eyes as she whispers a worried sound to me. “You better not die. I’m supposed to talk to you.”

Yes, my mate, my sweet, wonderful mate. I take her words into my dreams with me and promise myself I will not die because if that were to happen, she would be very unhappy. The idea of making her unhappy is so foreign to me that it makes sense that I am to live. No matter what, no matter the injuries or what else is to come.

I will survive this, and I will take my mate back to the tribe, claim her as mine, and never let her out of my eyesight ever again. Yes, this is the perfect thing to do now that I have her back in my life again.

13

Alice

Iwake from the darkness not very long after the demon tried to squeeze the life out of me. In fact, I wake up as Twirls is beating the life out of the smaller demon, the one who I faintly remember plunging his knife into Curls’s neck.

I come to a bit more, a heavy weight on top of my body that I soon realize belongs to the demon who was stabbed. His body is lifeless and even colder against me. His blood stains my shirt and my skin. I try to push him off me, but he weighs too much. It doesn’t help that my body is exhausted from what I’ve had to endure. Not that any of that matters to me right now when I can hear the younger demon begging the other one to stop hitting him. There’s a loud crack before the hitting stops, and the wailing begins.

I push at the corpse on top of me, scrambling, knowing that right now, I need to be protecting this child who just killed someone for me. I shouldn’t be lying on the bed listening to him take blow after blow and crying. No matter how hard I struggle, the body doesn’t move until suddenly, it’s dragged off of me. I try to ignore that Twirls’s eyes are bloodred or the snarl he throws my way. I flinch when he raises his hand, but it’s only to wipe away blood that managed to hit his own forehead.

“Stay in this building,” Twirls snaps at me as he drags the dead body toward the front door. “If either of you try to run, I kill the other. If you both try, I will make you watch as I gut you both.”

I take his threat seriously, considering his friend choked me until I passed out more times than I can remember, and he just finished beating a child. My whole body trembles when I move, but he doesn’t seem to care about where I go. He knows I’ll behave because the alternative is death for both of us.

The door to the small house swings open, revealing a pale light, meaning morning must be here. I only catch a glimpse of the trees outside before the door slams shut as the body is dragged out. I move fast once we’re alone, my mind forcing my body to act even though I want so badly to curl up into a ball and cry. My throat aches, my shoulders are screaming in pain, and it’s taking everything in me not to start sobbing.

“It’s okay.” I try to soothe the smaller demon who’s lying in the fetal position on the floor. His crying is softer now, but it’s still there, and his body shakes worse than mine does. He’s just killed someone and taken his own beating. I’m sure he’s in far worse shape than I am, but I can’t let him lie here without me checking to make sure he’s okay.

“Hey, hey.” I try to get his attention by placing a hand on his shoulder. He hisses loudly, red eyes showing as he turns his head to face me. It’s then that I notice the broken horn and how one of them continues spiraling upward while the other is jagged and short. One of his eyes is swollen shut, blood falls from his split lip, and a bruise is starting to form on his jaw. “It’s okay,” I mutter quietly, trying to keep his gaze instead of looking at where his horn is broken. I want to have him remove his tunic so I can check his ribs and arms, but it can wait a minute until I get him to calm down. “We’re okay now.”

“Not okay.” His voice is weak as his eyes shift back to black, something I’ve seen with the other aliens in the tribe.

Their eyes go red when they’re angry about something and back to black when they’re okay. Toron’s are always red, the same as his brother’s, because of whatever transformation they went through. It makes them stronger and more powerful, but it also keeps them always slightly angry, which can apparently be soothed by my touch. Not that I’ve tried it at all. I learned about it right before being kidnapped because all of us girls were having a slumber party of sorts where Deja and Skylar explained to me all the ins and outs of being with a chosen warrior.

“We’re okay,” I repeat. “Me and you, we’re going to get through this, okay?”

He tries to let out a small laugh of disbelief that turns into a groan of pain. It breaks my heart knowing this happened to him because of me. He had to kill someone because of me. He had his horn broken and his face beaten because of me. The least I can do right now is get him to believe even just a fraction that we’re going to survive this.

“What’s your name?” I ask, unsure what the protocol for knowing and saying the names of males is with these aliens if they’re still kids. When he doesn’t look embarrassed by my asking or shy away from me, I figure he’s still too young to have to worry about saying or not saying names.

“Thro.” He cringes as he tries to roll onto his back. I offer him my support by holding up his weight on one side and helping him to sit up. “I haven’t gone through the changing and won’t for a few more years. Then you’ll have to call me by something else.”

“That’s right.” I nod. At least he thinks about surviving for a few more years and hasn’t lost hope. “I have lots of sisters in my tribe, and I can’t say any of their mates’ names.”

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