Page 62 of The Alien's Little Sister

“Tahmoh,”he spits.

“Gesundheit,” I say back.

“Oh CRITE!” Inara suddenly shrieks.

“Inara is my woman,” I tell Tahmoh, because it’s important to test the waters.

From the way he bares his teeth—longer, sharper-looking than Inara’s—I can’t help but see the waters aren’t settled. Not by a long shot. He’s so not down with me claiming his little sister.

Inara skids around him and sidles up to me, grabbing my hand as if this will protect me.

It might slow him down. He won’t want to ripherarm off. So I appreciate her gesture.

Tahmoh does not. “That’s mysister,”he snarls.

“Yeah? Well, this,” I haul Inara even closer to my side, “is mymate.You gotta deal.”

“You’re going to die,” Tahmoh rages.

“Figured you’d feel that way,” I say with an apologetic tip of my head.

Tahmoh tries to glare me down, fantasies of dismemberment dancing across his murderous eyes.

Normally, this is the part where the woman’s brother hauls her man out back, beats the hell out of him, and if the man doesn’t run off—or die—then the two men reach an understanding.

By surviving, her man properly demonstrates the following:I’m dead serious. I want your sister as my forever-mate—I have now proven my earnest conviction.

Her brother:You have impressed me by taking my beating. Don’t ever fucking hurt her, or I finish the job.

Unfortunately, there’s no scenario in which Tahmoh—who, according to Inara, is her ‘sweet, scholarly’ brother, by the way—can take me anywhere and give me a beating. Not withoutannihilatingme.

I look at Inara, then her brother. For some reason, I had therealmistaken impression that he was the smallest brother. And for yet another very much incorrect impression, I just assumed that male and female Rakhii were about equal in size.

If Tahmoh and his sister are anything to go by, the disparity between the genders is extreme. It’s like looking at an elephant seal cow and an elephant seal bull, except instead of five hundred pounds of blubber, it’s easily three hundred pounds of pure muscle. Maybe more.

Yep. My funeral. If I’d known this ahead of time, I’d have encouraged my woman to ditch her ship and move with me to Greenland, where we’d live in a sod-roofed hobbit house, or something with an equally too-small door for her brothers to fit through when they came for us.

“Any chance I’m going to walk out of this?” I ask Tahmoh.

“Alive?” he asks. Which is not a promising response.

Inara’s arm squeezes around my back—and she starts growling.

Tahmoh bares his teeth at her.

“Hey,”I warn him. I may not be able to take him, but if he goes for Inara, I can promise you I will make him hurt.

From around the side of the building a woman’s voice calls, “Tahmoh! Stop scaring them, geez!”

“Janet! You had the baby!” Inara squeals—and then she turns to me, excitement chasing away a lot of her concern. “Meet Janet! Tahmoh’s mate.”

I glance over to see a human woman holding a super-alien baby in her arms. No scales, but the little one has a tiny set of horn buds, quills on its head, dorsal spines, and a tail.

It’s chubby-cheeked face is adorably human, somehow.

My eyes swing up to Tahmoh’s. “So you get to tap a human woman, but I can’t marry your sister?”

“Matt!” Inara snaps, and I cut my eyes to her to see she’s gaping at me in incredulous horror. “Don’t antagonize him!”

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