Page 28 of Claimed By the Alien Barbarian

I rose enough to place my lips against his. I’d thought his tusks might get in the way if we kissed, but I didn’t feel them at all.

He groaned and tugged me closer, gathering me up in his arms and holding me as if I was the most precious person in the world. I let the wonderful feeling sink into me. When he lifted his head, he smiled. “Pleasant morning.”

“Pleasant morning.”

“I imagine you’d like me to take you to the ground.”

I actually wanted another kiss, but what if he didn’t?

No, he did. I could see it in his eyes and feel it in the way his fingers still ran up and down my spine.

“I suppose we should eat and get going.”

“Yes, we have a long day of walking ahead. We want to reach the island before it gets dark.”

I reluctantly slid off his legs.

He eased onto his feet and scooped me up, holding me with only one arm. “I’m going to jump.”

“Wait, I—”

The world rushed past us as he dropped, landing squarely on his feet on the forest floor.

When he released me, I scooted along the river and ducked behind a bush to take care of business. I’d discovered the exact right leaf to replace toilet paper, though I’d only found the plant growing near the water. After, I washed quickly and brushed my teeth, returning to the campsite to find Nevarn approaching from the river upstream after doing the same.

He made quick work of heating our leftovers for breakfast. We ate quickly and packed everything up.

I dressed in the pants and t-shirt the tree had left for me, neatly folded near the base of the trunk. I wasn’t sure what I thought about wearing tree-generated clothing, but they were clean, they fit, and it was wonderful to wear something other than my hand-washed stuff.

The tree also left a tunic and pants for Nevarn, and he quickly donned them. I kind of hated to see him covering up his body, but it would be easier to move through the woods if he didn’t have to worry about thorns scratching his skin or mosquitoes, assuming they had bugs like that here.

After securing his spear holder to his back and my skinning knife around his waist, he shouldered my bag. “Ready?”

I tucked my bow into its sheath.

“Come on, Molly.” My voice drew her attention away from the grass she was nibbling on. When she scooted over to me, I lifted her and tucked her into my arms like a baby.

“I could hold her if you’d like,” Nevarn said.

“Later? I’ve got her for now.”

“This way, then.” After scanning the area, he led me through the woods and back onto the broad trail weaving through the dense forest.

Though we kept pausing to listen and Nevarn periodically worked his way around to scout the area behind us, we didn’t see any sign we were followed. Had they given up?

I had a feeling they hadn’t. If, as he suggested, this was the person who’d killed Weela, and they were determined to keep him from revealing their identity, they’d make their move again soon.

We whispered about this and that, me sharing what my life was like on Earth and him telling me about the homes his clan lived in, those provided by Helena, the goddess of wood.

“When you spoke with the trees last night,” I said, “were you actually speaking with Helena?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. She communes, as you called it yesterday, with the trees in the territory I claimed for my clan. But she taught us how to speak with the lesser gods who reside within the forest itself.”

“Lesser gods?”

He frowned. “I’m not sure how to explain it other than to say that everything on Zuldrux is, to some extent, sentient. I believe each being residing inside a rock or a tree is a fragment of the gods who originally came here, hence the term lesser.”

“Could they be aliens like me, a species of people who came to this planet on their own?”

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