Page 4 of An Alien for Her Heart

“Just what am I dealing with here, Eleanor?” I look back from the chaos outside my window just as the video screen suddenly shifts.

Zynar appears. He’s so tall I can’t see his face, only the purple iridescent scales on his shirtless chest, which means Eleanor is holding the comm up for him.

“Umus are terrorizing Catherine’s farm. I’m worried the same thing that happened to me might happen to her.” I can hear the stress in her voice, and for me, a woman she only knows because our lives were both torn apart. It makes something deep inside me wring and twist. Something a part of me pushes back against. “You have to go help her.”

“Oh! No!” I startle, surprised, shocked back from my thoughts to the words she just said. “I couldn’t possibly take Zynar away from his duties. I know you’re both busy. If he could just tell me what I should do. I—” I talk quickly but I don’t think Eleanor’s listening. She’s rattling something about me getting hurt and how they have to prevent that.

Zynar bends and his face suddenly appears on screen. “It would be no trouble, human.” He gets an elbow in his side and I see the faint shadow of a smile, giving me a glimpse of sharp fangs. “It would be no trouble…Catherine.”

It’s clear his mate has been teaching him to call us humans by name, but pushing that from my mind, I shake my head. “It’s quite a distance between our farms and it’s rather urgent. My field. The oogas. I—”

But he’s already shifting the device back to Eleanor. “I cannot make it out to your homestead, Catherine,” he says, loud enough that I can hear. “Not with the seeds soaked and ready for sowing. They will go bad if not sowed in the next hor and Eleanor cannot do such a job.”

“I can do it.” Eleanor frowns. Zynar growls.

“Much too strenuous work for you, mykahl,” he rumbles. His kahl? God, it feels like I’m snooping in on a private moment with the way his voice deepened on that word. “Varek will go to her aid.”

I blink. Varek? That’s his brother. I met him once. On the same day I met them all. That first day when I had no idea what I was doing or where I was going. Only knew that there was a gaping hole inside me that nothing can fill.

Grimacing slightly, I wish I never called. The last thing I want is to make a big deal out of something I could have probably fixed myself.

“I’ll Google a solution.” Well, the alien version of Google. “I can’t possibly—”

“It’s no trouble.” Eleanor faces me now. “He drives fast. He’ll be there in less than an hor. You know,” she nods at me “an hour.”

I want to tell her this feels like something that’s being blown out of proportion, but an ooga takes that moment to charge straight at the perimeter fence. It makes such a heartbreaking sound as half its body gets stuck in the wires—front half outside my property’s bounds and his backside in. Oh, crapsuckles. I really need help. “Okay.” My voice lowers, reality sinking in. “I’ll see you then.”

“Not me.” Eleanor grins. “Varek.” I open my mouth and she smiles some more. “He’ll sort it out. Don’t worry.”

“I—”

“Talk to you soon. I’ll ping him now.” Eleanor gives me a reassuring smile and the ping closes.

I release a breath, pulling on the bravery I’ve been using for years to keep me going as I set the device down and hurry out of the house to stop my animals from killing themselves.

2

VAREK

Idon’t sleep. For the entire dark cycle, I remain awake, tossing and turning in my bunk. Now as dawn rises, the star’s rays seem to light up the fact the room is painfully quiet, just the rustling of sleep coverings breaking the silence as I move. Every little sound is like a loud noise that threatens to shatter the stillness.

My gaze shifts to my comm where it’s resting nearby. The screen is dead. No notifications. No messages. No pings. No one to speak to. My brother’s absence is a tangible thing, a hollow space that seems to swallow up all the air and light.

Some of his belongings are still here. I can just make them out among the shadows settled in the room. A pair of trouse. Boots. Little things he left after moving away to his new home.

Because Zynar has a mate. The thought sends a pang of something sharp and bittersweet lancing through my chest. After so many cycles spent resigned to a fate of solitude, my brother’s core-rhythm sang for a female neither of us had expected to find. The fates brought her to him.

A displaced Kari has found a mate. Zynar has found ahome. And I…

I am alone.

I’ve seen the way Zynar looks at his mate, the way his entire being seems to light up in her presence. It’s both beautiful and painful to witness. I try to picture it, try to imagine what it must feel like to be so certain of one’s place in the universe, to know beyond any doubt that you belong to someone and they to you. But the image slips away, as elusive as the shadows that haunt me now.

I’ve never been lonely before; not quite like this. Not with this aching, yawning emptiness that seems to carve out my insides and leave me raw and exposed. I’m a warrior, battle-scarred and hardened. I have long ago made peace with the idea that solitude will be my only companion.

But now, in the wake of Zynar’s happiness, that hard-won acceptance is crumbling, leaving behind a yearning so fierce it steals away my breath. And this yearning is like a virus. I’ve heard the whispers, reports of other displaced Kari becoming reckless and approaching unmated females with a boldness born of desperation.

A bitter smile twists my lips at the irony of it all. My siblingkin’s mating has unleashed a flood of repressed hope among our people. A wild, reckless want for connection that borders on madness.

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