Page 38 of An Alien for the Future

She’s looking at me as if she wants me to continue. She still isn’t moving and she hasn’t even blinked.

“It’s why the Tasqals hunted us down. Experimented on us.” I’m not sure how much she knows or how much I should even say. “We heal quickly, and their race was dying of a scourge. And our…” I trail off. Just how much should I tell her? What if saying all this will turn her away from me even more?

I have nothing to offer this female. No planet to return to. No kin to create a family unit. All I can offer her is myself.

But she is either more perceptive than I thought or she is one of the few that can read Kari emotions, because Donna sets the utensil down in the bowl as she watches me.

Her voice is soft when she speaks. “They hurt you too? Experimented on you?”

I look away. She’s struck a wound there without even knowing it. “No.” My admission is almost too quiet. “They didn’t experiment on me.”

“What experiments?”

I take in a deep breath, remembering scenes of males we’d rescued, the horrors they’d told. “Caged. Tied up. Forced to…forced to release spend. They, the Tasqals, had trouble bearing young. They believed that because we Kari are virile, they could synthesize whatever makes us so. It didn’t work. Many suffered.” Including the Korruk brothers that she knows so well. I’m sure they bear the scars.

“But you…”

Here it comes. I take in another breath, steeling myself. “I was a fighter pilot. I fought from the skies, not on the ground.” There’s a sudden rush of shame that goes through me, a sudden rush of unworthiness. My claws clench at my sides. “Many of my people bear the scars of what the Tasqals did to them. They endured unimaginable horrors, fought battles I can barely comprehend. And I…” My voice trails off, and I force myself to look back at Donna. Her eyes are soft, concerned, and it makes my core ache.

“I have no scars to show. No visible marks of what our people went through. I was up there, in the stars, while others suffered below. I tried to help, to fight back, to protect our people. But I know it wasn’t enough.”

I don’t know why the words pour out of me now, things I’ve never admitted to anyone, not even Arnak.

Donna blinks slowly, those eyes seeing deep into my soul. “It sounds to me like you did the best you could with what you had,” she says. Her voice is a gentle balm against the harshness of my self-recrimination. “And sometimes, honey, that’s all any of us can do.”

There it is again. That goodness that dwells within this female. The one that only confirms to me that I’ve found my home.

For a few moments, I watch as she moves, a heavy sigh making her shoulders rise and fall as she consumes a few more mouthfuls of the food I made.

“I know you’re afraid.” Gods, I can’t shut up. “I’m not asking for everything. I’m not asking for anything at all. I’m just asking for a chance. A chance to prove myself to you, to show you that this isn’t some grand scheme. You truly are mykahl.”

Donna pauses, looking down into the bowl before her.

“I’m fifty-one years old, Tovan Kamesh. I don’t have time for games.”

“I do not do this in jest.”

She looks up at me then. “And what if I can’t give you what you want, hmm?”

I reach out slowly, giving her time to pull away if she wants to. When she doesn’t, I gently cup her face in my claw, electricity shooting up my scales at the contact. “All I want is you, Donna. Just as you are. You say I know nothing about you, and you’re right. But I want to know. Your fears, your doubts, your past. I want all of it. Because it’s all part of what makes you mykahl.”

She shifts out of my grasp and it feels like the dawn loses its light. “Your core-rhythm has to awaken for you to have akahl. I’ve seen it happen, Tovan, and you don’t look like you’re in heat to me.”

The utterance is like a barb. As if she’s deconstructing everything I’ve said and calling out a lie. Of course, she’s seenit happen. She knows the Korruk brothers. Knows their mates. They’re all allies.

Except, I haven’t lied. This is true.

“I know it hasn’t. That is my failure.”

Even now I search within me, hoping it will just spontaneously react. It doesn’t.

“You know, I could do that test New Horizons messaged about. And if you’re wrong…” She says it like it’s a challenge. As if mentioning the test will get me to back down.

“Then you will know I speak the truth.”

She stares at me for a long moment before taking another mouthful of the food.

“You can use my bathroom. You’ve got mud and twigs stuck in your hair and that camp you have out there might be some fancy alien thing I don’t understand but I know you sure as hell don’t have a shower out there. You’re welcome to use my bath if you want.”

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