Page 28 of Her Alien Savior
I took the death of Seira-Le as a sign that the elders spoke of what I needed to do since King Sylve could not. It was my duty to travel the stars, earn my place among the trill to save our tribe. With no mate, and no spawn, I was unburdened to leave Necias Prime to do what needed to be done, assure the trill that an heir to rule the planet would not be on planet to cause them trouble.
With Nen-Le, and myself traveling the stars, they had no need to make any more statements, or kill any more warriors.
Finding Riley changed everything. I had a mate, and she was human… no one should fear me returning to Necias Prime when my spawn would not have right to be heir without proving new honor in the tribe. Was this a sign from the goddess to return home?
Pacing the small living quarters the other female human interrupted my thoughts with her unwelcomed commentary. “You did see the way she was looking at Riley, right?”
The smaller male, I believed was called Bryce joked in reply. “We all saw a lot more than that.”
A warning growl vibrated through my throat at their mockery of our customs. What I shared with Riley was nothing to joke about, though I would have preferred to bathe in her juices without Nen-Le’s assistance, it couldn’t be helped. I would make sure once Riley accepted me as a mate to have a proper ceremony with the tribe and show Nen-Le that no one could give my mate more pleasure, and it is my name on those pretty lips as she gifted me with her ellopul nectar.Mine, I thought possessively, heat in my eyes as I glared at the smaller male human.
The larger one, Chester, bowed his head to me, and smacked the back of the other for him to do the same. “We are honored to have witnessed your intentions to seek Riley as your unne.”
I grinned at the term, yes, I thought, it would bring me great joy for Riley to be my bonded unne. Perhaps these humans would assist me with how best to endear myself to her.
“He wasn’t the only one,” the female spoke, unaffected by the displeasure washing over my face. Ashley was her name, I reminded myself. Riley would wish for me to know the names of her tribe, and I would make an effort to not harm the smaller male, Bryce, that insulted the honor of my mate. I struggled to keep myself from growling, it wasn’t Ashley’s fault that she was observant about the way Nen-Le was treating Riley.
Why did the humans think I was pacing uncomfortably in this small space? I trusted Nen-Le to keep Riley safe, but that trust didn’t extend to whether she would try to sway my mate from bonding with me. Nen-Le wasn’t used to losing duels, and I knew as well as any warrior she was a prized match to mate with. If she had Riley in her sights as an unne, few warriors would stand in her way. And many warriors would fight to win over approval from the mated pair to earn the honor of supplying them with growing their spawn.
I couldn’t stop the growl from rumbling in my throat, shaking my chest with an aching pain that was worse than any wound I’d experienced. Even my punctured lung, now healing nicely, allowing me to breathe more fully, felt like it was tearing itself apart at the thought of other males seeking to fill her future with their seed, and be the bringer of her spawn. The human Ashley clucked her tongue at me with sympathy that only made me more agitated.
“For a tribe of sexually free loving warriors, you sure don’t like sharing,” she said, while shaking her head at me like I was some injured animal incapable of showcasing my worthiness to mate with Riley.
“We don’t share our Pulsunne,” I gritted out. “You are not the first species I’ve come across that do not understand the necia tribe. When we find our mates, we show the tribe that we are honorable, worthy, and that our mates need for nothing. We do not bathe with another once our mates accept our unne mark. I have no intention of sharing my Pulsunne with another, but without my mark, I can not go against our laws. Without my title, Nen-Le is my superior, and as a female of the tribe, and an heir to the Vomxel House tribe, without a proper duel, the tribe could brand me in exile for denying her right to bathe when Riley had accepted.”
Why was I explaining myself to this human, when I would never do such a thing even with my own warriors? Have I fallen so far that without my title I’ve lost my pride? This Ashley didn’t need to understand why my frustration was warranted. Any warrior would be in worse shape than me if they were confronted with their mate and watching them be protected and guided by another. To watch another warrior blatantly show their interest beyond approval of my choice of mate. Knowing another warrior envied my mate was an honor, knowing they wished to take her from me was enraging.
My nostrils flared, and I flexed my fists trying to ease my tension before I allowed my epul to grow from my second skin. It was not my intention to frighten beings that were my duty to protect, but the need to destroy something overwhelmed me. My rut would get worse until Riley claimed or rejected me.
“Alright, alright. Calm down, Spikey. I get it. You want to show your mate off, but you don’t want others to play with her,” she said with a roll of her eyes. I hoped my success of showing Riley that I was an honorable mate would not be in the hands of this human. She still did not seem to grasp necia culture.
“They display their affections for approval with the tribe, to prove that their mates need for nothing in all ways. If a mate isn’t satisfied then another is allowed to offer themselves, as being unsatisfied is life threatening to their species and the balancing of their body chemistry is not something to take lightly. It is an honor to bring pleasure and support their mate’s health. To share a mate is to say they are incapable of protecting their mate’s long life,” Chester defended for me, and I grinned realizing that perhaps some humans did understand the ways of an honorable warrior.
“Bringing a mate pleasure is the highest honor,” I agreed.
“Sure, how about we focus on the next highest honor of protecting one?” She tapped at the tablet left in Nen-Le’s workstation, and then flipped it for us to view the screen. A bunch of code was scrolling and I frowned, recognizing some of the symbols as a tag I’d seen before by the outlaw Al-hez, who supplied nanobugs to slavers and anyone with enough credit.
“How do you have access to that code?”
She smirked and ignored my question. “I thought you might recognize the signature. What do you know about Al-hez the Star Breaker?”
“Star Breaker?” I had never heard the outlaw be called this before.
Ashley huffed with disappointment. “You know less than us then. Al-hez has a signature in the code that always includes a strange poem of sorts. ‘Small stars fade in eye. Large stars destroy the sky. We break under pressure and electrify.’ I’ve been calling Al-Hez the Star Breaker, because every being they touch with their tech lives a broken life.”
I lifted a brow, more curious about Riley’s human tribe. Even my feet stopped pacing the room as I stared at the tablet resting in front of a remarkably adept tech master to have uncovered something in the code that even my best hackers could not or chose not to tell me about.
“I’ve been monitoring Al-Hez for some time, but I’ve never been assigned the mission to bring the outlaw to trial. My vessel has always been a low-impact enforcer, to monitor activity and visit planets on my ship’s route to remind them of our presence and scan for any misconduct of law. The MX-Vul Fleet An rarely engages directly with outlaws, except when they’ve gone against galactic law and we are the closest ship to secure them.”
My trip to Necias Delta Fal was going to be my last mission before I could be promoted to a more active ship’s command. I’d finally gained trust with the trill to rise in the ranks. I wanted more excitement, and the universe delivered. For the love of Horv, I would be lucky to make it out of this mess with any title of honor at all.
I finally sighed and admitted my failure as a commander of this ship. “You, Ashley of Earth, have uncovered more about this outlaw than my team, and I am ashamed to say that I did not place much effort in allocating resources to assist the team assigned to the task. It was dishonorable of me to not insist my team keep in contact with the task force on Trillume and work together. I had assumed they would order me to stall any investigation and focus on my given initiatives for the ship.”
It was likely that if I was wrong about gaining the trill’s trust that telling them I had a team on the task would have resulted in more mundane carrier missions for my ship and no promotion at all.
“I think we should tell him,” Chester interjected.
“Go ahead, I can see you’re going to anyways,” Ashley accepted with a shrug, and I wasn’t sure what exactly they were going to tell me that was more alarming than what they had already uncovered. What other secrets had my team missed about Al-Hez’s code? If I had known my mate would be suffering at the hands of the outlaw’s nanobugs then perhaps I’d have more information to protect her with. Strange how things don’t seem as important to conquer until they affect one’s life directly. This was my shame to carry.
