Page 58 of Alien Prince's Fake Bride
“Thisiseasier,” Umbra says, concentrating. “I can sense all of you and then just grab a part of you.” She twists the two tendrils together and releases them.
“That’s interesting,” I growl. “I should tell you that it’s considered bad manners to touch someone else like this, with Syntrix or without— hmm. Right.”
She ignores me and pulls two tendrils from either side of my head together on top, then ties them in a simple knot. “Now you look so cute! You were saying?”
I reach up and undo the knot. “I said, it’s not the kind of thing we do— good grief.”
She runs her Syntrix presence down my forehead. It feels the way a child’s finger would, clumsy and searching. “But it’s good practice. And surely those rules don’t apply to your wife. Oh, sorry! Was that your eye?”
I rub the eye she poked. “It was. No, of course a couple in love will often touch each other like this— I see.”
Her Syntrix touches the tip of my nose. “Boop,” she says. “Boop. I can feel the softness through the Syntrix. But not the texture, which is weird.”
“It’s normal skin texture,” I tell her, part annoyed and part happy that she’s got this much control. “Now if we can continue the actual training?—”
Her Syntrix thread goes into my mouth while I speak, pulling at my lower lip. “It should feel warm and wet, but it doesn’t. Does it feel good toyou?” She lets go of my lip.
“‘Good’ is not the word I would use,” I tell her as her Syntrix takes hold of all my tendrils at the same time and twists them together on top of my head.
She concentrates, her pink little tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth. “You can keep them like that when you’re not using them! They’re completely out of the way now. And you look adorable.” She puts a hand to her forehead. “Oh damn. I’m dizzy. What wasinthose emergency rations?”
She does act like she had a drink too many, but we haven’t actually drunk much since we came to this planet. I grab the empty pack of rations, but there’s no list of ingredients. “Probably they added some stimulants to keep any escape survivors energetic and optimistic,” I take a guess. “And it wasmeant for large Khavgren legionnaires, not Earth women half our size.”
“That’s common practice,”Bellatriz says from her sheath. “The thinking is that crewmembers who have just had to escape from their spaceship will be mentally shaken and possibly injured. The rations are meant as both nutrition and a pick-me-up. Most Khavgrens wouldn’t notice much, except their mood would stay mostly cheerful. Umbra isn’t used to our drugs, I suspect.”
Umbra scoots closer and puts a little hand on my shoulder. “Okay. But. Hear me out. What if everything we eat has those things in it and we just don’t notice because it’s not much? But this time they made it more! It’s nice, though. Thank you for the drugs. There’s more, right? Oh, you untied the tentacles? Didn’t you like it? Wait, I’ll do it again.”
“We won’t eat more of that right now,” I tell her while she playfully pulls and yanks at my tendrils with her clumsy Syntrix control. “Tomorrow, we’ll eat much less of it. Wait here, I’ll go and pick some fruits. Scream if anything happens.” I get to my feet, partly to get away from Umbra’s Syntrix thread before she annoys me for real.
“I’m not a screamer,” Umbra assures me. “I know I screamed a little when that dinosaur wanted to eat me, but you can’t judge me based on that. He had claws!”
“I’m not judging,” I assure her as I walk off to where I saw some fruits earlier. “I hopethatwon’t last much longer,” I mutter. “In that mood, she might run off or start to sing. Should I go back and tie her up?”
“She seems happy enough,”Bellatriz says. “She won’t run away.She’s afraid of the monsters here, and she should be.”
I return with a handful of alien fruits. “They don’t smell too bad. Do you want to try?”
Umbra holds out one hand. “Sure. Let the survival expert check this out. Wouldn’t want you to get poisoned.” She tries to grab the fruit out of my hand using Syntrix, but she uses too much force. The fruit shoots out of my hand and makes a graceful arc and lands somewhere in the dark, outside the flickering light from the fire.
Umbra howls with laughter. “The look on your face!”
Immediately there’s an angry growl coming from where it landed.
23
- Umbra-
A big dinosaur comes into the light from the fire. It’s a dark, splotchy green and as wide as a pickup truck, but only half as tall. It waddles on six thick legs, all tipped with giant claws. The head is just a circle of churning, brown teeth, and the round eyes are placed on stalks that grow from the monster’s shoulders, not its head. The body is covered in strange, uneven plates that grow from the thick hide.
Mareliux draws his sword. “Umbra, get into the escape pod and close the hatch.”
I’m already halfway there, but I’d prefer not to have to step into the pool of half-coagulated raptor blood that reaches me to mid-shin. I stop behind Mareliux’s back, feeling pretty safe with him between me and the monster.
“I’m right behind you,” I tell him.
“The pod!” he says again. “I can’t fight properly with you this close.”
I take a couple of steps back. It’s probably the interesting drugs from the emergency rations that does it, but I’m more annoyed than scared about the monster appearing.
