Page 49 of Bred

“What were you thinking?”

A very angry alien is growling at me. I stare at him, my jaw dropped, my mouth open. This is one of the hottest, scariest men I’ve ever seen in my existence. Not that he’s a man. He’s way more than a man. His face is serrated in places, he is like war personified, especially when those cold eyes fall on me with so much intensity I feel arousal pooling between my thighs.

“Thinking?”

“Lyra,” he snarls. “This is the second time you’ve crashed your shuttle into my ship. It’s dangerous.”

“The second time, huh?”

“Yes, the...” He stops and looks at me with narrowed eyes. “You don’t remember?”

“Nope.” I keep it casual, because what else can I keep it? I have no sense of consequences or fear of what could come, because I no longer know anything. Fear comes from anticipation. No anticipation, no fear. Easy. There are certain animal instincts that tell me when I am in danger, but they’re not firing now. I’m safe with him. Even if he does look like his face came out of a knife drawer.

“Do you remember me?” There’s something in his voice that almost makes me feel sad, which is a slight improvement on feeling nothing.

I shake my head. “Sorry, no. I’d really like to. You seem like you’d be memorable.”

His face shifts into something that might be a smile.

“You were aboard this ship for several weeks.”

“Oh...”

“You were my mate.”

“Wow...”

“Are you capable of making more than single syllable sounds?”

“Yea...”

He glowers, and a little giggle escapes me. “You do seem familiar,” I say, throwing him a bone.

“Really?”

“No.”

This time a growl escapes him. I can’t help but laugh. I don’t know what this monstrous creature is, but he’s attractive and he seems to care about me, which is more than I can say about most any other sentient being I’ve encountered since I woke up in the hospital.

“You are still the same brat,” he says gruffly. “Never mind. Perhaps your memory will return.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“Then you will make new memories. I’m certainly never letting you go again.”

“You let me go once before?”

“After you were injured in battle, I returned you to Earth.”

“You fucking what now?”

His head jerks back at my sudden change in tone. “That was wrong?”

“What do you mean you returned me? I’m not an ugly sweater. You can’t just return me! You mean you left me there. Alone. Not knowing what the fuck had happened to me? Not understanding anything that was going on? At the mercy of people who didn’t give a fuck about me and took everything I had and...”

“You were injured badly,” he interrupts my tirade. “We did battle with an entity unlike any in this dimension. Afterward, you were unconscious and could not be revived. Before that moment, all you had wanted was to go back to Earth. It was all you ever talked about. It was our last gift to you.”

“Well, it was a shitty gift.” He looks offended and pissed off at hearing that, but I don’t care. “I would much rather have woken up and saw your face than what happened down there. Do you know what they fucking did? Did you even wait to see?”

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