Page 12 of I Punched an Alien and Now We’re in Couples Therapy

I came to stand beside her and placed an arm around her shoulders. “This is not a creature, this is Blair. The woman who pulled me from the fires and saved my life. The lot of you are to treat her with the utmost respect. Understand?”

Kuzuu laughed and shook his head. “It’s hard to picture such a little thing carting one of us anywhere. But if this is what their females are capable of, I’d hate to run into a male.”

“Do you think she’s a native to this world?” Hakri asked.

“We should find them! If there’s more like her, then I wouldn’t mind a lucky charm of my own. Maybe she’s got sisters as pretty as her.”

Talk of females and sisters drew more of the warriors over to eavesdrop on the conversation. With blood still running hot from battle, I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them defected to try to search the flames for any signs of mysterious females hiding among the smoke.

A younger rider by the name of Biesabu slid off his mount and pushed past the growing gaggle of onlookers to reach us. “We should try and find a way to ask her. Maybe if we show her a map of the area, she can tell us where she lives.”

Oh, he wins the prize; I didn’t even think of that.

“Or she could lead us into a trap,” Jivorn sneered. When the men looked at him in disbelief, he continued. “You can’t be serious? We don’t even know what that thing is! It could have saved the king in some bid to gain our trust so we let our guard down, and it could kill us in our sleep. We should get rid of it before it can sink its claws in any further.”

“Don’t be so paranoid,” Kuzuu protested. “If it weren’t for her, we would have lost our king. To an attack you as constable should have been able to prevent. You should be first in line to hail her as a hero.”

“Lord Kuzuu, you are out of line!”

“Where’s she going?” Hakri asked.

By the time I’d turned to look, Blair had marched off the field headed east. I called her name, but she only raised her middle finger and kept walking.

Hakri fussed his hands together. “Do you think we angered her when we stopped watching her performance?”

“Good,” Jivorn said. “Let it go. We should head back to Thornward before dark.”

I shoved past him and headed after her. With a quick whistle, my horncrest, Comet, broke away from the rest of the herd and came to kneel in front of me.

Jogging beside us, Jivorn looked at Blair’s retreating back, then to me. “My king, have some sense and let it go.”

Comet flicked his head, warning Jivorn out of his path lest he be skewered like the last fools who got in my way, now rotting in the mud he waded through. With a light kick to his side, the mighty horncrest picked up the pace, leaving my paranoid advisor behind.

“What if it’s diseased?!”

* * *

Disappointingly, Blair didn’t fawn and fuss over me after the battle. Worse still, she seemed to be livid with me for some reason. Judging by her subpar reaction to being presented with the beast master’s head, I guessed that meant it wasn’t the raiders that caused her to end up in that fire. Pity. I’d hoped she’d throw herself at me in gratitude after I’d taken care of them.

But that probably meant there was something else out there to deal with. There always was. “Just where did you come from?”

At the sound of my voice, Blair turned to look up at me. I straightened in my seat a little. Hoping she’d somehow ease my curiosity, or at least…I don’t know, acknowledge me in some way. Those hopes dashed as quick as they came when she wrinkled her nose and turned away, arms crossed over her chest.

Night fell quickly, and the road back to Thornward felt a lot longer with my new charm seething the whole way. For all his fuckups as of late, I was glad Jivorn had enough sense to bring my horncrest with him—the larger Comet proved too frightening to try to leap off of after I scooped her back up.

Each scathing look she sent my way grew more withering with every pitch and bump in the road. I offered her the reins to see if having control eased her nerves, but she wasn’t having it.

“You can’t be this testy over a little skirmish. Where’s the fierce, venomous thing that dragged my sorry carcass out of a forest fire?”

“Will you stop messing with it?” Jivorn asked, riding up next to us. He brought his arm up to his nose as if she stank horribly. “If it wants to run away, let it! The thing looks like an ill omen.”

“To you maybe. She’s my m—good-luck charm, and she’s staying with me.” The near slip in my words took me by surprise. I almost said “mate.” Blair was an entirely different species. A beautiful creature to be sure, and if she was willing, I’d be more than happy to explore every inch of the differences between our species as soon as we were alone. Yet with every glance she sent my way, the ache in my horns grew worse. That damnable magnetic pull was enough to drive me to madness. My instincts screamed at me to claim her as my own. Almost like the call of a Zhali match.

I’d never heard of a Sankado finding a match with another species. Then again, we’d never really gotten the chance. It wasn’t like we were a spacefaring race before our planet was destroyed. If the gods were merciful, and Blair really was meant to be mine, then…this changed everything. We could have children. The very first Thornward had seen, that any of us had seen in a decade. If we found the rest of her people, it could mean an actual future for my kind.

I bit the inside of my check, forcing down the excitement before I got ahead of myself. I’d need to test this theory before my men and I went gallivanting off into the sunset searching for imaginary Zhali matches. I made a plan to search the library for any records on how to trigger the bond process. Normally, the pair would undertake the trial of the gods and scale Mount Ponosonee together in the hopes of gaining the gods’ blessings. But the holy mountain erupted not long after that Biwbanian ship crashed into Dulrock.

There had to be another way to test it…