Page 8 of I Punched an Alien and Now We’re in Couples Therapy

No matter. In time I’d unite the scattered bands of my people and restore Dulba to its rightful glory.

Her head tilted as she scanned me up and down. She moved to pull her hand away, but I kept hold, inspecting her long red nails. Black leggings disappeared into bizarrely shaped dark purple shoes with sharp spikes. The jacket at her side was the same bright green of the deadly nylos back on my home planet. Even the tattoo that spanned her neck resembled the deadly creature, save a few missing eyes. “Are you venomous?”

Despite being trapped on this planet for the past ten years, I had never seen a creature like her before. As far as I knew, no one had seen any other form of intelligent life besides our people. Aside from the Biwban who stole us away from Sankatul. Yet here she was. She clearly wasn’t Sankado. If only we could communicate, I could ask her where her people had been hiding all this time, and why she was out in a forest fire by herself.

Did the marauders destroy her village and force them out?

Rage festered inside me at the thought of my venomous good-luck charm being forced from her home. They had already sealed their fate when they tried to plunder our lands. If I could exact revenge for her in the same breath, then I’d stack bodies at her discretion until my life debt was paid in full.

The woman looked back at the burning grove before returning her attention to where our hands conjoined. She pinched at her cheek and pulled until the skin stretched enough to show her teeth.

I pushed her hand from her face and took hold of her chin, forcing her attention back to me where it belonged. “It’s common courtesy to give your name after someone introduces themselves.” To ease the discomfort of the language barrier, I leaned closer to her and repeated my name slowly. “Osid.”

Her brow furrowed, the only indication I got before she jerked her chin from my grasp and sank dull teeth into my finger.

I pulled my hand away. “You bit me.”

She held her head high, as if proud of the accomplishment, before she smiled and said, “Blair.”

“Blair, is it?” I found myself returning her infectious grin once again. “I think I’ll keep you.”

Chapter 4

Osid

The remnants of my war party found us not long after we resumed walking. All of them looked worse for wear, dripping with sweat, and their faces were so coated in soot that I didn’t notice that young Hakri was the one leading them until he drew close enough to see tattooed ivy curving around the base of his horns. Hakri dismounted and rushed toward us. “Sire, thank Azuumual you’re safe!”

“Hakri? Jivorn should be leading the rest of you to Riverbend. Why are you here?”

“Lord Jivorn was thrown from his horncrest in the blasts. He broke the rest of us up in smaller groups to search for you while he returned to Thornward to come back with a fire-control team. We’ll need to put out the fire before it spreads to the rest of the grove.”

“And again I ask, why are you here? Your orders were to kill the marauders in Riverbend.”

“We thought you might be dead, and the fire—”

“Have you lost all sense?” I asked, flicking his horn. “First you accuse me of being weak enough to succumb to such a lazy assassination attempt, and now you can’t feel the storm coming?”

He closed his eyes and stilled. “You’re right.”

I could understand Hakri making this mistake; he was one of the youngest of my men at twenty and had to spend most of his youth fighting monsters on this crapshoot of a planet rather than honing his magnetic sense. It was to be expected. This planet’s weather was fickle to a fault, but the storms back on Sankatul could vaporize a man on the spot during storm season, and if you didn’t learn fast how to sense the subtle changes in the air, you were toast. In the most literal sense.

There was no excuse for Jivorn, however. He had several decades on me and had fought alongside both my father and me in the Broken Plains War. He should know the importance of protecting farmland. The Rumbling season was almost upon us, and if we lost access to our main food stores before we were able to collectively finish the harvest, then we’d lose out on several tons of wheat. With the endless stampede of monsters, we wouldn’t go hungry. But without any wheat to fill our bellies, we wouldn’t be able to produce fire. And there went our long-range attacks.

“Of course I’m right. This place will be a marsh by morning. Now instead of celebrating a victory with my new lucky charm, I need to clean up your mess.”

“Your…lucky charm?” He turned his attention to my companion, his eyes widening.

“This is Blair, she pulled me from the flames and saved my life.”

He placed a fist over his heart and bowed. “Thank you for saving our king. We owe you a great debt.”

“She doesn’t speak like us. I’m still working out a decent way to communicate.” I touched her shoulder and pointed at him. “Hakri.”

She lifted a thumb at me.

“I’ll assume that’s a positive affirmation. Look at us, we’re in sync, we’re bonding.”

“Did the Biwban drop her here too? Vos said he saw what looked like space pods falling out of the sky this morning.” He gave my charm an appreciative glance. “She’s a bit cute, isn’t she?” He reached out to touch her hair.