Page 14 of Proslo

I growled, thinking about another male touching something so intimate belonging to my mate. My vision blurred for a split second before resolving into even greater clarity than before and my skin began to itch.

“Whoa, your eyes! They turned black, but are slit like Pumpkin’s! Well, not completely black, you still have whites,” she babbled.

I rubbed the side of my neck where the itching was currently worse. “My mating display. Parts of my battle form will appear and remain until we complete the bond.”

She licked her lips. “Yeah, I’ve heard about that. You’ll get scales too, huh?”

I nodded. “It’s nothing to fear unless we don’t complete the bond before my full form emerges. We’ll have plenty of notice before that happens though, as I’ll go into a fever.”

Her eyes widened almost impossibly wider. “And what does that form look like?” she asked. Then she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. “Oh gawd, that video! The one with the guy everyone called Godzilla Man. That wasn’t a stunt, was it? That was one of you!”

“It was,” I confirmed, “but please keep that to yourself.”

She bobbed her head in agreement. “Was he okay? Did he and his mate manage to ah…complete things?”

I smiled at her reassuringly. “They did indeed.”

She heaved a sigh of relief. “Oh, good. And he looks regular now? No battle form, I mean?”

“Mostly. Light scaling and shifted eyes are all that remains.”

She looked immensely relieved.

“And you guys can normally change in and out of that, anyways, like for fighting.”

“Yes. We can do a full or partial shift.”

“Oh, wow. I just realized! I’m mated not only to an alien but a shifter! That’s like two different romance tropes.” She beamed with happiness.

I laughed. “I’m glad you’re pleased about that.”

“Hell yeah! I love me some monster smut.” Her hand flew to her mouth once more. “Shit! Not that I think you guys are monsters for real. That’s um, okay, rude now that I think about it, even though that’s what it’s called a lot of the time in the book reader world. Um, non-human romances sound better. I’ll use that from now on, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” I chuckled. “I gathered that’s what you meant, but yes, please use non-human instead. We’re definitely not monsters, and neither are the other species I’ve met. There are those individuals with the souls of monsters, but that’s as far as it goes.”

“Yeah, we have people like that too,” she replied glumly.

I bent down and kissed the top of her head, knowing she was thinking about one male in particular. The last unworthy one who tried to claim her as his own and now was facing a lengthy incarceration. “And they can all stay far, far away or face our justice.”

She wrapped her arms around me, leaning into me, and I closed my eyes, relishing the press of her body against mine.

“I like the sound of that,” she said softly, and I wrapped my arms around her, letting her know that she was here now and she had me and the rest of the Fleet to help keep her safe.

9

BETTY

Having done the two dollar tour of our apartment, there was nothing else to do but wait. Proslo showed me how to use the tablet to access the Fleet library and I quickly found several books to read. I added them to my reading app, which to my delight I found would sync to my Kindle once I paired it to the Fleet’s network. I now could go from one device to another, just like I had with my phone, so now I had three things to read my books with. I’d never be caught without something to read as long as everything remained charged and that pleased me to an almost ridiculous degree. The books from the Fleet library were purchases too, so they did not count against my Kindle Unlimited. Though, seeing as I now had free access to absolutely every book from Earth, I no longer needed that subscription.

That thought led me down another rabbit hole. “Are we able to order from Amazon?” I asked. “And can we access Prime, Hulu, and Netflix?”

He glanced up from where he was sitting on the other end of the long sofa, reading something on his tablet which he’d taken from the desk in his home office.

“Sort of,” he confirmed. “The Fleet audiovisual library has free access to your planet’s audio and vid catalogues. Though the latest holiday vid releases are now shown for three weeks in pop up viewing centers for something they call ‘the cinematic experience’.”

“So, I can just use my tablet to watch a movie or a TV show?”

He hummed in affirmation. “Yes, though it is more usual to simply ask Xeranos to play what you wish to watch and have him show it on a wall screen.”