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“We did have some unscheduled visitors,” he says.
“Nah, mate. Wouldn’t be down to a visitor or two. I reckon it’s part of the whole age of the hairy ass.”
“What is he saying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, age of hairy ass, got a whole lot of monstrosities rearing their heads at the same time. Nothing to be done about it. You two coming up or ya wanna stay down there, get yerselves eaten?”
“I cannot leave my people.” Isu holds me up to the man. “Take her. Save her. I will return to my people.”
I am shocked into silence. He’s just going to hand me over to this stranger, as if I am a possession, not a thinking, feeling being able to determine her own future. To Isu, I have been nothing but an ill-omen, and I think he is glad to be rid of me.
“Alright, mate, I’ll swing her up here and we’ll check on you in a couple days, alright?”
I hold on to Isu. I don’t know this man. I don’t want to leave the male I have been mated to.
“But you still haven’t punished me. Keep me here. Punish me.”
He pushes hair away from my face. “Be strong, Aspel.”
I didn’t want that name when he gave it to me. Now I suddenly love it.
“I don’t want to be strong. Let me stay with you.”
Dark eyes focus on me. “You can’t stay. It’s too dangerous.”
“Then come with me,” I beg, knowing he won’t. He’s going to go back to that collapsed hole and dig his people out rock by rock. Isu is a hero, and heroes save lives. He saved me when I crashed, and now he will save the others as best he can.
“I cannot. But I can get you off this planet. It’s not safe here, and he is human. Like you. You should be with your kind. You will be happier and safer in a human society.”
“I don’t want to…” I cling to him, my fingers tightening on his shoulders. I wish I was strong enough to hold against his will, but he plucks me off his body and holds me aloft like a sacrifice.
“Take her!” he roars to the pilot of the ship. “Take her and get her out of here.”
“Alright, mate. No worries, up you come, sheila!”
A claw descends from the ship, long metal fingers extended until they wrap around me and haul me aloft. I scream for mercy, for Isu, for him to change his mind. But he doesn’t. He holds his ground while I am pulled into the air and into the belly of Cozza’s shuttle.
The wyrm is rising again, heading into the sky. There is no time for goodbyes.
“Strewth. Betta jet outtof here,” Cozza curses, yanking on the controls and sending his shuttle spearing straight up from the ground, into the depths of space.
Isu disappears in seconds, and I am left with the knowledge that the last time he saw me, he was angry at me for having disobeyed him.
Chapter Six
Aspel
“Yah gunna need some clothes!” Cozza points me to the back of his ship. “There’s a suit in there, geddit onya.”
I am grateful for clothing. I am still wet with Isu’s seed, but Isu himself is already further away than I can comprehend. I feel an awful tearing sensation, as if I am being pulled apart all the way down deep in my soul.
Cozza gives me a wink and offers me what he describes as a ‘beer.’ I am safe, but I don’t feel any relief. I feel deep misery of a kind I’ve never experienced before. It’s like grief and guilt and despair all wrapped up in one heavy lump that sits in my stomach and weighs me down.
Cozza sees my expression and grins at me. “Don’t worry about it. They’re used to the wyrm down there. We’ll swing by in a year or two and they’ll have mostly dug themselves out again.”
But I do worry. More than worry, I miss Isu. Maybe I shouldn’t. He held me prisoner. He punished me. But he also gave me pleasure and he tended to me in the way I needed to be tended to.
Cozza is a human male. He is who I should be attracted to, but I can’t muster a spark of interest. I mated with Isu. I belong to him. I want him.
“Havva beer,” Cozza says as I start to weep, pushing the cool metallic cylinder into my hand. “You’ll feel betta in no time.”
I try sipping from the can. Whatever is inside tastes foul. I spit it out immediately.
“Eh, what’s that about?”
“I don’t like it.”
“No reason to waste good beer!”
I quickly learn that Cozza is preoccupied with beer in a way most people are with oxygen. Over the next hours, he has six beers, and with every one his speech becomes more slurred, his concentration more erratic, and his head bowed until he is fast asleep at the controls.
