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“The what, now?” Ree asked.
“He means the men,” Kenosi said in a voice that sounded very much like his own, but to my ear, suddenly sounded like he was speaking perfect English. The wide grin that split his face when everyone looked at him had me smiling too. “Haven’t you noticed? They’re all men. Or, all the same gender, I suppose. Perhaps not men?”
Ree glanced around, looking a touch hunted, but nodded. “I guess I just assumed they were like the US military not so many years ago. You know, no girls allowed?”
“Ahh,” Kaelum said with an agreeable nod. “Of course. It was a surprise that only half of you could carry children at first, but no matter. There are no ‘girls’ among the Thorzi, as you call them.”
Ree’s eyes went round, and my brain started whirring. Was it some kind of immense tragedy where all their women died, and now they were stealing human women to try to have babies? But then why the hell did they kidnap nine men, too? From what I had gathered, the men they had taken were disproportionately gay by a wide margin, but I had no way of knowing if that was deliberate or accidental, and being gay sure didn’t make us able—or willing—to give birth.
That was when the doctor launched into the most dry, boring explanation of chromosomes and sex organs I’d ever heard in my life. No joke. He said penis, over and over again, and it was so boring I could barely focus on it.
Plus thinking of penises kept making me glance back over at Kaelum, who was... still watching me. Intently. I met his eyes and glanced away, but kept being drawn back, like he was a magnet.
Morris had always been a bit of a gym bunny, always joking that he’d had to be buff, to make up for having a “nerdy name.” Morris wished he was half as ripped as Kaelum. The dude had an eight-pack, minimum, but I thought it might be rude to count. To reach out and run my fingers over them, as I had his shoulder.
Lick them, maybe.
Would they be different than human skin? Harder? The lacy tattoo had been warm and zingy against my fingers, what would it feel like on my tongue? What would it taste like?
One of Kaelum’s giant not-blue friends, the one who had stuck to his side throughout, was shooting a smirk my way. Shit. Caught with my eyes on the cookie jar. At least I hadn’t reached out and touched him this time.
But hell, why not? He’d tried to grab my dick, on the assumption that my being hard up meant, um... yeah. Assuming it had been about my dick getting hard made sense in a way that the actual colloquialism didn’t. I looked away, but even as the doctor wound down, I continued to feel Kaelum’s eyes on me.
When the doctor finished, many of my human brethren looked as distracted or disinterested as me, but some were watching him, rapt. Genevieve stared at him in abject horror. She threw herself at the nearest convenient human, sobbing, insisting that they were monsters, and she’d rather die than be a prisoner.
Every alien in the room seemed genuinely alarmed at the reaction.
I took the opportunity to lean toward Kaelum, feeling more of his warmth—and boy was he warm. It radiated off him from a foot away, particularly at the shoulder, where his closest tattoo was. “I think she’s engaged.” At his bewildered expression, I added, “To be married, you know? Like, you took her away from her plans to marry a person on Earth.”
The guy behind Kaelum, Mr. Smirky, stopped smirking. His eyes narrowed as he looked at me, and the expression made me feel like a mouse who’d just been spotted by the cat. I froze, my heart beating wildly in my chest. “He took that human from a mated pair?”
I nodded, but clamped my mouth shut, terrified to say anything else.
The guy turned to Kaelum and said, “We must return her.”
And just like that, a tiny bit of the tension went out of every human in the room. I didn’t think they were just going to let us all go home, but the fact that Genevieve’s misery, her engagement, meant something to them, and at least Smirky McScarypants wanted to honor it? That was a damn sight more respect than any of us had gotten from Crux, and it let my lungs unclench, so I could take a full, deep breath for the first time in days.
CHAPTER8
KAELUM
We spent the day that followed on the bridge, arguing between ourselves about the capture of Genevieve. Crux insisted that he had not known the human was mated, that of course, he would not have taken her if she were, and yes,yes, he would return her to Earth on the next convenient transport.
He assured us that she, like all humans he took, had wanted to leave Earth, had longed for a new life. It was a difficult thing, he said, to pick the right humans. They were a primitive, frightful species, and when asked directly, few knew precisely what they wanted.
The return ship would need an escort if the Zathki were coming out of hiding; if they meant to attack us in our own territory. It was not as simple as merely turning around, but he would see it done.
By the time we landed on Thorzan, we were all glaring and well ready to be rid of each other. The humans stumbled from their quarters when we set down on the landing, uneasy to be on stable ground again.
They had insisted on sharing one room even on my own ship. They wanted to stay together, and since it had brought them comfort, there was no reason to argue with them taking up less space than they could have.
I had wished they would speak with us more, but they seemed to feel safer, more comfortable, among their own kind and left alone. It struck me that, despite my mother’s humanity, I was no more like them than I was a true-born Thorzi. I was something else, outside of both, and by the time we landed, that knowledge had made me bitter.
We followed the humans out onto the landing. With a deep growl, Crux ordered them to follow him, but I grabbed the nearest, Lucas, by the arm. He was bravest, most comfortable, and he wandered to my side often. I wished to keep him there.
“You are with me,” I said.
He blinked up at me, his cheeks hollowed once more. “What?”
