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I longed to see Earth, to see what parts of me were Thorzi and which were human, to find a place in the universe where I fit and thrived.
I wanted that place to by my father’s home, but if he chose another heir, would I really stay and spend my days as a palace pet while he put his faith in another?
Lucas was watching me, his eyes too keen. I shook off my doubts. “Tell me more of Colorado.”
A smile cracked his concern. “How ’bout I tell you about Donna Meowble instead?”
“Donna Meowble?” A lance of fear rushed through me. “Your mate?”
Lucas laughed. “No. My cat.”
And that was how I learned that there were creatures like zintari, small as Lucas’s forearm, on Earth.
CHAPTER15
LUCAS
Kaelum was a little broody on the morning of the tournament, and I didn’t think it was because he’d never won one. I mean, that kind of sounded like a source of frustration, but also, he was up against people as much taller than him as he was taller than me. I couldn’t begin to hope that I could fight him—not that he’d forced me to do so, but the point was that I didn’t know how he was supposed to win against them.
Was the notion of having babies—babies with me, of all people—so important to him?
At least they didn’t expect me to physically have the babies. Bullet dodged.
I felt worse about the baby discussion than about the fact that I hadn’t let him into my pants yet. I mean, he okayed that. He said he didn’t want to pressure me into giving him something I didn’t want to.
Okay, he didn’t say it like that, he said it in his fancy alien way, but still, he said it.
He wanted me, but on my terms.
But also, after being with him for a few days, I realized something.
Kaelum was incredibly lonely.
His friend Captain Smirksalot—whose actual name was apparently Jax—dropped by soon after we got back from swimming that first day, and the difference in Kaelum was like night and day. He went from subdued thinking about Earth—maybe concerned about whether I’d be willing to give my semen for a rhinoceros and not him—to smiling and chatting easily in a few moments.
I didn’t think he was less bothered by the semen conversation, no, he was just desperate for approval. For friendship.
It was miserable to think of, but maybe Kaelum was just as alone on his home planet as I was. His father had been terse and forbidding, and the world’s best mother couldn’t make up for that. A great friend couldn’t fill all the holes caused by not fitting in—especially if he didn’t fit in either.
There was so much to the politics of this place that I was missing.
I was still musing on it when Kaelum took me to the tournament. It took place right in the middle of court, because the right to reproduce was apparently one of the most important things to their entire race.
The room was enormous, teeming with big blue aliens, smaller, slightly less blue aliens, and even a few humans. Opposite the huge double doors that made the entry, across a huge area sectioned off for the matches, was a set of raised platforms—in the center, one was higher than the others, with an ornate chair that held the king. Like some barbarian warlord, the man sat atop his throne, wearing nothing more than a pair of gauzy pants similar to mine and watching over the proceedings with a dour face.
The outfit Maria had put together for me was beautiful and comfortable, even if it felt a little overindulgent. The top was more of a vest than an actual shirt, hanging open in the middle and giving everyone a nice view of my pasty chest, and the pants were long and flowing, all in the same super soft, gauzy material as Kaelum’s robe, and dyed in a deep red, almost the shade of the evil flower from the garden.
It was weird, I got a few appreciative looks from both ginormous blue people and their slightly smaller humanish counterparts. It was clear just from looking at them that they—the people like Kaelum and Jax—were hybrids between the Thorzi and humans. Both groups seemed to find humans attractive, which explained why they were doing the whole ridiculous tournament thing, winner gets to procreate with the humans.
But I couldn’t shake the way Kaelum’s father had looked at me when we’d met. Like I was something dangerous, to be concerned about.
“His bark is worse than his bite,” a familiar voice said behind me, marking the first person who’d dared speak to me since Kaelum had left me alone in a seat on one of the lower daises.
I turned to find his mother, in a flowing blue dress, in the same fabric. She was so light on her feet that she practically floated over to sit down next to me, offering me a smile, then looking up at the king. Her husband? Or was it different for them? I hadn’t seen the two interact, so I didn’t know if he was like Kaelum was with me, or if she was just another gamete donor to him. Except that Kaelum had said his mother “carried him,” hadn’t he? And that it was unusual. So even if they didn’t so much as glance at each other now, he had to have knocked her up at some point.
They’d seemed to find “mating” important, since they’d promised to send Genevieve home over it, but there the queen was with me, on a lower dais. There wasn’t even a second chair on the level with the king, despite there being plenty of room for one.
“I dunno, he didn’t bark that much,” I hedged.
