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My father was not. He only stared at the two of us.
I stepped back, lifting the plate between us. “Are you hungry?”
Blinking and confused, she stared down at my offering and shook her head. “No, Kaelum. No. We—” She glanced back at Father. He crossed his arms. “We were only worried about you, sweetheart. I know you like Lucas, but you can see how that’d...”
“Lead to challenges you are not prepared to face,” my father supplied when my mother lost the flow of her words.
I swallowed and flexed my jaw. “Lucas is not a challenge to be overcome.”
Father’s eyes narrowed, just a fraction. But mother was right there, her expression full of sympathy. “No, sweetheart. But he’s human. Thorzan is not his home.”
“It is yours,” I snapped. “You chose it.” I was unwilling to see that there was no place for humans here, for her.
Because if there was no place for humans, there was no place for me.
She wilted. “It is. Now. But it wasn’t always.”
Thorzan was not Lucas’s place. Was not his home.
Was not where he wanted to stay.
I hissed. “There are many humans of Thorzan. They find happiness. And—And so will he. If he desires it. I will give it to him.”
My father huffed. “You will invite challenges. Your offspring will be more human than Thorzi. Our warriors will not tolerate further weakness.”
“Lucas is not weak!” I was shouting now, a lotfi fruit tumbling off the platter to stick its red spikes onto the furs on the floor. I struggled to take another breath, to shut my eyes and calm myself.
“If he wishes to return to Earth, I will take him. I will not force him to stay or see him unhappy,” I said. When I opened my eyes again, Mother was nodding, a sad kind of pride in her eyes, even as they glistened wetly. “But if he chooses to stay, he is mine. I am his. That is my choice and my will. He is all I fight for, and the one I would die to protect.”
Mother grimaced. Father glared in full. But I did not stay to hear what they would say, what arguments they might have to keep me from the love that had blossomed in my chest.
Where Lucas was, that was where I would go.
So long as he wanted me, and he was not merely sating his human curiosity while he longed for home and escape.
CHAPTER23
LUCAS
Closing in on thirty years of life, and I had never, not once, woken up feeling so absolutely amazing. It was like I’d started doing all those things everyone said you should do to improve wellbeing, only without, you know... giving up cake and sex, taking up yoga and jogging, and, I dunno, was there some other form of self-torture people were recommending?
Seriously, I felt like a million bucks.
More, even.
It wasn’t just the sex. A night with Morris had sure never left me on top of the world. Not even a night with that surfer I’d dated in college with the floppy hair and thevoiceand the enormous freaking... yeah, anyway.
Still not as big as Kaelum’s.
I stretched languorously, letting my arms and legs take up as much of the bed as possible. I didn’t come anywhere near the edges—there was a benefit of living among people bigger than me, and it was giant beds with blankets that utterly engulfed me. Plus, you know. Ridged blue alien dick. Holy hell could a guy get used to that.
I had a minor twinge as I stretched, reminding me just how much I’d been stretched out the night before, in an entirely different way. Mmm. That wouldn’t be hard to get used to.
And there it was. I’d been with the guy for a handful of days, gotten as many blowjobs as he could convince me I needed, and I... was attached. I wasthatguy, and I always had been. I hadn’t wanted a cat, and then we’d gotten Donna, and I’d gone and gotten instantly attached.
And there was the tiny letdown I was used to starting my mornings with there on Thorzan.
Donna.
