Alien Warrior (Zerconian Warriors Book 1) (7 page)

“Everyone looks slightly frightened of you.”

He sighed as he entered his quarters. “Unfortunately, my behavior has been somewhat erratic lately. They have reason to be wary.”

Dex sat down on a seat, settling her on his lap. She shifted around, not entirely comfortable with sitting on his lap. Dex clasped his arms around her, stalling her movements.

“We must keep touching each other.”

“Why?” she asked warily.

“Because we are both suffering from some side effects of our mating.”

“What? But we haven’t, uhh, you know …”

“Exactly,” he replied. “We haven’t fully joined. Which is why Thor thinks you’ve been ill and I have been, well, not my usual self.”

“What have you been doing?” she asked, wondering if he’d suffered from the same heights of painful arousal she had.

“The males of our race tend to be highly physical,” he said slowly. “We have a need to expend energy or it builds up inside us and explodes out. It felt as though that energy built inside me at a far greater rate than normal. I was out of control, I wanted to fight whoever got into my path, I was confrontational. These are things a warrior cannot be. Particularly not the Crown Prince. Few under me feel they can tell me no. I have a lot of reparations to make.”

She could feel the regret pouring off him. Unable to help herself, she clasped hold of his hand. This was a vulnerable side to him that she thought didn’t exist.

“I’m sure they will understand. So this mating fever, that’s what made me feel so, uhh, odd?”

He grinned. “Odd? Or aroused?”

Her eyes widened. “You knew?”

“Mate, I could smell your need. I could see how hard your nipples were. At first I was jealous, wondering who you were thinking of that would cause such a reaction.”

“No-one!” Not quite true. When she could sleep, she would dream of him ravishing her against a wall or dragging her to the ground and taking her hard and fast. Or her favorite, sitting her on his lap so she could ride his hard erection.

He raised his eyebrows in disbelief.

“I didn’t want to feel that way and sometimes it was painful, my skin was so sensitive and I felt so feverish, so out of it. I could hardly sleep, I couldn’t eat. I thought I was going insane.”

“If I had bothered to check on you as I should have, I could have spared you a lot of suffering.” His voice was heavy with recrimination.

“Seems like you had enough on your plate,” she commiserated.

“My plate? I don’t believe I did much eating either.” His stomach rumbled as though to emphasize his point.

“No, I mean, you had your own issues going on.”

“Nothing is more important than you.”

From someone else, she might have waved that off as all-talk-no-action, but she could see his sincerity. He truly believed what he was saying. She couldn’t deny feeling a touch special.

“I can never make these last few risings up to you, mate. But I will certainly try to never neglect you this way again.”

“There is a way,” she said, almost reluctantly. What was wrong with her? This was her chance and she was hesitant to even mention leaving him. In fact, the idea felt like a stab in the guts.

“What?”

“Let me go home. Back to Earth.”

He was silent for so long that she began to fidget. Surely he must have known she would ask.

He sighed. “My father described finding my mother as the single most amazing day of his life. He said it felt as though there were only the two of them, like no one else existed. For days, they remained in their quarters, barely eating or sleeping, just getting to know one another. Even now, a hundred years on, he still looks at her as though she is the most precious, beautiful being he has ever seen.”

“It didn’t happen that way with us,” she whispered.

“No.” He ran a finger down her cheek. “Perhaps that is why we have been struck with illness or maybe it is because you are human. We don’t know. This is all theory. But it seems that as long as we are touching, the illness stays away.”

“So are you saying we can never be apart?” She had visions of having to do everything with him, like a Siamese twin.

“No, don’t panic. Thor believes once we complete our mating, that our bodies will return to normal.”

“Complete? You mean we have to …”

“Join? Yes, I do. Once our joining is complete, then we will be fully mated. Mated pairs do not live apart. They have a deep need to be close, to touch each other often. It is hard to explain unless you have seen it.”

“So your answer is no, I can’t ever go home.”

“Yes, that is my answer.”

So that was it? She would never get to see her home planet again? “And if we don’t finish the mating then …”

“I assume whatever has inflicted us gets worse, but I do not know.”

“A lot of things you don’t know, aren’t there?” she said bitterly.

“I am sorry, my mate.” He ran his hand over her hair and her traitorous body melted, wanting to lean into him, to burrow against his chest. To let him surround her in his heat and strength.

“I have to do all the compromising, and you get everything your own way? Does that seem fair?”

He frowned. “Females are guided by their mate. It is the way it has always been.”

“Well, that way sucks. Ever thought about breaking that stupid rule? How about you move to Earth with me?”

The appalled look on his face might have made her laugh under other circumstances. But this was not a laughing matter. This was her life.

Their life.

She swallowed at the enormity of it. She really was contemplating her future with Dex. It was madness. It was crazy.

But it was her mad, crazy life.

Hadn’t she wished for something to come along and stir up her boring life?

“I am the Crown Prince, I cannot just leave. My race is relying on me. One day I will rule, although I hope that day is long in coming. I cannot move to Earth.”

“And what if I told you I was important on Earth? That my race was counting on me?”

Silently, he watched her. “Are you?”

Wow, she wished she could lie. “No, I’m a nobody,” she muttered.

He cupped the side of her face with his hand. “You are not ‘nobody’ and I don’t want to hear that from you again. You are the mate of the Crown Prince of Zerconia.”

“Great. How’s that going to work seeing as I know next to nothing about your culture?”

“Do not worry yourself about that,” he replied. “You will be fully trained in how to be a proper mate, and my mother will tutor you on your duties. You are very intelligent, I am sure it will not take you long to become one of us. We can even work on it while we travel. For example, you can practice getting used to your new name.”

“Yeah, I am so not letting you change my name.” She scowled at him. Arrogant jerk. Just when he was beginning to seem normal, he had to go and say something like that.

He made a face. “But your name sounds so odd.”

“And you think giving me a stripper name sounds better?”

“Stripper?” he asked with a frown.

“Someone who takes their clothes off for money.

He looked thunderstruck. “Lulu was my Onla’s name.”

“Onla?”

“The mother of my mother.”

“Well, your Onla had a stripper’s name. There is no way I am letting you change my name, Dex. We are both going to have to compromise if this is going to work.” Yep, she’d given up fighting it. She didn’t see what choice she had but to make the best of things. Still, that didn’t mean she was going to just roll over and let him have his way with everything.

“I am doing most of the compromising here, buddy. I think you could bend a little, right? I know it’s a blow that you don’t get to mate with someone who will just give in and let you have your way. But I am not going to let you just dictate to me. I am never going to be subservient to you. If I have an opinion, then I will tell you.”

He scowled. “I cannot let you disrespect me in public.”

“I’m not trying to be disrespectful or difficult. I’m being honest. I grew up in a different culture. I have a voice and I’ll use it.”

“If you argue with me in front of others it will usurp my authority.”

She thought that over. “All right, I understand. I won’t argue in public. But in private, things will be a different story. I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not.”

“I understand. But in front of others you must be a properly behaved mate.”

“Fine, fine, whatever that means.”

“And you must obey me in all things.”

“Did you not hear what I said?”

He sighed. “Being mated to a human is difficult.”

“You’re no prize either. I’m not going to blindly obey you.”

“But you will obey if I give you an order in front of others.”

“I guess so,” she allowed. “As long as it’s reasonable.”

“And you will obey any order given for your health and safety,” he added.

“All this talk about obeying isn’t really making me want to fuck you, you know.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Really? It’s making me rock hard.”

“Pervert.” She snorted.

“I’m guessing that is an insult.”

“Yep, you guessed right. Listen, I’ll try not to embarrass you or do anything to undermine you but I can’t promise to be a perfect little mate, okay?”

Dex nodded. “That will have to do. But I will take your safety very seriously. Put yourself in danger like you did when we first met and I will warm your bottom for you.”

“Definitely a pervert.”

“Koran dressed me down for how I have handled things. For not properly explaining what being my mate means.”

“Back on Earth, I studied other cultures and life forms. I also studied strategic operations. I remember some things from my studies about Zerconian matings, although we didn’t have a lot of information about your race.”

“We are very private and self-sufficient. But perhaps our need for privacy has become our downfall.”

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We are long-lived; the oldest Zerconian alive is nearly four hundred years old. But he found his mate when he was young. Finding our mate is key, both for our females and males. Without their mate, males tend to become violent and aggressive; they generally don’t live much past one hundred and fifty years. Our females grow melancholy and fade away.

“One of my best friends died a few years ago. He had grown excessively aggressive, picking fights, just generally acting out of character. One day, he took off in his shuttle and never returned. We found his body five days later. He’d crashed his shuttle.”

“And you believe he did it on purpose? Because he hadn’t found his mate?”

“He was older. I believe his mind was eroding away. If he had found his mate in time, he could have been saved.”

“I am so sorry, Dex.”

He nodded, face grim. “There are far fewer females than males. All this time we thought that we could only mate with other Zerconians. It seems that wasn’t true.”

“Because of me.”

“And if we hadn’t closed ourselves off so much, perhaps we might have discovered that earlier.”

“That isn’t your fault. Your friend’s death isn’t your fault.”

“But I have always advocated that we didn’t need to engage with other planets. I have always voted against signing any treaties with others.”

“Why?” she asked.

“I suppose because of our ongoing war with the Coizils. We once had an alliance with them and they betrayed us. We have been at war with them ever since.”

“It sounds like you had a good reason to be cautious about others.”

“But I may never have found you.” He ran his hand through her hair, looking down at her intently. “And what did I do once I found you? I put you in danger.”

The remorse in his voice had her melting.

“You didn’t mean to. You said this has never happened before.”

“No, but I still feel like I failed you. It is up to me to look after you, to ensure your safety. It brings me great shame that I didn’t do that.”

She cupped his face between her hands. “I don’t know what your females are like, Dex, but I’m used to looking after myself. I don’t need you to protect me or take care of me—”

He scowled fiercely. “But that is my role, my right.”

“Wait for me to finish,” she scolded. “I don’t need it, but it’s nice to have someone who wants to look out for me. I haven’t had someone care about me that much since my mother died.”

“Koran said your father left you.”

“Koran has a big mouth.” She hadn’t quite meant to tell Koran so much.

“He also said you had a mate.” Dex scowled and she patted his arm.

“Not a mate like you mean it. My culture doesn’t mate like yours does. When we find someone we like who likes us as well, me might date them.” At his confused look, she explained. “Go out and do things together, get to know each other. If we really liked each other, then we might move in together. Maybe get married—which is where we swear to love and cherish the other person.”