“My liege, the scythkin have returned, and in greater numbers than before.”
That’s some really bad fucking news. I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep. I don’t remember falling asleep at all. It feels like a really long time. It feels like I passed the fuck out and didn’t wake until there was a reason to.
I’m sure I never slept this long on Earth. I know I never slept this well. When I wake up in Brawn’s arms, I feel as though everything is right with the entire universe. It’s as though nothing was ever wrong at all. I am having a hard time now remembering what my life was like before him.
The days have been passing by in a haze of sex, feeding, and sleep. I feel as though I am becoming part of him. When I open my eyes, and hear that bad news, I find that he has been carrying me about the ship, entirely naked.
Once upon a time this would have humiliated me. I would have been ashamed not to be clothed. But that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. Nothing seems to matter very much anymore. Except this news. This news is like a cold knife cutting through the warm glow of care which has been wrapped around me for so long.
“Evasive maneuvers,” Brawn commands. “We may be able to outrun them.”
“We have been running for the last six hours. We have passed through three galaxies, two dimensions, and one temporal anomaly. I can’t shake them. I’m sorry, sire, but battle may be inevitable.”
This is a whole lot of very bad news all at once. I’m feeling quite strange. The headache is back, and so is the hunger. I am absolutely fucking starving, but I am guessing that this is not the time to ask for a snack.
“Battle stations,” Brawn announces. “Scythkin are planet invaders, not dog fighters. Those ships are made for hauling brood from one incursion to the other, not engaging in bat…”
BOOM!
An explosion rocks the ship, sending me off my feet. Brawn catches me by the arm just in time to stop me from falling into a control console.
“The scythkin are firing on us,” the weapons terminal officer tells us with maximum redundancy.
War comes when you least expect it. It doesn’t care if you’re hungry. It doesn’t give a fuck if you’re tired. It comes in a great wave of violence and anger and you must adapt in an instant or you will die.
The old adrenaline responses I used to have are muted. I know back on Earth, I’d be reaching for my firearm. I don’t even know what happened to that. I can’t believe I haven’t even asked about it, or thought about it until now.
“This makes no sense. Destroying our ship could kill Ariel. Have they lost their minds?”
“Scythkin are not known for their sensible decision making,” his captain says. “It’s possible they are going to try to shoot their way in. That was a fairly targeted blast, aimed at our weapons array.”
“And?”
“Weapons capacity down twenty percent. We have reserves in place too. We are able to fight this, sire.”
“Fight we will.”
BLEEP BLORP
“There’s a message coming in, sire.”
“On screen!”
The screen pops up out of the ether, and on it is that incredibly strange and aggressive alien, who I hate with every bit of my being.
“Us again,” the scythkin Commander Zenith says. “We’ve decided we might just take the human and then kill you, if that’s okay.”
“It is not okay,” Brawn replies dryly. “The human is mine. She feeds from me. She is one with me. Any attempt to attack this ship will lead to a vigorous response.”
“Excellent. So we’re going to launch some space torpedoes and you’re going to…”
“You’re going to explode the human. Excellent plan.”
“Maybe put her in a part of the ship where she doesn’t explode? Or hand her over now, as you’re wildly out gunned. We brought our entire brood.”
The camera pans, showing at least thirty scythkin ships. We are completely surrounded. I feel my stomach sink as I realize that this may be a hopeless situation. Almost as hopeless as the one which found us on the pier back in California.
“Is there another, bigger, badder ship coming to rescue us from this?” I whisper the question to Brawn.
“We are the bigger, badder ship,” King Brawn tells me. “I am not going to let them take you. You are mine.”
I wonder if he means it romantically. Our relationship has been so unclear to me aside from two simple things: he will protect me, and he wants me for his own. But I need more than that. I’ve fallen for him in the same way I’d fall for a human man. I’m in love, and that hurts.
Suddenly, that matters.
I don’t know if it’s the adrenaline making me suddenly so clear-headed, but I feel as though I’ve just been woken up from a dream I didn’t know I was having.