Alien Desire by Hannah Haze
Chapter nineteen - Emma
Iam vomiting into the toilet. Powerful wretches roll through my body as I grip the cold rim of the toilet bowl, wanting nothing but to lie my head down on the tiled floor and stop the world from swaying.
Green tinged liquid spills from my mouth. It is nothing but water and bile because I was too queasy to eat this morning. And yesterday morning and the morning before that and the morning before that.
I wretch one more time as the nausea passes and I drag myself to the sink, splashing water on my face.
“You know what is wrong,” I tell my reflection.
I’ve been pushing the thought away, trying to deny it. But I know.
I lift the hem of my plain white shirt and stare down at my belly. Is it already curved? Or is that my imagination? Isn’t it a little early for that and for the sickness? I run my palm over the skin, trying to remember, trying to ignore the icy fingers of panic crawling up my spine.
What is the use in panicking? What’s done is done. Out here on the far side of the universe, stranded on this icy planet, there is nothing that can be done about it.
Perhaps it was inevitable. Perhaps I was a giant fool for believing human medicine would prevent this from happening.
Letting my shirt drop, I head out of the bathroom.
What will I tell Tor?
Our future has been a looming cloud we’ve resolutely ignored, happy to remain in our ignorant existence and not think about what will happen to us both. And then finally we’d come to an agreement.
But this will force the issue. There’s no hope in fighting the future when it’s growing in my belly.
I need to be sure first though, so I tiptoe to the medical scanner, confident Tor is occupied with the computer once more.
Tugging off my shirt I climb inside and tell Sheila to run the analysis.
“Undertaking medical examination, please wait,” she chimes as the red and blue laser beams sweep my body, seeming to linger at my abdomen. “Scan complete,” the computer says. “Making medical assessments.” It hums for several minutes then concludes, “No damage detected. Human female in mid twenties. Health very good. One foetal heartbeat detected. Foetal age estimated to be four weeks. Health of foetus undeterminable at this stage.”
The blood rushes to my head and I am suddenly dizzy, grappling to steady myself with a hand on the wall of the machine.
Breathe, I tell myself, breathe.
I knew it but now it is all the more real. A heartbeat? A heartbeat in my stomach?
Steadying myself, I step out of the machine and I find Tor standing in the corner of the room, arms folded across his chest, watching me.
“I’m pregnant,” I blurt out.
“You told me this wasn’t possible.”
“It shouldn’t be!”
“I knew I shouldn’t trust human technology. Look at this place and its rudimentary machinery. Of course your medicines are useless,” he scoffs, sweeping his hand over the room.
“So it is my fault?” I snap. “I seem to recall two of us involved in creating this situation.”
He ignores my comment.
“I need to get a message to Astia immediately.” He spins on his heels and marches away, leaving me standing naked and aghast in the middle of the medical bay.
For a moment I’m so shocked I don’t move, and then I hurry after him. “What do you mean send a message?”
“I have nearly succeeded in upgrading the computer. It requires only a few flicks of switches and then the computer will be capable of sending a message to my planet.”
“It’s nearly ready? How long has it been nearly ready?” I’d noticed he’d spent less time tinkering with the machine in the last few days, but I thought that was because I’d proved a more enjoyable distraction. Now I realise he’s been hiding things from me.
“Four days,” he grunts, as he flops himself down on the chair and punches at buttons.
I grab at his hand and he brushes it away. “Four days?! Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you finish the job and send for the ship like you said?”
“Because I wasn’t ready for us to leave this planet yet, and for everything to change.” He doesn’t look at me, his attention is drawn to the screen and to the buttons he busily presses in front of him. I barely have time to process this, more keen to stop him from doing whatever he is doing before we’ve talked this through.
“So why are you contacting them now?”
“I need to get you back to Astia as quickly as possible.”
Leaning all my weight on the back of his chair, I swing him away from the console to face me. “Why?” His words sound so cold and hollow, void of emotion. I don’t know what I was expecting. He’d talked so often about mating and procreation in the past, I thought he’d be delighted, ecstatic. He just sounds annoyed. “There’s no way I’m getting rid of it.” I snarl.
Horror sparks across his face and he grabs me by the upper arms. “What?”
“Nothing,” I mumble.
“I was happy to entertain the idea of us delaying our return to Astia, of exploring the universe together or perhaps allowing you a visit to Earth. But not anymore, Omega. We’re going home. Now!” he swings his chair back to the monitor.
“But you promised!” My voice is a high pitch screech. “You promised you’d fetch us a ship and we’d head out there exploring together.”
“Circumstances have altered and as a consequence so has my mind.”
“And do I get a say in this? Do we get to talk this through? I’m not yours to order about. We’re not even mated.”
“I can change that,” he says with a growl so low and with such menace a sinister chill skates down my spine.
“What in Hell do you mean by that?”
“I can bite you anytime I want, little Honeypot.”
I take a step backwards and curl my other hand into a fist. “I’d like to see you fucking try,” I yell. I may be small but I’m a fighter and I make my own decisions. This is my body, my baby and I get a say in both our futures. “You can call them all you like. I’m not going.”
His eyes flick to mine and he scoffs. “So you are going to remain here, alone with a child, waiting for a rescue ship that is never going to come? You have no choice Omega. You’re mine and you’re coming with me.”
My heart is hammering in my chest and a cold sweat swims across my body.
“You planned this,” I screech. “You planned this. This was your plan all along. All that stuff about wanting to give me choices was bullshit. You just said that to make me believe I had a choice. You always intended to get me pregnant and abduct me back to your planet.”
I remember all the chess games we’ve played, how quickly he’d picked up the rules and the strategies needed. How clever he is, how it hadn’t taken many games before he was constantly several moves ahead of me.
Shit! I’ve been played.
His hands fall away from the controls and he stares at me with astonishment. “You told me you couldn’t have children.”
“I’m not your Omega. I don’t want to be part of your fucked up world — owned and commanded by some sexist chauvinist.”
He jumps to his feet, his shoulders and jaw tense with rage. “You are my Omega. It doesn’t matter that I haven’t claimed you. How can you deny it, Emma? There is something between us.”
“It’s just sex,” I scream, “it doesn’t mean anything to me. You don’t mean anything to me.” He flinches at these words and I instantly regret them. It isn’t true, but they slipped from my mouth in anger.
“You said you were mine. You gave yourself to me,” he growls low, that growl that had Fluffy sinking to his belly, the one that makes my knees buckle.
“When?” I say, forcing myself to stay standing.
“Before I had you.”
“That … I didn’t mean that. And what? It was in the heat of the moment. You think because we’ve fucked you now get to make every decision for me? You don’t OWN me.”
“It is irrelevant either way,” he says heatedly, “you’re carrying a prince of Astia in your belly and you’re coming home with me, even if I have to sling you over my shoulder and drag you onto the ship kicking and screaming.”
I don’t know if I want to burst into tears and run for my bed, or pummel his chest with my fists.
Instead we simply stare at each other, the distance between us seeming to grow wider by the moment. His skin is the palest I’ve seen in weeks and the colours in his eyes are stilled like silent waters.
The gap grows wider. I want to cross it. I want him to take me in his arms and see things my way. To be the Tor I thought he was, not some tyrant. But I have been a fool. I should have listened to that little voice warning me in my head.
We are too different. Our bodies, our species, our ways. In his world, Omegas are meek things who must submit and obey, while Alphas are dominant and controlling. To think I’d changed him, to think things between us would be different, was stupid.
A chasm has formed between us now, and there is no way for either of us to cross it.
He knows it too, and he sinks to the chair in resignation. “Sheila, send an SOS message to my father, Lord Qudrat, on the planet Astia, the Stanort Galaxy, requesting a rescue ship be sent immediately.”
“Searching for this location,” Sheila chimes brightly as tears stream down my cheeks. “Location situated in an unknown region. Message transmitting now.”
“Good,” he says, not looking at me. “Thank you, Sheila.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How long?” I whisper, “how long until they come?”
“Our ships are much faster than yours,” he says. “They will be here in a matter of days.”
A matter of days.That’s no time for me to work out what I’m going to do. Storming from the room, I dash into the bedroom, Fluffy trailing behind me concerned, and barricade myself in. Then I flop down on one of the unused beds, avoiding the ones we’ve been sharing, knowing the aroma of our combined scents in the sheet will only upset me further.
I curl up into a tight ball and Fluffy places his paws on the edge of the bed and snuggles his face into mine, licking at my wet cheeks. I shuffle backwards, making room and cuddle up to him.
“You were right all along, Fluffy. He’s a jerk. A giant multicoloured, unfeeling jerk.” Fluffy allows me to tickle his ears, while he sniffs at my belly. “Yeah, it’s a baby. Not sure what the hell I’m going to do about that.”
I hear Tor’s footsteps approach the room, his hand twists the handle and he grunts when he finds the door won’t open.
“Omega,” he says, but I ignore him. If he thinks he is going to bully me into opening the door, he can think again. “Omega, let me in.” he growls at me in that commanding way and my body jolts, my feet itching to move towards the doorway. I have to fight every instinct to hurry across the room and fling back the door.
“No!”
He rattles the handle and heaves against the door, but I’ve bolted the door and moved three beds across the doorway and there is no way he’s getting in.
“Omega, do as I say and open this door.”
I do not answer and eventually he gives up, his footsteps fading away into the station.
Good. I don’t want to talk to him. I want to wallow here in my outrage.
How could I have been so stupid? So easily swayed. I’ve been alone for such a long time. And it’s safe. No one can hurt you if you don’t let them in. Because they always do. Whether they mean to or not. Sometimes you find they aren’t the person, the alien, you thought they were. Or they leave you — for no fault of their own, they leave you all alone.
But I’m not alone any more. I have my baby. It’s mine and I’m not giving it up to some alien. I’m not sending it off to be raised by Alphas who’ll deny him love and affection.
No, we’re going home together.
I sit up.
“Sheila?” I say softly into the empty room.
“Yes, Space Cadet Steele?” she answers.
“Is it possible to send a message to Earth, or one of the other occupied planets?” If he’s fixed the computer so it can reach his people, maybe it can reach mine too.
“Running analysis.” She’s silent for one long second. “Yes, connection made.”
“Tell them my ship crashed and I need picking up.”
“Message sending.” More silence. “Message received.”
“What?”
“The message has been successfully delivered.”
I can’t believe it. All these months and months of trying and failing and now finally, finally I’m through. I should be ecstatic. But I’m not. I feel as empty and hollow as I did when I first arrived on this planet.
* * *The days on this planet are all the same. There’re no seasons like there are on Earth. Everything is as regular as clockwork. So the hours pass and the shadows lengthen and crawl across the floor and the light fades to a dark grey, the sky outside the window leeching colour.
“Space Cadet Steele?” Sheila says, startling me awake from dozing.
“Yes.”
“Message received from the commander of space rescue. Permission to play message.”
“Yes, please.”
“Space Cadet Steele,” says a deep gruff voice warped by time and space. “Your message has been received. Nearest spacecraft is space shuttle Odon. Order has been sent to detour and pick you up. Expected arrival three months. Apologies this can’t be sooner.” The message ends abruptly.
“That’s it?” I ask.
“Yes.”
Not so much of a ‘how are you doing? Do you have shelter and food?’. And no specific mission to rescue me, just a shuttle told to detour. Fan-fucking-tastic.
Tor’s ship will arrive first. I have only two options: hope he won’t bundle me onto his ship or try to escape.
There’s a knock on the bedroom door, as if my thinking of him has conjured him up.
“I’ve brought you some food,” he says with a sigh, “and the pet some too.”
“You’re not coming in.”
“I understand,” he says, his usual calmness returned. “I’ll leave it by the door.”
I listen for his retreating footsteps, wanting to make sure he’s not lurking about out there ready to grab me and tie me up ready for the spaceship. It’s a risk, but one I’m going to have to take because I am starving. My stomach is still empty from my vomiting earlier.
Stalking to the door, I climb over my bed barrier and rest my ear to the wall. I can’t hear him, so carefully I dismantle the barricade, draw back the bolt and creak open the door.
I can’t see him either, only a tray with a dish of food for me and one for Fluffy. Fluffy whines behind me, clearly knowing what’s coming and quickly I grab the tray and bring it back inside the room, speedily replacing the beds so Tor can’t follow me in.
Then Fluffy and I eat together in the dark.