Possessive Alien’s Mate by Luna Hunter

Chapter One

Thiray

The human femaleis even beautiful when she sleeps. Her dark hair is sprawled out over her pillow, her chest rising with every breath.

She does not know I am in her room. Watching. Waiting. Protecting.

I live for these moments, when she is lost in sleep and I take the risk and board the Dohan vessel. I know it’s safer if I wait in my own ship, which is cloaked nearby, completely invisible to the Dohan and their primitive sensors, but I cannot resist.

I must see the female. I need to study her perfect human features. Her full lips demand to be claimed, her exposed neck… it tempts me. It begs for my mating mark.

And her scent, by Yssadril, her scent! It makes my cold blood run hot with desire. What I wouldn’t give to climb under those soft sheets with her, to let my strong hands run across her perfect curves, to sink my fangs into her neck and claim her as my mate…

I ball my fists and exhale quietly. I mustn't. I cannot interfere, I can’t upset the Balance. The Trials should have purged me from all desire!

And it did. For years and years. And then I saw Viliana and her friends on Saloo VII. Three human females, completely out of their depths in the grimy underbelly of the Outer Sector. The moment I laid my eyes on her changed my life.

I knew in my very essence that I had to protect her and her friends, no matter what. I swore a vow to myself at that moment, and I intend to keep it.

Whether she wants me to or not.

Viliana stirs in her sleep. Her eyes twitch ever so slightly, and her perky nipples harden underneath the thin sheets. My fingers ache to tear the sheets away and grab hold of her, to take her breasts into my mouth, to plunge my hand between her legs…

I close my eyes and exhale quietly through my nose. By Yssadril, I am like a young one in rut.

I must keep my distance. The Dohan say they protect her, and Viliana seems to travel willingly with the large brutes. I will keep my watch.

If anything happens, I’ll be there.

And I’ll make anyone who hurts her pay dearly for it.

Viliana

His long white hair dances in the light of the twin moons. The silver alien turns towards me, his dark eyes brimming with love and desire. He holds out his hand for me. I accept tentatively. His grip is strong and firm, and he pulls me into a tight embrace. My heart hammers in my chest as I feel his warm breath on my skin. He kisses me. I melt. His hand slips between my legs.

I wake up with a jolt.

It was the same damn dream again. Every night, for weeks and weeks on end, I dream about him. The pale, white-haired alien with the unsettling ink-black eyes that saved my life on Saloo VII.

I rub the sleep from my eyes, blink a few times, and then my heart is launched straight into my throat. It’s him. He’s standing in my bedroom. Watching me!

“Lights!”

The light in my bedroom flicks on at my command, and my room is empty, save for the one chair with my clothes sprawled all over it.

No creepy sexy alien watching me sleep.

I could’ve sworn I saw him. It must be my tired mind playing tricks on me. I thought that traveling to Earth from Doxhar would make the dreams go away, but if anything, they’ve gotten worse.

They’re so vivid it’s like I’m really there on that strange alien planet, watching the two moons reflected in the calm sea with Thiray th’Rasda Di’ylian by my side.

I haven’t forgotten the alien’s name. It’s burned into my mind, like a song that’s stuck on repeat.

My mind is playing tricks on me.

There’s no way Thiray could sneak onto this ship. The Dohan are taking me back to Earth, after they saved me from the clutches of the despicable Uttux. The Dohan are extraordinarily powerful warriors, and protective to a fault. They’d never let Thiray on-board, and they certainly wouldn’t let him into my room.

That’s what I tell myself as I shower and get dressed. Still, it can’t hurt to check. I have to be absolutely sure.

“Tyonn, can I ask you a strange question?”

The tall Dohan warrior looks up from his many, many screens at me. There’s a dozen of them all around him, monitoring every minute detail of the ship.

“All your questions are strange to me, human.”

“That may be so, but this one is a little stranger than most. Was someone in my room last night?”

He shakes his head full of long, black hair. “Impossible. I’ve been manning this station for the past thirty-six hours, and I have seen nothing of the sorts on the monitor.”

“Can you check, just to be sure?”

The Dohan warrior shrugs and pulls up some windows.

“The lock on your door has remained perfectly sealed all night.”

“So, there’s no way anyone was in my room, right?”

“Correct, human.”

“There’s no way they could bypass the lock?”

Tyonn looks at me dismissively. “Are you asking me if I can teleport, human?”

“I don’t know. Am I? Can you?”

“No. I cannot. And I do not know anyone that can.”

He turns back to his many screens.

“Is there any other way you can check my room?”

Tyonn grunts. I am starting to annoy him. “Do you want me to install a camera in your room, human?”

“Uhm. No.”

“Then no, there is not.”

“What about like, oxygen levels or something?”

Tyonn pulls up another window and sighs. “There’s some light fluctuations there.”

“So, someone was there!” I yell.

“Or you snore.”

The warrior looks at me with an impassive expression.

“Pardon?”

“You have been complaining about suboptimal sleep, correct? It could be that your oxygen intake during the night is uneven, due to your uneven breathing. Humans have a tendency to do that, I have learned. I will install a microphone in your bedroom, so you can hear.”

“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m good.”

“Are you sure? It would be no trouble.”

“It’s fine. Really.”

“Suit yourself. Be sure to exercise, human. It is important to move your body during space travel.”

I decide to take Tyonn’s advice and busy myself with a long walk through the entire Dohan vessel. I even throw in a few jumping jacks and walking lunges in there to mix things up. Anything to get my mind off Thiray and his intense gaze.

None of it works. It’s like his presence follows me wherever I go. Like he’s my damn shadow.

The Commander opens the door to his office right as I’m walking lunging my way past it.

“Viliana. Staying busy, I see. Very good.”

“Commander Dhauk,” I stammer. “Sir.”

I try to salute him, lose my balance, and fall flat on my ass. I try to laugh it off. The Dohan Commander doesn’t break a smile.

“I wanted to speak to you. Come into my office.” The large, bare-chested warrior shepherds me into his workspace. I still don’t know why the Dohan prefer being shirtless all the time, but I’m not complaining. I plop myself down in one of his Dohan-sized chairs, my feet barely touching the ground.

This feels eerily reminiscent of visiting the principal’s office. Then again, my principal was never a shirtless, tattooed alien warrior with an axe dangling from his hip, but Commander Dhauk does have that same stern energy that principals tend to have.

“We are nearing Earth. You must be happy.”

“I am.”

“You do not sound happy, Viliana.”

“The dreams,” I sigh. “They haven’t gone away.”

Dhauk nods. “The Thaana. Elder Xaldur has warned me. We’ve been monitoring the sub-atomic subspace levels closely. Tyonn hasn’t found any irregularities. He is not near, human.”

Everyone keeps saying that, but that’s not what it feels like to me. “What do you know of the Thaana?” I ask.

Dhauk shakes his head. “We’ve been over this, Viliana. I don’t know more than you.”

“I doubt that. There’s got to be something you haven’t mentioned yet, something you’re keeping from me.”

All I know is that Thiray’s gorgeous ink-black eyes haunt my dreams, and that I wake up breathing heavily and sweating profusely as my body fires on all cylinders, aching for the touch of his pale lips.

I haven’t mentioned that last part to the Dohan. Didn’t seem pertinent.

“The Thaana are exceptional warriors. No match for the Dohan of course, but exceptional. Extremely proficient with their curved blades, with reflexes as quick as lightning. That is all I know, Viliana.”

“Where are they from?”

“We don’t know.”

I stare at the Dohan Commander. He stares back impassively.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we do not know.”

“They’ve got to come from somewhere!” I throw up my hands in frustration.

“I agree with that assumption.”

“But? You don’t know where from?”

“That is correct, Viliana.”

“They can’t just appear out of thin air!”

“And yet that is exactly what they appear to do.”

I cross my arms across my chest. It feels like the stern Commander is pulling my leg, but I have yet to ever catch him making a joke.

“So just to summarize, you are saying that my dreams are haunted by a multi-dimensional alien that has simply popped into existence out of nowhere?”

Commander Dhauk leans back in his chair and folds his large hands behind his head. “I assume that the Thaana’s home planet was destroyed eons ago. Much like how we Dohan have wrecked our planet with war. The Thaana are formidable warriors in their own right — of course they pale in comparison to us — so it wouldn’t surprise me if that happened.”

Hm. Perhaps Thiray has no planet to return to. No place to call home. Poor thing.

Doesn’t give him the right to live in my mind rent-free though. Ah, who am I kidding? I’m the one dreaming about his muscular silver body, his flowing white hair, his fangs…

“Now that I have answered your questions, Viliana, it is time to discuss how to save the Dohan species.”

“Right,” I say as I sit up straight. This is the whole reason why they’re taking me back to Earth. The Dohan are on the verge of extinction, and human women are the only species compatible with them. It’s up to me to come up with a plan to find enough suitable mates to repopulate their planet.

Without resorting to plain old kidnapping.

That’s what the Uttux, the gray, four-armed overlords that control the Interstellar Union and in turn, the entire universe, did to me and my friends. They were also the ones to meddle with the Dohan genes, causing their society to collapse.

Luckily for us, Xaldur and his band of Dohan warriors saved us from the clutches of the Uttux before they could get their bony hands on us. Now it’s time to turn the tables, and it’s up to us human ladies to save the Dohan from complete extinction.

Riley and Kayi have already done their part. They’ve bonded with the strong warriors, and they’re both as pregnant as pregnant can be. Sarina will be pregnant soon enough.

Me? I haven’t met the right one yet. I’m too busy coming up with schemes to save the Dohan, and repay them for all they’ve done for me and my friends.

“I’ve got a plan. It’s called a dating app.”

Commander Dhauk stares at me blankly. “App?”

“Yeah. You don’t know what an app is?”

He shakes his head.

“It’s a program on your tablet.”

The Commander scrunches his nose. This is going to be a long conversation. The technology of the Dohan is incredibly advanced, but at the same time they’re also extremely traditional. They almost remind me of ancient warriors, with their long, wild hair, their tattoos and their bare chests, and the swords and axes dangling from their hips.

I explain the concept of a dating app, and apps in general, and tablets and the internet to the grunting warrior. He seems to get the gist of it.

“Will the Sol Alliance not discover this app?” Dhauk asks.

A fair point. The Sol Alliance, humanity’s multi-planet government, is in league with the Interstellar Union. We have no idea how much they know of the Uttux and their machinations, but it’s clear we can’t trust them.

If the Uttux find out that we’re on Earth, recruiting human women for the Dohan to mate with… I shudder to think what they’d do.

Raze half the planet, probably.

It’s something I’ve struggled with. By traveling to Earth, we’re risking not only our own lives, but also those on Earth. Innocent people could be caught up in the crossfire. The women that join our fight will not be able to return to their homeworld, probably ever. Is it fair for me to ask them to give up everything they know, move to Doxhar and start a family?

It doesn’t feel right. At the same time, doing nothing and letting the Dohan go extinct is not an option either. They’re the only species with the strength to stand up to the Uttux. We’ll just have to be extremely careful.

“There are billions of apps. The Sol Alliance won’t notice one more. It’s the perfect way of finding suitable women, while staying low. You Dohan, you stand out in a crowd. This way I’ll be able to find women, talk to them, and narrow down our options until we’ve found a few that I think will be a perfect match for you guys.”

The Dohan Commander exhales deeply through his nose. “Why must we go through all this trouble? I do not see why we cannot simply take a batch of women and be on our way. That would be the safest route.”

“That would also be kidnapping,” I point out. “Human women are people, not cookies. You cannot simply take a batch. Xaldur gave me his word that there would be no kidnapping and no force used. All the women who will travel to Doxhar must do so willingly.”

Dhauk relents. “You are correct, little one, but you must understand my frustration. Human women are the only hope of survival for our species. We thought for years that we were doomed to extinction. And now the answer to our prayers is so, so close… and yet we cannot close our fists and simply take it. We have to build a stupid dating app.”

He balls his fists in front of me, the muscles on his arm bulging.

“I understand, big guy,” I say. “But trust me: There will be plenty of women who will gladly mate with a Dohan warrior once they get a good look at you.”

“And yet you have not taken a Dohan mate,” Commander Dhauk counters.

“Correct.”

He raises his chin and studies me. Once again, I feel like a naughty child being scolded. “Hm. Yes. You belong to the Thaana assassin. I see that now.”

“Wh-what?” I stammer. “That’s bullshit. Where did you get that idea?”

“You speak of him every day, human. It is clear he possesses your mind. I will allow it, but I will not allow the Thaana stealing any other females from under our nose! Make that extremely clear to him.”

“How? I’m never going to meet him! I’m running away from him as fast as I can! Why do you think I’m traveling halfway across the galaxy in the first place?!”

I stand up and my heart pounds with anger. The nerve of this guy, I can’t believe it. “We’re done here.”

I bolt out of the office and slam the door behind me.

I do not belong to anyone.

Certainly not to Thiray th’Rasda Di’ylian!