The Alien’s Claim by Zoey Draven

Chapter Eleven

Erin was five when she first saw John hit her mother. She’d been peeking through the doorway. Her mother had been pregnant with Jake and Ellora at the time—they’d been due in another month. It was the first time she’d actually seen it, but not the first time she’d been aware of the abuse.

The thing was that children saw a lot, they just responded to it in different ways. Even then, Erin knew it was wrong. She knew it was a terrible thing. But after John left that day, off to work in a fancy office in San Francisco, Erin had gone into her mother’s bedroom. Quietly, she’d crawled into bed next to her. Her mother had been crying, but Erin hadn’t been. Even then, she’d held her emotions tight and close, never letting them peek out. Even at five. She’d known her mother needed her close and so she’d run her small fingers through her long, black hair. Erin liked when her mother did that to her, so she thought it would make her mother feel better.

For some reason, that was the first thing that Erin thought of the next morning, when she woke in the cave. Running her fingers through her mother’s hair after John had left a large, angry red mark across her temple.

Erin’s eyes watered and then a drop escaped, sliding across her own temple as she stared at the stone of the cave’s ceiling.

Then she squeezed her eyes tight, wiped her face, and sat up.

It was cold in the cave and she pulled the furs around her shoulders. It was cold because the door was gone and buckets of rain fell just outside the entrance. The storm had come in the middle of the night, just as Jaxor said it would.

The male himself was leaning against the mouth of the cave, looking out towards his drenched base. During the night, he’d propped the door up to help shield the entrance from rainfall, but it was morning now—a dark morning—and he’d moved it out of the way again.

Erin bit her lip, rising slowly, a shiver prickling its way up her spine. The muscles in Jaxor’s back contracted when she approached, as if his body sensed her near. She didn’t look at him as she stepped beside him, inhaling a long breath when she saw the state of his base.

Most of it was flooded, the water a foot or more deep. The waterfall to the east was pouring down twice as much as it’d been yesterday—though now the pool’s bank had all but disappeared—and when she looked up at the mountain it came from, she saw the tips peaked in a cool blue. Frost? Snow? She couldn’t be certain.

The rain was loud. It was a thunderous roar that she’d gotten used to in the middle of the night. She’d never quite seen anything like it. It looked like solid sheets of water as it poured. It had even drowned out the shrieks of the kekevir, which seemed like an impossible feat. If she concentrated hard enough, however, she could still hear them.

The cave was high enough off the ground that flooding inside wouldn’t be a concern for quite some time, even if the downpour continued at the same rate. The entrance was sloped downwards, so the rain sluiced right off the stone.

“Will we be okay?” she asked quietly, surveying the base. A fur floated near the fire pit. Just last night, they’d been sitting there, dry.

“It will take another three spans of this until it will become a problem,” was what he replied, his voice surprisingly…gentle.

Erin tilted her head to look up at him. She appreciated his honesty. It also told her that he’d experienced this type of storm before.

Those electric blue eyes were on her. They scanned her face, as if searching for something. When he moved, his arm brushed her side and Erin realized how close they were. The entrance to the cave wasn’t that spacious.

“What do we do?”

“Wait,” he said. “There are drainage lines. It will take time.”

“What about all your things?” she asked, nodding down below, into the crater. Chests and weapons. His crops. The tanning station, the furnace.

“The stores beneath the ground are sealed tight. Everything else will keep until the storm passes.”

He was being oddly calm about this. But it was obvious he’d been in this situation before, perhaps many times. Maybe it was Erin who was more concerned than necessary.

“Alright,” she said quietly.

“You are worried?” he asked next, his voice gruff but soft.

Wasshe?

Erin met his eyes and said slowly, “I trust that you’ll keep me safe.”

It was only after she said it that she knew she honestly believed that. At least, in regard to the storm. Beyond that…Erin didn’t know.

His pupils darkened at her words. They flickered back and forth between her eyes, as if he was trying to discern the truth. His full lips were pulled down into a frown. His jaw tightened.

He really is handsome, Erin thought, almost sadly. His hair was a little wild, knotted in places—she itched to give it a long-needed trim—but there was a strong elegance to his features that she thought seemed familiar.

His gaze changed from suspicious to something else that threatened to consume her. She exhaled a small puff of air as his eyes went to her lips. She was getting dizzy again, the rain roaring in her ears alongside her heartbeat.

“Rixella,” he rasped, the word almost an accusation, whatever it meant.

This is madness, isn’t it? she wondered. She thought that if he reached out to touch her right then, she might start trembling. The strangest part was that she wanted him to…just to see what it felt like to let that madness consume her. She wanted to feel wanted, needed.

He reached out and touched her cheek. Her lungs filled with crisp air, with relief—

A familiar hissing sound echoed and Jaxor broke her gaze, his hand falling away. His head snapped towards the entrance of the main tunnel. Splashing came next and Erin gasped when she turned her head and saw a kekevir.

On all six of its legs, it paced the edge of the entrance tunnel. The water came up to the middle of its thighs and it squinted its four white eyes as it shook its shiny black head. It was what she remembered, only it looked more fearsome in daylight. Unnatural. It shrunk back from the dim morning light, sticking close to the shadows of the blackened tunnel. It paced, making those muted roars and hisses in its throat.

“Vrax,” Jaxor murmured. He was already jumping down to the crater’s floor, weaponless, water splashing up around his ankles. “Stay in there,” he ordered.

“Jaxor,” she exclaimed, watching in alarm as he trudged his way towards the beast. When the kekevir spotted him, its mouth pulled back in a low snarl and it crouched in the shadows. Preparing to leap at him?

Erin’s heart pounded in her chest. The furs she’d been clutching fell away. The rain picked up, a solid haze in her vision, and she struggled to make out Jaxor as he approached the main tunnel.

Something flashed after Jaxor crouched. It was the knife she’d had last night, when she’d been waiting by the fire pit for him to return. It was a small relief that he’d managed to find a weapon in the flooded base, but the knife was small. More of a paring knife for food than an actual weapon.

Jaxor approached the kekevir without hesitation, attempting to block its way into the base.

But he didn’t get there fast enough.

Erin’s heart leapt in her throat when she heard the creature roar. In the blink of an eye, the creature lunged from the shadows.

Jaxor dodged easily, though narrowly. The water around his ankles slowed his movements, but the kekevir seemed unaffected. The beast pivoted, its six legs proving to be an advantage, bouncing through the water with ease. It lunged before Jaxor fully swung around to face it.

A cry escaped Erin’s lips when the kekevir slammed into Jaxor, attaching the front of its clawed legs into the side of his chest and raking down.

“Jaxor!”

Through the heavy curtain of rain, she saw blood bloom across Jaxor’s skin.

The kekevir’s head snapped to her after it detached from Jaxor. Erin didn’t even have time to process those eerie white eyes until it was racing towards her.

Erin gasped, stumbling back, going down hard when the furs she’d dropped tangled around her feet. The kekevir was fast. It was already at the fire pit. Another long leap and it would be at the base of the cave’s entrance—

The creature shrieked and jerked back with the undeniable sound of cracking bone. Erin heard it even over the roar of the storm.

Jaxor had lunged for the creature. He had a grip around one of its hind legs, had broken it with his strength as he pulled it back from the cave, away from her.

The kekevir hissed, lashing out at Jaxor with its claws, struggling as the Luxirian male brought it down, pinning its front to the ground. It thrashed in the flood, water spraying up in chaotic, frenzied arcs.

With a rough bellow, Jaxor jammed the knife into the back of the kekevir’s head. It went deep. In a single moment, the creature slumped, quiet.

It had all happened so fast that Erin was still frozen on the floor of the cave, her hand still stretched out towards the furs around her ankles.

There was a ringing sound in her ears as she stared down at Jaxor and the dead kekevir. A swirl of dark blood moved in the water beneath the both of them. She didn’t know whose blood it was.

Thatthought jolted her into motion and she tore the furs away from her ankles quickly, climbing to her feet, ignoring the dull ache in her backside from falling hard on her ass.

The moment she stepped from the protection of the cave, she was soaked to the bone. The rain was that thick and heavy.

“Jaxor!” she called out, carefully navigating her way down the staircase that led up to the cave’s entrance. Erin ignored the way her foot throbbed, putting her full weight on it. She needed to reach him and fast. “Are you okay?”

The Luxirian male was still hunched over the kekevir, his hand still on the handle of the knife wedged into the creature’s skull. When he heard her, he finally pushed to his feet. At first glance, Erin thought she’d been mistaken that the kekevir had slashed him at all. His skin was clean. But she’d seen the blood, hadn’t she?

Then she realized the rain was washing everything away. When she jumped down to the base floor, she trudged through the heavy water until she reached him. His hair was inky black, tendrils plastered to his features.

Erin’s eyes scanned the front of his bare chest, trying to swallow the panic that was rising. Up close, she saw the two deep gashes, raking from the middle of his left pectoral all the way down to his hip bone.

“Vrax,” he cursed.

“Jaxor,” she breathed, blinking away the rain in her eyes. It was deep. Too deep. She watched dark blue blood push up between the gashes before it disappeared into the rising water at their feet. “That needs stitches. I—I can do that.”

Erin knew it was bad when Jaxor nodded his head without a single argument. He jerked his head up to the cave’s entrance and Erin remembered that he had medical supplies in one of the chests.

He staggered forward, seemingly dizzy, and Erin, acting on instinct, wrapped her arm around his hips, minding the deep wound. She wondered how much blood he’d lost already…and how much it would take until he passed out from the loss. If he’d been human, he would have already, surely.

Leaving the kekevir, Erin helped lead him up to the cave, though it wasn’t easy. The stone was slick and she had a seven-foot-tall alien male leaning on her.

Jaxor groaned when they made the final push up the last stone and then they both stumbled inside.

He dropped on the furs towards the back of the cave—where Erin had slept last night—leaning against the wall.

Out of the rain, Erin watched with dread and dismay as the blood began to pool.