The Alien’s Claim by Zoey Draven

Chapter Fifty

It was late afternoon. All the women were in the common room, but Erin only wanted to be alone. She was hiding away, holed up in the spare back bedroom in Lainey and Kirov’s home, watching the twin suns’ light track across the plush rugs lining the room.

Hours earlier, she’d come back to the dwelling after Jaxor’s trial, numb. She’d told the women only the bare basics of what had happened and then she’d retreated. Kate had tried to bring her a tray of food earlier, but it sat next to her, untouched.

And now, Erin was tucked in the ring around the fire pit, her back to the cushions, staring out the window. There wasn’t much of a view. She only saw the mountainside, but the sunlight cast interesting shadows along the stone.

She heard movement behind her, heard her door sliding open. Maybe one of the women were checking in on her to see if she’d eaten.

Only, the back of her neck tingled in a familiar way and she gasped, turning her neck so sharply she was surprised she didn’t injure herself.

And there he was.

Jaxor, standing on the threshold of the room, unchained, and regarding her with an unreadable expression.

“Jaxor,” she whispered, immediately rising from her position and striding towards him.

A lump in her throat made it hard to swallow as she walked into his chest, threading her arms around him. Her hands shook against his back and she heard his heartbeat when she pressed closer.

The trial.

Sucking in a sharp breath, she pulled back and asked, “What happened?”

“I have been pardoned,” he told her. “Fully.”

Hearing it didn’t seem real.

“What?” she asked, reaching up to clasp his face.

The way he said the words made her think a part of him didn’t believe it himself. It was everything she’d hoped for. Even if it had been exile, she would have been happy…because at least it meant she could still be with her mate.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her tears finally spilling over. “Really? It’s over? You’ll…you’ll be okay?”

He inclined his head. “Tev. It is over.”

The stress and worry lifted off her shoulders like they had weighed a hundred pounds. She grinned through her tears, her breath coming out quick and fast. And when she smiled, his lips quirked, as if her reaction to the news was finally making it real for him.

But then she watched his small smile slowly fade.

And she was reminded of her testimony. She was reminded of what she’d done, or rather, what she hadn’t done…which was be honest with him.

And that was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place, wasn’t it? The lies? The half-truths?

So, she said the one thing that she’d been thinking repeatedly the last few days.

“I love you,” she told him, her hands still clasped to his cheeks so that he wouldn’t look away when she said those words. “I promised myself that I’d tell you the next time I saw you,” she continued, watching his brow furrow, mirroring words he’d said to her when he’d confessed his feelings, “only, I made a mess of the trial and I didn’t get the chance to. So I’ll tell you now and hope that you can forgive me for not telling you sooner.”

“Rixella—”

“Wait, please,” she said hurriedly, needing to get it all out. “And I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you about the baby.”

Air whistled through his nostrils and his gaze burned bright into her.

“I’m so sorry, Jaxor. I meant to tell you, I really did,” she whispered, her voice anguished. “And there’s no excuse for it. Absolutely none.”

“Why didn’t you?” he rumbled, his hand curling around the back of her neck, the movement so familiar. In a strange way, it was comforting. It made her feel safe.

“I was still so confused. About us. About what happened,” she confessed and he stiffened ever so slightly, but his gaze was steady. Those bright blue eyes that she wanted to look into forever. “And a part of me couldn’t think past the trial. That was all that mattered…that you would be safe.”

She breathed in his scent—that musky, delicious, warm scent all his own—and felt her heart thud with longing and memory. What she wouldn’t give to go back in time, to start over, to start fresh.

But Jaxor was safe, he was free. He was here.

And Erin realized that she wouldn’t trade this moment for anything in the world. Because this moment was important. For both of them. She needed to make amends, to make sure that he would never doubt her again.

“When Privanax confirmed that I was pregnant…no, even before then,” she corrected. “When I was in the dungeons and I began to suspect that I was, I knew that I couldn’t go back to Earth.”

Jaxor swallowed.

“So, I already knew that I would be staying on Luxiria when you first came to see me when I was healing in the labs. It was overwhelming. Everything that was happening. The Jetutians, the Mevirax. Knowing I would never see my family again, my home planet again. All while being in awe and, to be honest, in disbelief about the baby,” she whispered, watching as his eyes flickered with realization. “And then us. And your trial.”

“Vrax,” he cursed softly.

“It’s no excuse,” she finished, “but when I came to see you in your room that day, I had every intention of telling you about the baby. Everything else just seemed so much more…pressing.”

“I understand,” he murmured, his voice low.

But Erin still remembered the hurt in his eyes when her pregnancy had been revealed at the trial.

“I know what you thought,” Erin said, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. “But Jaxor, I didn’t keep it from you because I was ashamed of you. Because I didn’t think you’d make a good father.” She gave him a small smile. “Quite the opposite, actually.”

Jaxor’s eyes closed and Erin’s chest ached, knowing that her assumptions had been true. That was exactly what he’d feared.

And for the first time, Erin sensed her mate’s exhaustion. Her brows pulled and she bit her lip, reaching up to stroke his hair. He’d been locked away since he’d arrived in the Golden City, seeking his brother’s help to rescue her from the Mevirax. That was what the other women had told her, who’d learned it from their mates.

Even knowing that he’d be put on trial for returning, he still did because she’d been in danger.

There had always been the threat of death lingering over him. Erin couldn’t imagine the strain it must’ve put on him, especially considering that he believed their relationship was over. She remembered the way he’d asked her not to reveal their matehood, telling her it would make life difficult for her.

Always, he’d had her well-being in mind, and that knowledge cut her deeply. He’d been caring for her all along, though she’d perhaps not realized it…and now she only wanted to care for him.

“Come,” she whispered. “You need rest.”

His grip loosened as she pulled him towards the bed she’d been sleeping on. She hadn’t had much sleep either. Most nights, she’d tossed restlessly without him beside her.

She drew him down beside her and he looked up at her, his eyes flickering over her features, as if he needed to memorize her all over again.

They lay side by side, the late afternoon sun gently drifting down the walls of the room as they stared at one another.

“Did you mean it?” he murmured finally.

She knew exactly what he was talking about.

“That I love you?” she whispered. She ran her hand through his hair. It didn’t look like it had grown at all since she’d cut it. That moment seemed so long ago now. “Yes. I love you, Jaxor.”

That intensity she loved in his gaze flared to life as she pressed closer, bringing their foreheads together because she knew it brought him comfort. Winding her arms around him, she felt his thigh come down over hers, tucking her in place.

Though their position was relaxed, her heartbeat was thumping wildly in her chest. She knew that Jaxor could feel it, that he could possibly even hear it.

“Even if you’d been exiled,” she whispered, “I would have gone with you.”

His brows drew lower as his lips parted. “Tev?”

Leaning forward, she hesitantly pressed a small kiss to those lips, watching him as she did. He made a rough, startled sound in the back of his throat.

“I would have followed you anywhere, Jaxor,” she murmured. She took his large palm, trailed it up her pale blue dress—hearing his breath quicken as she did—and rested it on the flesh of her growing belly. “We would have. And we would have been happy anywhere, as long as it was with you. I know that.”

“Luxiva,” he rasped.

But she didn’t let him finish. She leaned forward to give him a proper kiss, a long overdue one, one that hopefully conveyed everything that went unspoken between them: her regret, her apology, her love, her hope for their future, her relief…her happiness.

Need was growing between them. Desperate, aching need. They’d been without one another for too long. That time was stretched between them and Erin wanted to make it disappear.

When Jaxor’s hands grew bold on her flesh, she slipped off her dress quickly as golden beams of sunlight slid across the bed. Jaxor groaned, moving over her between her spread thighs, undoing the laces on his pants, his cock springing forward from the confines.

And then Erin gasped when he drove inside. It was sublime pleasure, but it also felt like relief, to feel him this way again. This moment was more about reconnecting than it was about sex.

“Yes,” she breathed, spreading her hands across his back. He still had a long-sleeved tunic on and all she wanted was to feel his skin, so she pulled it off, revealing scarred golden skin, every inch of which she’d already memorized.

He wasn’t close enough. Even plastered against her body and deep inside her, he wasn’t close enough.

Jaxor tilted her head back and claimed her lips. His kiss, just like always, made her head spin, made the whole world seem to disappear. And Erin clung to him. Even now, even after he told her he’d been pardoned, that it was over, she still felt anxious that she might lose him. But she figured that it would take time for that feeling to disappear. This time had marked both of them, but Erin was looking forward to their future, one they would fill with memories not related to the Mevirax, the Jetutians, the trial—but rather memories of their family, their friends, their new life together.

Their mating was quick and filled with need. When Erin felt her body tighten around him, when she cried out softly—trying to hold back a scream—as her orgasm washed over her, she felt Jaxor jerk. His groan and ragged breaths followed as heat exploded inside her and when she looked up, her flushed lips parted, their eyes locked.

Like magnets, she remembered.

Jaxor collapsed, though he’d managed to roll before he crushed her with his bulk. His breath rustled her hair when Erin wedged her face into the space between his neck and his shoulder, one of her favorite places. Her hands were still gripped tightly around him, as if he would pull away.

“I love you too, rixella,” he whispered. “Always.”

And Erin knew they still had so much to discuss, so much more to talk through. But that afternoon, she fell asleep in his arms completely happy for the first time since…ever.