The Alien’s Claim by Zoey Draven

Chapter Seven

“Who were they?” she asked after a swallow of the dried kekevir meat. Jaxor watched her delicate throat bob, desire tightening in his gut.

Vrax, he hadn’t mated with a female in what seemed like rotations. The last he remembered was with a female named Lakor during one of his visits to the Mevirax. Before everything had changed. When had that been? Or had it been during one of his visits to the outposts?

Though his brow was furrowed as he tried to remember, he never took his gaze off the human female seated across the fire pit from him. Tomorrow, he was planning to cull the kekevir. They would have fresh meat soon.

“Who were who?” he replied, stumbling over the words in her language, though he knew perfectly well what she asked.

“You know who,” she challenged, though her voice was even and light. He found that he liked her voice, though he thought she spoke too much. He was unused to so much talking. Had Lakor, or any of the other Mevirax females he’d bedded, spoken so much?

“Mevirax,” he said.

Rixella,he thought, almost angrily, as he found the word being pulled from him, as if she truly was an enchantress or possessed some power over him.

“Mevirax?” she repeated, nibbling on her bottom lip for a brief moment. Her dull, white teeth flashed and Jaxor unconsciously leaned towards her, fascinated. With a scowl, he forced himself to lean back, to look down at his uneaten food and away from her.

He only lasted a few moments before his gaze sought her again.

“Is that one of the outposts?” she asked.

Jaxor made a sound in the back of his throat. “Nix.” As if the answer was pulled from him, again, he murmured, “They are a people. Far from here.”

Not that far, his mind amended. Now that Jaxor possessed Cruxan’s hovercraft, he would be able to travel to the Caves of the Pevrallix in a little over a full span. He only wished he’d been able to see Cruxan’s face when he realized his hovercraft had been stolen.

“Are they a different race of Luxirians?” she asked, curious.

Jaxor didn’t know how to explain, or why he was even thinking of trying to, especially when the beginnings of the Mevirax were so closely tied to his blood line.

“More by choice,” he found himself saying.

She didn’t understand. He could see that written plainly on her face. And Jaxor found that he didn’t want to speak of the Mevirax anymore.

“Were you going to give Crystal and I to them?” she asked next, meeting his eyes. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact, even.

“Enough questions for this span, rixella,” he growled, standing, deciding he would eat on his patrol. He needed to ensure everything was in working order after his week-long absence.

“I just want to understand,” she said, her gaze flickering away, down to the fire. The air was cold and, for the first time, Jaxor noticed how closely she sat to the flames. Shame and unease made him pause. His eyes slid over her bare feet and legs. She wore nothing more than a tunic in the Kokillix region that time of the rotation. She hadn’t complained once.

Jaxor was used to it. He embraced the cold, actually. But she was small and her flesh was soft and vulnerable.

Swallowing, he went to his storage of spare furs. He had many, some he’d been planning to trade in Kroratax on his next visit. He took out a heavy black pelt from the chest. It was his finest one of libellex’a fur, one that he could’ve bartered a lot for in Kroratax.

He stroked the soft pelt, clenching his jaw, and then brought it over to Erin. He dropped it around her shoulders without a single word and she almost dropped the rest of her dried meat in surprise, catching and holding the furs swiftly.

Then Jaxor turned, striding towards the only exit off his home. Well, the second exit now, he thought. The main tunnel that led to the kekevir nest was one, now that he had a hovercraft, considering it only had a single opening at the top. But before, when he’d only had a sandcraft at his disposal, he used the exit accessed by a wide hole in the ground towards the east of his base. With the help of a pulley system, he could lower himself down to ground level and then navigate his way out of the mountain pass to the shores of the Kokillix and the sand banks below.

“Where are you going, Jaxor?” she asked. Hearing his name on her lips felt almost like a sin.

“To patrol,” he grunted, not turning to look at her, lest she pull more answers from him than he was willing to give.

When he reached the pulley, he peered down into the opening, the dark, cool, quiet entrance below. Wind whistled and rushed up towards him. Jaxor gritted his teeth, hating the descent and the ascent in that tunnel, but it was necessary. He wanted to conserve as much fuel as possible in the hovercraft until he could source and create more.

He grabbed a long blade he kept sheathed near the entrance, attaching it to the slot at his hip. He had another weapon at the bottom, along with a storage chest with provisions just as a precaution, but he didn’t plan to be gone for long.

Unable to help himself, he looked back at Erin, who had stood, clutching the furs around her shoulders, watching him with a small frown, her brown hair long and loose, hitting just above her breasts.

Longing and need and rightness burst in him, momentarily stealing his breath. It was the same emotion he’d felt when he’d fought with Cruxan a couple nights before, when he’d realized that he’d been fighting against the other male to keep her, so that he wouldn’t take her from him, which the Ambassador had threatened to do.

Mine, his Instinct bellowed inside him.

And yet, Jaxor still considered the idea of giving her to the Mevirax. So that the Mevirax could trade her to…them.

He swallowed, fists tightening, growling the thought away and taking a deep breath in through his nostrils. A different kind of longing consumed him then. A longing that had been with him for ten rotations, buried deep in his soul like a blackened lust. It was that that he had to fear because he wasn’t certain what he would give up to feed it. Would he even give up her?

His voice was rough, almost violent, when he rasped, “The only other way off this mountain is through that tunnel.” He jerked his head towards the darkened space, the one they’d come down last night. “You can take your chances if you wish. But kekevir are vicious things when they smell blood.”

I am sick in the head, he thought, watching her eyes widen as they flickered to the entrance. For the first time, Jaxor felt sorry for the female the Fates had chosen for him.

“You’re leaving me here?” she asked, her voice rising in what he thought was worry. Or distress.

He didn’t answer her. He jumped into the hole, landing on the metal plate a few feet down—something he’d scavenged from a wreck he’d come across rotations ago. The pulley system had taken him almost three lunar cycles to complete, but it had been worth it. Cables ran down the entire length of the vertical tunnel, attached to the system embedded in the facev wall of his base. He could easily descend and then ascend with little energy spent.

“Jaxor,” she said, regaining his attention. “Please.”

Please. She was begging him? But for what? To not leave her? Or to let her go?

He could do neither.

And so he pulled on the metal cords, losing sight of her as he descended into the darkness.

Monster, he thought. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

He ignored those thoughts too.