Stoan: Mated to the Alien by Kate Rudolph & Starr Huntress

Author:Kate Rudolph & Starr Huntress [Rudolph, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-04-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

It couldn’t be.

Stoan ducked out of the room on instinct as soon as Inrit’s name crossed Reina’s lips. His mind spun out of control, like a ship with malfunctioning anti-grav. After half a lifetime, he’d finally convinced himself that she was gone. He’d taken steps to bond with Reina.

And now Inrit was here, but he only wanted to talk to Reina.

Relief coursed through him as he stood on a secluded balcony off a side room. He was in shock at seeing his old friend. She shouldn’t have been in the Citadel and he wanted to shake her to make sure she stayed safe. He wanted to catch up, find out what her life had been like these last years.

But he didn’t want to kiss her. Or fuck her. Or spend the rest of his life learning to love her.

Reina had his sole devotion.

Inrit’s sudden presence had him uneasy on a mission level as well as a personal one. There were coincidences, and then there was this.

A few moments after he found his privacy, he heard a movement behind him. The slightly spicy scent of an alien perfume let him know it wasn’t Reina. He turned and saw Inrit up close for the first time in thirteen years.

She was tall.

That was his first thought. And though her eyes were harder now with years of unknown struggle, she looked like a grown-up version of herself.

“I—”

Stoan held up a hand to cut her off. “Not here,” he said in Detyen. Even if there were prying ears, they wouldn’t parse the nearly dead language. “There is a small cafe down the street with a picture of a dancing woman on the door. Meet me there in twenty minutes.”

She looked at him for a long moment, face worried. Then she nodded and left without another word. That only whetted Stoan’s curiosity about who she had become. A normal woman would have questioned that order. Only someone who understood the need for privacy, someone who’d seen the deadly consequences of loose talk, would leave without argument.

Less than a minute later, Reina stepped out onto the balcony. She walked to the stone railing and kept two meters between them. She looked out at the city without glancing at him, as if they were strangers sharing a nice view.

She didn’t need to say anything.

The moment was tense with the weight of those unsaid things. Stoan wanted to look at her, to tell her every truth he had to give. But he had already caught Droscus’s eye once and he would not risk her.

“Tonight,” he promised, whispering the word onto the wind.

Reina nodded once and didn’t watch him as he left.

Twenty minutes later, Stoan had wedged himself into a shadowy table at the back of the cafe. It was getting late, but the clientele didn’t seem to realize, and it was just as packed as it would be at midday. Even better, unlike the rest of the city, most of the people inside were not human, and a blue man speaking to a red woman wouldn’t be cause for notice.

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