I was nursing the last baby, drowsy and thirsty because nursing makes you stupid drowsy and thirsty, when I heard the whoosh, pat, and click of Gilrack's arrival.
I readied a smile, ready to soften the quick warning to be quiet, as our daughters had already had their fill and were asleep, when it died on my tongue.
The one who pulled back the curtain had a bronze arm and chest connected to his purple hand. Curled ram's horns followed.
And he had wings. Great, purple wings that spread out the moment they were in the nest, as though to show off.
My mind waves must have spiked with alarm, for my little son popped off from his meal and started to cry. The girls scrunched up their little faces and begun to stir.
Green eyes snapped down to the noise. I rushed to cover my bare breast. I rushed to pull up my mind game to shut down my mind waves and bared my teeth.
"Get out," I hissed, with all the venom I could.
His tail curled, glittering with black spines through the purple tuff.
"I am of royal blood," he clicked, softly.
As he took a step forward, I put down my mewling son.
"Get out!" I snarled. A part of me more human the rest balked at my rudeness. He had done nothing yet other than visit and he was, technically, my brother-in-law. The more stronger part of me which had lived in this alien world for three months doing my best to learn everything I could screamed that he could be here for nothing good. I knew all of Gilrack's and his parent's fears concerning Rikek and his ambitions for the throne. An even more fearful, paranoid part of me remembered that instincts are so strong after babies are freshly hatched because rival males could come in and kill the young if they desired the female.
I didn't know if Rikek was that kind of male, but he very well could be.
He stopped, eyes darting all over me, then back down to the crying baby boy. The little girls were starting to cry in protest as well.
Rikek crooned, that low, musical sound Gilrack and his mother couldn't make. Something warm and soothing washed across me, throwing a blanket over my thoughts—which kicked and screamed at it.
"Waterfall breath," he murmured. "Breathed up the waterfall, breathe down. Blocking thoughts, but can still see through."
"That won't work on me," I growled.
"Waterfall breath," he just said again, his crooning wavering like the voice of a singer. "I won't hurt your young."
He lowered himself to the floor, his eyes never leaving mine, hourglass shaped pupils steady. Slowly, singing in that low hum all the time, he rolled on his back and bared his neck.
"I won't hurt young or you," he continued to croon. "Your mindwaves are frightening your young. Waterfall breath. Breathe up. Down. You are safe."
More warmth flowed over my mind. It was hypnotizing, in the way, in familiar. How many times had I felt Gilrack do the same? Though his were more like an ocean which smothered me in the endless depth and breadth of his affection. Rikek's came on me layer after layer, steadily growing the longer he lay and looked at me.
Despite myself, I felt my muscles, which were readying to launch myself into attacks I'd been practicing for weeks, relax. The hairs on the back of my neck still stood tall, though, and I'd begun to sweat.
At length, the babies began to quiet. The girls, after staring at me long and hard, as though making sure I was still there, let their eyes flutter close. My son took a bit longer and settled for snuffling against my chest for comfort, rooting for food. I didn't feel safe taking out my breast while Rikek was here, though.
"It's okay to feed him," he said, as though reading my thoughts or that of my child. "I will not harm. You are safe."
"Why are you here?" I asked.
He blinked slowly, his pupils rounding ever so slightly. His tail swept slowly across the floor, as though even that movement was measured.
"I've come to entreat you, divine maiden."
"To what? Not kill you?"
He made an amused grumble deep in his chest.
"So fierce for someone so soft."
"Soft can still break your neck."
"I am sure."
I didn't appreciate his patronizing tone, but the thought had occurred to me that the longer I kept him talking, the more time Gilrack or his parents had to get here.
"Not mocking," he said, once more seeming to read my thoughts—I though only Gilrack's dad could do that. "There is nothing more dangerous that a mother protecting her young."
"So go away."
"No."
I curled back my lips again, giving my best version of an alien growl.
For some reason, that seemed to please him.
"Such a good mother," he crooned.
I wish I had something hard to throw at him.
"With how often you people are telling me that, I'm beginning to think your females make really crappy mothers."
"Perhaps. Which is why," he slowly rolled back onto his front as he said this. "You are worth unorthodox efforts."
"Gilrack will be back any minute." A small lie. He'd left for hunting not long ago. "He'll kill you. He'll smell you here."
Rikek put his hands and feet beneath him. "I'm counting on it."
Excuse me? Unfortunately they didn't have the equivalent of that in their language, so I settled for bundling up my son and setting him aside. He didn't like that and gave a small mewl of protest. But I needed all my limbs for what I wanted to do.
Rikek's eyes shivered as I stepped out from the nest, followed by the streams of silk that made up my dress. I felt a break in the warm mindwaves lapping over me that spiked with heat and a unique mint like scent wafted into the air. It reminded me of the piney scent Gilrack would give off when he wanted a kiss, which was always followed by the apple cinnamon that said he was aroused.
Rather than strike a sexy pose, which this idiot was probably hoping, I widened my stance, lowering my center of gravity.
"I'm going to break you," I snarled.
Pear and cinnamon tinged the pine.
I scowled, "How dare you get aroused by that! Gross—GO AWAY!"
"I can't help it," he said, but he failed at sounding meek, and I got the impression he couldn't be meek even if he wanted to be. Even while baring his neck before he'd radiated surety.
And rather than roll back over and bare his neck again, he slowly rose, tail lashing, pear and cinnamon wafting away the mint.
"You are the most beautiful, erotic creature I have ever seen," he said. "The divine beings must have claimed the sky by their beauty alone if they looked any—"
I launched for his head, my aim his horns.
Despite how they looked, these alien's horns were surprisingly sensitive along the base and heavy compared to their heads. Urish had taught me to aim for them, as taking hold of their horns was the best way to get control of their whole body. Basically, if I could get my entire weight hanging on those horns, his whole head would get pinned to the floor.
He gave a croak of surprise as I latched on to them, nails digging into the base, and dragged him down, kicking his stomach to enforce it. He went down—
Only for his own grip to grab my waist and yank me under him as he did so.
Urish had also prepared me for this to, so I went for kick, digging my nails even deeper into the sensitive base of his horns, snarling and readying to bite if I had too--
In a show of flexibility he shouldn't have been able to manage after growing wings, Rikek brought up his large, draconic foot on my stomach.
The wind knocked out of me. Claws dug into my rib cage, breaking skin. The whole weight of an alien nearly twice my size pressed down on my organs. I heard the spines of his tail tuff clack loudly against the polished floors.
The babies erupted into squawls.
Rikek had the gall to croon as my arms began to shake with the effort to stay clamped onto his horns.
"You're making this easier, sweet, sweet Jolene," he murmured.
I began to click that he said he wouldn't hurt me, head spinning, win his face began to lower, lips curling back to reveal his gleaming fangs, longer than Gilrack's, bigger, deadlier.
The baby's cries gained a shriek like quality I'd never heard as terror overcame my rage.
Purple hair, thick with the smell of pears and cinnamon, smothered my face. His teeth dug deep into my shoulder, straight to the bone. Unwanted heat burned into the pain with my breathless scream as I kicked and flailed, but the huge foot kept me pinned.
Rikek started that damn crooning again, as though he could calm any of us at this point, when the sound of another shriek broke across the room. Air fwooshed past. Ornaments in the nest rattled.
"Get off her!!" screamed Shatit.
Rikek drew back his head too quick, tearing his teeth out in the process. His foot lifted just enough for me to get a sliver of breath.
"Get out!" Rikek snarled, all sign of crooning gone.
I could just make out Shatit through my spinning vision, a mass of purple outside the cage of Rikek's bronze body, kicking and pulling at his wings and hair.
With a crackling roar Rikek spun on his mother, slamming her into the wall. She had never looked small to me until then, held up by her son.
"You have no right!" he barked.
"I don't care!" she cried, struggling to kick out at any piece of him she could reach. "The younglings, the younglings!"
"I wasn't going to hurt them!"
"MINE!"
Rikek threw his mother across the room, through the curtained entrance, ignoring her squawk of pain and surprise as she must have fallen off the edge.
"We aren't younglings anymore, mother," he huffed, sounding winded though his mother's kicks hadn't landed anywhere to do so.
Then he turned back to me, who was gasping for breath and curled around my bruised stomach and pricked ribs, even as the heat of his venom pulsed through the rest of my body. Blood, sticky and warm, pooled around my cheek from my bitten shoulder.
One of the babies choked on the strength of their scream.
"You are mine, now," he murmured. It was a miracle I could hear him at all through the babies. "You are safe. Go, calm your young."
"Go die," I managed to croak out.
"Hush, waterfall brea—"
"FUCK YOU!"
He must have thought I was just screaming pointlessly since I'd said it in English, but he got the message across that I was done with him and let out a little huff, as though I were simply having a fit that would pass.
His hands reached out for me.
I tensed up, commanding my body to do what it did best and get ready to strangle the bastard.
A crackling, primal roar popped my ears. Rikek vanished from above me.
Gilrack had returned, and nothing about him seemed human anymore.
________________________________________
And Rikek returns! As you all knew he would. That was an overdone trope, I know, but then this story isn't exactly genius on my part. I just wanted an egg-slipp'n alien story and no one was readily supplying it for me, sooo here I am.