Ice Planet Barbarians (Ice Planet Barbarians, #1)(52)

“Damn, girl, we can’t leave you alone for five minutes,” Liz says. “Dead serious this time. I feel like if you leave our sights again, you’re going to show up with a litter.”

A hot flush comes over my face. “To be fair, I thought he couldn’t make me pregnant if it was interspecies sex.”

“A Great Dane can still make a Chihuahua pregnant,” Liz points out. “Guess which one you are.”

I make a face at her. “I didn’t want to say anything to influence you guys.”

“Like, hey, someone buttered my roll while you guys were waiting for me to return, and he left a few crumbs behind?” Liz cracks.

Ouch. “I’m sorry. I—”

“Don’t be sorry,” Kira says, butting in. She touches Liz’s arm before Liz can make another comment. “It’s just been rough for us.”

“Trust me, showing up pregnant was a surprise for me, too.”

“So we’re staying?” Josie asks.

I look at the tired, exhausted faces of my fellow captives. “If you guys are decided, yes.”

“If a guy shows up with a hamburger, he can plant as many babies in me as he wants,” Liz declares.

I hear shuffling outside and low murmured conversations. I sigh and look at Liz. “Did I mention that some of them learned English from the old ship?”

“The offer stands,” Liz says with a grin. “Should we wake up our test tube ladies?”

I eye the wall and feel a bit of anxiety. “They’re really going to hate us, aren’t they?”

“Why?” Kira says. “It’s not like we kidnapped them. We’re giving them an out.”

“An out that involves cooties and mating an alien.” I point out.

“You’re not complaining,” Liz says. “If they treat us half as good as Vektal’s been treating you, it’s not a terrible thing. And it beats being cattle, doesn’t it?”

I nod then touch my stomach. “I guess we wake them up, then. Maybe we should warn Vektal and the others that there are eleven of us.”

Around me, eyes widen.

“You haven’t told them there are six more?” Josie asks.

“Oh shit, they’re totally going to think it’s Christmas around here,” Liz says and starts to laugh. “I can’t wait to see the looks on their faces.”





VEKTAL


Just when I think my mate can surprise me no more, she brings something new.

“So, Vektal,” she says, sidling up to me as I return with my men and a freshly-slain dvisti for the humans to char into inedible food. “Can we talk for a minute?”

The other men shoot me envious looks as my mate touches my arm and my khui begins to hum. One of the men resonated earlier as well, but no one is stepping forward. I don’t blame them. With the humans undecided as to if they will stay or go—a thought that is like a knife to the gut—no one is sure how to act.

But Georgie gives me an encouraging smile and pulls me aside. Her hand goes to my chest, and I hold it against my thrumming khui.

“So I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“There is bad news?” I’m staggered. The urge to grab my mate and run off with her hits me like a palpable thing. “If it is bad, you must tell me now. I cannot bear it.”

She looks a little alarmed at my response. “It’s a human tease, Vektal,” she says. “Don’t get so upset. I don’t know if it’s bad news as much as it is startling news.”

I exhale slowly. “I am ready.”

“The good news is that we’re staying,” she says, a small smile playing on her lips. “We talked and voted.”

I don’t know what voted is, but the words she’s saying fill me with utter joy. I crush her against me and press my lips to hers. She twitches, and a happy laugh escapes her. Then, she wraps her arms around my neck and kisses me back, and for a moment, nothing exists outside of my Georgie and her soft, sweet mouth. “My resonance,” I murmur between kisses. “You fill me with joy.”

She breaks the kiss, and there’s a worried look on her strange, smooth little face. “You might not like what else I have to say.”

I want to tell her that nothing else matters. Not as long as she is with me. But there’s such anxiety in her strange eyes that I bite back the words. “What is it?”

“Your men are here to rescue five women,” she says, her fingers fiddling with the laces on my vest. She won’t look me in the eye. “But there are six more of us. Hibernating.”

I study Georgie for a long moment. Her words don’t make sense. Perhaps she still has not grasped all of our language. “The word you say, it means . . . sleeping? Did you mean something else?”

“No, I mean hibernating,” she says again. Her smaller hand grips mine, and she pulls me toward the wall with the strange panels and the lights, much like that in our elders’ cave. When we get to the wall, she touches it with a pat of her hand. “They’re asleep in here, and they have no idea what is going on.”

I am astonished. “Asleep in the walls of your cave?”

“Yes,” she says, her expression sad. “We were afraid to wake them.” And she tells me an incredible story of being taken from her home while she was sleeping and finding herself in the belly of the cave-ship. “We are the extras. These in the wall are the original cargo.”