not an it. I am a he. Behold the fearsome warrior who protects this clade.” Turning back to Molly, he complains, “Humans are small and cute but they are not very good listeners.”
Penelope brings a stack of cleaning cloths and bends down to help clean up the mess our clade member made. “Let’s get you all cleaned up. You’ve got to keep yourself looking nice so we can find you a queen of your own one day.”
He snorts a laugh. “I am too young for a queen. Also, Sonarian queens are rare. We should start looking now so I might have one when my time comes. We will not tell her I eat meat. We will keep that information top secret for now.”
Penelope mutters, “You sure eat a lot of it to come from a race of vegetarians.”
He snorts another laugh and begins talking about the lack of abundant sweet tasting fruit on this planet. Our Sonarian clade member can derail a conversation faster than anything I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t matter. Our little talk was playing itself out anyway.
I sip my sim-caffeine and watch the three newbies slowly bend down and start touching and talking to Lugon. He’s the cat person who never met a stranger. I envy that about him.
I suddenly remember their names. The redhead is Jill Hill. I remember thinking at the time how strange the rhyming was. Tonya Mackel something, maybe Mackelberg, is the one with who looks like me with black hair. I believe the blonde is named Elaine, but I can’t remember her last name. It seems like a million years ago that we agonized over the decision to trade women for military support. It was a little over a year ago, give or take a few months.
Borak whispers in my ear. “Are you well, my queen?”
“Yeah, karma can be a bitch sometimes.”
“Karma is when you expect one thing to happen but another thing happens instead?”
I shake my head. “That’s a good guess, but no. It’s when you do something bad and it comes back on you. Like me throwing these women at a strange alien hoping to save my home world, and now they’re my responsibility and I had to apologize to them.”
“I see this karma as different. I see it as them having good karma. They acted in good faith while in a situation they thought was terribly unfair, and now they will be taken care of and cherished by our clade.”
I smile at my mate. He’s trying to help me find the silver lining. I lean over and give him a peck on the lips. “You are good all the way down to your bones, and I do not deserve you even a little bit.”
“We are two imperfect beings swimming in a vast ocean of chaos who were lucky enough to find each other. That is the only truth that matters this day, my queen.”
When his lips land on mine, I forget we’re not alone for a brief second. Then my second favorite clade member sounds off. “No. You are wrong, young queen. This is not affection. He is smothering his queen. Do you not have eyes to see? He is depriving her of oxygen.”
I begin laughing and bury my head in Borak’s chest. I can feel him moving slightly, the way he does when he’s holding back a laugh of his own. When I turn my head around to look at Lugon, he’s managed to create a puppy pile with the queens, but he’s staring straight at us. I take another sip of my sim-caffeine, trying to keep a straight face. “So did you and the other Sonadraid ever decide if shoes made of rocks would make it easier to chase down an enemy than bare feet?”
“You listened to our conversation? That is not polite. We were talking amongst ourselves.” We all listen as he goes off on a tangent about how his race is superior because they can simply close their ears when they don’t want to listen to something. He demonstrates by making his ears stand straight up and then letting them flop down again.
A strong hand comes out to turn my head around slightly, and Borak steals himself another kiss. And I let him because he’s got the best lips on the planet. This man has burrowed himself so far into my heart that he’s never coming back out. I can’t wait until our boys come out of the shell. Borak is still his rambunctious, funny,