The Breeding Prize - Aya Morningstar Page 0,25
to sit down. Before Raiska can sit down though, Kula pulls his chair away. “Come to the kitchen with me, brother.”
Raiska eyes me nervously. I smile and wave toward the kitchen. “Go ahead. I’ll be fine. You and Kula will be right next to me anyway.”
When the two alien men are gone, Ellie looks at me and smiles nervously. “I’m sorry for kicking you out.”
“No. I understand.”
“I feel like a hypocrite, because I was in a sort of similar situation before. If I weren’t about to have a baby it would be different.”
I reach out and put a hand on the back of hers. “Ellie. I understand, really.”
“So...four aliens are coming after you?”
I nod.
“Hundreds of Ulkar were coming for me. Did you ever see an Ulkar?”
“Does Raiska count?”
She laughs. “I guess Raiska and Kula technically count, but those two look nothing like Ulkar. Ulkar are like...tentacle dicks.”
“Hundreds of tentacle dicks were coming after you?”
“Each Ulkar can have up to dozens of tentacle dicks, so I’d say it was more like thousands of them.”
My eyes bulge. “The ones coming after me are like...three little aliens that are the size of children. I think they are psychically connected—er, connected on the higher dimensions—because one of them screamed when Raiska cut the other one’s head off.”
“How many are there?”
“Well, there were four, but Raiska killed one or two of them.”
“At least they’re small…”
“Their dicks weren’t.”
Ellie bites her lip. “So there are those little guys, and who else?”
“A gold-skinned one named Philos. He ate like ten cheesesteaks—”
“Cheesesteaks? What? Aren’t you from Pittsburgh?”
“They were Pittsburgh style cheesesteaks, I personally like them better than Philly ones, but I get the feeling he used the food to power himself up or something. He could grow pieces of himself much larger. He made his hand the size of a truck. I’m guessing he had to eat a lot to do that though. Cheesesteak guy killed the third one though at least, so it’s just those two. Well, technically the goblin things are more than one, but I think I’m counting them as one.”
“I’m glad to let Kula help you.”
“I, um, heard what Raiska did to you and Kula. I’m really sorry.”
She shakes her head. “It’s water under the bridge. Being bonded is an amazing thing, but what Kula and I managed to accomplish without a bond is more special to me. I’m his Muru, bond or not.”
“What is Muru? I’ve heard him say it, but I don’t quite get it.”
“It’s an Aparan word. I don’t know if the Valittu use it.”
“Raiska just calls me ‘little human’ all the time.”
She smiles. “That’s cute.”
My face goes a bit red, partially from residual frustration toward Raiska, but mostly from embarrassment toward her being right.
“So, um,” Ellie says, “maybe I’ve been around Kula too long and have lost my tact, but what are you planning to do? Do you like Raiska? Are you going to let him breed you?”
I laugh nervously. “You have been around Kula too long if you say ‘breed’ like that. I don’t know, Ellie, I actually do like him. I’d sleep with him in other circumstances, but the bond thing scares me, and the fact that I have to get pregnant after knowing him for a few days is honestly kind of fucked up. It feels like an insane thing to do, but then I remember the alternatives: Cheese steak guy and a pack of alien goblins raping me.”
Ellie forces a sympathetic smile. “When I met Kula, I had even less time to make a decision. The Ulkar had surrounded us in a cabin on Earth, and Kula had some kind of stasis thing that stopped time around us. It only was able to hold them off for a few hours, and I had to decide quickly. Bond with Kula, or let the Ulkar take me.”
“Do you ever wonder what you would have done if it hadn’t been such a forced decision like that?”
She shakes her head. “Not really. I mean, it was scary at first. Right after he bonded me, he abducted me to some spaceship. I wasn’t exactly thrilled about that. Things worked out though, and I’m so happy with my life right now. I couldn’t really have asked for anything more than this. It’s a very strange story to tell people about how Kula and I first met, but it’s romantic in its own way.”
I nod as she speaks, but I wonder how I would ever tell my story to anyone.
“Imagine if I end up