His to Claim: A Sci-Fi Alien Romance - Taylor Vaughn Page 0,53

I’d been looking forward to his return before last night.

Our calls up until then had been…I don’t know. Nice, I guess. Not just sex, but conversation, as well. Unable to touch each other, I’d found myself sharing all sorts of things with him.

I relayed the stories my parents used to tell me about what living on the old planet had been like. He’d seem particularly interested about that. I also told him about life on New Terrhan and how we survived without much technology. I described my favorite entertainments to watch on the colony ship. I even shared stories of roaming the red forest with my best friend Zinnia.

It had seemed like he had been opening up as well. While he hadn’t talked much about how the negotiations with the Kaidorians were going, he’d told me a lot about growing up on Xalthuria during a time of war. His childhood had been full of warrior training and he had started shadowing his father, shortly after his mother died of the same virus that had wiped out the Xalthurian females’ ability to get pregnant.

I was beginning to understand how important these peace negotiations were to him. His planet had been at war all his life, and for most of his father’s. So, everyone was looking to him to lead them into a time of peace and prosperity. With an emphasis on prosperity.

As it turns out, Xalthuria used to be a merchant race and this war had basically transformed them from trade aliens to warriors, which was why they didn’t bother much with New Terrhan before our colony ship crashed there.

While our planet was closest to theirs in proximity, there wasn’t much to mine in the way of resources, save a few small deposits of iron—which they didn’t seem to value nearly as much as we did. Probably because they were so stinking rich, it wasn’t worth the effort to mine there.

According to D’Rek, everyone on the planet, no matter their class, lived in abundant prosperity. And though their neighboring systems had several occupants, they got along so well that wars like the ones with the Kaidorians rarely happened.

“Maybe once every hundred generations,” he’d claimed, during one pre-masturbation conversation, when his hologram appeared to stand in front of my sleeping mat. “Though the Kaidorians are savage, they much prefer raiding to warring. And it is a matter of some debate about whether they actually have a planet in the system. It is possible they live mostly in scattered communities of starships.”

I’d been surprised to find out that the Xalthurians did not know where the Kaidorians lived and the Kaidorians did not know where Xalthuria was located. Apparently, most trade and even the war was conducted in space and agreed upon battlefields. Never revealing your home planet’s location was considered a rule of thumb in this part of the universe, and most aliens didn’t even think to ask where the person they were trading with came from.

This had made me look at the old planet in a new light. For there was no such thing as war on Xalthuria, and this was the first inner-system war they’d experienced in hundreds of generations.

But according to my parents, the old planet had been one never-ending war, and I’d become used to the constant inner-colony squabbles. I could only wonder what it would be like to live in so much peace, and I can see why D’Rek had been so eager for these talks if it would guarantee the return of that harmony.

So then, what happened yesterday? Why had D’Rek been so hot one moment then totally cold in the next? Plus, he hung up on me! I mean, what was that all about? He’s keeping something from me. I know he is.

I clamp my lips, feeling both annoyed with him and weirdly guilty.

Yes, he’s keeping something from me, but it isn’t like I haven’t accumulated some secrets of my own, since he left for his six days of meetings with the Kaidorians.

A few huge ones.

I mean, maybe he wouldn’t mind the fact that I’ve been meeting with N’Maryah every day, a staunch advocate of Xalthurian female rights. But he definitely wouldn’t like the story of how we met…or how anti-Kel she is for a Xalthurian…or how she refuses to stop worrying about me. Especially since I told her the secret I still hadn’t told D’Rek.

“Ki’Ra…how…are…you…this…day?”

The halting New Terrhan greeting pulls me out of my jumbled head. I look up to see, L’Than—yet another secret I’ve