Taken by the Alien Next Door (Aliens Among Us #1) - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,1

to capture a maddening number of still images of the two of them, repeatedly checking the results and trying new angles until she’d found one she was apparently satisfied with.

There’d been no formal introduction, no discussion, no request for his permission. The only thing she’d said to him by the time they’d been seated at their table was, “You’re even hotter than in your pictures.”

Immediately after they’d sat down, she’d posted her chosen image to some social media outlet, and had spent the next fifteen minutes—to the annoyance of both Zevris and the food server—replying to comments on the image.

He’d kept count during their meal; she had looked at him directly a total of five times over the hour and twenty minutes they were at the table, and had not once set her phone down, even when she’d begun eating her food. In fact, she’d taken a picture of said food right after it had been placed down before her. Zevris had deliberately spoken to her in a manner that local humans seemed to find strange just to see her reaction.

If Kindra had noticed, she’d made no indication. She’d chatted incessantly throughout the meal, rarely leaving him any room for input. She talked about her ex-boyfriend, about drama within her friend group, about how much she hated her boss, and mentioned many, many times that she was on her way to becoming an influencer. Even after nearly a year on Earth, attempting to absorb the culture and the way these people used their language, Zevris had understood little of what Kindra had spoken about.

Zevris turned his vehicle onto his street, and he was stricken by an unexpected wave of familiarity and comfort.

This place is not my home, he reminded himself. This is just another theater of operation during another mission. My final mission. Soon enough, I will return to my true home…

His lips fell in a deep frown as he turned into his driveway and shifted the truck into park. A press of a button powered off the growling combustion engine. Normally, this routine activity spawned a very specific thought in his mind—why did the humans call the place they parked their automobiles driveways?

That thought did not come now; another dilemma was consuming his thoughts.

Was the world of his birth, Strion, truly his home anymore? He’d spent his entire adult life away from it, jumping from world to world as the assignments from Exthurizen Command were passed down, his neural transceiver constantly loaded with new languages, new cultures, new maps and documents and information. His homeworld was little more than a distant memory.

He spat a curse, grabbed his phone, and dropped his hand to the door handle.

The phone vibrated, and Zevris paused.

He knew without looking that every one of those chiming alerts had signaled a message from Kindra. He could almost hear her voice, as though the echoes of her relentless prattling were still resonating in his ear canals, and barely suppressed the shudder threatening to course along his spine.

His fingers flexed and his tail twitched as the urge to destroy his phone intensified. Zevris understood that the impulse was in some way born from repression; he’d not had a decent fight since arriving on this planet. Violence, though glorified in human media, was frowned upon in reality. It was, in fact, illegal here.

At least it was illegal as far as Zevris could tell. Human laws, like humans themselves, were unnecessarily complicated.

With a huff, he removed his hand from the door handle, unlocked his phone, and selected the message application without allowing himself to register the number of alerts noted on the display. He tapped on the entry labeled Kindra. The cascade of messages on the screen nearly made his head ache.

Where r u

Did u leave?

Not 2 sound mean or anything but thats a dick move. U couldve said something

Its kinda bs that u didnt tell me you were going

Especially cuz I was going 2 ask u for a ride home

I mean we had like a good time right? And u r rlly rlly hot. So maybe…

U wanna swing by my place 2nite?

My roommate is home but she is down for w/e and she thinks ur hot 2

Dont play hard 2 get I no u want me

U better not b ghosting me. Do u even know who I am?

WTF

Like who do u even think u r?

U better get over urself b4 u lose out on ur chance at this

Kindra had included an image of herself taken from a high angle,