Taken by the Alien Next Door (Aliens Among Us #1) - Tiffany Roberts Page 0,40

acknowledge it. He would not let anyone harm Tabitha.

All uncertainty had to be cast aside. It made no difference that faloran scientists didn’t know if humans could form mating bonds with falorans; it had to work. And Zevris only had thirty days to make it happen.

A foul odor struck his nose as he neared the flowerbed, halting Zevris in his tracks. He looked down to see several of his daisies uprooted and a large, fresh pile of feces in their place.

He gritted his teeth and swallowed the anger rising from his gut. As silly as it seemed, he was proud of his garden. He’d spent many hours kneeling in the dirt to plant seeds, bulbs, and seedlings, had read countless articles to learn which plants were best suited to this region and how to tend them, had fine-tuned the sprinkler system to ensure they received the water they required. He’d made extra trips to the Hardware Emporium to buy plants, fertilizers, and soil.

All that had started because his understanding had been that untended property drew unwanted attention, but he’d come to enjoy the work. Like woodworking, it was simple, soothing, and satisfying.

He’d not put in all that labor for a dog to dig up his flowerbed and shit in it.

Zevris strode to the fence, bracing his hands atop it, and peered over. Tabitha’s yard was plain and unkempt. The grass, having been left uncut, was shaggy and overgrown in several places, and the raised flowerbed at the rear of the yard was brimming with vegetation—flowers, bushes, and weeds gone wild, all gathered around a central tree. With a little tending, the spot would’ve been lovely.

For a moment, he wondered what Tabitha had planned to do with her yard. Would she have planted flowers? Would she have tended her plants regularly? Would she have simply left it to the dog?

His eyes met Dexter’s. The dog, who was lying on Tabitha’s patio with his tongue lolling, tilted his head questioningly.

“You and I are going to need to reach an understanding,” Zevris said. He scanned his surroundings, checking for onlookers, and drew himself over the fence smoothly.

Dexter did not move save to wag his tail.

Failed to protect his human, failing to protect his home. This is no guard beast.

Brows falling low, Zevris walked across the grass, approaching Dexter directly. The dog’s ears perked, and his tail sped. Dexter and Zevris stared at one another for several seconds. A strange, faint itching sensation soon pulsed along Zevris’s tail, the sort of feeling that almost compelled it into motion—as though he subconsciously longed to wag it, just like the dog was wagging his.

“No. I refuse,” he said.

Dexter made a soft whining sound, keeping his big, dark eyes on Zevris.

“I also refuse to have a rivalry with an animal,” he continued. “You are my female’s beast, and so you will defer to me as your master. Do you understand?”

The dog’s tail thumped the concrete beneath him, and a tendril of drool oozed from his tongue to splatter on the ground.

“This world has driven me to madness,” Zevris snapped as he walked past Dexter to Tabitha’s back door. The screen was closed, but the glass door behind it was wide open.

Claws softly clacking on the concrete signaled that Dexter was following. Zevris twisted to look back at the dog, jabbing a finger toward the animal. “Behave.”

If Dexter had any intention of complying with the command, he made no indication. Perhaps that was why dogs were considered humankind’s best friends—they were just as headstrong and difficult to read as their human owners.

Leaning close to the screen, Zevris sniffed the air. Though there were traces of many scents inside her home—far more than he could identify, but most of which were pleasant—he thankfully did not detect the one that had thrown him into that lustful frenzy.

Zevris opened the screen door and stepped inside. Dexter sauntered in behind him, brushed past Zevris’s legs, and continued into the kitchen, where he dipped his head to lap noisily from a water-filled bowl on the floor. Zevris slid the glass door shut and looked around.

Tabitha’s walls were painted a different color than Zevris’s, and the floorboards were a paler, warmer wood, but the similarities outnumbered the difference. The layouts of the two residences were almost identical mirrors of one another.

There were numerous cardboard containers in sight; some were stacked neatly, some were open with flaps askew, some were flattened and piled haphazardly. Wadded papers and sheets of plastic were scattered about, as well.