“Claire, please. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. That no one’s coercing you–”
“Not all of us are stuck-up prudes like you,” she huffs. She flings her cooked meat into the fire, uneaten, and then storms away out of the cave.
I’m left behind, my mouth hanging open slightly from that outburst. Wow. My feelings are a little hurt but I’m mostly just shocked to hear such a violent outburst from such a small, timid person.
Not all of us are stuck up prudes like you.
Ouch.
“That went well,” Megan comments, rolling over in her bed to look at me.
“What’s wrong with her?”
“The same thing that’s wrong with all of us rejects,” Megan says. “She’s just trying to find a place for herself.”
I bristle a little at her words. “We’re not rejects.”
Her shoulders shrug. “We didn’t resonate. You can’t help but feel a little rejected over that.”
I did…but I also knew why I hadn’t. “Don’t be discouraged,” I tell her. “If you want a family, I am sure at some point you’ll resonate for someone. The healer said that sometimes these things take time.” Which also explained why I hadn’t resonated, but I keep that thought to myself.
She makes a soft snorting noise. “I know why I didn’t resonate, Kira. You don’t have to try and make me feel better.”
“What do you mean?”
She sits up in her nest of furs, and for a moment, the expression on her face is incredibly sad. “I was pregnant, remember?” Her hand touches her stomach. “They sucked it out like it was nothing. And mind you, it was unplanned. Just a stupid night at the club that led to drunken sex. I don’t even know the guy’s last name.”
I say nothing. How can I judge? The life we left behind seems so very long ago.
“But I still think about it,” she says in a soft voice. “I still wonder about it.” She looks away for a moment, then blinks rapidly. “But I think maybe my khui knows my body isn’t ready for another child yet. So maybe it’s giving me time before it puts me back on the horse.”
“Oh.” I don’t know what else to say.
“And Josie has an IUD,” Megan says. “I think that’s why she hasn’t resonated. Maybe the other girls are on some sort of birth control. I’m starting to think that all of us that didn’t resonate just aren’t fertile.” She looks at me. “You on the shot?”
I shake my head.
“Huh.” She shrugs. “So, yeah. Josie hasn’t said, but she’s scared that someone’s going to figure out that she has an IUD and can’t get pregnant, and she doesn’t know how they’ll react. I can’t really blame her for trying to integrate herself.”
I say nothing. Josie has been working herself to the bone, learning how to tan, and weave, and everything else she can think of. I thought she just had a lot of nervous energy to channel. God. I truly am clueless. Of course she’s scared. We all are.
These alien men are interested in us because of what we represent. We’re wombs. We’re a chance for family. If we can’t give them that…at what point do they stop feeding us? Stop housing us?
Suddenly, the walls of the cave feel very narrow and enclosing. I breathe hard. “I…think I need to take a walk,” I tell Megan. I have to get out of here. I’m starting to feel trapped again. The walls feel as if they’re closing in on me. Have we traded one captivity for another?
What are they going to do when they find out that I’m sterile? That when my appendix burst as a child, it infected my ovaries and I won’t ever have children?
What will happen to me then?
AEHAKO
I see Kira’s small form hurry out of the caves, and I automatically follow her, a predator stalking its prey.
She’s fascinated me since the beginning, this Kira. Ever since we rescued them from the black cave they were hiding in, I have been drawn to the human with the melancholy eyes and the strange device protruding from her ear. I thought perhaps that I would resonate to her, but my khui remains silent.
My cock, however, pays attention when she is around. It comes to life when she brushes a lock of brown hair behind her small, perfect, unadorned ear. It twitches in response when she gives one of her rare smiles to the other human women. And when she flushes and hurries away from me? It ignites the predator inside me.
I want to find her and grip her against me. Push her into the snow and fuck her until my name is on her lips.
But she resists me. It’s the human way, perhaps. I’ve made it quite clear I’m interested in this particular human, but she ignores my attempts to get her attention. She’s rarely alone, always surrounding herself with the other humans. This might be my one chance to give her the human courting gift that her friend Leezh suggested.