Chapter Two
Rae woke cocooned in fabric unlike anything she’d ever touched. Where it grazed bare skin on her hands and throat, it was creamy without being slippery or cloying. It breathed like a cloud.
The fabric covered her face and bound her legs together, arms folded across her chest with palms to either shoulder. She lay on her side on the hard ground.
Her other senses filled in some blanks: the susurrus of wind through leaves and earthen scent from the ground told her she was in a forest. Struggling to free herself, she went utterly still at someone’s grip to her shoulder. Her assailant flipped her onto her back.
Rae tried to scream. A hand clapped over her mouth—she could feel it through the fabric. “No one will hear you but wild animals,” said the voice of that enormous, dark-haired stranger. “Even Vaya is scouting.”
Garr was his name. Vaya must have been his giantess sidekick.
“I’m taking the otoya off you now. I can tell from your pulse and the scent of adrenaline that you’re preparing to run. However, you’re on my world. There is nowhere to go. Nod if you understand.”
Heart thundering in her ears, Rae nodded.
His fingertips grazed her throat. She instinctively froze like cornered prey. Rather than rip out her throat, his touch merely caused the fabric—the otoya—to dissolve until it was slippery and wet.
It slid off her body and left behind dry skin. Like tiny rivers of ink, it flowed up Garr’s thick forearm. The initially shirtless alien wore only billowing white pants, but the otoya transformed into a pristine sable jacket with trim that matched the pants. It was long like the kurta he’d worn, but open in front, so that she could see a wide band of his upper torso.
Garr had been in disguise at the conference center, but now she could see the network of black markings—like tattoos—on his bronzed skin. A starred nova symbol rested over his heart, and tiny circles marked his throat beneath either ear.
Tribal stripes angled down his neck on either side, tracked his collarbones, and then joined the nova—in turn, other lines spread from the nova either across his chest or down his abdomen, disappearing into his clothes. She tried not to wonder what other markings he had; or to think about why he straddled her.
He set fingers to her jaw, tilting her head left and right, examining her in return.
Rae jerked her chin from his hand, glaring at him. “Let me go.” She despised the quaver in her voice.
“My domé told me you would demand freedom.” Her own fear was reflected back at her through his shiny black eyes. “But you are mine now. I am Prime Garr domé Kaython, and you are claimed. Your last mate surrendered you.”
“That’s not how it works.” Tears burned from the corners of her eyes.
“It does here.” He gestured around them.
And that was when it hit Rae: she was no longer on Earth. She lay at the foot of a bizarre forest where the shapes weren’t quite right. Cliffs flaked in dark green scales the size of shields rose on two sides of her.
There were patches where the scales were absent, revealing honeycomb pores of uneven size beneath, most ranging between ten to twenty inches wide. Bunches of violet and teal flowers burst from some of the pores, and tree trunks from others.
The trees were ridged in tiny versions of those scales instead of bark, and only some of them grew straight up. Others formed arches or bridges, and far above, the tallest trunks wove organically together.
A dense canopy overhead let dappled sunlight through, and in its midst were chattering, gliding lizards and bright-feathered rodents. The whole place gave her the sense of a rainforest mixed with a coral reef.
“Where are we?” Rae’s voice was high and thin.
“Ythir.”
She swallowed. “And you brought me through a portal.” She recalled Vaya’s words at the conference and realization settled in.
“The asteroid was meant to seed our world. And… and when I examined the debris with electromagnetic radiation, I activated those seeds.”
“Yes.”
She imagined explaining that to her parents. Mom. Dad. You know how you warned me about spending all my time in books? Well, I started an alien invasion.
Thinking about her parents only made her stomach knot. “Listen, Garr—whoever you are. I don’t belong here. I’m an Earthling. You’re… Ythirian. I’m a geneticist, so maybe you don’t know this, but our species couldn’t possibly be capable of mating. If that’s what you’re after.”
“Kaython will provide.” He hoisted her by the shoulder to her feet.
What the hell is a Kaython? “Is he the one who taught you English?”