Chapter Nine

Nem

The relief from the flames sends me into a dreamful sleep—filled with visions of my gold alien god. In my dreams, he fucks me every way a woman can be fucked.

And then when night falls, he sleeps beside me, not touching me, but he’s such a formidable presence, I can feel him as though he’s surrounding me.

And there is a comfort there.

His care in my pleasure was…confusing. This situation could so easily be about us using each other to get off. But my concern for his pain when he was poisoned by the water was…astonishing. Something more than mere lust is happening between us.

This place is wreaking more havoc on us than just desire. It’s as though it’s making us care about the other’s needs. Maybe it’s just because the sex is literally so fucking otherworldly.

I sleep, twisting with anxiety, worried for my crew, ashamed of my weakness.

I dream of chasing Oten, intending to kill him, poised to strike, then ending up beneath him instead, his cock relentlessly pounding me full of orgasms, ceaselessly.

I dream of kissing him, sucking on his tongue, then feeling his fangs prick my lips and tasting his syrupy sweet venom.

But there’s another dream of horror that wakes me. A dozen Ssedez massacring my entire crew—all of my soldiers’ bloody bodies on the ground—their helms pulled off and me seeing their faces for the first time, dead.

The morning light sprinkles through the trees, and I am alone.

The bed he made us is empty.

The desirous flames aren’t back yet, and I’m grateful for a break from them and him. I’ve never had so much sex at one time in my life.

And yet, I know as surely as I need to breathe, I’ll want more.

Even as I’m shaking from the terrible dream and what I know he and his warriors attempted against my crew, I’m still craving him.

I feel different. My body is stronger, sturdier, my limbs more lithe. So it’s not like sex with him has been bad for me.

But then I touch my arm, and something else is different.

I look down at my naked form, and my heart speeds. “No!”

I run my hands over myself, disbelieving. It can’t be real. It must be more hallucinations. I’ve started seeing things even on myself.

But I pick up one of his knives next to me and prick my forearm.

It leaves a scratch. But it doesn’t cut me. I slice the blade over my skin again and again, willing it to draw blood, screaming at it to harm me. But nothing happens.

The sun lifts, the rays spreading onto my legs—that aren’t pale anymore.

They gleam, as though turned to gold. Like his.

He’s made me like him.

Shock seizes me—what I’ve done, what he’s done. I never suspected… If I had known…would I have stopped him? Would I have been able to drum up the restraint to say no?

The memory of the pain and flames raging through my blood is still vivid.

I couldn’t have resisted him. Not when the relief he brought was so complete and ecstatic.

He just had to be capable of transforming a human into himself. Did he know this would happen? Was using his sex and his venom on me as much a weapon as any knife or blaster?

Is the change permanent?

My skin has a new texture. It’s thicker, more durable. It’s still smooth, if not smoother than my own, and still soft in a different way, but now there are tiny sparkles across the surface. I glisten.

A dull ache throbs in my upper jaw. I finger my teeth and find a new set of incisors probing my gums.

I pull forward a piece of my hair and find it run with gold strands, though some are still brunette.

I’ve never heard of this. Never in any of my grandmother Dr. Eda Klearuh’s research did I hear of interspecies sex causing a change of one’s cellular makeup.

I’ve memorized her theories on the common marks of all intelligent life in the universe. I’ve been riveted by her theories. After evolution and the “big bang” theories were proved correct, she set out to prove all intelligent life in the universe stems from the same source. Her discoveries ran contrary to the Ten Systems’ credo, which is that humans are the dominant beings destined to rule all others.

My parents died protecting her research, hiding it where only their daughter knew where to find it. The military forces the best scientists into service for their own agenda to prove one and only one thing: humans are the superior species, ordained by nature to conquer. I was raised with the knowledge that only by infiltrating the Ten Systems’ military could I learn their tactics well enough to extract key scientists, evade the authorities, and escape.

I recruited as many as I could who believed what Dr. Klearuh’s studies, if completed, will likely prove: all intelligent life, in every galaxy, in any form, is equal.

We escaped with the best crew we could find with the sole goal of rebellion against the Ten Systems to continue her work.

But I failed in my mission. Dr. Klearuh’s findings, the cause my parents died for and my crew risked their lives for, is gone.

All the files were likely destroyed along with my ship. Unless someone else in the crew managed to save it and survive.

Oten.

He’s the reason for all of this.

His fluids worked a transformation on me. Whether it is from his venom or his semen, I don’t know. But I do know I can’t let him put any of his liquid in me again.

The changes can’t be permanent. They’ll pass through my system like any other injections would. They have to.

How this rapid change is scientifically possible, I don’t know.

I read no notes on the Ssedez and their evolution in my grandmother’s research. There was so much information she’d gathered from dozens of ships and thousands of scientists, I couldn’t read it all. Those in my crew combined may have combed through it, though they wouldn’t have memorized it.

Gone. All that precious knowledge.

Because of him.

Rage builds in me like a coming explosion. It ricochets inside my skull with the force of split atoms in a reactor. I can’t let him beat me.

He will pay.

“Oten!” Wherever the fuck he is. I’ve let my guard down with him. He’s probably still planning to kill me. I can’t let that happen. I can’t let him win.