Arik: Alien Adoption Agency #7 Read online

Flora smacked her lips, and her legs started their excited marching movements as she sought out the flask again.

  “Thank the gods,” Lucy breathed in relief.

  “We’re going to have a lot of explaining to do if our baby reaches for someone’s flask in the future,” Arik said, giving Flora another sip.

  “We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” Lucy decided. “For now, I’m just glad we don’t have to travel with a hungry little girl.”

  Arik nodded, and she watched as he concentrated on getting as much milk into Flora, and as little on himself, as possible.

  After a long time, Flora turned her head away when he lifted the flask.

  “All done?” he asked her.

  “Bah,” she crowed, waggling her fingers at him.

  “Okay, princess,” he told her. “Let’s have a burp.”

  Lucy took the flask from him and tucked it in her cloak as he put Flora over his shoulder.

  The plains were still calm outside. But the sun was past its peak. It was time to travel on.

  “Still no return comms,” Arik said as he rubbed between Flora’s shoulder blades. “I think it’s time to head back and see what’s what.”

  14

  Lucy

  Lucy scanned the desolate plain as they walked, not quite allowing herself to hope the others had come to rescue them, but also not giving up on the idea completely.

  It seemed most likely that they were on their own getting back to camp. And it was also possible that when they got there the others would have already given up on them and turned back.

  She shivered at the thought.

  “You okay?” Arik asked.

  “Just wondering how long they would wait for us before traveling back to the village,” Lucy said.

  “It’s not even been twenty-four hours,” Arik said. “And the adoption agency is footing the whole bill. So, they’re unlikely to leave without Flora.”

  “They might have gone to get help,” she suggested.

  “We’ll figure it out,” Arik said. “For now, let’s just focus on getting back to camp.”

  She nodded, choosing not to ask him how the heck he thought they were getting across the giant crevasse.

  And after all that seismic activity, it might not even be the only one.

  At least Flora was well fed and cheerful. She chirped and chuckled away on Lucy’s back, completely unaware that they were doing anything other than taking a nice walk in the freezing cold.

  The mama bison and her calf were walking along agreeably, too. Lucy figured as long as they were together, they were happy. She decided to take a page from their book and look on the bright side.

  She was alive and well, in spite of the best efforts of the unfriendly moon. Flora had a full belly and a light heart.

  And Arik…

  Her cheeks heated at the thought of last night. She knew intellectually that this mating business was serious stuff, and that she had better be darned sure she was all in before she pulled the trigger, especially since they would be alone together on this forsaken moon for the next twenty standard years.

  That wasn’t a mistake she could afford to make.

  But she liked Arik. He was capable, supportive and easy to be around.

  And gods, that wicked mouth…

  Do not think about it, Lucy Solitude, she told herself firmly. Think about survival. You can melt over the sexy alien when you get to the ranch.

  She glanced over to find him looking at her with that bad boy half smile.

  “What?” she asked, hating that her thoughts were probably on her sleeve. Lucy never exactly had a gambler’s face.

  “Oh, nothing,” he said, eyebrows lifting slightly. “Nothing at all.”

  But he was clearly amused.

  “Hang on,” he said suddenly. “We’re getting close. Which means there could be other irregularities. So, let’s go slowly.”

  They continued onward, scanning the land as they moved. Nothing seemed amiss. The only sign of the seismic event was the scatter of stray ashes over the snowy ground.

  At last, they reached the crevasse.

  In the afternoon light it was even more dramatic than it had been before. The land looked like it had been torn by the hands of an angry giant.

  Atropos can be a cruel host…

  JO-3’s words echoed in her head. At the time, she had felt it was an overwrought statement, especially for a droid.

  But looking at the jagged landscape, Lucy felt the truth of it to her bones. Atropos was ripping herself apart with her own cold fury, making and remaking herself with every storm.

  Lucy would find no softness here, and no quarter. Atropos might have moments of beauty, and surviving here might be exciting. But the gentle rains and nourishing sunlight of Terra-9 would not be replicated on this moon. Atropos was not a home. She was a nemesis.

  “I have an idea,” Arik said, eyeing a dead tree nearby. “Stay back.”

  Lucy stepped back and checked on the bison.

  The mother was nipping at a bit of exposed greenery, the baby right by her side.

  “We’ll be here,” she told him, putting herself between Arik and the bison.

  Was he going to shift into a dragon? She had been wondering since first meeting him how that could happen. He was enormous, but he was only a man. Could matter appear out of nowhere, making him even larger? Or would he be a compact sort of dragon?

  And now that she was near him and he was about to do it, another thought occurred to her.

  Would he know her after he shifted? Would he harm her?

  Before she could open her mouth to ask the question, he was stalking off to the far side of the tree.

  She placed a protective hand on the bison’s flank, then wondered what the heck she thought she would actually do if a dragon attacked the cow.

  Arik had wrapped his hands around the wide trunk. His muscles rippled and his eyes took on a fiery glow. He looked like an angry god, imposing his will on the carcass of the great tree.

  There was a groan and then a crack like a gunshot.

  Lucy gasped as the entire tree fell with an earth shivering thud, forming a bridge between the two sides of the massive chasm.

  The root ball was enormous, and the canopy formed a huge cloud of skeletal branches on the other side. But if they could scramble onto the trunk, they could make it to the other side.

  Arik strode out from behind the tree, looking satisfied.

  “I’m going to make sure it’s stable,” he told her, swinging effortlessly up onto the trunk.

  She held her breath as he began to move.

  The tree trembled in place, but didn’t roll or give way. She and Arik could almost certainly get across.

  “What about the bison?” she asked.

  “If I cross with the baby, the mother will follow,” Arik guessed.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Lucy told him.

  “Let’s find out,” he said. “Once he’s across, I can come back and carry you.”

  “You don’t need to carry me,” Lucy scoffed. “If you can cross it, so can I.”

  He lifted one brow, but his cocky half smile was appreciative.

  “Fine,” he said, and headed over to the calf.

  “Easy, girl,” Lucy told the cow, patting her flank.

  But the unhappy creature stamped and snorted when Arik slung the calf over his shoulders again like it was nothing more than a scarf.

  Lucy and the cow watched as Arik crossed the tree and leaped off on the other side, placing the baby on the ground.

  “Come on, mama,” Lucy said soothingly. “Let’s go get your baby.”

  The cow moved willingly as far as the tree, and even let herself be encouraged to jump up onto the trunk, much to Lucy’s relief.

  She picked her way carefully along the trunk after Lucy.

  But as soon as they got to the place where the trunk extended over the chasm, the poor creature froze in place, mooing plaintively to her baby.

  “Leave her,” Arik called to Lucy. “We can come back with the others and cover up the chasm with equipment, so she isn’t scared.

  “No,” Lucy said. “I’ve got this.”

  She untied the scarf from around her neck and wrapped it around the cow’s eyes, tying it firmly under her chin.

  “Come on,” she told the creature, grabbing a horn and heading very slowly across the makeshift bridge.

  Just as before, the cow placed her hooves carefully on the massive trunk, and with some encouragement from Lucy, they slowly made their way to the other side.

  “Gods,” Arik said, as she removed the scarf. “You’re a regular animal witch.”

  “Nah,” Lucy said, her chest warming with pride as she leapt off the trunk. “It’s something I picked up in the Home Guard.”

  “I want to hear all about the Home Guard one of these days,” Arik said. “You guys must have done some pretty wild stuff.”

  She glanced over at him.

  He was serious, his eyes bright with interest.

  But Lucy couldn’t talk to him about the Home Guard without talking about the Zyntine floods. And she wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. Maybe not ever.

  She gave him a quick nod and stepped out of the way so the cow could join her calf, then walked off before he could ask and follow up questions.

  15

  Arik

  Arik spent the long walk back to camp in a haze of pride over his resourceful mate. Her quick and fearless attitude had him thinking they just might make it on this wild moon after all.

  And he didn’t mean just that they would survive. He’d survived worse. But with Lucy in the driver’s seat, they might just thrive.

  It was hard not to start envisioning a successful bison farm, with dairy and shearing components. They could bring in outside help, and one day, the kids would participate too.

  He pictured Lucy, her belly swollen with his child, and his heart did a funny little flip in his chest.

  Sure, he might have been bound to her involuntarily. But he was damned sure that what he was feeling right now was real. He adored her with his heart and his head.

  “I see them,” Lucy said suddenly, ripping him out of his fantasy. “They waited for us.”

  The relief in her voice was evident. She had obviously been very concerned.

  He was honestly relieved too. They would have been okay even if they’d had to carry on without the caravan, but it would have meant getting creative.

  “Miss Solitude,” Miles shouted across the plain, his voice booming and happy and obnoxious.

  He ran toward them, with Charley behind him and JO-3 bringing up the rear.

  “You made it,” he said clasping Lucy on the arm in a way that made Arik think he wanted to clasp the rest of her too.

  Arik scowled at him.

  If he likes her so damned much, why didn’t he come after her when it was evident something held us up?

  Thankfully, Lucy didn’t return Miles’s admiring gaze. She had already turned to smile at Charley.

  “Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Charley drawled, looking back and forth between Lucy and Arik. “And you brought back the bison too. Well done, for a pair of rookies.”

  Arik waited for Lucy to take offense and start in about her time in the Home Guard.

  Instead, she gave Charley a smug, closed lipped smile and a nod.

  Good girl.

  “It is a pleasure and a relief to see you, Lucy Solitude,” JO-3 said. “I suppose you’ll want an inventory of all that was lost to the wagon leak.”

  Lucy’s face went slack. In all the adventure of surviving, apparently neither of them had given the leak much thought.

  After all they had done to get back swiftly, they might still need to head back to the village to restock. The last thing Arik wanted was to start the whole trip over.

  “Sure,” Arik said, figuring they might as well get the bad news out of the way. “Good idea.”

  “I’ll explain it to her,” Miles told JO-3. “All told, it could have been worse, Miss.”

  Lucy nodded, looking slightly relieved.

  “Of course, the vitamins are no good anymore,” he began. “That means we may have to move a little faster, since there aren’t many fresh greens on the way.”

  “Okay,” Lucy said tensely.

  “A little of the hay was moldy, but not too much,” he said. “Again, speeding up our journey, we should be just fine.”

  Lucy nodded, biting her lip.

  “And we lost one water ration,” Miles said. “That was what leaked onto everything else. Now it’s only one, but we didn’t bring that many. It’s not so long of a journey and water is heavy.”

  “So, speeding up our journey will mean it’s not an issue?” Lucy asked.

  “Exactly,” he said, touching his finger to his nose. “For the most part, everything is just fine. The main thing is that we have to get moving, since we don’t have a buffer anymore.”

  “Not too bad, right?” Charley said brightly.

  Lucy smiled, but Arik could feel the tension behind it.

  “Let’s get moving then,” Lucy said.

  “Take a few minutes to eat something and settle in, while we harness the dogs,” Miles told them. “We’ll be on the road again in no time. And once we’re off, I’ll ride back to hear all about your adventure.”

  He winked at Lucy, winked at her, and then jogged back toward the shadow dogs, Charley following after him.

  “I’d better inform the driver droid on the storage wagon,” JO-3 said worriedly as he rolled off.

  Arik and Lucy walked on in silence for a few paces. They were out of the woods for now, at least. Things might be tough, but they were definitely looking up.

  The only thing they hadn’t talked about was the mate bond.

  He suddenly had a bad feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  “Are you okay?” he asked her at last.

  “I’m fine,” she said, too quickly.

  He nodded, hiding his smile. He would have answered the same. She was a tough cookie. They were cut from the same cloth.

  “Lucy,” he said gently. “Are you sure we’re not moving too fast?”

  “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

  16

  Lucy

  Everything was moving too fast for Lucy.

  She tried taking in a deep, calming breath and letting it out slowly, just like the peace counselor on her favorite hologram help pod advised.

  But she couldn’t seem to make her lungs fill all the way, and her heart kept right on racing.

  Things with Arik were good. He was an incredible man. But they were moving at lightning speed. Lucy hadn’t had a lot of serious boyfriends. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t had any she could have imagined being with forever.

  But she knew enough to be wary of anything that seemed too good to be true.

  And it would be the height of foolishness to move so fast with someone she was about to be isolated with for the next twenty standard years. What if something went wrong? She hadn’t had time to collect all the information a person had to know to learn if they were compatible with someone.

  Sure, he was phenomenal in bed, really, really phenomenal… But that didn’t mean she should surrender her heart immediately. The mate bond might have locked Arik into a huge commitment, but if he was telling her the truth, she still had choices.

  And her first priority was Flora. The little girl needed stability and love. And if Lucy was recklessly throwing her heart around for someone she just met, then what kind of stable environment was that?

  Lucy was proud of what she had done with her life so far. Considering her circumstances, she had accomplished a lot - first through her career with the Home Guard, and then with the incredible good fortune of being selected by the adoption agency.

  But she hadn’t gotten this far by taking a ton of risks and acting without careful thought.

  It didn’t help that the relationship wasn’t the only thing moving fast. Atropos was a dangerous environment. If the caravan didn’t make it to the mountains in time, they were all in trouble.

  And there was no way Lucy was putting Flora in danger if her concentration on the task at hand could improve their chances. She needed to put all the stuff with Arik aside, at least for now.

  “I’ll do better, Flora,” she told the little one as she slid the carrier around and pulled her out to stretch her tiny limbs while the hands readied the caravan.

  “Ahb-gab-gab-gab,” Flora crowed, grabbing Lucy’s nose.

  “I want your good attitude, baby,” Lucy told her, suddenly feeling so happy it was like there were tiny bubbles releasing in her chest.

  “Miss Solitude, I have an idea,” Miles said, riding up on a bison.

  “What is it?” she asked. “And you can call me Lucy.”

  His face broke out in a sunny smile.

  Arik made a funny snorting sound. But when she turned to check on him, he just cleared his throat and nodded.

  “If you two don’t mind riding bison, it’ll mean less of a load for the dogs,” he said. “Might mean we make it a little farther before sundown. Have you got any riding experience?”

  “Sure,” Lucy said excitedly. “I rode equine-deer back on Terra-9.”

  “How about you?” Miles asked, looking at Arik.

  “Sure, bud,” Arik said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Great then,” Miles told them. “I’ll get two of our strongest ready for you. Don’t worry, they’re gentle as lambs.”

  A few minutes later, Lucy found herself astride a massive bull, her hands tangled in his impossibly silky mane. Flora was strapped firmly to her back again. But instead of napping, the little one was chirping and laughing to herself.

  As usual, JO-3 rolled down the length of the caravan, announcing that it was time to go. Then they set off, the bison practically prancing in their eagerness to move on.

  With a big warm animal under her, Lucy felt nice and cozy.

  It was also an excuse to get just a little space from Arik. She was very certain that with her body pressed to his in the wagon, she would have had a hard time thinking clearly.