Page 19 of The Alien’s Mate

The alien grunted and led the way out from the storage. Several sets of boots rushed closer, but Atlas didn’t seem worried. Lila waited inside the room and watched as the alien rounded a corner. Almost immediately, a hail of bullets was fired straight at him, but the large male took them as though he didn’t feel a thing. The bullets bounced off him, leaving his thick hide unscathed while the walls around him exploded in bits. When the rounds were empty, Lila heard the gasps and cries of the men behind the corner, just before Atlas roared and threw himself at them.

She didn’t see what happened, but she could hear it—and that was enough. The white walls were sprayed with blood, the sounds of tearing flesh and dying men almost made her vomit, and when Atlas appeared behind the corner, covered with blood, she felt tears brim her eyes.

“Come, pet,” he muttered, urging her to follow.

She didn’t like the inclination of the word, but she obeyed and carefully made her way to his side.

They returned to the elevator, the sounds of the dying men filling the halls. Atlas pressed the top floor and urged Lila behind him.

The elevator stopped after just a couple of floors, and as the doors opened, they were faced with more gunfire.

Lila made herself small behind Atlas, and she saw him raise an arm before a strange, whooshing sound overpowered the guns, and everything stopped. She dared to peek out from behind him, and she saw the guards lay dead on the floor, all cut in half. Bile rose in her throat, but Atlas only pressed for the doors to close, and their elevator ride continued.

They stood in silence, and Lila could feel the fear crawl around her lungs like vines. He could speak now—or rather, she could understand him. He called her pet , said she would “do well” in his bed. Reality was slipping away, it seemed. None of this could be happening, none of this could be real. No—she couldn’t have been recruited to a top-secret scientific project, by Howland & West Industries, where they wanted to breed her with an alien deep below the surface in the Canadian wilderness; she couldn’t have been fucked by an extraterrestrial being—and liked it; she couldn’t be destined to become an alien’s pet.

“What is going to happen?” she managed to ask, but her voice was weak.

Atlas glanced at her and sighed. “I am being fetched by my people.”

“And me? What’s going to happen to me?”

He looked at her, his yellow eyes hard. “You belong to me now, Lila. You will come with.”

She swallowed. “T-to space?”

He didn’t seem amused by the conversation and only grunted as the elevator came to get another stop. But when the doors opened, the hall outside was empty.

Lila glanced at the buttons. This was below two. “Mr. West has his office on this floor.” She didn’t know why she even said it out loud, but Atlas responded with a deep grunt and grabbed her arm as he stepped out of the elevator.

“Show me,” he growled.

Lila swallowed and carefully made her way through the hall. The alarm was still ringing, and she expected most people to have evacuated to the ground floor by now. Maybe, if they were lucky, Mr. West was still in his office—if he was there at all.

The narrow corridors were empty but sounds of feet were heard scurrying. As they turned a corner, Lila saw a white-coated man hurry away from them, dropping papers in his wake. There were voices down the hall, calling for others to run, and amongst them, she could hear Mr. West bark at them to control themselves.

Lila gasped. “He’s here!” Without thinking, she began to run. She would not let that sadistic man get away with what he’d done to her—or Atlas. As she rounded another corner, she saw the man peeking out from his office. “Mr. West!” But he only ducked back in and closed the door.

She hurried to it, grabbed the handle to tear it open, but was roughly pulled back by the alien. He glared down at her, his teeth bared. He said nothing as he forced her away before grabbing the handle, himself, but the door was locked.

With a growl, Atlas extended one of his long and powerful legs, and the door nearly exploded upon impact. It flew into the office space, splinters hailing through the air, and Lila heard a pistol being cocked. She dared to walk closer until she entered the room.

Mr. West stood behind his desk with a pistol aimed at Atlas. His hand was trembling, his breath was short, and his face was pale. His otherwise perfectly combed hair was disheveled, he seemed to have spilled some coffee on his shirt, and his eyes widened in terror. The items on his desk were all in disarray as if he’d either tried to bring them with him as he ran—or destroy them. A computer monitor had tipped over, and Lila could clearly see an image of Atlas’s lair, and the camera was pointing directly at the very bed where he’d fucked her.

Disgust and rage rose within, and she spat, “You thought you’d get away with it, didn’t you?” Speaking her own language, she felt the difference in her throat. Despite it sounding smoother, it was more straining for the mouth.

Mr. West didn’t tear his eyes away from Atlas, but he said, “I gave him the best I could find, and he enjoyed it. I regret nothing.”

She wanted to attack him, scratch out his eyes, but as long as he held the gun in his hand, she couldn’t do a single thing. Instead, she turned to Atlas. “He watched us,” she told him. “He watched us mate, and he jerked off to it.”

The alien’s eyes narrowed, and he grunted. “I know, Lila, but it matters not. He should wish to observe a greater being claim his female. He should take pleasure in the superiority of our coupling. But he believes himself to be above me; he imprisoned me, tried to make me dance like a puppet, and tried to exploit my biology to save his own pathetic race. Such disrespect will not go unpunished.”

It was not the answer Lila had hoped for, but either way, Atlas didn’t seem too keen on Mr. West.

The man dropped his jaw, and the arm holding the gun wavered. “Y-you can speak to him? What were you saying?”

Lila glared at him and pursed her lips. “He’s saying that you deserve to die for what you did.”

“No!” He tightened his hand around the gun and aimed it once more. “We can discuss this. We can talk about this!”