Resisting the Alien Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides, #3)

by Ursa Dax

The brim of his hat was slung low over his brow, but there was no way to hide the white glow of his eyes. “I started making my way back towards you the moment you said my name.”

I gave a loud, genuine laugh. From across the beginnings of our camp, where he was bent over doing something fiddly with a rope, I saw Garrek’s head snap up sharply at the sound.

The man gave me major stressed-out-dad-who-regrets-bringing-his-kids-camping energy.

LMAO

If Garrek was hard, maybe it was only because this life had made him hard. Try as it might, it clearly hadn’t finished the job.

“Oaken has not even seen a female since childhood,” Garrek said, his tone flat. “You’ll impress him simply by breathing.”

“Of course,” he grunted. “What in the great dusty blazes would I do with a wife?” “What everybody does, I suppose,” I said dreamily, thinking of the way Silar and Fallon so obviously worshipped their human wives. “Love her.” I heard the breath rush out of Garrek, like he’d been punched.

“Clean what?” I grunted at her as I went to get the collapsible troughs for filling. I grasped one with my tail and pulled it up into my hands. “Like, my clothes,” she responded. Then, more quietly. “And my body.” I dropped the trough.

oh he’s down bad for her

Killian needed a wash. Maybe they could go together. But he could be a handful about bathing at the best of times. I did not think- “I will go with you!” Magnolia’s smile widened at Killian’s interjection.

Being with Magnolia was making new males of us both. I wondered if we’d even recognize each other, or ourselves, when she was gone. Who were we becoming with her? Who would we be without her?

😭😭

The kid was already traumatized enough without me flashing my alien titties at him.

Killian hesitated for a moment. Then, he cupped his hands and gathered some water in them. He lifted them together, his brow crinkled with concentration, and then gingerly let the water dribble from his hands onto my hair. “You don’t have to dunk down if you’re afraid,” he told me, repeating the motion. “I can help you get your hair wet first.”

HE’S SO PRECIOUS OH MY GOD

“Would you say he’s a bad man?” “No!” Killian’s reply was instant and steely with certainty. And then I wanted to cry all over again, thinking about the way these two males had found their way to each other and maybe, just maybe, had found a little bit of healing in the process. Even if they didn’t want to admit it.

Magnolia and Killian had taken longer than expected and so, after filling and refilling the troughs three times over, I’d come back to this spot. To spy. Blast! No. Not spy.

I didn’t even try to stop myself from wanting now. I wasn’t strong enough. There was something addictive in the pain of it. I hadn’t let myself want anything for so, so long.

I swallowed hard and realized I was shaking. I could not remember the last time I’d felt so catastrophically alive.

How? How did she do things in one night that I’d been fighting with Killian to get done for half a cycle? If she were anyone else, I would have disliked her intensely for it. But she wasn’t anyone else. She was Magnolia. So instead, I just watched with wary wonderment as Killian came closer to where she stood, turned so that his back was to her, and plopped his bare bottom into the shallow water so that she could more easily reach his head. And then she started washing his hair. And he actually sat still and let her do it.

By the time she was putting the lids back on the small bottles, Killian was racing out of the water towards her. “Oh, boy! Let’s get you something to wear, shall we?” Magnolia muttered, glancing around. “Here. You can borrow my towel. It’s EvapoTech. It’s already dry.” She retrieved it and wrapped it around Killian’s shoulders. “There. Warm enough?” Killian wiggled in a way that seem to wordlessly suggest that he was, indeed, warm enough.

killian 😭💀

“Good!” Magnolia crooned, as surely as if he’d spoken aloud. Killian’s eyes shone with adoration as he stared at her face. It truly was a testament to how much he worshipped and trusted her that he did not take off running through the trees when Magnolia produced what appeared to be a comb from her bag.

“Come on down and let me have a look at your ears.” “That’s… That can’t be necessary.” Garrek’s eyes flashed white. His cute little mousey ears twitched, as if already trying to get away from me.

“Garrek?” Magnolia asked, breathing heavily in my arms. She turned her face up to mine, exhibiting surprise, and then an expression that could only be described as elation. She was happy to see me, and her happiness punctured something in me. Letting light into places that should have stayed hidden in the dark.

sobbing

“He’ll fall,” Garrek repeated with disappointed impatience, as if he couldn’t even believe that I was pressing him on this, “but it won’t matter.” “How can that not matter?” “Because,” he said slowly, his whitened gaze boring into mine, “I’ll be there to catch him.”

sobbing x2

I knew the moment he saw that Garrek was injured, because his whole body jolted with a sick sort of awareness.

His hands hooked around the solid wood of it while his tail looped itself in desperate coils around the hook on the back of Garrek’s belt.

🫠

“You have to jump, too!” Killian keened. His tail tightened on Garrek’s belt hook.

Even now, the hand that wasn’t plastered to the tree to stabilize himself was busy yanking Killian’s tail free from his belt. “I don’t want to leave you!” Killian said in a broken little voice that damn near broke my heart.

As soon as his feet hit the ground, he was running for me. We collided, and I wrapped him in my arms, barely holding back a sob.

It was so quick that I nearly missed it. If I had blinked, I would have. For the tiniest of moments, Killian’s eyes flickered with a warm, rich colour other than white.

He stopped walking when he saw me approach. Something raw, maybe even pain, contorted his features when his white eyes met mine. His breath snagged, and he watched me without moving. But when I finally stopped before him, it was Garrek who reached for me, not the other way around.

When I finally stilled, I thought for the briefest of moments that I felt his mouth pressed against the top of my head.

Soap. It was soap. The one I’d made for him. “Like I said,” Garrek grunted, bending to retrieve it. He snatched up the soap and left the leather on the ground. “I saved what I wanted.”

He approached his convict-ward and raised his hand. Killian tensed and scrunched his eyes shut, as if expecting pain. But when Garrek’s hand landed on the top of Killian’s head, the touch was gentle.

their soft moments are getting to me 😭

I finally let myself use a little bit of Magnolia’s soap, rationing it like a man who knew that he’d be starving soon.

She gave me another one of her little, devastating smiles. Devastating, that she might be happy merely to see me.

“But if this one’s yours,” she said slowly, her brow wrinkling, “then what’s that one?” I turned to follow the line of her gaze. In a chaotic heap of hides, not-so-subtly placed against my pack, was a bedroll. Killian’s bedroll.

But with Magnolia here, it all felt just a little bit less… Lonely. It felt like this was exactly where I was meant to be, where she was meant to be, where Killian was meant to be. Like this was what I was born for. That this was the life I was supposed to lead.

The expression transformed his entire face. His fangs gleamed, his eyes lit with a soft, warm white, and, Jesus Christ on a cracker, did the man have a fucking dimple?! And only one little dimple, on one little side, because his smile was so unfairly crooked and cute?

“Have you ever felt that way before?” I asked him. “The first time you meet somebody new, and you suddenly just feel like, ‘yes, I know you. You’re somebody special.’ You just feel like you were meant to meet? And that everything’s about to change?” Garrek’s throat contracted on a swallow. When he answered, his voice sounded oddly thick. “Yes,” he rasped. “Only once.”

“Because I know that you’re a good man.” Her words rattled me more than I cared to admit. It was like using her soap on my wounds earlier. There was pain, but a satisfying sort. Like maybe that pain might accomplish something real one day. Like maybe it could help.

“It’s a stool. So you can get up and down on your own.” He unfolded the contraption, revealing a step-stool with two levels. It looked brand new. My eyebrows shot up. “Did you… Did you make that?” “Of course I did. You think I need to carry around a stool like this for myself?”

Garrek’s back, usually covered up by his vest, or hidden while he faced me, was on full display in the greyish light. His hair was tied in a simple low ponytail, which made it easy to see that gouged into the meaty muscle was the criss-crossing violence of dozens of wounds.

hell is not hot enough for his father!!

Oaken, who didn’t have that hard blue jaw and those smoke-purple eyes and a back that made me want to hold him. To heal him. Oaken, who didn’t love Killian in the gruffest, silently tender way imaginable. Because Garrek did love Killian.

His eyes flew open. They burned briefly white when he saw me.

“Um. I was up late reading.” “A romance book?” From the side, I saw her smile, and I briefly felt time halt. “Always a romance book,” she said, turning that smile on me. “You could… You could tell me about it. If you want.”

And now, here I was, looking at all those sacrifices I’d made – and they were sacrifices, because every time I stepped back from her I earned another invisible scar – and I was acting like they had never happened at all.

“We could kill him,” Killian said suddenly.

LMAOOOOO

“He’s already broken his foot, hasn’t he? Maybe he also tripped and fell down a gorge. Or off the edge of a cliff. Or-”

STOP I THOUGHT HE WAS KIDDING HAHAHA KILLIAN PLS 😭

“It’s because we don’t deserve her,” he mumbled. “We aren’t good enough.” His mouth twisted, and he ducked his head so that his hair hid his face. “I’m not good enough. Maybe if I was, then she would want to make a family with us instead of Oaken.”

🫠😭

and that was not even considering the fact that leaving him behind might now break me nearly as much as leaving her.

“You think that I am happy?” I snarled. “You think that I want to give her up? When I said no to the bride program, I had no idea it could be her. If she were any other woman – any other woman, Killian! – I would not feel like my heart is being ripped up and out of my throat every time I so much as look at her!”

“I did not know someone like Magnolia could even exist out there! Had I been tasked with bringing Darcy to Oaken, or Cherry, I would not be falling apart right now. I’d be able to deliver her safely and move on with my life. But now, I just look around and think, what life? What’s left after she goes? I can’t even ask to be granted my own bride now, because it won’t be her and no one else will ever be enough. You think that I don’t feel regret? Some days, it’s all I feel. Some days, it’s like I’m drowning in it.”