Changed: Mated to the Alien Alpha (The Omega Colony, #1)

by Robin Moray

I’m a xenolinguist for the most part but I’ve got enough lab hours and field work under my belt to pass for a xenobiologist if you squint.

I mean, you get to name bugs. You get to argue about whether or not they actually qualify as bugs, and then you get to name them things like Erikisa Dumbassus, and then send pics of them to your stupid ex. I mean, you could. If you wanted to.

And within the science team the geologists and biologists are banding into cliques based on their respective disciplines. It makes sense. I hate it, of course, because while on paper I’m a biologist, in reality I’m just the only xenolinguist in the whole colony. Thus, I’m in my own clique. Of one.

I cannot cease thinking on his scent. It was unlike any I have scented before, fresh and sweet and alien to me. I want to scent him again, I want to mark myself with it. And I know what this is, though I do not understand it. This is mating behavior. This is a mating urge, and I must fight it. Because I must be mated to one who bears, whether a woman or amekha it does not matter, but I cannot mate a man who cannot bear.

I really do want there to be speech-capable aliens on this planet. I mean, of course I do. That would be a dream come true. But also…does it make more sense that there are hot muscle-bound aliens that look like sex on legs or that my brain has finally given up on me, after a bitter break up and the prospect of eighteen months of celibacy?

“Cameron,” I say, touching my chest with both hands. Then I gesture up to him. It doesn’t always work. On Yuanfang III it nearly got someone eaten, because it looked too close to the ritual sign for ‘I offer myself up graciously for consumption’. I’m betting that’s not going to happen again.

“We are friends, that’s why you should let me see. Because friends share embarrassing things and it brings them closer together.”

for in my dream he has presented. He is amekha and he is mine and I will keep him for always. My mate. My beloved. My only one.

I groan and thrust down between his thighs. I want to mate with him, put young in his belly. I want it so badly it burns, and I put my teeth to his shoulder and bite down in my frustration. He feels good. I have never had a lover so good as he. I will never have any other lover again.

Then he drags my hand under his kilt and wraps it around his cock. Jesus, he’s hard. I can’t help the way my hand just latches on. I gasp and I want to pull away only, only…that’s him down there. I don’t want to pull away at all, not when there’s seven feet of purple beefcake smoldering at me with those golden eyes. Fuck, he’s horny, and I’m horny, and Mike is just over there.

“You are beautiful to me, and I want nothing more than to mate with you, and keep you always safe and happy and well. I will watch over you, until your time comes and you are Changed. And then, if you will allow it, I will watch over you until we are made smoke, and join the ancestors in the sky.”

Obviously Cameron has no impulse control, and this guy…yeah, he’s very…” “Very?” I prompt. “Bangable.” Karl doesn’t look embarrassed about it, just rocks the vid back and forth, checking out angles. “Extremely bangable.” Oh-ho, I think. Gentlemen we have a man who loves men here. Good to know.

“Karl tells me you’ve been fucking an alien,” he says, blunt as a brick. I rub a hand over my eyes. “I mean, define fucking,” I say, but he just raises his eyebrows. “I might have been…a bit.” “Why haven’t you reported first contact?”

But this planet? I want to know all of it more than I’ve wanted to know any other planet before. This is Tal’jen’s planet, and it’s incredibly wonderful. It feels right in a way others never have, in the way Tal’jen feels right. It feels like home. That’s ridiculous, of course.

Leo grins. “I don’t know about you, but I think an orgy is a bonding exercise.”

“Ah, I would never have imagined you, of all my friends, becoming so protective of a potential mate. You have never been been jealous of your lovers in the past.” “They were simply lovers,” I protest. “This is different. Cam’ren is my heart, and will be mine always.”

“Such prudery! I have seen you wallow between the thighs of a woman while her lover tongued your nethers. Where is my wild buck of a Tal’jen now?” “He is in love,” I say, as plainly as I can. “And he will do right by his mate from the first. There is no other way he can be.”

Being around him is a constant trial. He’s so incredibly sexy, lazing around the village, draping himself on things and eyeing me with obvious interest. It makes me shudder, just knowing he’s there, watching. I can practically smell how much he wants to fuck me. It’s like this tangy thing sticking to the back of my throat. I want it. I can feel myself getting wet just looking at him. Which, to be honest, is a new and weirdly exciting development.

Tal’jen grips the cloth tangled around me and casually tears it to shreds because it’s in his way. Fuck, the bulge of his muscles makes me want him to hold me down and let me squirm helplessly in his grip. Should I want that? I do, God yes, I really do. Just hold me still and fuck me senseless. Which it seems like he’s intending to do. Thank God.

“Fuck me, you bastard!” I yell at him, and he must finally, finally get it because he rears up, kneeling between my legs. He reaches down to unfasten his kilt and drops it on the ground. His cock stands out stiff from his body, and it’s even bigger than I remember, this huge, thick, dark thing, ridged along its length and studded with round bumps that look like something designed with the sole purpose of driving any man or woman out of their mind. The head is fat and curved, and dripping with clear pre-come.

It feels like nothing I’ve ever felt in my life. The great warm thickness of his cock, the brush of fangs at my throat, the way his hands swallow my hips. The altar. Our audience. I feel claimed, like he’s made me his in some irrevocable way, like this is the moment my life changes for ever.

“The fires of your claiming burn hot, my mate. All of them gathered only to see you satisfied, and then to seek satisfaction for themselves. It is a good beginning.”

“Your body is perfect. Your passage is like a tight fist around my cock. I yearn to have you again, and I will, tomorrow, every single day that you allow it. I regret I will not be able to give you my knot again until your next heat. But, once you have birthed our young and your time comes again upon you, I will gladly mate you and knot you and fill your belly with fresh young.”

He sighs, and turns his head to blink at me. He murmurs something with my name in it, and I croon at him, overwhelmed with love for this strange perfect being who has accepted my seed and my young. “I waited for you,” I tell him, soft as a feather. “I knew I would find you one day.”

And thick fingers. Fuck, just his fucking fingers… (His fingers fucking me, teasing my prostate like he knows exactly what it’s for.) I’m such a goner.

We wander down. The dry stores are in a series of caches covered with an elaborate waterproofing system of oiled hides. As we go people call out to me. “Cameron! Well done!” or, “Congratulations!” or, “Tal’jen’s mate!” and the exquisitely embarrassing, “Golden buttocks!” which makes me nearly fall down on my face. Golden buttocks? Have they been calling me this the whole time or is it new?

So, he’s head of his tribe, then. ‘First’. And I’m…I’m his wife. I wrinkle my nose. No, I’m his mate. A bearer to bear his young. it seems as though it didn’t matter if I was amekha or not—he’d have been just as happy with a cis woman, but as a cis man I had to be amekha.

There’s a part of me that thinks this is complete nonsense. How can you be in love with someone who you’ve only been able to talk to today? We don’t even know each other. It’s so…so immature, such an oversimplified attitude to love. But I can’t help feeling it when I look at him, his chest rising and falling, his lashes thick and black against his cheek. I do love him. I feel like I’m always going to love him. The idea of loving anyone else is sickening, filling me with dread. I want him. No-one else is ever going to do.

“I am not your boyfriend,” I remind him. The word is insufficient. “I am your mate. If you are sincere in wanting me.” He nods, whispering, “Yeah. I’m so sure. I’m sorry, baby, for making you worry. I’m all yours. As long as you want me.” “Than that will be always.”

We are together, as one. He is mine and I am his, and so it will be forever.

In the water I feel less like I’m lugging an entire other person around in my abdomen. I still feel like a hippo, just a somewhat more buoyant hippo.