BONUS SCENE – Changed

Brooks

“Are you quite convinced of my affections yet?” Maldek asks as the sweat fades from our skin for what must be about the tenth time now.

“I was quite convinced before,” I say, snuggling back into him as his arms go around me, our bodies spooned together. The sated, post-orgasmic feeling is fading, but I don’t feel any need to chase after the next peak while we’re lying here together. His body surrounding mine is more than pleasant enough for now.

“Good,” he says, a low chuckling sound vibrating through his chest that makes me smile. “I do hate to think that you were ever not.”

I slide my fingers through his and draw our interlocked hands up to my mouth to kiss his knuckles. “How was it you put it - human and raskarran headspaces don’t always align?”

“Yes, linasha, this is wisdom my mated brothers have passed to me.” He shifts, moving me slightly so he can look down at me. “And now that our bodies are sufficiently aligned-” A glint of humour and heat in his gaze makes me want to refute what he’s saying, spend a little longer with him stroking deep inside me. “-perhaps we should make the most of being able to speak freely here, and ensure our headspaces are quite aligned in other ways.”

My mind immediately goes to the question of kids, but I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about.

“Did you have something specific you wanted to discuss?” I ask, rolling so I’m facing him.

It’s not quite as lovely as his chest being pressed up against my back, but his arms and tail are still wrapped around me, and his eyes gaze into mine with enough warmth that I don’t much miss the extra body heat.

“Well, there is the question of living arrangements,” he says. “I would like for you to live in my hut with me, but did not want to assume-”

“Suits me,” I say, cutting him off in my eagerness. “I’d love to share a home with you.”

“We would have to give my brother a little time to find alternative accommodations. I am unsure what the situation is in the village. Harton has been supervising the building of many new houses, but I do not know if any are yet completed. We are too many for the village now - especially with all the rest of the frozen females to join us.”

“Oh,” I say. “Well, I wouldn’t want him homeless on my account. He can stay with us as long as he needs.”

“He would not wish to overstay his welcome, believe me.” Maldek’s grin is bright, mischievous. “He will much desire that we have our own place to ourselves, as is right for a newly mated pair.”

I think of how noisy we are when we have sex, our passion difficult to contain. I wouldn’t want to be listening to that every night either.

“Then I guess we better all hope this Harton is cracking the whip.”

Maldek frowns, so I clarify.

“That he’s making sure all the builders are working hard.”

Maldek nods. “They will be. It is a source of much joy for us to see the village expand. For many seasons we have only been shrinking in our numbers.”

A sombreness settles over him, and I recall our conversation in the dreamspace before I showed him the rest of my memories.

“You said something about a sickness before?”

Maldek nods, his hand coming up to cup my face, brushing his thumb over my cheekbone with soft reverence.

“I did not wish to tell you before, as I did not wish you to feel any additional urgency or pressure because of it. But it is important that you know. It is a big part of what makes my people they way that we are today. Fractious tribes and and conflicts between us. Stealing females like with Sam. Or trying to, like the Cliff Top tribe did.”

He tells me the sorry tale of a sickness unlike any ever experienced by the tribes before sweeping through Lina’s forests. How it disproportionately affected women and younger men. Elders survived, children survived, few in the middle. And no women at all.

“So when I asked you before if there weren’t any nice raskarran women you wanted to dream with…”

“I said no because you were in my dreams. Because even if there was a secret tribe of raskarran females hiding somewhere in Lina’s forests, I would not desire any of them over you,” Maldek says, his tone ardent. “But the secondary truth of it is that there are no raskarran females who could have joined in dreams with me.”

I nestle in closer to him, feeling the pain that radiates from him, despite the fact that we’ve found each other. It’s a hurt that his whole tribe must carry deep in their hearts - a hurt that the presence of human women on their world might start to heal, but will never fully erase.

“I’m sorry that happened to your people,” I say, speaking my words against his chest, right where his heart beats.

I feel him give a sort of shrug.

“It was seventeen, nearly eighteen seasons ago now.  I was just a youngling. I barely remember the way of life we had before the sickness.”

“That doesn’t make it less terrible and difficult. Staring down a future that was no real future at all…”

And don’t I know a thing or two about that?

But something else trickles through my mind, the significance of what he just said finally registering.

Seventeen, nearly eighteen seasons ago. And seasons aren’t that dissimilar to years.

The last things I remember happened nineteen years ago.

Maldek presses a kiss to the top of my head, holding me even closer. But even his touch can’t stop the cascade of thoughts racing through my mind now - little bits of information lining up to paint a picture that I don’t like. That I really don’t like.

Nineteen years ago. Seventeen years ago. Sickness. Sally’s ship malfunctioning ten years ago. Liv and the others crash landing here.

It’s a whole lot of coincidence.

Do I really believe it could be just coincidence?

I absolutely fucking don’t.