Pairing with the Protector Read online

  “As was I,” Rafe growled. “Well, I suppose we have a second reason to stay away from it now.”

  “Just as long as you pretend to play with the ball when Mama is around sometimes,” Yancy cautioned them. “That way she thinks you’re getting the full effects of it.”

  “Hello—are these our new neighbors? Are they Thinking Ones, then?” The black-haired male came to join the girl on the other side of the bars. Looking at their identical raven-black hair and startling green eyes, Whitney couldn’t help thinking they were awfully similar. Maybe Mama Tusker had put them together to breed for a certain look or trait.

  “Yes, they are. This is Whitney and this is Rafe,” Yancy said, pointing them out. “And this is my brother, Yarrow,” she said, nodding at the black-haired man beside her.

  “Your brother?” Whitney said blankly. “But I thought…”

  “That we were mates? Yes, so does Mama Tusker. She’s thought that for the past three cycles.” Yarrow laughed as though it was a fine joke.

  “But we were told by Dood that tweedles who don’t, er, breed, are not kept here for long,” Rafe objected, frowning. “How do you get around that? Surely you do not…”

  “Oh, certainly not!” Yancy said, perhaps a bit too quickly.

  “You mean Mama Tusker doesn’t keep tweedles who don’t look like they’re breeding,” Yarrow corrected Rafe. “It’s easy enough to fake it, you know. The Tuskers are so huge they really can’t see exactly what’s going on with the naked eye. So we just…pretend every now and again and that seems to make her happy.”

  “I see,” Whitney said a bit blankly. She couldn’t imagine “pretending” to breed with your own brother but apparently Yancy and Yarrow were used to it.

  “Why do you not try to escape?” Rafe asked. “Surely this cannot be an easy life for you, pretending to be mates when you are actually siblings.”

  “And you think living out in the open is easier?” Yarrow demanded. “With all the predators out there? We tweedles are at the very bottom of the food chain—don’t you know that?”

  “Actually, we’re not from here,” Whitney said and explained as they had to Dood, that they were from another galaxy.

  Yarrow listened skeptically and she got the distinct impression that he didn’t believe her at all. But he only shrugged politely when she was finished.

  “Well, your galaxy sounds like a fine place. But for my money, there’s no place safer than in a cage, living as a treasured pet. Why, we have all the food we can ever want, a soft place to sleep, fresh water, plenty of tweedle weed to while away the hours…”

  “But I thought you told us to avoid the tweedle weed,” Whitney protested. “Yancy said it has side effects. That it leads to, uh, breeding.”

  “Only if you’re not careful,” Yarrow said dismissively. “You can have a sniff or two of it as long as you don’t get carried away.”

  Whitney wanted to ask if he and Yancy had ever gotten “carried away” but then she decided she didn’t want to know.

  “So the two of you are happy and contented here and never want to leave?” Rafe asked, sounding skeptical.

  “Oh yes—Mama is very kind to us and little Zhu-zhu is also very sweet, although she’s not actually supposed to play with us,” Yancy put in. “But she loves to come and watch us and sometimes she gives us things.”

  “Like food?” Whitney asked, thinking of the giant celery plank and blue-rimmed radish which had been dinner and was probably going to be breakfast too.

  “And other things. Like that.” Yarrow pointed deeper into his and Yancy’s cage. Looking around the bars, Whitney saw what appeared to be a large round bed covered in a bright flower-print pattern. After a moment, she worked out what it was—a replica of the giant couch-like sitting platform the Tusker family had in their own living area.

  “Oh—she gives you furniture!” she exclaimed.

  “Exactly. She takes it out again sometimes and gives us other pieces.” Yancy shrugged. “It helps to pass the time.”

  Whitney imagined that it did—almost anything would be better than sitting around the cage bored all day.

  But Rafe had another question.

  “When she does this—when she gives you new furniture—do you ever have a chance to escape?” he asked, narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

  But Yarrow was shaking his head.

  “Oh, no—she’s very careful, is Zhu-zhu.”

  “She knows she’d get into terrible trouble if she was caught playing with Mama’s tweedles,” Yancy added.

  Whitney sighed. Well, so much for that idea.

  “But don’t you think—” Rafe began but just then the ponderous thud-thud-thud of Tusker footsteps could be heard on the ramp leading down into the lower area of the house.

  “Quick!” hissed Yarrow. “Pretend to be Mindless Ones. Mama mustn’t suspect you can think or she’ll think you have the ‘Speaking Disease’ and kill us all!”

  “Oh my God,” Whitney muttered. As the footsteps got closer, she felt like a kid playing musical chairs when the music is about to stop and the only free chair is far away. “What are we going to do?” she whispered to Rafe.

  “This way! I’ll run on the exercise wheel and you climb,” he murmured back. “Let’s go!”

  They ran for the back of the cage and while the big Kindred got onto the wheel and started jogging at an even pace, Whitney crawled halfway up the brightly colored jungle gym structure, feeling weird and exposed. Who ever heard of climbing nude? It just felt wrong but she knew she couldn’t try to cover herself or the Tuskers would suspect her of being a thinking being, which they apparently didn’t want in a tweedle.

  “That’s not gonna make her happy.” The low voice was coming from Dood’s cage. When Whitney looked over, he was shaking his head.

  “What are you talking about?” Rafe growled in a low voice. “We are acting like the animals she thinks we are.”

  “She’s gonna want to see you breeding,” Dood advised. “She put you in the cage together for a reason, you know.”

  There was no time to answer him because just then, Mama Tusker’s huge moon-sized face with its enormous trunk came into view and this time she wasn’t alone.

  Nineteen

  Rafe watched as covertly as he could as the second vast face appeared in front of the tweedle cages. It wasn’t Zhu-zhu, as he had thought at first. No, this Tusker was much larger than the child. In fact, now he realized why they were called “Tuskers” by the tweedles. The face hanging outside the cages like a vast blue moon had a long trunk with two short, sharp curving tusks on either side of it.

  “You see, my dear! Aren’t the new little tweedles that Zhu-zhu found in the forest adorable?” the alien mother exclaimed.

  The other Tusker—who must be male and was quite possibly her mate—answered her, but his voice was so deep Rafe couldn’t understand one word in three. It wasn’t that the translation bacteria wasn’t working—it was just that the male Tusker’s voice was almost below the range of what he was able to hear.

  “Yes, I’m certain they’re fine. You know there hasn’t been a case of Speaking Disease anywhere near us so stop being so foolish,” the alien mother said, frowning at the male. “Though they really aren’t acting like I had hoped they would,” she added, moving her face closer to the cage to see him and Whitney.

  Rafe saw Whitney freeze on the climbing structure and he had to admit, it took an effort for him to keep running on the exercise wheel. It was very difficult to keep acting like a mindless creature when he knew they were being watched.

  His protective and possessive instincts cried out that he needed to get to Whitney and keep her close and safe—that he needed to defend her from the possible threat. But he didn’t dare do it lest the alien mother suspect them of having “the Speaking Disease.”

  “Why aren’t the two of you breeding yet?” the mother alien muttered, frowning unhappily. “I must check the tweedle weed in that ball and make certain it’s fres