Pairing with the Protector Read online

  Her would-be attacker played his role as well. Hooting and grunting in apparent fear, he scuttled away from her, his long auburn hair swinging in his face. He ran to the door of the cage and looked up at the mother alien appealingly.

  “Oh dear!” she exclaimed. “So she didn’t like you either, did she, Silky? What a shame.” She sighed. “Well, maybe she’s not in heat right now. We’ll have to try again later, won’t we? For now I think we’d better let her get settled down for the night.”

  She put the man she’d called “Silky” back in his cage, which just so happened to be right beside Rafe’s and then reached her trunk into the cage for Whitney.

  Whitney still didn’t like being handled like a Barbie doll but there wasn’t much she could do as the large blue trunk curled around her waist and lifted her, with surprising delicacy, out of the cage, only to deposit her into another.

  Unfortunately her new cage was on the right side of the large center cage and Rafe’s was on the left so they couldn’t talk—at least not at the moment when the mother alien could have heard them calling to each other. But she saw that the big Kindred’s face was pressed against the thick wire bars, looking at her anxiously.

  The whole time she’d been fighting with “Silky” he had been raging—furious at not being able to help her. Whitney had heard his inarticulate growl of fury, though of course he couldn’t get to her to protect her, as he was no doubt wild to do. She wished she could call out and tell him she was okay—that she hadn’t been hurt. But the mother and daughter alien were still down in the lower level so all she could do was press her face to the bars of her own cage and mouth,

  “It’s all right! I’m okay!”

  Rafe’s dark face relaxed a bit, though he still didn’t look happy. At last he gave her a short nod and turned his attention to Silky in the next cage. He appeared to be saying something in a low, threatening voice. It must have been a pretty awful threat because Silky’s face turned pale and he backed away from the side of his cage which was next to Rafe’s and got as far from the big Kindred as possible.

  Serves him right! I hope he’s scared to death! Whitney thought resentfully. She was still pretty shaken up by the attempted rape and it didn’t help that she was still so naked and vulnerable. Who knew what new male the mother alien might put her into a cage with next? And what if it was a mindless feral who couldn’t be reasoned with, unlike Silky? Whitney didn’t even want to think about what would happen to her in that case.

  Then don’t think about it, she told herself firmly. Put it out of your mind, for now anyway. She did say she would at least give you the night to settle down so there’s no point in worrying about tomorrow.

  One of Whitney’s best qualities was the ability to put things out of her mind and not pick at a problem like a kid picking at a scab. When she decided not to worry about something, she was generally able to manage it by focusing on something else instead.

  Right now, she decided to focus on exploring her cage. Crossing her arms over her breasts and cupping her elbows in her palms, she began to make a circuit of the area, which was about the size of a large living room back home on Earth.

  The greenish-purple grass was about knee-high and covered everything but when Whitney knelt down to sweep some of it away, she saw a papery surface underneath which covered the wire bottom of the cage.

  She swept more of the grass away and frowned at the squiggles and marks which reminded her a lot of the markings on the outside of the dome of the house she’d seen when the little girl alien, Zhu-zhu, had first brought them in. Hmm…did they decorate everything in this culture, even the paper they used to line the bottom of their pets’ cages?

  Wait a minute! Suddenly a light bulb went off in her head. She’d had a menagerie of pets herself as a child—everything from guinea pigs and hamsters to cats and dogs to a fat old parrot named Chuckie Cheese she’d inherited from a cousin who had gone off to college and couldn’t take him along. Her mom had put up with everything as long as Whitney took care of the animals herself and used her own allowance to pay for their food and supplies.

  And what was one of the supplies that came in most handy?

  “Newspaper,” Whitney whispered to herself. She’d used it on the bottoms of all her birds’ cages and also put it down on the floor for training puppies. Her mom had often joked that Whitney was one of the only ten-year olds she knew of who had a subscription to the paper and actually used it. That had been true enough though she mostly only read the comics and used the rest for pet purposes.

  “I bet this is writing and this is their paper,” Whitney thought to herself. She studied the squiggles harder, willing her brain to make sense of them. She had heard that the translation bacteria often gave the ability to understand written languages as well as spoken ones but it didn’t seem to be working for her. Maybe this particular written language was too different from anything the translation bacteria was used to.

  After she had stared until she started to give herself a headache, she gave up and decided to worry about the alien’s language later on.

  Anyway, it’s probably just an ad or the latest political news which wouldn’t mean anything to me, she told herself. Time to look at the rest of the cage and see what she could see.

  Which turned out to be quite a lot, since her private cage was much better fitted out than the bare middle cage. Near the back of the cage was a veritable wonderland of pet toys—all of them so big Whitney felt like she was in an adult-sized playground.

  To start with there was a giant wheel which looked like something you would see in a hamster cage. Whitney was tempted to get in it and run around a bit—it looked like fun. But she was acutely conscious that she was still naked and she didn’t want to do any physical activities that would make her over-bountiful curves jiggle all over the place.

  Reluctantly, she turned to the other toys she could see. There was a vast hollow ball about the size of a big rubber exercise ball back home which came up to her thighs. It was dark blue and had tiny slits all over its surface. When Whitney gave it an experimental push, it rolled a little way over the grass-covered cage floor with a dry rustling sound and emitted a spicy aroma which was strangely compelling.

  She rolled it again and took a deeper whiff, then giggled for no apparent reason. The smell—which was a little like wild cherry cough syrup crossed with the skunky odor of someone smoking pot, made her feel light-headed and silly. What could be making it? Was there something inside the ball?

  Whitney looked more closely at her new toy. Sure enough, through the slits in the ball she could see something like red hay mixed with dried purple flowers. The dried plant material rustled when she rolled the ball and emitted more of the spicy aroma which made her feel stupidly giggly.

  What the hell? Is this some kind of drug? But why would the blue elephant aliens leave a ball filled with drugs in a pet cage?

  Then she thought of her cat, Mr. Fluffypants, back home. He was an extremely dignified Persian mix who looked with distain on all the world. Until, that was, he was given a toy filled with catnip. Then he lost all restraint and went completely crazy. There was almost nothing funnier than watching her decorous pet lose it when he got his kitty high on.

  “Catnip,” Whitney muttered. “Or in this case, humanoid-nip.” That must be what it was—some kind of drug that affected only the aliens’ pet “tweedles.”

  She had to restrain herself from rolling the ball again or leaning over for another sniff. Now that she knew what the stuff in it was, it was probably better to avoid it.

  Although I wouldn’t mind getting high right now—it would certainly take the edge off this crazy situation, Whitney admitted to herself. Still, she decided it was better to keep her wits about her and see what else she could find in the cage.

  There was a dome-like climbing frame made of brightly colored wood which looked a little like the jungle-gym she’d used as a kid in elementary school and an assortment of large oblong things covered