Book 5: Chapter 50: Perfect

Princess of the Void: An Alien Abduction Romance

One Decacycle Later

Grant mumbles and shifts as his dream flees him, leaving no memory of itself behind. What’s this weight on his chest? Who’s—

It’s Kiar. Grant Hyde has a son, and that son is lying on his chest, staring at him with wide, brown eyes.

“Ba,” Kiar says.

“Morning, bud,” Grant says, grinning the last of the sleep away.

“Baba,” Kiar observes.

Grant sits up. His son coos and clings to him like a kitten. He holds the diminutive Taiikari boy up by his armpits. Kiar’s tiny feet pedal the air. His tail wags.

Kiar’s tail wags constantly, even after he got control over it a few cycles ago. Grant and Sykora took him to the doctor, fearful about some sort of missed milestone, but the medtechs assured them that no intervention was needed. Kiar can control his tail just fine. He’s just excited all the time.

“How about dada?” Grant stands Kiar up on his socked feet, hands under his armpits. “Dada.”

“Dada.” Grant carefully removes his hands from Kiar’s sides.

For a second, his son is standing. Then Kiar lands on his butt and giggles. “Baba,” he insists.

“Dada.”

“Baga.”

“Ooh, he’s got variations.” Grant boops his nose. “Close, Kee, but no cigar.”

“That’s partway there,” Sykora says. His wife’s awake; Ziavra’s in the crook of her arm latched on and nursing. Aurora snoozes on her stomach.

He rolls over, careful not to wake Rory, and pulls Sykora into a long, slow, lazy kiss. “Morning, Batty,”

“Good morning, Boy One,” she says. Kiar reaches his tiny hands toward her, and Grant obediently plops him onto his mother. “Good morning, Boy Two.” Sykora lands a peck on the top of Kiar’s wispy head.

“Hey, I’m Boy One.” Grant sits up and stretches. “Nice.”

“The competition will grow fiercer when this princeling is potty trained,” Sykora says. “Speaking of which, I do believe it’s your turn for Rory.”

The little indicator light on the caboose of his daughter’s onesie is blinking. He plucks Rory from the bed and strolls to the changing table they’ve set up in the kitchenette.

Whatever tech they’ve got in these baby outfits to block the smell is certainly impressive, but it doesn’t bother him as much as he thought it would, changing a diaper. Rory wakes up while he’s changing her and lets out a mewling little cry. She’s their little fusspot so far.

Maybe it’s the difference in species and evolutionary instinct, but the crying of a Taiikari baby isn’t so cloying to his ears as a human baby’s. It’s more like a guinea pig’s squeak than the power drill Maekyonite sound.

“Shh. Hey now, little lady.” He tosses her old diaper into the disposal chute by the window. “Y’know, I won’t have to bug you once you learn how to do this yourself. Little motivation for you.”

He’s surprised when that works to soothe her. Her blood-red eyes open and focus on his as he cleans her off. He chuckles at her expression: solemn and serious, like she’s actually considering what he’s said. “Gweh,” she argues.

“Good point,” he says, and slips her new diaper on. “There you go. All done. Let’s go say good morning to Mom.”

They’re people already. One decacycle in, and they’re little people. Maybe it’s just his imagination, maybe he’s ascribing behavior to them that won’t bear out, and he’s just baby crazy, but it’s getting truer and truer every day.

He washes his hands and returns Rory to her mother’s lap. Sykora has put aside the nursing babies; Ziavra is already crawling around the foot of the recessed bed, peeking up over its edge. She’s their explorer.

“These little gluttons have had their turn.” Sykora opens her arms. “C’mere, lover.”

He holds her close, burying his face in her chest.

She giggles. “You notice they got bigger?”

He nods into her cleavage.

“You did that, you know,” she whispers.

He kisses one. “And now I have to share them. A solemn trade-off.”

Her laugh twinkles as he kisses her birthmark. “My husband isn’t jealous, is he?”

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“So what if I am?”

“So this.” Sykora reaches over and activates the intercom. “Connect me to Chief Engineer Waian. Audio only.”

A cheerful chiming connect sound. Ziavra looks up at it with confused concern. “Y’got Waian,” the Chief Engineer announces.

“Waian, are you free?” Sykora plays with Ziavra’s teensy toes.

“Nothing I can’t pass off to an Ensign. I—hmm?” A moment of ambient chatter as the sounds of the bridge filter in. “Your Princess-in-Waiting says hi.”

“Hellooo, Vora,” Sykora sings. “Ask her how the Alamenko succession crisis is going.”

“She wants the thing. One second.”

A shift of air, and then Viscountess Vora, the Princess-in-Waiting of the Pike, is on the line. “Majesty. We’re working toward a solution that the baronesses can be pleased with, but Countess Nazara keeps blowing things up for her faction. I can tell they’re all sick of her, but nobody’s willing to cut off her money.”

“Hey. No pulling. Hey, little tyrant. Ow.” Sykora gingerly removes a strand of her hair from Aurora, who takes the confiscation with stoic grace. “Pardon me, Vora. My daughter is showing her insufferable Maekyonite blood. So what’ll you do?”

“I suppose I need to make Nazara feel inessential, somehow. Tamp back on those outbursts.”

Sykora considers this while she plays with her daughter’s floppy ears. “Inessential can work. But don’t be afraid of unsubtlety, remember.”

“Your title’s bigger than hers,” Grant adds.

“Right,” Vora says. “I need to remind myself to be less… meek.”

“It was tough for me to get used to,” Grant says.

“I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it. Shall I hand you back to Waian?”

Sykora stands Kiar up; he falls on his butt again. This is his favorite game lately. “If you’d be so kind.”

“Of course, mother.” Vora’s smirk is audible.

“I hate when you do that,” Sykora says. “You’re grounded.”

“Who’s grounded?” Waian asks.

“The Viscountess,” Sykora says. “I can ask a caregiver, but if Vora’s got things in-hand, would you like to come take the little terrors on a strollabout?”

“Abso-fuckin’-lutely,” Waian says. “There in two.”

It’s closer to one-and-a-half; the crew of the Pike has gotten used to their chief engineer sprinting to the cabin, a sight that used to be a harbinger of some technological crisis.

With much cooing, blowing of raspberries on bellies, and oh, he’s getting so fats, Waian loads the triplets onto the hover-stroller. She pauses on the way back out and half-turns back to Grant and Sykora, who are already tightening their embrace on the newly vacant bed. “Hey Kora,” she says.

“Hmm?”

“You’ve given me some adorable fucking grandkids, you know that?”

“They will be less adorable if their first words are fuck, Chief Engineer.”

“I beg to differ,” Waian says. “That would be cute as hell.” She shuttles the lord and ladies of the Pike out, humming a song to them as she goes.

Sykora rolls onto her back. Her tail wraps around Grant’s arm and tugs him to her. “All yours, now,” she purrs.

He loves the way his wife’s body has changed, now that she’s a mother. Her breasts have shrunk back down some, from her pregnancy, but not all the way back. The warm flesh spills through his fingers, now, when he holds them. The tight, pebbling nipples blush a deeper blue.

She’s been stubborn about getting her gym hours in, was back at it in a few cycles, as soon as the medtechs were willing to clear her, but there’s still a softness to her from when she was carrying. A motherly amplitude to her hips, a little fluff still on her abdomen. The pale stretch marks on her stomach she doesn’t like; there’s some kind of enzyme that she rubs on them which is fading them quick. He enjoys them, enjoys tracing them with his fingertips, and has assured her they’re lovely. But it’s her body to do what she wants with.

And what she wanted was to give it to you. To give you a family. She let you change her. You turned this alien into a little blue MILF.

He anchors his hands on the hips that bore their children. He kisses the belly that grew them. The mouth that sings them to sleep. The breasts that nurture them.

Her mischievous whisper in his ear. “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?”

“About what?”

She laughs and imitates his gravely voice. “About what.” She squeezes the puffy roundness of her breast. “Go on, Maekyonite. You’re the one who filled them up in the first place. Aren’t you curious?”

“Are you?”

“I’m sore,” she says. “I make enough for more than three, you know. That’s a small litter. Come on.” Her hands burrow into the hair at the back of his scalp. “Come help out mama.”

--content omitted--

She sputters and gives him an indignant little flurry of open-palm slaps on his thigh. “Vandal.”

“My—my bad,” he pants, as he eases off her. “Let me.” He finds his pyjama sleeve and dabs at her flushed cheeks.

She’s still acting mad, but she can’t help but giggle as he tries to clean his copious orgasm off her. “Is it in my hair?”

“Uh—don’t worry about it. We’ll shower.”

“Too right we will. Hellfire.” She wipes her hands on her stomach. “How such a big bully gave me three perfect children I’ll never know.”

“They are perfect,” he says, and picks her up from the silk. “Everything is fucking perfect. Life is perfect.”

“You’re perfect,” she says.

“You’re perfect.” He bridal-carries her out of the bed and toward the shower.

“You.”

“You.”

“Okay.” She kicks her legs into a slouchy cross. “Carry your perfect Princess to the shower, servant.”

“I was already doing that.”

“Faster.”

They laugh and jabber on and she feigns further outrage as the shower warms up and the steam rises. And Grant knows it’s true: everything’s perfect. And the tiny bruise on his joy, the shadow on its edge that is Maekyon, that’s not something he has to worry about. Not for a few more decacycles of contentment, anyway. And he tells himself he isn’t afraid anymore. And today he believes it.

Aagi stares with bloodshot eyes at the terminal screen. He takes off his anticomps and stares some more. There’s something wrong. There has to be. He double checks. Then he triple checks. Then he spends an hour of growing panic checking again and again, finding stealthsat footage and sitting in drymouthed disbelief at what he sees.

As his shift ends he staggers from his observatory office like the living dead. Surta, the other member of the skeleton crew, strolls round the sterile station corner and nearly drops her tea. She rushes to his side. “Aagi. Gods of the fucking Firmament, brother. What’s going on?”

Aagi slumps against a wall and sits on the floor, ignoring the grit he’s getting on the seat of his technician uniform. He holds up a printout. “Here,” he says. “Right here is where they came back into realspace. We have to—we need to send a flyer. It has to be unmanned. Has to be. But it—even then I don’t know how it’s fucking possible, but it has every hallmark. It can’t be happening, but it’s happening.”

“What? What’s happening?” Surta’s trembling fingers unfold the printout. “Aagi, what is—”

She freezes. That same panicky disbelief spreads across her face.

“Get word to the station hangar,” Aagi says. “And boot up the extrasystem array. We have to tell the Pike. Surta.”

He takes her shoulder and shakes her halfway out of her fugue.

“They need to know,” he says. “Maekyon’s discovered the sweep.”