“Earth is very stupid in many respects, and humans are very silly creatures, but it is also your home, and that makes Earth feel special to me. Without Earth there would be no you, Jude. That makes it a very,veryimportant planet. The most important planet in the whole universe.”
“What about your family, though?” Jude asked, blushing. “I know you and your parents have your differences, but do you really want to be so far away from them? From your siblings?”
Al put a gentle hand on the egg closest to him and smiled sweetly down at it. Without looking up, he said, “I am already with my family, Jude.”
Jude, who didn’t think he could be any more overcome with emotion, swelled with love at the words. It occurred to him then, that in the entirety of his life, no one had ever chosen him. Not really. Oh, sure, he knew Ezra and Corbin cared for him, and even his family loved him in their own way, but in the grand scheme of things, Jude had never been the one to come first. His parents always blatantly favored Lennon, all his exes turned out to be scumbags, and he could count the number of friends he had on one hand with plenty of fingers to spare.
But Al? Alchosehim, and not only that, but he had been chosen for him by fate. It was a lot to process, and as the true gravity of it finally sank in, Jude understood, for the first time since all of this had begun, what it truly meant to be someone’s True Mate.
“I love you,” he told Al for the second time, the words rushing out of him, propelled by the depths of his emotion.
Al was usually sunshine personified, but his face lit up even brighter, and he leaned over to kiss Jude with all the warmth and joyfulness of a beautiful summer’s day. Against his lips he whispered, “These words are my favorite of all English words.”
“Okay, but you hate ninety-nine percent of all English words. That’s not a very high bar,” Jude countered with a crooked grin.
“These are my favorite words in all seven thousand Earth languages, then,” Al corrected himself. He kissed Jude again. “My favorite in all the languages on my planet, too.” He kissed him a third time. “There are no words in my language, or the language of the Sand Dwellers, or the Aquatic Beasts that I feel more appreciation for than these three words in English—because they areyourwords.” The fourth time he kissed Jude, it was longer and lazier. Jude didn’t know if Al was exaggerating to be flirty, but it didn’t matter—Al’s favorite words or not, Jude was pretty damn sure that they were his favorite words to say.
The two of them melted into each other, lips locked. Jude’s face flushed as his body heated up from head to toe, his breath quickening and his heart thudding in reaction to Al’s tongue licking into his mouth. He began to forget himself, losing track of where they were and what they had been doing in favor of immersing himself in the feeling of Al’s hand sliding up his bare torso. His skin tingled like a sparking wire—touch between them had always been electric, but with the addition of open, purposeful love it was akin to a lightning storm. If this was what Al’s fingers on his chest felt like, would he even survive the amount of pleasure he was sure to feel with Al inside—
“Human Corbin has shown me the Earth hairstyle called the mullet,” Al’s dad declared as he barged into Jude’s room unannounced, his wife, Corbin, and Ezra all following close behind.
Jude’s stomach gave an unpleasant lurch.
He couldn’t help but wonder just what kind of impression he was making on what were essentially his in-laws now that they had interrupted him fooling around with their son for the second time in the course of an hour and a half.
“Observe the mullet, Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p,” Al’s dad demanded, seemingly unaffected by his son’s compromising position with Jude.
Al shut his eyes briefly and muttered something that sounded not terribly polite before moving away from Jude and looking at his father. Jude, despite not wanting to make eye contact with Al’s parents maybe forever, forced himself to look too.
Al’s father was indeed rocking a light brown “business in the front, party in the back” mullet. He still had a mustache, but it was a much more reasonable size, although still in a handlebar shape. Al’s mother was sporting a hot pink mohawk, and rather than getting rid of her facial hair, had added a bushy beard. She was wearing a striped green and blue tank top and tight cut-off jeans Jude recognized as an outfit of Corbin’s that had been in a clean clothes pile in the laundry room for months, after he had yarfed on himself during a night of drinking with Jude and Ezra. Meanwhile, Al’s father was wearing a black t-shirt advertising a grunge band that Jude had never had a singular desire to listen to, and a pair of gray sweatpants, obviously belonging to Ezra. They were both wearing slippers for shoes.
“Good god,” Jude said under his breath.
“I did the best I could,” Corbin said, sounding exasperated, which was a step up from the near-constant terror he’d been exhibiting since the birth of the eggs. “These two arestubborn.”
“We got them to move the race car to the alley in the back of the house, though,” Ezra said cheerfully.
“Thewhat?” Jude asked, perplexed. “When you said they cloaked it as a human vehicle, you never said that it was a goddamn race car. And what do you mean, you had them move it? Did you actually let other people see them like that?” He pointed at Al’s parents, who both looked affronted at the attack on their excellent human disguises.
“Trust us, if you’d seen the car, you’d know that they lookexactlylike the types of people who would be driving it,” Corbin said, clarifying exactly nothing for Jude.
“Don’t sweat it, man,” Ezra added, noticing Jude getting visibly concerned.
Jude was sweating it quite a lot, but no one else seemed particularly concerned, so he forced himself to trust that, despite all evidence to the contrary, everything would be okay.
“Human Ezra introduced us to Nonhuman Buttons,” Al’s mom told Al excitedly. “Nonhuman Buttons has much intelligence and grace. Very articulate creature. Very better language than the very stupid English.”
“Nonhuman Buttons speaks very great of Human Ezra,” Al’s dad added. “She speaks okay of your mate, Human Jude.”
As Al nodded in agreement, Jude decided to simply let that one slide right on past.
“Human Jude is not Ξ.A.kr’ξ??’p’s mate,” Al’s mom said with contempt, her lips a thin, tight line behind her facial hair. “Human Jude has rejected this title.”
“For your information, Human Jude—er, I mean,Ihaven’t rejected any title,” Jude said defensively, irritated at the nasty way Al’s parents were looking at him, even though hehadbeen fairly rude to them earlier. But it had been justified!
Ezra perked up at that like a dog hearing the mailman approaching. “Wait, what do you mean?”
Jude blushed and glanced at Al. Al took Jude’s hand and gave it a reassuring squeeze, which instantly strengthened his resolve.
