* * *
Later that night, he slid a plate in front of me and it simply looked like a square brick of cheese and red sauce of some kind. I looked at it quizzically at first and he caught my hesitation.
“It’s lasagna,” he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world.
I glanced down at it and back up at him with the same perplexed expression. I raised an eyebrow and waited for him to explain himself. This absolutely looked like a heart attack on a plate.
“I take it you’ve never had Italian food then,” he replied, and I shook my head.
“It wasn’t really on the menu out there in the woods,” I countered, and he smirked.
“Have I steered you wrong yet, my pet?” he asked.
“No,” I replied bashfully. “It just seems like a lot of cheese.” I added.
“Inside this fancy gluttonous treat is sausage and ground beef, as well as a rather decadent heaping portion of ricotta and mozzarella cheese,” he explained.
“There’s cheese packaged inside of cheese,” I said flatly.
“Technically, it’s packaged between several layers of pasta,” he corrected, smirking as he did so. His eyes practically glimmered with his excitement, and I had to admit that even though he was an alien, he was really quite handsome when he smiled that way.
“Where did you even find a recipe for something this terrible for your arteries?” I questioned.
“There was a really old cookbook stored inside a glass cabinet that I came across several years ago. I’ve tested out a number of recipes from it and found most of them to be quite good,” he explained.
I looked back down at the square of pasta and cheese with reservation. Before I could reach for my fork, Talyn picked it up and cut a bite from the edge. Steam rose where the layers had separated. He held it out across the table with the air of someone who had already accounted for how this was going to end.
I leaned forward and blew on it before I opened my mouth and took that single bite.
I practically moaned as I devoured that single forkful. I spent far too much time just staring down at the plate before I said anything about it. He’d been right and now I was going to have to tell him. Finally, I swallowed my pride because I didn’t want to wait any longer to take another bite.
“That is way too good. That shouldn’t be allowed,” I said hoarsely, already reaching back for seconds.
“Told you so,” he replied. He didn’t even try to hide his pride, but I didn’t blame him. I ate that whole plate and even went back for another slice. When I was finished, he surprised me with something he called gelato for dessert and by the time we ate a bowl of that together, I felt like I was so full that I might burst. It was a strange feeling after getting used to being hungry all my life.
The two of us walked out onto his balcony and sat together under the stars. The tail swished between my legs and I blushed thinking about it again. The moon was bright and very nearly full, which was quite pretty to behold. When my food finally settled, I snuggled in against his chest, wanting to hide from the chill of winter that was beginning to set in. Up here, the breeze was colder. He pulled a soft blanket up over my thighs and tucked me in while I was still on his lap.
It wouldn’t be much longer until the land was hidden in snow.
It dawned on me that this would be the first winter that I wouldn’t have to shiver through. I wouldn’t have to put on every layer of clothing that I owned just to stay warm. I had food, shelter, and a growly but mostly kind alien at my side. The moretime I spent with him, the more I appreciated how there was a human side of him that emerged on occasion when we were alone together.
There were several times when we were interrupted by those he led. They delivered daily reports or any emergency intel to him when necessary. Any time he interacted with his alien comrades however, he turned into someone I almost didn’t recognize. His words were harder, his body language and tone used to taking command of a great number of his people through conquest and battle.
He turned into everything that my people had feared, and the affection that I’d become accustomed to receiving from him all but disappeared. He treated me as if I were simply his human pet and nothing more than that.
I didn’t quite know how to handle him when he was that way.
The next day, he brought me down with him to his command center when a particular report captured his attention. I followed him warily. I determined silence was probably my best course of action. I might be able to learn something by just observing how they went about their work too.
The room was big, complete with every sort of technology under the sun. I didn’t know what half of them were, so I focused on the interactions between the aliens and the visuals on the screens that depicted various places inside their territory.
One of his men pointed out an anomaly on the map. I stared at it closely, knowing enough to pinpoint the area based off my own experience. It was a familiar place and a long-used basecamp for a human group since the old days. They were a quiet bunch and they kept to themselves. I’d never heard anything about themattacking the alien camps or stealing supplies. I didn’t really know why Talyn would concern himself with them since they posed no threat. The more I listened, though, the more it seemed like the aliens didn’t actually know a camp of humans lived there.
I kept quiet. I wouldn’t give up their existence.
The two men talked at length about what it could be. From the initial report, it appeared to be an abnormality that emerged on a drone scan of the area. There was an electric signature in a location that hadn’t had reliable electricity in more than a century.
“Put together a team of men. I will lead a reconnaissance mission tomorrow to investigate,” Talyn instructed.
