Page 3 of His to Mate

2

Ann wokeup the next morning with a smile on her face. Rager’s attentions had kept her up until the late hours, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t like she had anywhere to be today. The servants had their assigned duties, she had no appointments, and the day was hers. After a long, hard night, some time in a hot bubble bath with a book was all she really wanted.

She stretched as she thought about what she’d order for breakfast and looked over to Rager’s pillows when her hand brushed against something. It was a white box with a red bow and a smile twitched her lips. A present?

She sat up and pulled the ribbon apart to open the box. Her mouth dropped open when she saw what it was. A piece of paper fell out to reveal an MP3 player, new earbuds, and a charger! A soft shriek of happiness filled the air as she put the earbuds in and hit play. It didn’t matter which song played first, all that mattered was hearing something that she knew. She pressed a button on her nightstand to let the kitchen staff know she was up and to bring her coffee while she settled back into the pillows.

It was one of her favorite songs by a band called the Ozones. They’d only just made it big the year the world went to hell so she was a little surprised to hear it on there, but she’d had it on her old player so it shouldn’t be a surprise really. They’d been massive, after all. She started to scroll through the songs on the player, much more expensive than hers had been.

“This is my memory card!” she said softly, but out loud. “He must have put it in here.”

She dug around the covers until she found the piece of folded paper. Maybe it was a note.

“If you carried this thing around for all these years, the music on it must mean a lot to you. I really like some of it. Have a good day, my sweet.”

Her heart melted a little at that. She’d promised herself she’d stop comparing Rex and Rager, but damn, sometimes it was hard not to. Rex wouldn’t even share his MP3 player with her. Rager had found her a brand new one and had put her SD card inside of it. It was old technology, but she had loved stuff like that when she was a teenager and she still did, she found as she went to answer the knock at the door and took the tray from the servant there.

She got back in bed, sipped at her coffee, and then ate her pancakes with a happy smile as Janis Joplin sang about life with a fella named Bobby McGee. It was a song her mom loved, and she’d learned to love it too. Rager had given her this moment of happiness, he didn’t have to, but he was an observant fellow, and he’d wanted to make her smile. He’d more than done that.

When her breakfast was done, she went into the bathroom and ran hot water into the tub. She used some of the soap she’d found in an abandoned store to make coconut-scented bubbles, and then stepped into the soothing water. Music filled her ears as she leaned her head back against the edge of the large tub.

Rager had told her that one day, everything that was old now would be made again. Things like soap, razor blades, all of it would be made again. One day. For now, they were still having to make do in many ways. She wasn’t going to complain a bit. She wasn’t one of the wolves, she wasn’t a servant. Sometimes she watched them, saw how they rarely smiled, how many walked around with their shoulders bent, and wished she could do more to help them.

Rex had said the most terrible thing to her, that he hoped she died giving birth. He thought she was a traitor to their kind. But she wasn’t his kind anymore, she reminded herself as she let water fall between her fingers. She lived a life of privilege that she couldn’t have imagined a few years ago. Even a few months ago, she’d have said this was impossible.

Sure, she and her little band of a family might have been able to find this house, they could have made do in it, but how would they power it? Would they have even made it this far? Many of the wolves had turned into cannibals, they’d started to eat non-wolves, which wasn’t quite cannibalism. Or was it? Ann wasn’t sure, but she knew it was close enough that it made the world dangerous.

The aliens put those wolves to death, and left only those that had never intentionally, murderously, tasted human blood. Now, those that had survived were virtually slaves. She hated to think about it, she didn’t want to think about it, but she did. The same way she thought about the words Rex had spit at her.

Guilt plagued her, she’d been so in love with Rex for most of her life, but even before the aliens came she’d started to question that love. She’d given him so much devotion, and all he’d ever shown her was disdain. As if her loyalty was owed him for being a high school sports star and nothing more.

Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t lifted a finger to save any of them, not even his parents. It was her father that did that. Not Rex, the homegrown hero. The hero of nothing. Not like Rager, either.

Rager had crossed galaxies, universes with his people, and then, they’d started to save what was left of life on Earth. With their advanced technology and science, they were recreating the world. With the help of the humans and the wolves left, they had started to bring the world back to life mechanically as well. Power plants were operating again, and she’d heard that there would be a medical center opening soon.

Which reminded her that her mother had tripped over… nothing. Something? She wasn’t exactly sure what had happened that made her mother smack her head like that, but she decided she’d call later to check on her. Her mother had never been a clumsy woman and that trip had left a nasty gash on her head.

The water started to cool, but instead of getting out, Ann ran a little more. It was decadent, indulgent, but her thighs were sore. Which made her remember her mate and what he’d done the night before. In so many different ways. Her body was covered in his marks, bruises from fingers that clenched a little too hard for an earthling, the love bites his lips left on her thighs, the scratches from his nails along her back. It all needed to be soothed.

The hot water swirled along her body as it mixed with the cool and she sighed in bliss. She wouldn’t complain about her new life, how could she? She just wished everyone had the same privileges. It wasn’t fair that Amanda and Stephan Wolfson were servants while Ann and her parents lived in what was now luxury.

Her father worked for his privilege, she knew that, but her and her mother? It was almost like being in the 19th century again. She and her mother were the ladies of the manor, posh and privileged. In reality, they were just ordinary people that managed to survive the end of the world, or the near end of it.

With a frown, she sat up, put her MP3 player a safe distance from the edge of the tub, and started to clean up. She’d have to figure out a way to make this all right. Okay, so the aliens didn’t want the wolves mixing their DNA with the humans. For a moment, she wondered if it was only racism that caused that kind of thought. But then she thought about those wolves that had killed non-wolves.

Maybe it wasn’t racism.

There was only a fraction of a difference between her DNA and Rager’s, enough to ensure they weren’t related and enough to know they were different. His eyes were orange, after all, that wasn’t really a color that showed up in the Earth population. All of the aliens were huge men, more like the Nordic people than her own. Tall, broad, and fully muscled, they were all made for battle and hard work.

Earth didn’t need to be a battle zone, though, she thought as she ran a sponge over her legs. Rex had talked about a resistance movement. She could understand that the wolves wanted to change their fate, nobody wanted to be enslaved, but did it have to come to the war Rex seemed to crave?

There’d been a hungry gleam in his eyes every time he’d talked about fighting the aliens. It had made her wonder about his sanity, that gleam, and the way he talked. Surely, he’d noticed how little effort it took to conquer their world? Rager and his merry band of aliens had basically waltzed in, sat down, and declared themselves the rulers of this world, because they could.

Even if Rex and his cronies managed to take over a military base, they wouldn’t be able to defeat people that could basically fold time. That’s how Rager had explained it, as a kind of folding of time until the travel time was shortened because all of the extra space had been removed. When he’d explained it, the whole thing made perfect sense. She wasn’t sure anyone on Earth would be able to build the kind of technology it would take to be able to do that, but it made sense to her. In theory.

With a final rinse from the handheld showerhead finished, Ann stepped out of the tub and wrapped herself in a huge towel. She smoothed some coconut oil into her skin and dried her hair before she put on a white linen dress. It was light and sleeveless, with a row of buttons down to her knees. It would get her through the day.

She picked up her phone, the only thing she could think to call the device, and went downstairs to the kitchen. She talked with the cook about what they would have for dinner and then went out to the garden. She saw her animals out in the fields and smiled. Soon, things would almost be back to normal.