cosmicshifts (12 page)

Phillip nodded, but he needed to know if this creature had seen
Alika
. He pointed at the second figure by the ship. The yeti shook his head and motioned to
Elarna
once more. He hung his head and sighed. Phillip slammed his hand down into the dirt. Pain shot up his arm as he realized he had broken something. It would dissipate when his body repaired itself. A jolt of energy raced along his arm. He looked up and no longer looked to the hairy face of the creature. Instead, he saw a dark skinned man with deep green eyes. His hair was as white as the snow outside. Phillip tried to pull his hand away, but he couldn’t.

“I can heal your wounds,” the man before him said.

Phillip understood him now that he was in a human or humanoid form. He nodded and took a deep breath and tried to push the Bigfoot back within his mind away. It took him a couple of moments before he had shrunk down into his man form as well.

The yeti’s eyes widened. “How did you do that?”

Phillip hoped he could maintain his human form. “Thank you for trying to heal me, but you
don’t
have to worry about it. My body will restore itself. Can you understand me?”

“In this form yes, I can understand you. Please, how did you do that?”

“It’s complicated. Did you find another woman with
Elarna
?”

“No. As I tried to tell you before, there was only her. This other woman, she is like this one?”

“She is my…” Phillip didn’t think wife was an appropriate word for
Alika
nor was she his girlfriend.
“Mate.”
He ended up saying. That seemed to be the best description of their relationship.

The other nodded in comprehension.
“Mate.
Yes, I understand this. I did not see her, only this female in the wreckage of the great ship that fell from the sky. I searched the remains where it had broken up, but most of it was buried in the snow. I barely recovered her. Then the royal guard arrived and surrounded the ship. They’ll go through it and bring any survivors back to the compound. How do you do this, change your form? I thought I was the only one.”

“We have to the go and find
Alika
. We have to go and…”

The other held up his hands. “No. We can’t. There’s nothing we can do. The whole city will know you’re not one of us. They will know you have come from the craft. Besides, I can’t leave her. She still has injuries that I haven’t healed completely. Her wounds were
grievous
, and it took much of my energy to repair them.”

It sounded like the other male was a healer, but he still wasn’t sure. Phillip gritted his teeth at the beast, pushing back against the human half. He had to keep the Bigfoot at bay for a while longer. The anger from not being able to find
Alika
weighed on him. He ran his fingers through his hair. She could be out in the elements, freezing to death. She could be at the mercy of the royal guard, or worse she could be dead. Phillip refused to believe that she was dead. He had to find her and this…man was his only link to her. “What’s your name? Where am I? Where did we smash onto?”

“My name is
Heragthan
,” the yeti replied.

Phillip heard the name, but it sounded as though the other man had swallowed half of it. He didn’t think he could pronounce most of it.
“
Hergman
.”
He articulated carefully.

The other man frowned.

“
Herrrman
,” he tried again.

The other seemed to accept that. He touched his chest. “Phillip.” Then he pointed at the woman on the bed. “Her name is
Elarna
.”

Herman nodded and said the name to
himself
very low, but it was enough that Phillip heard it. The beast within wanted back out, but he held it at bay for a little longer, remembering what
Alika
had told him about trying to be in sync with it. He needed more time to talk with Herman. He smiled when he thought about Herman, the Space Yeti. There would be a story to tell in this. Of course he still had to find
Alika
first and get off the planet. No one was going to hurt his mate.

“
Phhiilllipp
.”
Herman strung the sounds together, but he did better than
Alika
had the first time she had said his name. “Yes. How is it that I can understand you in this form when I couldn’t in the other?”

Phillip tapped the center of his forehead. “
Alika
implanted a universal translator in the center of my head so I can understand her and I guess you, but it doesn’t work when I’m in my Bigfoot form. Only then I can hear her thoughts. I guess it allows me to understand you and vice versa. But I won’t be able to understand you while you’re a yeti.”

“Y-yet-
ti
?
What is that?” Herman asked.

“Where I’m from, there are stories of beasts that resemble your other form; tall, white hairy monsters that live in the snow up in the mountains. Sometimes humans find large footprints and make copies of them to show the rest of the world. They even do that with me. They call me Bigfoot because of my large feet, but I’ve never come across anyone else like me.”

“I have not heard of these h-h-
uma
-
nns
. But they are like your other form?”

“No. They look like me as I am now. This is how I was before I was cursed.
Beast by night and man by day.
Live for all eternity no matter what happens to me. What about you?”

“My people.
We are beasts….” Herman screwed up his face as though he was in pain. He backed away and his dark skin was covered once again by a thick white pelt. He stood up, towering above Phillip.

It was then he felt his own body shifting back into the Bigfoot. There was no need to fight it. If
Alika
was with him, she would have been able to keep him from changing back. But she was not. He had to find her. He knew now that he couldn’t do that without Herman’s help. He prayed that
Elarna
would awaken soon so he could ask her what happened and why they had crash landed. Maybe those answers would assist him. Maybe she knew if
Alika
had gone to another life pod or been at the helm too. Phillip dismissed the notion that she was buried somewhere under the ice. He couldn’t fathom the idea of never being able to look upon her stunning emerald face ever again.

Chapter Three

Elarna
opened her eyes. It took a moment for her to realize she was lying down and staring up at a stone ceiling. Blue crystals embedded in the walls and the ceiling illuminated the space so she could see. Every muscle in her body cried out in pain. When the ship had been going down, she didn
’t have time to make it to the escape pod. The alarm had sounded, tugging her from sleep because the craft was on autopilot speeding them back to
Rovan
. Her flight path had kept her clear of space debris, asteroid belts, and far enough away from enemy planets they shouldn’t have had to worry about anything. However, something had gone wrong. She had sprinted to the controls and….

The rest was blank from there no matter how much she tried to search her memory for it.

Must have gotten a bad bump on the head.
Thank the goddess
Geru
I’m alive.
As she sat up, her side pained her. She placed her hand over her left side, and it seemed that one of her ribs was out of place. When she tried to turn over on her good side, her leg screamed in agony and she fell back onto the bed. Right now she wished f
or the healing bed in her ship or to be back on Rovan where the healers could touch a person and mend any injury someone had.
So much for trying to get up and figure out where in the universe I am.
Elarna took in more of her surroundings from her limited v
iewpoint. A fire pit with a small fire popped a few feet from her, throwing off warmth into the room. The air was cool around her exposed limbs. She examined the blankets and noticed some were hides from some large animals and some were woven fabric. She r
an her hand over them and felt a mixture of fur and scales.

She heard a grunt and saw something large move in the room. A twinge of fear gripped her as many possibilities of what it could be went through her mind. If she was going to have been eaten, she w
ould be dead already. Being in an unfamiliar place and unfamiliar surroundings, the trepidation of her situation caused her two hearts to beat rapidly. She drew in another breath and tried to stay calm. It could be many things that this shadow could belong
to. It could, in the end, just be a shadow. However, the silhouette gave way to a large, apelike creature. At first she thought it was a
gorenaut
, a giant gray primate that lived in the forests on her planet. They were eight feet tall and weighed between
six hundred and eight hundred pounds. They were vicious beasts that even weathered hunters avoided. Her brother had once tried to go after one and never returned. Her brother had been such a prize with beautiful lavender skin and white hair. Sharim already
had three brides lined up, but he didn’t listen and went to prove himself against the gorenaut.

Now one stood before her. She froze.

As a child they were warned that if ever confronted by a
gorenaut
, she should freeze. Don’t look it in the eye. The primates were the largest predator on the planet besides the
lolliz
, an enormous six legged, nine hundred
poud
serpent
that lived in the wastelands. One bite could kill besides spitting poison onto its prey. Some tried to tame them to ride because they were fast, but not many were successful to tell the tale.

The beast moved into the room. From her position all she could see were its large seven toed feet. They were bigger than
Alika
’
s new mate’s. They were covered in white fur, and the nails on the seven toes were curved long enough into claws so they could grip whatever the beast was walking on. It knelt down next to her. She expected the worst, but it did nothing. Once she realized that, she mustered enough courage to look up and inspect the beast for herself. Instead of the
gorenaut
this creature’s face was a mixture of ape and canine features where his muzzle was rounded like the primate, but slightly elongated with sharp teeth. Yet it was also very humanoid too. He reached toward her, but she shied away from him. An annoyed look crossed his features, and he let out a long snort. He said something, but it came out more as grunts and growls.

Elarna
sighed and touched the left side of her face. Instead of feeling the small buttons that controlled the universal translator implanted along the side of her left cheek, she felt half of it.
Broken.
Just my luck.
She shook her head. He held out his hands as though trying to tell her to wait. Before her eyes his large form shrunk down and all the hair receded from his body, leaving a male that resembled a human like Phillip. Instead, this man retained his seven toes and had a longer face. When he smiled his teeth were all sharp points.

“You have nothing to fear from me.”

Her eyes widened. “I can understand you. Thank the goddess. I thought my translator was broken.” A sense of some relief flooded her. “Are you the one who brought me here?”

He nodded. “I am. You were badly hurt in the crash. I …
arhgou
...
outis
.”

She frowned as his words were swallowed up into a void of static. She held up her hand to get him to stop for a second.
Elarna
tapped her left temple, hoping the translator would work. It was probably
loose
wiring. If she had hit her head it made sense that something would have been jarred loose.

“Say something again,” she requested.

“
Origh
trinata
…”

She gritted her teeth and smacked the center of her forehead where the main module of the translator was located. The jarring pain hurt, but…

“I was saying that you were badly injured.”

“
Oh good.
”

“That you were hurt?” His eyebrows furrowed, but his green eyes were filled with concern.

“Huh-no.
That’s a bad thing. I assume I
wasn
’
t hurt very badly, or you
wouldn
’
t have been able to get me away from the ship.”

“On the contrary, you were almost dead. It took a great deal of my energy to restart your heart and make sure your wounds were sealed so that you would survive the night. Your physiology is so different from mine in so many ways that it burned my normal amount of energy I would use when healing others of my kind.”

Elarna
nodded. It sounded reasonable. If he had healed her then that would make sense why he hovered, and yet there was something familiar in his other form besides looking like a
gorenaut
. “Where am I? Do you know what happened to the other passengers of my ship?”

“Hush. All of your questions will be answered later when you’re better. For now, let me heal you. Lay back please.”

She hated being given orders. Because of her stubbornness she had lost many things and gained others.
Alika
had stood by her when she had broken from her family tradition and became a procurer the way that
Alika
had. They went out looking for
matable
men. She had a grand time traveling the galaxy and finding herself in places she had never been before. But when she had been called home because her mother was dying, she had been told she needed to take up once more with the family business and give up her ship. She had until her birthday to make that happen. When
Alika
never showed up and then the distress call came in, there was nothing or no one that could keep her from helping her friend. Now she had no idea where her friend was or what had happened to Phillip.
Alika
had shoved him into one of the escape pods. After that it was still all a blur.

The man before her laid a hand on her forehead and tried to pull down the blankets that covered her chest. She grabbed the furs and wouldn’t release them. She was not about to let this male see her naked.

He chuckled. “I had to remove your clothing so I could heal you. I have already seen your womanly mounds. I won’t harm you. Trust me.”

Womanly mounds?

He waited patiently. He did seem to be telling her the truth. Finally, she relented and released the covers. He placed another hand on her chest. Once his palm settled on her skin a great heat flushed her body until sweat slid down her face. The pain eased, and something else happened. His energy filled her and made her tingle in every way possible. This stranger
wasn
’
t touching her in a sexual way, but by the goddess if he
didn
’
t make her gush with desire for him. Her nipples hardened at the thought of him. From her perspective he was completely naked with nothing covering his genitals. His cock was semi-erect and rested against his thigh. Even in that state it was ten inches long. She felt her hearts skip a beat, picturing how he would be in bed and how he would be in his beast form.
Elarna
had always loved big, hairy males who could make her howl. In his other form, knowing he was not a threat, she could see herself mounting and riding him until he made her come, screaming.

He moved his hand from her chest, and it brushed her pert nipple, shooting desire through her. A small moan spilled from her lips.

“I apologize if this hurts,” he said to her in a flat tone.

He leaned over and pressed his lips to the center of her chest where his right hand had been while he trailed it lower over her abdomen. He stopped at her navel and more warmth flooded her system as something within her moved back into place. It made her jump, but she was more focused on trying not to get lost in the pleasure that inundated her system. He was trying to heal her, and she was so turned on that it was embarrassing. It had been a long time since she had been with a male of any species.

“It
doesn
’
t hurt,
” she forced out. He trailed his tongue down the center of her chest, slightly scraping her flesh as it went. “What are you doing?” she asked, trying to keep her voice even.

“It helps me detect if there are any places that I missed or if there are toxins in your skin. They center
around
the heart. Since you have two, I wanted to be doubly sure that you have nothing else in your system. Most of your wounds are healed, so there’ll only be one more time that I need to do this, and you’ll be well again. It will take me some time to regain my strength. It takes more energy to heal you than what I’m accustomed to.” He sat up and the creases in his forehead deepened. “Have I done something to offend or hurt you?”

“No. It
’s
just
…never mind.”
Elarna
couldn
’
t help but let her gaze trail down his chiseled physique and notice the etching of his muscles and how they stood out underneath his skin. He might have been all
beast
in one guise, but in this one he was all male. She tried not to want to feel this longing that had sprung up inside of her.

“
Tell me,
” he insisted.

Elarna
leaned over and planted her lips on his. He stiffened but did not pull away from her. She took his face between her hands and held him there. His skin was silky against her palms. When he responded, he kissed her lightly and then disengaged from her very slowly. He smiled.

“I-I
’
m s-sorry,” she stammered as she realized what she had done. “I
shouldn
’
t have done that.”

He trailed a finger down her cheek. “There’s no need for apologetic. It happens quite often when I heal people.”

“I think you mean apologies. Your patients always kiss you after you treat them?”

“They have this intense feeling that can arouse them. When a healer heals, it creates a bond between patient and healer. It’s a normal reaction. Even the smallest wound with the exchange of energy it makes for a forged link. With your strange anatomy, I can’t say how powerful the effects will be.”

“Oh.” She smiled and settled back down into the bed. Questions bounced through her mind.
“
Still.
I
’
m sorry. I
shouldn
’
t have forced myself upon you with you being such a gracious host. But can I ask you a few more questions?”

He nodded, but before he could answer,
Elarna
heard heavy footsteps. She glanced over and saw a large, hairy, brown beast
who
trotted over to see her. She held out her hand. He took it in his and squeezed.

“You
’
re okay,” she said.

He nodded. He said something, but she
couldn
’
t understand him. “Sorry. My translator is broken.”

He nodded again and she knew he understood what that meant. It took him a moment before he became human once more, but it seemed he struggled to keep the shape.
Elarna
found him to be more appealing when he was in his Bigfoot form and not in his human one. However, she
wasn
’
t going to argue because at least this way she could speak to him. She hoped he could fill in some of the holes that were in her memory.