A Son for the Alien Warrior (Treasured By The Alien #2)(5)

Halfway through his search, his heart rate increased. Several entries mentioned that Trevelor had become a haven for a variety of species because of the pleasant climate and the fact that they had been relatively untouched by the Red Death. One entry even mentioned a possible Cire colony.

Cestov was a Cire, one of the races most affected by the Red Death. The plague had been especially cruel to them. It had taken all of their women and their hope for the future. To the best of his knowledge, there were no longer any female Cires in existence. His tail flicked unhappily. He and his brother were the last generation that had been born before the plague and their father had taken them from Ciresia not long after their mother died. The older male had never been the same after her death, but he had lived long enough to make sure that both boys were prepared to take over the Wanderer and support themselves. Of course, their father had assumed that they would do it together. For the first ten years after his death, they had done just that, but five years ago they had a bitter argument and when he woke the next morning, his brother was gone. If only he could go back in time and take back the things he had said.

He shook his head. There was no use dwelling on something he couldn’t change. All he could do was to keep searching for his brother and in this case, thankfully, it looked like his search and his business would coincide. They were headed for Trevelor.



“Captain!” Maldost burst into his cabin with an excited look on his face.

“Now what?”

“The slonga is giving birth!”

“What the hell do you mean it’s giving birth? First, you tell me that you traded for a slonga instead of the seedlings you were supposed to obtain and now you’re telling me that the creature is female?”

The anger in his voice finally penetrated the young crew member’s excitement, and he bowed his head, his ears flicking down in apology. Maldost was an Afbera, another race to lose many of their females to the plague, although not to the extent of the Cire. Perhaps that was why Maldost did not understand the appalling act he had propagated. The female was now separated from her mate and was about to have young without any assistance or anything familiar surrounding her.

“I didn’t know that she was female,” Maldost protested. “Just that the slonga was trapped in a too-small cage. And that it was worth a lot of credits,” he added hastily.

Cestov sighed and rubbed his head, a headache already forming beneath his lamella, the ridges on his scalp which marked his age and warrior status.

“Can you tell if she is in distress?” Not that either one of them had any experience with females—of any kind—in labor.

“Well, she is making a sort of grunting noise?”

“All right. Let’s go see what we can do to ease this birth. Did you summon Whovian?”

Maldost scowled, his fangs showing. “He said he was a medic, not a veterinarian. And he smelled like liquor again.”

Cestov’s tail twitched angrily as he and Maldost took off for the cargo bay at a run. He had known when he took the medic on board that Whovian had been running from some kind of trouble, but he hadn’t realized that the trouble had been of the male’s own making. The drunken idiot was leaving the ship at the next port. Twice now he had been softhearted enough to believe the male’s promises of improved behavior. The third time was enough.

He was still scowling at the male’s absence when they reached the slonga. A low grunting could be heard from the entrance to the cargo area and he looked down to see big dark eyes fastened on him, as if imploring him for assistance. Fuck. He had no experience and no equipment, but he could not resist that look of entreaty.

He pushed up his sleeves as he strode across the room.

“Start searching the interwebs to see if you can find any information,” he ordered Maldost.

“There, there,” he said soothingly as he stroked the slonga’s long pink fur, trying his best to sound calm and confident. The slonga mooed and wrapped her trunk around his arm. Still murmuring gently to her, he stroked the large mound of her stomach. How could they not have realized that she might be with young?

She grunted again, and he saw the very tip of a tiny trunk appear between her back set of legs. Prepared or not, she was giving birth and he was the only one here to help her.



Two hours later, Cestov sat back with a weary smile. Three tiny slonga calves snuggled against their mother as they nursed happily. But then he realized that the last one, the smallest one, had been pushed to one side and wasn’t moving.

“Maldost, did you find anything about an infant who isn’t moving?” he asked urgently.

Instinctively, he picked up the tiny creature and started rubbing the small sides. The mother mooed again, her trunk reaching for the infant.

“When they came out, she rubbed all of them with her trunk,” Maldost said anxiously. “Like you’re doing, but it looked much harder.”

He started stroking the calf again, more firmly this time, but there was still no response. Frantically searching for a solution, he finally remembered a technique his father had mentioned a long time ago when he was teaching them basic medical skills. He bent down over the infant and began gently compressing its ribs while he breathed into the tiny mouth. For an agonizing few minutes, nothing happened but then he finally felt a small movement, and a minute later the tiny trunk wrapped around his wrist. His tail circled the much smaller length protectively as he sighed with relief. Too many things had been lost to death over the past generation—people, planets, family—but he had managed to save one small life.