hand. Whether this planet affected her or not, she found it disconcerting to react to a woman almost as much as she’d reacted to Grayson.
“It amazes me that men don’t think of these things.” Alyssa continued, hopefully unaware of Katelyn’s discomfiting reaction. “But, then, they’re men. They think we’ll just blindly follow whatever they dictate without question.”
Katelyn nodded. A subject change would be good—anything to get away from this sudden sexual attraction to the queen. She cleared her throat, hoping her voice would work. “So, do you know what this is all about? Why those pale guys showed up at my store?”
Pain, followed quickly by anger, etched across Alyssa’s face, surprising Katelyn. “Yes, I know only too well who they are and what they want.” Alyssa dropped the remains of her pastry onto the plate in front of her.
“About twenty-four years ago, there was a civil war here on Tador. The Klatch all look pretty much like Grayson and myself—dark hair, lavender eyes, the men muscular, the women curvy. The other race we warred with are called the Cunts.”
Katelyn cringed at the term. “Yikes. What a horrible name for a race.”
Alyssa laughed. “You have no idea.” She topped off her glass of tea from the pitcher. “Most of the Cunts are products of a mating between two half-Klatch, half-human parents. Once the Klatch blood is diluted to that degree, their physical characteristics change, and their children are pale blond, with tight, athletic bodies and clear blue eyes. Over time, the Cunts decided they were superior to the Klatch and tried to overthrow the king and queen—my parents.”
Katelyn sipped at her own tea, still trying to breathe through the physical reactions surging through her. “You said ‘tried’—I assume the…the Cunts were unsuccessful?”
The queen nodded, but her lips thinned, and her eyes narrowed. “They may not have been entirely successful, but they did a lot of damage. When they lost, they fled to Earth to hide, but not before they kidnapped me and my nanny.”
Alyssa’s energy snapped and sizzled in the air around them and caused Katelyn to gasp. The queen was a powerful practitioner and wielded more energy than Katelyn had ever seen in one person. Because Alyssa concealed it so effortlessly, Katelyn assumed that, like most people, the energy bled through only when strong emotions threatened.
I wouldn’t want to be one of the Cunts if she gets ahold of them.
Alyssa blew out a slow breath and smiled at Katelyn. “Sorry, there’s a lot of history there, and it still makes me want to tear a few of them limb from limb.” Her smile was self-deprecating. “Not a very queenlike attitude, I’m afraid.”
The queen pulled off another small piece of the pastry on her plate and popped it into her mouth. “Anyway, they raised me but never let me know my true heritage. They planned to use me to overthrow the planet when I came of age. Luckily, Stone found me just before my twenty-fourth birthday, and last month I ascended the throne.”
“Wow.” Katelyn couldn’t imagine everything Alyssa had gone through. She didn’t want to. “I’m glad it all worked out. But I don’t see what that has to do with me and my shop.”
A flicker of a shadow crossed Alyssa’s face and then disappeared, giving Katelyn the impression the queen still held something back. “We know they were looking for a Seer, but we weren’t sure what they were going to do once they found one. Luckily, Grayson happened to be there and was able to keep them from taking you.”
“Is that why Grayson was hanging around my shop?”
“Yes.” The queen leaned forward, resting her forearms on the table. “The Cunts are extremely dangerous. They view humans as cattle, purely existing to feed them sexual energy.” Alyssa’s suddenly intense gaze rooted Katelyn to her chair. “They are also a very sexual society, but they don’t have the same moral code as the Klatch. They think nothing of rape, necrophilia, bestiality, pedophilia, torture, and several other things the Klatch would never dream of doing.”
A shudder ran through Alyssa, and she closed her eyes as though trying to chase away dark memories. Finally, her eyes opened, and she glanced over at Katelyn again. “It might be best for you to stay here a while. In the meantime, we will continue to search for more information on what the Cunts are up to.”
Holy hell. What have I fallen into?
“Is Rita safe?” Katelyn blurted out the words. “Should I bring her here with me until whatever danger this is passes?”
Alyssa pursed her lips, considering. “We can, but do you think she’ll come?”
Katelyn studied her hands for a long moment. “No. For a woman who owns half a new-age shop, she doesn’t believe in anything supernatural or new-agey.”
The queen nodded. “As I said, we have Klatch guards watching over Rita and your shop. No one will harm her.”
Reluctantly, Katelyn agreed. Her first instinct was to tell them to thump Rita on the head and drag her cynical, skinny ass back here and out of danger. But how much did Katelyn really know about “here” yet? She didn’t sense any immediate threat, and her internal alarms were blissfully silent, but what if Tador wasn’t the right place for Rita right now? Katelyn knew better than most that everyone’s individual path had a purpose in the greater scheme of things.
Besides, Rita was one tough lady. She would be all right, especially with some hunky Klatch hanging around. Maybe Rita would even drop that loser boyfriend after seeing some hot Klatch guys.
One could only hope.
“So, now that we’ve gotten through that, what exactly do you have to do as queen? Is it all state dinners and paperwork?” Katelyn sat forward, excited to learn more. Her imaginary playmates as children had included a prince, but never a queen. She smiled as the warm memories trickled just below the surface of her thoughts.
Alyssa’s sudden bark of laughter surprised Katelyn.
“We are a very sexual society, remember? So my biggest duty as queen is to maintain a symbiotic relationship with the planet. And I’m glad because I think I would hate paperwork.”
“Symbiotic?” Katelyn sipped her tea as she puzzled over the word. “It sounds very…Sci Fi Channel.”
Alyssa cocked her head to the side. “Yes, I guess it does. But once you understand it, it makes a lot of sense. I get energy from the king through sexual interaction, and then I use that energy to heal myself and the planet.”
“Wow, talk about pressure. So what happens if you don’t create enough energy?”
The queen slumped back in her chair and sighed. “We are actually facing that problem right now.”
As a Seer, Katelyn wasn’t often shocked by the metaphysical, but other than sex magick, she’d never heard of using sex like a human battery to power a planet. She wondered what had caused a sudden shortage of energy if the entire society was as sexual as Alyssa had said.
Alyssa smiled as if she’d heard Katelyn’s thoughts. “Usually, as the future queen grows into a woman, she begins to take some of the burden for the health of the planet from her mother. Think of it as on-the-job training.”
Sudden understanding hit Katelyn. “And because
