Page 79 of I Punched an Alien and Now We’re in Couples Therapy

A rustle, then another voice cut in—quieter and more hesitant.

“Um. I-I might be able to help.”

Dory turned toward the source. “Whatchu got for us, Misty?”

A hand reached out, and Dory deposited the feather into it. The screen turned to show the woman I had seen defending that Sankado tied to the basketball hoop. With her small, hunched posture, and the terrified stutter in her voice, she was the last person I’d expect to come through in a clutch, but I was hardly in a position to nitpick if she was going to save my life.

Her too-big glasses slipped down her nose, and she pushed them back up before her hand fiddled with a loose piece of hair hanging down past her chin. “Back at the enclosure, I was able to hook my phone up to their system to play music. Nearly fried it before I realized their whole architecture was growth based. Not binary, but just these cascading prime clusters. Took me a whole day to recognize the pattern: Fourier sequences controlling their audio frequency modulation. Once I could predict how they mapped numbers to sound waves—”

Dory cut her off. “Misty, we love you and your big brain, but get to the point.”

“Right!” Misty snapped upright. “Whatever you do, just don’t hang up. If I could just—”

I turned a corner and ran face-first into a wall and fell back on my ass. Blood froze in my veins when I looked up to see the T. rex’s side. I scrambled backward as she turned her massive head toward me, the chain around her neck clanking as it hooked against a statue of a woman holding a chalice. The T. rex let out a choked sound when the line grew taught. She jerked her head, ripping the statue’s arm clean off as it broke against the chain.

Oh fuck.

“Misty, whatever you gotta do, girl, please do it now.”

“J-just another m-minute.”

The T. rex loomed over me, its massive chest rising with each breath. Nostrils flared, and she took in my scent. Her chain dragged against the ground as she lowered her head. “Well, well, aren’t you a tasty-looking morsel?”

For a moment I couldn’t breathe. “You can talk?”

“Yes,” the T. rex answered. Her voice was smooth and deep, yet undeniably feminine in nature. She tilted her head and continued. “It’s strange. Ever since you and that gray one appeared in the trap I was in the other day, my mind has been…different. Wider, so to speak. I could even understand the words of a few of my captors.”

“But how did…” I trailed off as the memory came back. When Osid tried to kiss me, I’d knocked him into the T. Rex. “Holy shit, the kiss!”

“How curious,” she purred. “I’ve never eaten a creature I could converse with.” She stepped forward, and I crab-walked back. “Tell me, morsel, how does it feel to stare death in the face?”

A chill crawled up my spine. “Misty?” I whispered.

“I still need t-time,” came her panicked reply.

The T. rex closed her eyes and breathed deep. “Ah, fear. Now that I don’t need conversation to understand.”

I shot to my feet and held up a hand. “Wait, you don’t want to eat me.”

“I don’t?” she asked, cocking her head. “Aren’t you the one who called to me?” She took another step closer, raising the pitch of her voice as she called out, “ ‘I’m over here.’ What was that other line you used again? Oh that’s right, ‘T. rex, get your begonia-colored ass over here and eat me.’ ” She chuckled as she drew closer and said, “Here I am.”

Me and my big mouth.

Through the screen, I could hear Misty choke out a gasp. With all the shouting and screaming going on behind her, I didn’t know if her fear was for my sake or the battle around her. I glanced at the screen to see her brows furrowed in concentration as she fiddled with her phone. Lines of code I had no hope of reading reflected on her glasses. I tried to move farther away, but my ankle rolled on a loose root, and I fell back.

The T. rex laughed. “Well, don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind now. I’ve never had a meal beg for my attention before, don’t spoil this moment for me.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little shortsighted?” I asked. “We should be helping each other.”

A look of amusement crossed her face. “Helping? Now why would you assume I would need help from you?”

I pointed to the chain around her neck. “Don’t think that just because you’re no longer bound to that table, you’re free. As soon as you’re done with me, they’re going to use that chain to drag you back into your cage.”

Pink lips curled, revealing rows of teeth the size of butcher knives. “And I suppose you’re the kind morsel who would free me from that fate?” she asked, her tone teasing.

Swallowing hard, I rose to my feet and squared my shoulders. My knees were shaking; sweat pooled into my palms. I rubbed them against the back of my dress, then crossed my arms, doing my best impression of a powerful woman that totally wasn’t about to piss herself. “Look, both of us are just captured prey of the same enemy. My”—Fuck, what do I call Osid? Friend, lover, recently redeemed mortal nemesis?—“companion and I can’t get out of here on our own, and neither can you. How about we work together to get out of here, and if you’re up for it, take some well-deserved revenge on the Biwban, then you can eat as many of them as you want.”

“Biwban? What is this Biwban?”