They continued together for some time in silence, as Jen came to terms with what was really being offered to her. It wasn’t a decision she should make without really thinking about it but she would be lying if she said it wasn’t tempting.
If she became one of those dragon things, she could always fly away from here.
“With all your technology... all your wisdom, why do you hire those awful creatures to do your dirty work?”
“You mean Torfan and his crew? We did not exactly hire them to go out and get us women, no. But if they come across them, they know what pleases us. They like to stay on our good side,” he replied curtly. It was obvious his mood was still short.
“That still doesn’t explain why you don’t just... fly away from here and get them yourself. Are your people really that lazy?”
Lazy, no. Stuck in their old ways, more likely. It was something Dominic had been trying to convince his father to do, to go out and see the galaxy for what it was instead of sitting here and watching it pass them by. There was so much of it to explore. Dominic had barely seen half of it.
“That’s a complicated story, one I can’t really explain at the moment.”
Without the ceremony of yesterday, Jen had the chance to appreciate the real sites of the city. The construction of the buildings, how all the flora seemed to be perfectly placed to make everything look as perfect as possible. And the smells that floated through the city were enticing too. If she wasn’t already full, she probably would have headed for them.
“Sorry. For offending you earlier.”
Dominic tried to not let his temper get the better of him. She was apologizing after all, which was more than anyone else had ever done for him.
He nodded. “You are forgiven,” he exhaled.
“Do you mind me asking how many other women have you had before?” Jen wasn’t sure why she was asking. Perhaps to keep the conversation going, or she was just sick of the silence.
Dominic rubbed at his chin a little, hiding the pain from her question. She didn’t need to know about his past heartbreaks.
“About four? You are the first to actually stay this long. They weren’t very interested in staying and left on the first ship provided to them. That was a long time ago and I am sure none of them are still alive today.”
Jen looked over her shoulder, back the way they had walked, at the house on the hill.
“So you’ve had that big house to yourself for a while? It must get lonely.”
“Oh, you have no idea. I mean, I have responsibilities that keep me busy throughout the day,” he tried to recover, but it was too late.
Jen, however, decided to pick at another topic to keep the conversation away from the sensitive topic.
“Responsibilities?”
“I am the prince of this city. What? You thought I lay around in bed all day, looking pretty?” He was silently appreciative for the change.
Jen snorted and managed to cover up the rest of it with her hand.
“You’re kidding. Princes live in castles and have crowns on their heads.”
Dominic then looked at her quite seriously, and it slowly dawned on her that this wasn’t a joke.
“Wait! You are an actual prince? Like royal blood, the whole thing?”
Dominic’s gaze narrowed even further. He wasn’t kidding.
Jen froze in the middle of the sidewalk and turned beet red, her hands pressed to her face. There was nowhere to hide from her shame and she was sure she had just given him a lot of ammo to use against her for the rest of the day.
A peek between her fingers revealed the wide, mocking grin on his face, and she felt herself internally shrinking.
“Oh, kill me now.”
Chapter 9
After half a day of embarrassment and teasing, Jen managed to convince Dominic to wait a little longer for her answer. He accepted, of course, without question and it made her wonder whether he was playing some kind of game with her. To be sure, she inquired into how she could contact the other women so they could meet somewhere for a talk.
Dominic showed her how to use the comms device of his home and wrote down the right signals to dial. He figured she had no reason to conspire against him. If she wanted to hatch a plan with her friends to leave, that was fine with him. It wasn’t like she could do anything else to hurt him, physically or emotionally.
It wasn’t long before Julie and Beverly agreed to meet her somewhere in the city. Place names were still new to all of them but they managed to describe it well enough that it would be hard to miss.
It was mid-afternoon by the time they got together, mostly from how far apart they were from each other and trying to find the place they were all talking about. Jen was pleased to see they were well and looking quite happy.
“It’s felt like forever since we’ve seen each other,” Beverly exclaimed. Her greying hair had been styled in such a way that flattered her face and gone was the streaked blue eyeshadow. She looked like she’d spent a million dollars on a spa treatment and had been eager to show off the results.
Julie was done up pretty well too and practically beaming. A surprise, given her earlier worries about the arrangement that had been made.
“I know!” she exclaimed, propping her chin up in her hands. “But I’ve been so busy, I kind of lost track of time. Plus I thought we were all going to be so much closer together, distance-wise.”
“This city is pretty sprawling, isn’t it?”
“Is it? I haven’t really been outside.”
“Why? Busy roughing it around with that man of yours?” Beverly gave her a wink while she sipped on her drink. Jen felt her face turn hot at the insinuation and a touch of annoyance that someone would think she’s so easy.
“No. I have not. He’s giving me space to think about everything.”
“You can think and screw him at the same time, you know. At least get something good out of it.”
Jen huffed and crossed her arms over her chest. Did they really have to talk about this kind of thing in public?
Beverly and Julie both snickered quietly behind their hands. Jen wasn’t sure what they found so amusing. Beverly eventually nudged her gently on the shoulder to show that she was joking.
“They’ve done... they’re capable of so much more than you’ve ever thought possible with a human man, believe me. I haven’t felt like this in... ever.” Even she turned a little pink in the cheeks as she fanned herself.
“Julie? They’re okay with you...?” Jen hand-flourished; she wasn’t sure how much Beverly knew and didn’t want to reveal anything if Julie wanted to keep it a secret.
“They understand. They’re not going to force me into anything I’m not interested in. But that doesn’t mean...” She averted her gaze. The blush on her cheeks was unmistakable. “I’m not what they expected, but at least I’ll be happy here. His sister is quite fond of me.”
They sounded like a pair of teenagers fawning over some boys they’d just met. It annoyed Jen they decided so readily, just because these people were attractive and apparently capable of sexual feats that had their heads turning.
“So... you’re all happy with this?” Jen interrupted, sounding more annoyed than she’d intended. As nice as it was to see them happy, it was strange they would move on so quickly from everything that had happened. “Staying here, getting married, becoming those things?”
“What’s so wrong about living for a thousand years?” Beverly tossed some hair over her shoulder. “If we’d stayed back on Earth, I’d be dead in another twenty. But now, I am imagining all the things I could see living for that long. Technology, the galaxy growing and changing. And the possibility of having children of my own, well...”
Her voice quivered at the notion. She failed to hide it in time behind a gulp of water, unable to contain her emotions. Jen couldn’t judge her for that. It wouldn’t be fair to remind her that 50,000 people had died for her single dream.
“I guess that’s it then,” she mumble
d quietly to herself before thanking them for their time. They reached for her, wanting her to stay and enjoy more conversation, but she had the feeling it would just be more of them fawning over their chosen lovers. It wasn’t interesting conversation she wanted to listen to.
She ventured around the promenade, looking in through shop windows and gazing at what they had to offer. Many of them she didn’t understand nor knew what their purpose was. Which was fine; she was really only walking around to clear her head of the conversation she’d just had. She thought it would have been more helpful, but all it did was make her question everything.
“Ah, hello! You’re one of the new women around, aren’t you?”
The voice and touch to the shoulder spun her around, forcing her face-to-face with another woman elaborately-dressed.
“Uh, yes...?”
“I was in the crowd when you stepped off that ship. What an honor it must have been to be chosen by Dominic.”
An honor? Maybe. Now that she knew he was a prince. But she’d felt more like a slab of meat being paraded down a conveyor belt, surrounded by hungry lions.
“I guess so. I don’t even really know if I’m going to go through with it,” she blurted out. She probably shouldn’t be having this conversation with a complete stranger.
“Oh.” The woman pressed a hand to her mouth. “That’s...”
“I know. He’s had many others before me. It’s not that he’s a bad guy, he’s really quite nice.”
“He really needs someone to settle down with, before the king passes on,” the woman interjected, taking Jen’s hands into her own. “The city needs to know that he’ll be able to pass on an heir.”
The king. She hadn’t considered that there were other reasons Dominic needed a wife so badly, that there was more at stake than simply wanting a woman at his side. His fate likely rested in her answer, whenever she decided to make a decision.
“And he looks quite smitten with you. He’s never looked that way with any of the others.”
“Uh.” Jen slipped her hands out of the woman’s grasp and stepped away. “Thank you, I wasn’t aware. Thanks.” She bid the woman a lovely day before turning tail and heading in the opposite direction.
To go or stay. To leave would mean her own freedom, to live and die as she chose. Though in a galaxy like this, it would likely happen sooner than later. And it would be at the cost of Dominic having to conduct another search for a wife. To stay would mean...
Beverly and Julie’s faces filled her thoughts and their words of how happy they were. She could be like that too, maybe, but something told her this was just the honeymoon phase for them.
Could they really be content staying here and being transformed into one of them. She still couldn’t conceive of the notion they could become dragons. She still didn’t even know what one looked like.
She would have to ask him about that later.
These thoughts continued to cycle through Jen’s mind as she made her way back to the house. Or at least, in its general direction. Every time she would see the steps leading up to it, she’d turn in another direction to make another loop, to give herself more time to think things over.
She knew when she made it back that Dominic’s presence would make it difficult to think it all through, that despite his honesty and adhering to whatever choice she made, he never made it easy with those looks of his.
He was a striking man, like he’d emerged fresh from the pages of a fashion magazine. Angular cheekbones that could cut butter and thin pink lips that tilted more to the right when he smiled. Those blue eyes of his. His words expressed fond eagerness, yet his eyes remained sad. She could understand why, being in that house all by himself, being rejected so many times. How many more women would he have to meet in the future if she refused him as well?
She shook her head; she didn’t want to make the decision out of pity. She needed to choose what was best for herself and no one else, no matter whose feelings she hurt in the process.
At this point, her legs were aching and she had no choice but to go back “home.” Up the steps she went, and it was when she got to the front door that she cast a glance over her shoulder. Being gone all day, she’d thought he would have sent someone to check on her, to keep an eye on her and report back as to what she’d been doing and saying. But nothing.
There had been no sixth sense prickling at the back of her neck, no reason to look behind her every so often to see if she was being followed. She felt safe. Free.
She sighed as she stepped inside and called out to him. When she heard no response, she called out again. Nothing.
“Hm, maybe he’s out doing what a prince does, I guess.” She ventured into one of the adjoining rooms from the entry hallway, one she remembered was a living room of sorts with plenty of couches and cushions on the floor. The walls were still something to behold, decorated in abstract pieces of art she couldn’t understand. A glass coffee table with something blue and sparkly floated in the middle of it. Maybe this could keep her interest until he returned.
She gathered up a healthy pile of cushions and lay her weary body down in the middle of it. It was a relief to her back and feet, and she uttered such a sigh that completely deflated her.
Though there was no substance to the floating object, it changed once her fingers met one of the motes of light. It vibrated, shifted a little so that it was somewhat different than before.
She tried both hands a second time and smiled when she discovered she could change its shape. She stretched it out, shrank it, pulled at the glowing dots to create an oblong thing that continued to rotate in the same direction at the same space.
An unintentional gesture from her changed its hue from blue to yellow, and a flick of her wrist sent it spinning in a different direction. What purpose this little thing served, she didn’t care. It was more than interesting to play with.
An hour or two later, she managed to manipulate the hologram enough to form the shape of a crude flower. She’d never been the best at drawing, but seeing her handiwork floating in the air, cycling through the different colors of the rainbow, was definitely something to marvel at.
A closing of the front door reminded her she shared this place with another, and she sprang to her feet to show off her pride and joy.
“Dominic, come look! This thing is marvelous! You have to show me how–”
The person standing in the doorway wasn’t Dominic.
Chapter 10
A tall, thin man covered in several layers of cloaks stared down his nose at her. His eyes were quite large but mostly hidden beneath thick bushy eyebrows that were as grey as the hair on top of his head. It was thin and tied up in a topknot, not unlike the ancient warriors from Japan she read about a long time ago.
Deep ocean-blue eyes regarded her up and down before he stepped further inside. His hands were hidden, folded within the sleeves of his many cloaks as he looked around the place.
“Is my son here?”
Struck with the realization that this was Dominic’s father, Jen lowered herself into a deep bow. She wasn’t sure of the customs around here – since no one had told her what to do around royalty – but she figured it was best to be polite than to do nothing and earn his ire.
“He’s not here. I’m sorry to say, I have no idea where he is.”
She became even more nervous when she realized she didn’t know how to address him. Dominic had never told her of his name or what the specific formalities were. That probably would have come up at some point if she decided to stay.
A low grunt echoed from him. She couldn’t be sure if it was a sound of disapproval or mere recognition he heard what she said.
“I take it you’re one of his new exploits. I don’t know why that boy has such a hard time finding a woman.” He walked past her, venturing into the hall to search for him. As if he had no reason to believe what she said.
She found that puzzling too. It wasn’t as if he was unattractive.
“H
e should just make them stay instead of giving them a choice. It would be much easier that way,” his voice echoed from upstairs.
Oh.
“Has it not always been that way?” Maybe if she got a little more out of him, then she could come to understand why Dominic was the way he was. And what this society was really like.
The silence continued for a time and she was unsure whether he heard her or not. Once he came back into view, she was just about to repeat her question when he gave her a dismissive wave.
“Things were simpler back then. Our people took what we wanted and the women grew to like it here. Just as you should, for his sake and the sake of his bloodline.”
Jen did her best to hide her displeasure. It was easy to judge them based on her human standards and would make her closed-minded to not consider why they chose to run their society and culture that way. Desperate times, she figured. But that still didn’t make it fair they had to resort to taking human women for the task. They probably had hopes and dreams of their own before they had been snatched from their lives.
“They did. And then they changed. Life happens.” His shoulder brushed against hers as he made his way into a different part of the home.
“Adapt or die. That’s the way of things around here.”
Jen was stunned by his answer, even more so by the fact that he continued to search the rest of the house. If Dominic had been here, he would have come out a long time ago to spare her from his words, she was sure.
He soon returned to the front hallway with a huff and slipped past her into the living room, toward her little art project. A touch to the hologram destroyed the flower she’d made, reshaping itself into a more detailed, constructed model. It was hard to make out what it was with all the squiggles and shapes she wasn’t familiar with.
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