by Roxie Ray
“No.” Nion rifled through my discarded shifts and pulled the fancier outfit out from beneath them. It was the same dark green color as his hair. He shook the wrinkles from the pants and top, then handed them to me. “Put these on.”
“They’re too revealing,” I insisted. I didn’t take the clothes from him. “For what should be obvious reasons, I don’t want to be dragged out of my room in a top that shoves my tits up at every warrior on the ship.”
“We are not going out into the ship.” Nion forced the outfit in my direction again. “You are going to get dressed, then you will eat. This is not negotiable. If you will not dress yourself, I will do it for you.”
I scowled at him. “You’re a bastard, you know that?”
Slowly, Nion grinned. “Yes. A baz-terd. Yes, I am. Now. Dress.”
I wanted to fight him on the matter, but he didn’t seem like the kind of guy who made idle threats.
Let him make good on it, then, the little voice in the back of my head called out with a tiny giggle. If he wants to undress you and put you in this new outfit, maybe he should.
I shoved the voice down and grabbed the outfit from him with a grumble of frustration. After the idiot I’d made of myself when I’d asked him if he’d wash me, I didn’t want to hear what he’d have to say about me if he had to dress me, too.
But as I stood to pull my shift up over my head, Nion didn’t move to leave.
“Um. Some privacy, Nion?” Seriously! I shouldn’t have had to ask.
“If I leave, you will just shut the door behind me and refuse to come out.”
I opened my mouth to argue with him…then closed it again.
Okay. Yeah, he was probably right about that.
“At least turn around, then,” I ordered him. “I don’t need you gawking at me while I change.”
Smirking, Nion held his hands up in surrender and turned toward the door.
But even with his back turned to me, his presence in the room was all consuming. Any moment, he could have wheeled back around and caught a glimpse of my naked body while I wrestled my shift up over my head.
So what? Afraid you’d like it too much? the voice in my head teased.
As I slipped into the dark green harem pants and the tight, short top Nion had given me, I wasn’t sure who I was more annoyed at: that little voice, or Nion himself.
“There,” I announced when I was finally dressed again. “Happy?”
Nion looked me up and down for a moment, then nodded. “Very.”
Then he took my arm in his massive hand and pulled me back into the living area of the suite all over again.
“Nion! Stop.” I tugged my arm away again—which didn’t work—and dug in my heels—which just meant he was literally dragging me across the room instead of forcing me to stumble along behind him. “You have to stop ordering me around. I’m not a dog, and I’m not okay with you pulling me around like you’ve got me on a leash.”
When he turned to face me this time, the purple of his eyes was slightly red.
Anger. I’d pissed him off.
“A leash, is it? Yes—perhaps a leash is what you need, vringna,” he snapped at me. “Shut in your room for a week dressed only in sleeping shifts. Failing to feed yourself. Wasting away alone while your days slip through your fingers like so much sand. You cannot even care for yourself right now. And you expect me to do—what? Simply allow it?”
“I’m still showering,” I mumbled. “I’m taking care of myself as best I can.”
“Oh, so she is showering—and she thinks that means she is well.” Nion raised his eyes up toward the ceiling like he was praying to some god in the stars for patience and guidance. “If you will not care for yourself, Alyse, then I must do it for you. Now. Sit.”
He pointed at the table in the tiny kitchen area of the suite. There were two chairs placed at it.
I slunk over to one and slipped into it, feeling like a child. No—less than a child. I’d never been reprimanded like that when I was a girl. After my parents were murdered, I’d more or less had to raise myself.
“There. I’m sitting. Happy?” I asked him.
“Not yet.”
Nion turned to the machine on the wall of the kitchen, the one he’d called a food articulator. He spoke to it plainly and clearly, though I didn’t recognize most of the words he said. They were in the snarling language I’d heard him speak to Healer Adskow and Coplan in before they’d stuck me with my translator chip. When he was finished, the articulator rumbled to life and began producing plates of food. Nion took each plate from the articulator as it spat them out. By the time he had moved them all to the table, it was completely covered with strange-looking food.
“Eat,” Nion ordered me. He crossed his arms over his chest and loomed over the table. His eyes didn’t stray.
“Fine,” I told him. “But not if you’re going to stand over me like a prison warden.”
“If you feel you are in prison, Alyse, then it is one of your own making,” he shot back at me. But he sat in the chair across from me just the same. “We will eat together, then, if it will make you more comfortable. If you have forgotten how, allow me to demonstrate for you.”
Nion plucked a small, rough-looking ball of food from one of the plates and held it up for me to see. It was golden-brown all over, with green bits beneath that looked kind of like spinach or kale.
“Fry-baaht,” he said, then popped it into his mouth. The fry-baaht crunched pleasantly as he chewed it. When he was finished, he lifted another up and offered it to me. “Eat.”
I gave it a wary look. “Are you sure I can even eat this? We have no way of knowing whether Lunarian food is good for humans or not.”
Nion’s stern look shifted into a soft smile. “We do, actually. Already, two human females like yourself have taken up life on Lunaria. Bria and Sawyer. They are married to the generals of this ship, Kloran and Haelian. The fry-baaht is one of Bria’s favorites. I imagine you will like it too.”
I blinked. Other humans…married to Lunarian men? I hadn’t even realized that was possible—but I supposed it made sense. If they’d been rescued by the Lunarians like I had, I could understand how easily they could have come to love the men who had saved them.
Maybe you could shack up with a Lunarian man too, the little voice in my head suggested. Nion’s looking pretty handsome today, after all…
Nion leaned forward and pressed the ball of food against my lips.
“Eat,” he urged me again—a little more gently this time. “You will feel better with food in you, Alyse. It will help you regain your strength.”
I parted my lips and Nion pressed the fry-baaht between them. When I chewed, a delicious blend of spices exploded into my tongue through the ball’s crispy exterior.
It was good. The best thing I’d eaten since…since I didn’t know when. The food I’d been given on the Rutharian ship had tasted healthy, but it didn’t seem like it had been cooked to enjoy. This, though…
“That’s incredible,” I said softly. Tentatively, I reached for another.
Nion smiled as I ate another—then another. Before long, we were both sampling from the plates he’d put out for me. The more I ate, the more ravenous I felt.
It was…kind of nice, actually. I hadn’t been hungry in so long, it felt good to actually enjoy eating again.
“So…Bria and Sawyer.” I brought up their names casually. I didn’t want Nion to think I was overeager…but I was dying to know more about these women who were married to Lunarians now. “Did they choose to marry their husbands? Or was it, ah…more of an arranged thing?”
Were they forced to marry Lunarians? was what I really wanted to ask. Arranged marriages happened within the gold-classes back on Earth often enough. Sometimes, wealthy men would even arrange similar things with the families of pretty gray-class girls. Anything to secure an attractive, obedient wife. I’d been lucky—I hadn’t had any family to tell me what to do.
Which meant I didn
’t have a family to go back to, either.
Maybe, if I was allowed to choose willingly…
Maybe making a life for myself on Lunaria wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world.
“Among the nobles on Lunaria, arranged marriages aren’t uncommon,” Nion said casually between bites. “Our species is not known for high birthrates, especially of females. There are so few Lunarian females on our planet right now, there is, I suppose you could say, a population crisis on the horizon. Men of our high houses are generally able to barter their way into finding wives and mates. But for the human females who choose to stay with us…no. No one would dare force a human into a marriage she did not wish for. We take such things very seriously. Bria and Sawyer chose to marry Kloran and Haelian.” Nion smirked. “And they seem happy with their choices as well, for what it is worth. Bria has one cub already, a darling little thing. Kaliope.”
“You mean…humans and Lunarians can…”
“Successfully breed?” Nion nodded. “Yes. As far as we know, humans are the only species in all the galaxies that can successfully breed with Lunarians—and, we believe, Rutharians as well. It is how we discovered that human females were being kidnapped from Earth in the first place. You are, as you can imagine, a desirable species for mating.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, my heart plunged into my stomach.
I didn’t think I was hungry anymore.
Nion’s brow knitted in concern. He must have seen the change in my mood written all over my face.
“I am sorry if I spoke poorly, Alyse.” He reached across the table and gently placed his hand over mine. “You are thinking of your time on the Rutharian ship?”
“I’m thinking that it makes more sense now, why you were all so insistent on me taking that pregnancy test.” It was something I’d been avoiding thinking about at all, actually. Being pregnant with a half-Rutharian baby wasn’t exactly a reality I felt ready to face yet. “You’re worried that if I’m pregnant with one of their awful little spawn, I wouldn’t be free to get knocked up by a Lunarian man instead.”
“No,” Nion said sternly. “We are concerned that you may be pregnant, yes. But only for your own safety. For the political ramifications such a pregnancy may carry as well.” He lowered his eyes to the table between us. “You are aware that the man who was holding you captive—the man I killed—was the Rutharian king. Yes?”
“He mentioned it.” I was staring at the table now too. Neither of us seemed eager to meet the eyes of the other.
“Then you understand that if you are pregnant—if—” he emphasized, “Then you may be carrying the heir to the Rutharian throne.”
When he put it like that, it didn’t just kill my appetite. It made me want to run to the bathroom and throw all the food I’d just eaten right back up into the toilet.
“I don’t want to be pregnant, Nion. Not like this. Not by him.”
“I do not wish that for you either, Alyse.” He squeezed my hand gently. “But that, I think, is a problem we will deal with later. If you are, then you will have options. More importantly, I simply want you to know that you are not alone. You have been so strong on your own so far, but here, with me—”
“I’m not strong,” I said abruptly. “You saw how I was when you came in. How I am. I know…I know I’m not handling any of this well.”
“You are stronger than you know, Alyse.” I felt Nion’s gaze shift up to look at me again. “The other females we rescued from the ship you were on…I will not try to scare you with the specifics, but they are adjusting far worse than you are. We have had…issues with other females we have rescued from the Rutharians before. Your spirit, though—it has not been broken. You are struggling, but yes, you are strong. Though, if you wish… the other females have been placed into stasis until we can take them to Lunaria for psychological treatment. If you wish, we can do the same for you.”
Immediately, I shook my head. “I don’t want that. That’s just tabling the problem, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps,” Nion admitted. “But if you wish to return home, as we suspect many of the others will, we could erase your memory and find passage for you back to Earth. Would that please you? If you are pregnant, it could be terminated. All that you have been through could be forgotten, if you desire.”
My jaw dropped a little. To forget everything that had happened to me…it wasn’t the worst thing in the world. But already, even through my depression, I was starting to feel like my struggle had become a part of me. It was difficult to deal with, but…
But I didn’t feel like the person I’d been before my abduction anymore.
Would it really be worth forgetting, if I just went back to the person I’d been before?
“It’s a nice idea, Nion, but I don’t think I want anything or anyone else screwing around with my head right now. And, to be honest…” I thought back to my little apartment in the gray-class area where I’d lived and worked. My annoying gold-class friends. All the frustrations I’d faced trying to deal with a hospital that had so little funding—with patients who often hadn’t wanted to be helped or weren’t able to be. And then, there was that old, looming darkness that had hung over me every night after my parents had been murdered. Var-arak was dead, true, but what would stop the other Rutharians from returning to Earth to capture me all over again? “I don’t think I want to go back.”
“No one will force you,” Nion reassured me. His eyes were shifting to a brighter color of purple, but his face and voice were still stern as ever. “It is your choice to make.”
“Then…” I took a deep breath. “I think I’d like to stay with you. If I can. At least here, there are people who understand the danger the Rutharians pose. Warriors who can protect me—warriors like you.”
“Good.” Nion gave me a small nod and a gentle smile. His eyes were almost sparkling now, the color of an amethyst cut to perfectly refract the light. “I think that is good, Alyse. But if you stay here, you must take care of yourself. Be kind to yourself. Heal. Do you think you can do that?”
“Probably,” I admitted. I was touched by how well he was taking care of me. He was right—I hadn’t been taking care of myself, not really. Apparently, all I’d needed was an annoying push in the right direction. “But I don’t know how well I’ll be able to do that if all I have to do with my days is shower and eat and sleep. Is there anything I could do to help out aboard the ship, maybe? I was a doctor on Earth, remember. A…um, a healer.”
“Then perhaps you could work in the medical bay,” Nion suggested. A sly smile crept onto his lips. “If you can stomach working closely with Coplan, that is. I fear the poor healer may be terrified of you, now that he knows you bite.”
I didn’t mean to, but I laughed.
“If Coplan and Healer Adskow will have me, I think I’d like that. A lot, actually.” Even as my laugh faded out, my smile remained. “I promise I won’t bite anyone again, for what it’s worth.”
Nion chuckled. “Do not promise that quite yet, Alyse. When you see how stubborn Lunarian warriors can be when it comes to receiving medical care, you may come to rethink your stance on it.”
10
Nion
The next day, I returned Alyse to the medical bay—this time, not as a patient, but as a healer. She brightened when Healer Adskow presented her with the white trousers, shirt and lab coat that the ship’s healers wore.
“I’d like to see you all try to gawk at me when I’m wearing these,” she chirped as she rolled up the cuffs of the pants. She was all but drowning in her new outfit, which had been sized for a Lunarian male—not for a tiny Earthen female. Not even close.
I hated to break it to her, but despite her oversized clothes, she did not look any less beautiful. Sexy…I chuckled as she struggled to tie her hair back and tried on a massive pair of protective goggles. No. Perhaps not exactly sexy.
But…cute. She was certainly cute. It gave me joy to see her in such good spirits. When I left her with Adskow so I could report
for my regular debriefing with Kloran and Haelian, there was a broad smile on her face and laughter streaming from her perfect lips.
Good. Those were both things that I hoped with all my heart would stay.
In the command room, however, my fearless leaders were unfortunately not in such good spirits.
“How are our warriors holding up, Nion?” Haelian asked as I came in. I saluted him, but he waved the formality away.
“They are…” I paused, never sure what my higher-ups wanted to hear. We had been in space for more than a week now since our encounter with the Rutharian king’s ship with no new orders and no word on when we would be returning home. Though I had kept myself as busy as possible, my thoughts and worries about Alyse had helped the time go by during this lull—but the same was not true for all the other warriors aboard the Avant Lupinia. “Do you want the truth, or a pretty lie, General?”
“The truth, Nion,” Kloran grumbled. He was seated at the head of the war table, with a wall of monitors and controls at his back. “Always the truth. At least, when it comes to Haelian and me.”
“The truth then, Generals, is…” I cleared my throat and straightened. If they wanted it, then they would get it. “The warriors are bored. They want to know when they will be allowed to fight again. Some wish to return to Lunaria if this leg of our mission is done. And…” I sighed. “They are unhappy that the human females have been placed into stasis for the remainder of the journey. Many were expecting that they would be privy to…interactions with the rescued females between missions, but as none of the humans have been visiting the canteen or roaming the ship…”
“Horny baz-terds.” Kloran pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. “You would think, as warriors, they would have more to focus on than their own chances at mating.”
“What about the remaining female? Alyse, she calls herself?” Haelian asked. “You have had contact with her, have you not, Nion? Perhaps she would be willing to visit the men. Improve their spirits.”