by Ava York
“There’s truly no way off here? I can’t get back to Earth?” she asked with a tremble in her voice.
“Not yet. My crew and I have been assigned a mission that requires we leave as soon as possible.” Her eyes fell. “If, after we’ve completed it, you want to return to Earth, I’ll figure something out for you,” I added reluctantly.
Her eyes narrowed. “I’m sure I can figure something out by myself, if you could just point me to the right person to talk to.”
For a moment, I thought about unleashing her on High Command. They wouldn’t know what had hit them.
Then sanity wrested control.
“You’ve had quite the journey.” I pulled down the bunk and straightened the blankets. “I suggest you make yourself as comfortable as you can and maybe you’ll feel better about all this tomorrow morning.”
Her chin jutted out. “I doubt it.”
So did I.
“I have some work to take care of and will check in on you later. Please try to stay out of trouble,” I told her before turning and vacating the room.
Once outside, I used my hand print to lock the door to the bedroom, sealing her in. If I thought she’d been successfully chastised, I was wrong.
Through the door, I heard her screaming at me to let her out at once, that it was against her rights to lock her away like a princess in a tower.
It was going to be another long night.
Lila
My introduction to my alien “mate” hadn’t gone well.
To put it mildly.
I was exhausted from fighting the process every step of the way, but I couldn’t seem to stop.
Stopping would mean accepting this.
And I couldn’t.
I sagged against the bunk, every muscle sore from the teleport, and tried to think of a plan.
Even though I didn’t want to be locked up, I found myself appreciating the quiet.
Since the long ride to the testing facility, I hadn’t had a moment to think.
It was uncannily silent so far out in space, and I was grateful to have a moment to breathe and process what I’d been through.
Not that I wanted to dwell on it for long.
The last thing I wanted in my life was to be a prisoner. I grew up with so much freedom on the farm and adjusting to my new situation was proving to be extremely difficult.
Hopefully I wouldn’t be out here for long.
Hopefully this Mahdfel warrior, Rekker, and I could work together to get ourselves out of the mess we were in.
Hell, he didn’t want to be mated either . . . which kind of stung, just a bit.
Not that I wanted him!
Even if he was kinda hot. And his eyes were kind.
But I wasn’t about to become some random alien’s mate, just because of a genetic test.
Especially one who didn’t want me.
Clutching a pillow to my chest, I muffled my sniffles in the sheets.
Apparently not well enough.
“Woman?” Rekker’s gruff voice came through the door. “Lila?” He said my name carefully, as if it were important to him. “Are you injured?”
“No,” I called back. “Just tired. And scared. And I want to go home.”
His sigh was clear, even through the door. “I know. But I can’t do anything about that right now.” A long pause followed. “Would you like dinner? I’ve been researching which of our foods will be safe for you.”
That was surprisingly sweet.
Except my stomach chose just then to flip.
“I don’t think I should,” I admitted. “But thank you.”
“Ah.” I could almost see him nod, curved horns gleaming. “The teleport does occasionally upset the stomach. Perhaps in the morning you’ll feel better.”
“Maybe.”
If I ever felt better about anything again.
I pinched myself. Stop it, Lila, I kicked myself.
Moping wasn’t going to fix anything.
So I’d tried to escape before at the testing facility, and it hadn’t worked. So what?
I was still in my own solar system, but if I didn’t figure something out soon, I wouldn’t be.
“Where are we going tomorrow?” I called, but there was no answer.
A moment of panic swept me. “Rekker?” I didn’t want him. I certainly wasn’t going to mate with him. But he was the only person I knew here, even vaguely.
“I’m here,” he soothed. “I was just trying to figure out if you would be familiar with the star system. It’s not particularly well explored, even by the Mahdfel.”
Oh. Of course not.
“Probably not.” I flopped onto my side on the bunk. “I was just curious.”
He laughed, long and low and deep. A nice laugh. “I’m curious as well, to tell you the truth. We don’t know much about the mission yet.”
“Is that normal?”
“Not exactly.” Another long pause, but this time I could tell he was there, sense him behind the door, weighing his words.
While I waited, I peered out the tiny viewport. The sun was so far away there was barely any light, but it only made the stars burn that much brighter. Thoughts of my family back home invaded my mind as I looked out at the twinkling wonder of the universe.
I didn’t even know how long I’d been away from them and I missed them so badly my chest physically ached.
As a farmer and someone who’d spent her entire life on one planet, I wasn’t even sure how long in duration it took me to travel from Earth to Pluto.
In school, I’d learned it was roughly seven billion miles away, but how long it would actually take to reach here, I wasn’t certain.
“So tell me, Lila, what would you normally be doing, if you weren’t here?”
I pulled myself up to lean against the wall, closed my eyes until I could almost see the barn, my little patients. “Probably feeding the lambs.”
“The what?” He sounded confused.
“Lambs, they’re little baby mammals.” Well, that was technically accurate. I’d never had to describe livestock to an alien before. “One of our ewes had triplets.”
“That—” he paused, “does not sound comfortable.”
I laughed. “It wasn’t, not for her, nor for me, since I was the one out there with her at three in the morning trying to help.” I rubbed my forehead, just thinking about it. “But they all made it.”
“So why are you feeding her young instead of the mother?”
“There’s no way she’d have enough milk,” I explained. “Besides, little baby lambs are cute and snuggly. It makes up for the less cute and snuggly parts of the job, like mucking out stalls.”
Another pause.
“I’m not entirely certain that the translator has picked up all of the words it should have,” Rekker grumbled.
I laughed. “Never mind. Anyway.” My heart sank again. “My sisters will have to take care of all of that now.”
“Sisters.” Rekker sounded incredulous. “More than one? How many sisters do you have?”
“There are six of us,” I said dryly. “Plenty to be helping out with the chores.”
“So many,” he said in wondering tone. “Surely your family is blessed.”
I hadn’t thought of it that way.
I’d always thought of our overabundance of females as a risk.
A threat hanging over the heads of our family.
“We—” Rekker paused. “You know that if we continue with the match, we will not have daughters. My kind cannot.” He said it flatly, as if wanting to rush the words out without tasting them.
Oh.
I knew that. Of course I did.
The Suhlik had done something to the Mahdfel, made it where they could never have female children.
It was the reason they had to keep looking for mates on other planets, the reason for the lottery.
Suddenly the lottery didn’t seem quite so cold and oppressive.
It was desperate. The only means of
survival of an entire species.
“Good thing I didn’t have my heart set on a little girl,” I teased, trying to break the awkwardness of the moment.
But I could imagine her and wondered. Would she have my hair and his horns?
Nonsense.
“It really is for the best,” he answered. “She’d have a crew of uncles ready to spoil her and we would never get her to do any chores.”
I laughed and for the first time began to think about it.
A crew of uncles. It would be like a family. Maybe.
“But speaking of chores, I need to get back to the ship, check on repairs.” Rustling came from behind the door. Had he been sitting on the floor, waiting for me to come out? Willing to talk about home and family until I calmed down?
“Will you be all right?”
I nodded, then shook myself when I realized that of course he couldn’t see me. “I will.”
“Good.” Heavy footsteps moved away. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
I tried not to think myself into melancholy, but I missed my sisters desperately. The thought of never seeing them again caused tears to gather behind my eyes, but I forced them away.
There were other things to see here. And I’d find a way to tell my sisters, all of them, about the wonders of space. Just as soon as I got home.
Too tired to sit upright any longer, I melted further down onto the bed. The scent of my Mahdfel mate wafted up from the bedding, invading my nose.
It was crisp and clean and manly and stirred something deep within me despite myself, an emotion I couldn’t and didn’t want to place.
Not yet.
I remembered the same scent clinging to him as he’d hefted me over his broad shoulder just moments ago, so it must be inherently part of him.
The fact that it was so appealing disturbed me, but I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply anyway, allowing it to wash over me and calm my frazzled nerves. If we couldn’t get out of the contract, at least he wasn’t a stinking brute. The match could have been so much worse.
I wondered where he was and what he was doing. He hadn’t looked as put together upon my arrival as I’d thought he would.
He’d said he had to repair his ship, but I couldn’t help but wonder if he was thinking about me. He’d probably already forgotten I even existed.
I opened my eyes so I could return my gaze to the viewport, wanting to see the stars but not wanting to sleep just yet. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were some sort of cosmic forces at work, pulling the two of us together. Neither of us wanted the arrangement, but here we were.
There must be something to the whole thing if two beings who had no desire to be matched were apparently “perfect” for one another.
I felt like there was something he wasn’t telling me. When I’d noticed the tattoo on his shoulder was glowing, he’d also seemed genuinely surprised.
He said it was only because he was angry, but I wondered if it had something to do with my being there. When he came back, I would try to get more information out of him.
If he came back, that was.
Unable to fight it any longer, as I finally fell asleep, my thoughts drifted to him again.
Would it be so bad exploring the universe at his side if he truly was my mate? Could we grow to tolerate one another, maybe be companions, if nothing else?
I’d think of something. I had to.
There had to be a way for us both to be happy, I just needed to figure it out.
Tomorrow.
Rekker
Sure, I needed to check on the Calliope.
I was the captain. There were things to do. There were always far too many things to do, honestly.
But I needed space from Lila.
Her voice. Her scent.
Everything about her was winding into my awareness, becoming natural.
Except, we had a problem. She didn’t want to be here.
Didn’t want me.
And if I was her mate in any sense of the word, I needed to make that right.
First stop, the easy conversation.
“I could use some good news,” I shouted across the clatter and clang of the engine room as I walked in.
Kyre ignored me, wisely choosing to focus on the engine coil he was calibrating.
Impatiently, I waited for him to finish.
“We’ll be ready tomorrow morning,” he said, then tapped the side of the engine, eyes focused almost through the metal.
I knew I may as well wait. Whenever he got that look, he was busy building something in his brain, adjusting it, improving it.
It was a quirk, a useful one.
With a shake, he snapped out of it.
“Never mind, I’ll figure that out later.”
He refocused on me and grinned. “You must’ve put some fire under High Command to get those supplies in so quickly,” he joked as he reached for a new set of calipers.
“Not my doing, I’m afraid. Strygan wants us out there, and fast.” A grimace twisted my lips. “I’m sure sending the supplies is just his way of pushing us out the door.”
Kyre shrugged. “Whatever works.”
He turned back to his repairs and I left him to it. If he said we would be ready, we’d be ready.
Next step, the slightly more difficult conversation.
“Doc, we’re going to need Cedroc to be able to fly us out tomorrow.”
Javik didn’t bother looking up from whatever device he was hunched over.
He’d filled the med bay with all sorts of equipment for testing the samples we came across on our missions.
“I wouldn’t suggest long shifts, if you insist on carrying out that plan,” he snapped.
“I’m not the one insisting,” I argued. “That’d be High Command.”
“It makes no difference.”
Javik straightened up to his full height, back cracking and snapping. I wondered how long he’d been hunched over like that.
“Either way, your pilot will be competent.”
“That’s all I wanted to know.” I glanced around the cluttered med bay. “If there’s anything that needs to be strapped down before we decouple from the hub, you may want to get started.”
I headed out before his tattoos started to burn with annoyance.
And now time for the hardest one.
I punched Commander Strygan’s code into the comms. This time, it went through to full video. Not ideal, but I didn’t have many choices. Not right now.
“Sir, first, I want to thank you for the supplies.”
“Of course. I don’t have a habit of sending my men out to missions without the tools they need to get them done.”
So much for easing into this with flattery.
“We do have one complication,” I started.
“Did the Calliope take more damage than you had reported?” he snapped.
“No, sir,” I paused. “You might not have realized, but someone in Command seems to have made a bit of a mistake.”
“Really,” Strygan’s eyebrows rose. “What kind of mistake do you think you’ve detected, Captain?”
I swallowed hard.
A smart warrior would stop now.
But I thought of the heartbreak in Lila’s voice.
I couldn’t give up.
“I seem to have been entered into the matching pool,” I tried again. “And I appear to have a mate.”
“Congratulations!”
That wasn’t the answer I had been expecting.
“Actually, sir, I think perhaps it’s a mistake.” I rolled on, staring over his shoulder. “She doesn’t want to be mated, and right now, with us heading into a mission with so many unknown parameters . . .”
I trailed off as his glare burned through the ether.
“Having a mate will make you more careful, a better warrior. Caring for your mate, having children, is part of your duty to the Mahdfel line.” He nodded sharply. “Don’t ever forget it.”
Well.
His face softened for a moment. “Every man has a moment of wondering about this, a moment of doubt. You’ll get through it. Just think of it as another battle.” He grinned, and I almost wished he hadn’t.
“Or a siege.”
After trying to delay my return to my quarters for another hour, I eventually wandered back.
Once I’d arrived, I flopped down onto the couch in the main living area and threw an arm up over my eyes to block out the glare of the lights still burning brightly in the room.
It had been a long time since I’d felt so exhausted. It suddenly felt like all the battles and emotions of the past year caught up to me at that very moment and all I wanted to do was sleep, but my mind wouldn’t stop racing.
I wanted a solution to the problem that was Lila, but I couldn’t figure one out.
Just beyond the door to my room was a beautiful, angry human woman who was apparently my perfect match—my true mate.
I had never planned to rely on some test to tell me who I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with, but the fact that my tattoo lit up like a beacon when she entered the room had rattled me to the core.
I didn’t want this, but it seemed like fate had something else in mind for the two of us.
As I lay there on the not-so-comfortable couch, I couldn’t stop thinking about her.
From our conversation earlier, it was evident she didn’t want me, but after I’d had some time to think, I wasn’t sure I could say the same.
I’d have to be an idiot not to think she was beautiful. I’d met humans before in my journeys through the universe, but none quite like her.
I hadn’t been able to get the thought of her fiery locks and gorgeous green eyes out of my head, even when I was speaking with Command and trying to convince them to send her back to Earth.
A long sigh escaped me as I thought about how I’d lied to her about what the flare of my tattoo had meant. I couldn’t help but wonder if I’d done the right thing in keeping the truth from her. Maybe I should have explained its true meaning, but I don’t even know if she would have believed me anyway.
The darkness outside weighed heavily on me and even staring out at the stars wasn’t helping lift my mood or lull me to sleep like it usually did.