Enemy of the Alien Bride Lottery

by Margo Bond Collins

  On the other hand, being convicted of aiding and abetting a runaway bride came with a punishment—time in an Earther prison, if I recalled correctly.

  Prison time would ensure that she doesn’t form a true bond with someone else.

  I could use this to my advantage.

  Without giving myself too much time to think about it, I quickly added information to the alert, noting her fraudulent marriage.

  If anyone bothered to trace the source of the information, it could lead back to me. But I doubted anyone would look beyond the fact—especially since I had attached all the evidence I found that she and Samuel did not have anything resembling a true marriage.

  I wasn’t certain it would hold up in a human court. Due to some antiquated and frankly bizarre religious beliefs, humans tended to put a lot of emphasis on the idea of consummation.

  Khanavai didn’t care if their mates had sexual relations with others before they met. As long as the human female wasn’t truly mated, we were happy—and that meant for us, that no Khanavai male had joined with her using his mating cock, and that she was not married—truly married—according to human law.

  Satisfied with my day’s work, I keyed in the code to log out of the secret system.

  Deandra wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

  That gave me time to figure out how to convince Vos Klavoii to put us both in the Bride Lottery so I could choose Deandra as my mate.

  Over the next several Earth months, I kept a watch on the proceedings in Deandra’s case.

  Earth legal systems confused me, what with their variations among regions and endless motions and appeals. Khanavai justice tended to move much more swiftly—and was more likely to be lethal.

  Then again, we tended not to prosecute things that had been resolved.

  Under Khanavai law, the fact that Amelia Rivers had been apprehended and was now happily mated to Zont meant that everything had turned out favorably. With that kind of outcome, no one needed to be prosecuted at all. Which was, of course, why Amelia faced no repercussions from her actions.

  On Earth, however, the authorities apparently remained infuriated that the Bride Alliance between our two planets had been endangered. If they could have charged Amelia with a crime, I feel certain that would have. But since she had diplomatic immunity as the mate of a Khanavai warrior—the brand-new Khanavai Ambassador to Earth, no less—the Earther authorities had chosen to go after Deandra instead.

  Her prosecution was big news, too. The most popular vid stations played endless stories of her ongoing legal troubles. The day the news hit about her fraudulent marriage, vid drones caught an image of her walking into some official-looking building with her human attorney.

  My heart clenched when I saw that clip. Even mediated through technology, everything about her called to me, even though she appeared worn and haggard, anxiety drawing her skin tight across her beautiful features.

  I hated that I had done that to her.

  That afternoon, I put in a vid-call to Zont. He was back on Earth, setting up the new permanent Khanavai Embassy that he had been tapped to run.

  I jumped immediately into the issue at hand without bothering with pleasantries. “Is there anything we can do to help Deandra Casto?”

  Zont sighed and ran a hot-pink hand through his dark hair. “Amelia has been on me like a Lorishi sand-gnat to do something about, as well,” he admitted, his tone more than a little rueful. “But Dee endangered the Bride Alliance. The Earthers want to make an example out of her. The most I’ve been able to do is get the prosecutor to agree to request a reduced sentence if she is found guilty.” He twisted his lips in an almost helpless expression. “The news that she engaged in a fake marriage to avoid the Bride Lottery isn’t doing her case any good.”

  Acid regret bubbled up in my stomach. I hadn’t thought through the repercussions of reporting her fraud.

  I only wanted to keep her safe. For myself.

  I hadn’t thought about what that might mean for her.

  She’s alone and probably afraid. How unbelievably selfish of me.

  “Why do you ask?” Zont tilted his head to one side curiously. “Wait. You talked to her as we were boarding the shuttle, didn’t you?”

  “Only briefly. Just trying to figure out who she was.”

  “Did she say anything interesting?”

  “Not particularly. She told me she had helped Amelia as your mate was trying to save you.”

  “I’ll pass along that information to the prosecutor. It might make the human jury more sympathetic to her.”

  Zont’s plan backfired, however. Instead of using the information that Deandra had tried to help Amelia save Zont, the prosecutor called me to testify that Deandra had admitted to aiding Amelia in her flight from the Bride Lottery.

  It was all done via vid, so I couldn’t even watch Deandra’s face as I repeated her words to me.

  I saw it in the replays, however. The whole time I spoke, Deandra sat at the defendant’s table, glaring at my face on the screen in the courtroom, her beautiful body tight with anger. As I sat in my quarters on Station 21 replaying the vid loop over and over, I was certain I saw true hatred in her eyes.

  That was twice now that I had interfered in her case.

  It wasn’t turning out at all as I hoped.

  I was beginning to suspect that I had made convincing her to become my mate—assuming I could even find a way to get her up to Station 21 and entered into the Bride Games—much more difficult than I had thought it would be.

  Chapter Five

  Dee

  Three months in a federal penitentiary.

  That’s how long the jury gave me.

  Plus ten years’ probation.

  My attorney told me it was a good deal, that I should be glad it hadn’t been worse.

  And it almost had been. He had encouraged me to take a plea deal, to accept two years in the same prison. But I hadn’t been willing to do that.

  I suppose I was lucky. Many of Earth’s governments were howling for my blood. Having the Alveron Horde show up on our planet—not to mention the attack on Station 21 that had occurred almost immediately afterward—had been a visceral reminder of how much we needed the Khanavai.

  But I found support from some unexpected quarters, too.

  Apparently, there were plenty of humans who thought sending our women off to pay for our planet’s safety was a barbaric practice.

  And in the end, doing my time ended up not being all that hard. In order to protect me from anyone who thought I should die for endangering the Bride Alliance, I was given my own cell.

  I was practically a celebrity in prison among the women who despised the idea of the Bride Lottery. After all, it was entirely possible to get out of most legal trouble by agreeing to have your name dropped in the lottery multiple times.

  And that was the worst part of my sentence. To appease all those who thought I should face a harsher punishment, the judge had added one stipulation. My marriage to Samuel had been dissolved, annulled. And for every year we had stayed married, my name was to be added to the Bride Lottery ten times every year until I aged out of the Bride Lottery program.

  Ten years of faux marriage. That meant until I turned 35, I would be entered in the Bride Lottery a hundred times every year.

  But given the number of women on Earth, I figured it didn’t increase my chances all that much.

  Yeah, it could’ve been much worse.

  I was, however, worried about what I would do when I got out. I lost my job when I was arrested. My tiny house had been mortgaged to pay my legal fees. And of course, I hadn’t been able to pay my mortgage while I was in prison, so it was about to be foreclosed on.

  I had never been terribly sociable, more prone to spending my time reading and watching vids than going out making friends—the result of a childhood spent being homeschooled by a radical anti-government prepper. It had been perfect for the night-clerk at a small highway hotel.

  Not so g
reat now.

  I knew my father would take me back in if I asked. But it would scare the hell out of him. There were bound to be reporters, and I was sure I would end up being watched by government agencies.

  No, I wouldn’t bring this back to him.

  But here I was, about to be an ex-con with no job, no home, and no one to count on.

  And I would be getting out right before Christmas.

  Which beat the hell out of spending the holidays stuck inside a cell.

  I was almost relieved when the woman who would be my parole officer came to talk to me about finding a place for me in a halfway house.

  “Marjorie Kent,” she introduced herself, her no-nonsense tone and hard eyes belying her small size. “I think I found a placement for you that will work,” she said, passing epaper across the table to me.

  “Sure,” I said, barely glancing at it. “Whatever. If there’s space for me, I’m good with it.”

  She gave me an awfully intense glance, and I blinked, not understanding what she might be trying to convey. “Should I be planning to try to find my own job, or what?”

  “There’s actually an opening in the halfway house staff. Usually, we reserve it for people who have been there a while, but I believe this particular position will work for you.” Her gaze flickered up to the camera in the corner of the room—an old-fashioned one mounted to the wall rather than one of the new flying vid drones many other places used. “Especially given your work history at a hotel.”

  “So, like, cleaning, clerical work, what?”

  Marjorie waved a dismissive and. “Yeah, that sort of stuff.”

  “Sounds great.” I was more excited than I probably should have been, but knowing I had a place to go after release eased a giant knot of worry I’d been carrying in my chest.

  Marjorie leaned over the table and stared into my eyes. “I’ll have someone pick you up when you’re released. Her name is Roya.” She put an unusual emphasis on the name.

  “Roya. Got it.” My parole officer was beginning to freak me out a little bit. “This all sounds great. Do I need to sign anything?”

  She pulled out another epaper. “Thumbprint here.” Her voice indicated more irritation than her words conveyed.

  I pressed my thumb against the official document, and Marjorie dropped it into the briefcase she carried.

  “Oh, you can have this back,” I said, trying to hand her the epaper she had given me.

  She shook her head. “That’s yours to keep.”

  At the time, I didn’t think it was all that odd. My attorney had periodically given me information to read over while I was in my solo cell.

  “Roya will be here next week, then.” Marjorie stood and smoothed her hands down the front of her pants, almost as if she were nervous.

  I stayed seated, knowing the guards would take my standing as a threat. “You and I will need to meet regularly, right?”

  “Once a month,” Marjorie said as she buzzed for the guard to come let her out.

  As a guard led me back to my cell through the institutionally gray corridors of the women’s prison, I realized that although I no longer had to be concerned about where I would go, I was still worried about what would happen to me once I was free again, once I was outside and people could track me down.

  My name had barely had time to die down in the news cycle when it popped back up again in connection to my upcoming release.

  I was really glad that Marjorie had arranged for me to work inside the same halfway house where I was going to live. It would be easier to hide from reporters until my story was eclipsed by bigger news.

  Eventually, I might even be able to slip back into the same kind of anonymity I had not known enough to enjoy back when I’d had it.

  And one thing was for sure.

  I was never again going to have anything to do with the Khanavai.

  Never.

  Chapter Six

  Wex

  “Could I see you in my office, Wex?” I jumped at the sound of Vos Klavoii’s voice over the com system.

  Why could he possibly need to see me in his office?

  “Yes, sir.” I keyed off my own com and began the walk from the control room to the administrator’s office.

  Had Vos figured out I’d been snooping in the system, researching Deandra’s background, following—and interfering in—her case?

  “Wex, good to see you,” Vos said as his assistant, Anthony, a human male, led me into the Games Director’s office.

  Vos surely couldn’t be too upset with me if he is greeting me that cheerfully. Right?

  “Sir.” I nodded in greeting. “You said you needed to see me?”

  “Yes, please, have a seat.” He gestured magnanimously toward the chairs in front of the wide expanse of his desk. His office had been remodeled since the Alveron Horde attack on Station 21. Before, the walls had been bare and colorless, the décor more in line with human tastes than Khanavai.

  Now, however, they were a riot of color, decorated as they were with pictures of happily mated Khanavai males and human females from throughout the Bride Lottery’s history. Prominent among them was an image of Prince Khan and his human bride Princess Ella, the first human-Khanavai pairing in our history.

  I slid into the chair across the desk from Vos. “What do you need?”

  “I have come up with the most brilliant idea in the history of the Bride Lottery.” Something about Vos’s smug smile put me on edge.

  “Tell me about it.” Vos had replaced the small statue of Earth and Khanav Prime connected by Station 21 that had been on his desk when it collapsed. I picked it up and began turning it in my hands as Vos spoke.

  “Some background first.” Vos leaned back in his chair.

  Vulk. This is going to take a while.

  “When I took over the Games Administration position almost twenty-five Earth years ago, the Bride Lottery was already in place. I’ve been doing what I can to increase our ‘ratings,’ as Earthers call them, on both planets ever since.”

  I nodded, mentally willing him to hurry through his explanation. None of this was news to anyone.

  “I knew the basics of the Bride Alliance,” he continued, “along with the traditional games schedule. We drew brides’ names once every Earth year—roughly twice per Khanav Prime cycle.”

  Again, I knew all this. But I simply made an encouraging noise and continued listening.

  “According to the Bride Alliance, we are allowed to choose up to a hundred Earth females to mate with Khanavai warriors.”

  “Of course,” I murmured.

  “We have always taken this to mean that we should draw a hundred names and push for the maximum number of mate-matches possible from that.”

  “Mm-hmm.” When will he get to the vulking point?

  Vos leaned forward, propping his elbows on his desk and tenting his fingertips together. He rested his chin atop his fingers. “However, I have been re-reading the original Bride Alliance Treaty. And here’s what I discovered. According to the language of the original Bride Alliance as it is written in Earther English, as long as we do not exceed one hundred matches, we are allowed to continue the Bride Games throughout that Earth year.” Vos raised his eyebrows and waited expectantly.

  Hold on. “Are you saying we could draw more than a hundred names? We could keep drawing until we had a hundred matches?” I thought about it a micro-moment longer. “We could have more than one set of Bride Games per Earther year.”

  Vos grinned widely. “That’s it exactly!” He pointed one finger at me in a very human gesture and stood up, sending his chair spinning behind him as he strode around to the front of his desk. “Earth entertainment, which I have been studying more closely recently, has the concept of seasons.”

  I turned the word around my mind, trying to see if my translator might have misinterpreted it.

  “As in, different times of the planetary cycle? The Earthers divide it into four, correct?” I tried to remember what they mig
ht be. “Winter is the cold one, summer is the hot one, spring is one where plants are most likely to bloom, and the fourth one has something to do with…tumbling downward?”

  “You’re thinking of fall, not falling,” Vos corrected me. “Also called autumn. But that’s not the kind of season I’m talking about. In their vid-dramas, the stories are divided out into groupings connected by theme. These groupings are called seasons. Regardless, etymology aside, I have decided to apply this idea of seasons to the Bride Lottery and Games.”

  I blinked. It already took most of the year between Bride Games to prepare. The games had to be conceptualized and the various filming areas of Station 21 torn down and rebuilt. We tried to conserve resources by reusing the basic rooms, but occasionally a new set of games meant completely different spaces to compete in. “What will one Bride Games season consist of?”

  “That’s the brilliance of it,” Vos replied, leaning on the desk behind him so that he stood closer to me than before. “As long as we run it in the same Earther year, we can have as many Bride Games as we wish, so long as we do not exceed our quota of one hundred Earther female mates for our Khanavai warriors.”

  My mind was already spinning, considering how such an extended programming season might work. “How will you introduce this concept to humans?”

  “That’s the easy part. They already know what a vid-drama season is. We simply tap into some of those vid-drama traditions and use them in the Lottery and Games.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as the tradition of the Holiday Special.”

  “What’s that?” My translator didn’t quite know what to do with the term, giving me comparisons such as “lunch special”—but I didn’t think Vos meant a price-reduced version of the Bride Games. Clearly, I needed to watch more human vid-dramas to understand exactly what Vos was getting at.

  “Well, to begin with, we are going to have a Christmas holiday special.”

  “Christmas?” There were enough human women on Khanav Prime that I had heard the term before. I knew it was some holy day that involved an exchange of gifts and…glitter? Or was glitter a feature of the egg-and-rabbit-eating holiday?