“Dee, what do you think? You’ve been awfully silent over there,” Frannie asked.
I would have answered, but a new image on the vid display snagged my attention.
Wex. He was on the program again, one of the second-chance bachelors scheduled to play this game.
A wave of sickness washed through my stomach, and I had to swallow to hold it down.
How can I possibly still be attracted to him after seeing his little snit-fit in the Holiday Special?
I dragged my attention away from his captivating face, all planes and angles and chiseled good looks, and answered Frannie’s question. “It does sound like they’re trying to marry off as many of their males as they can. But I doubt everyone’s off fighting the Horde.” I waved a hand at the vid screen. “That guy, Wex, was on the search team that came down looking for Amelia Rivers when she ran.”
I had everyone’s rapt attention, even as Vos began drawing names for the Bride Lottery.
“I don’t think they would leave him on Station 21 if they needed their military guys off fighting. He seemed pretty important.”
“You don’t think they can make this a regular kind of thing, do you?” Mandy asked the whole table. “I mean, we used to have to worry about it only once a year. Now we’ve had three in the last, what? Six, eight months?”
Roya pursed her lips. “And the last real set of games—not the weird holiday one, but the one last year—was drawn out longer than usual because they had the runaway, then that late match with the commander. It ran for weeks.”
“They can’t do this to us, can they? Doesn’t the Bride Alliance have rules?” Jacinda sounded like her voice was about to break.
Not for the first time, I found myself wondering exactly what these women had done to end up here. I knew all their crimes had to do with the Bride Games somehow, but since no one had ever asked me about my time in prison, I hadn’t felt comfortable asking them, either. And it seemed rude to go digging around in their files online, even after I had a private connection available in my new wristcom.
The whole time we were talking, the knowledge that Wex was probably going to end up marrying someone beat like a drum in the back of my mind.
It was a stupid response to someone I met for only a few minutes, months ago—and who had testified against me, basically sending me to prison.
Yet, it still made my heart ache. Which pissed me off at myself, making me angry that I had such a visceral reaction to one of those aliens.
Vos’s voice droned in the background.
I mostly ignored it, until something caught my attention.
“Wait. Hush. Hush!” I said. “Did Vos just call my name?”
Everyone whipped around to stare at me, then turned their gazes to the screen, where my registration ID popped up.
“Oh, hell no,” I began, as I stood up, my chair scraping across the floor behind me. “Absolutely not.”
I didn’t have time to say anything more, as the room began to dissolve around me in a haze of glittering lights.
Transporter tech.
I had barely enough time to realize I was being taken to Station 21.
The last thing I saw was Roya gesturing at me frantically, pointing at her wrist and mouthing words at me—but I couldn’t hear what she was saying.
And then everything went black, except for the afterimage of transporter sparkles in my eyes.
Chapter Ten
Wex
On Station 21, I paced back and forth in the hallway outside the transporter room, trying to decide whether to go in.
I had my com tuned to audio-only reception so I could listen to Vos as he pretended to blindly draw names.
But just as in every set of games for at least the last twenty years, the brides had been carefully vetted. Even down to their individual chemical make-ups, we knew more about humans from their implants than the Earthers had ever guessed.
Vos calling out Deandra’s name made my heart race.
My mate. Mine.
The words echoed in my mind.
I straightened my uniform, hoping against hope I would be able to convince her that becoming a Khanavai warrior's mate was not the horror she seemed to think it would be.
Taking a deep breath, I straightened my shoulders and strode into the transporter room just as Deandra materialized inside the tube.
Like many humans, she reeled out, stumbling a few steps in her disorientation.
In two swift steps, I slid around the transporter tech moving up to help her so that I could catch her elbow, instead.
As I steadied her, the contact of my hands against her skin sent an almost electric spark flashing through my body. And again, the sight of her pierced straight through me, down to my cock.
Deandra felt it, too, whatever that reaction was. She jerked and stiffened, a shudder running through her from head to toe as her gaze met mine.
“I can stand on my own.” She tugged her arm away from me, breaking the connection.
“Drink this,” the technician said to her, handing her a plastic container of a yellow Earther electrolyte solution. The drink was a new addition to transporter protocol, suggested by Natalie, the warrior’s bride who had such difficulty with transporters in general.
“Thanks.” Without another word, Deandra grabbed the container away and downed the drink in one long swallow. She handed the empty cup back to the tech and crossed her arms over her chest, glaring at me. “This is some kind of set-up, isn’t it? I’m not here by accident.”
I didn’t want to have this conversation in front of either the tech crew or the other incoming brides. “Come with me…please,” I said, trying to soften the command at the last minute.
“Are you going to take me away and force me to marry someone like you did Amelia?”
I blinked in surprise. I couldn’t think of how to respond to that except with the truth—or at least part of it. “Amelia wasn’t forced to marry Zont. She married him because she wanted to.”
“That’s why she was hiding from you, I guess?”
“We do need to make room for the next transport,” the tech interrupted apologetically.
Deandra’s nostrils flared in irritation. “Fine. Where are we going next?”
“Right through that door.” I pointed toward the exit.
As she marched out into the hallway, her hips swinging slightly from side to side, it was all I could do to keep from reaching out to touch her. I had forgotten how remarkably tiny she was. I had always considered the human women I met to be small and frail. But compared to Deandra, those other women, like Natalie and Amelia, were massive giants.
But the more I watched Deandra, the more I realized she wasn’t frail. She was small, but with her fists bunched by her sides, I could tell that her forearms were toned and muscular. I wondered if the rest of her body was as tightly compact under her clothing. My cock jerked again, and an ache settled deep in my balls, one that I was certain could only be soothed by Deandra.
Once we were in the hallway, she spun around to face me. Her hair had grown out in the months since I’d seen her, and now hung in a straight, dark sheet down to her shoulders. It swung out, floating for a moment when she turned, and I found myself longing to see it spread out beneath me on a sleeping platform—or floating loosely in zero gravity.
I wanted to see her wearing nothing, displayed before me.
The ache in my balls intensified, and it was all I could do to keep from picking her up and carrying her away to my quarters.
But I couldn’t. The law still required that we be matched through the Bride Games.
“Well?” she demanded.
I blinked, realizing I had lost track of the conversation. “I’m sorry, what was the question?”
“You arranged this. You and Vos Klavoii and whoever else wanted to teach me a lesson, keep me from ever going against the Bride Lottery again.”
“That’s not what happened at all.” At least, that wasn’t the reason I had arrange
d to manipulate Bride Lottery. She wasn’t wrong about it being arranged.
Infuriated by my answer, Deandra under let out a frustrated noise like a growl and, if possible, her body grew even tenser. If she had been a Khanavai warrior, I would have expected her to punch the nearest solid object.
As it was, her voice as tight as the rest of her body, she asked, “Where am I supposed to report in?”
“Deandra, please…” I began.
“My name is Dee.” Her words came out in a hiss. “Tell me where I need to go next.”
I rubbed my forehead, trying to think of something I could say, anything to convince her that my motives were not nefarious.
When I didn’t respond immediately, she spun away from me and began stalking down the hallway—in the wrong direction—muttering something about finding someone else to talk to.
“It’s this way,” I finally called out.
Deandra paused, blew out a long, slow breath, and turned around. “Lead the way.”
She maintained her silence all the way to the Brides’ Quarters. As I opened the door to her room and she slid past me, I tried to reach out to her, hoping if I couldn’t find the words, my touch would convince her my intentions were good.
As if she’d been expecting it, she ducked out of the way and put her back to the room, her stance defensive.
“Thanks for bringing me here. You can go now.”
I swallowed the words I’d been formulating.
This clearly wasn’t the right time.
Finally, I nodded. “I’ll see you later.”
I stepped back, and the door shut between us—but I stood there long enough to hear her mutter, “Not if I see you first.”
Vulking xelophian fladdergells.
This was going to be even more difficult than I had feared.
Chapter Eleven
Dee
An hour after they arrived at my door, the two aliens who had bustled in and introduced themselves as my assistants finally allowed me to see myself in the mirror.
I hadn’t spoken to them much during that time, only answering direct questions when asked. Not that I’d been rude, exactly—it wasn’t their fault I didn’t want to be here, after all. But I decided that if I had to go through the motions of participating in the Bride Lottery and Games, I would do so with the bare minimum of engagement.
Maybe I can get out of this without ending up married to some alien.
And to be honest, Wex meeting me in the transporter room had left me shaken.
You could choose him now, a tiny voice in the back of my mind whispered.
I ran my hand over my forehead, rubbing my fingers across my eyes just as Drindl flipped the switch to turn on the electronic mirror.
“Oh, no,” she exclaimed in that beautiful, bell-like voice of hers. “Do you not like it?”
“That’s not it,” I said, pulling my hand away from my face and blinking a couple of times to focus. “I just —”
My words died in my throat.
I didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror.
I rarely wore makeup at all—occasionally lip gloss and maybe a little mascara if I had to dress up for anything.
Growing up with my father meant I was required to be something of a tomboy. My mother had died before I hit the age of makeup-wearing, and I never bothered to learn.
The same went for my hair—I always went for wash it, brush it, and leave it styles.
Add to that a serious lack of feminine curves, and I never even bothered to try glamming it up.
I had always considered myself plain, at best.
But the woman who stared back at me from the reflection was actually pretty. I reached up to touch my cheek, as if making sure that was really my own reflection I saw.
“Do you like it?” Plofnid, the Poltien, asked, its nose-braid quivering in anticipation.
They had chosen my clothing without much input from me. In the mirror, my emerald-green gown shimmered in the light, satin vines and leaves swirling up around my body over a layer of chiffon, with more satin beneath that. A belt of the same green satin around my waist highlighted curves I’d never known I had.
My dress matches Wex’s eyes.
Again, I pushed the thought out of my mind.
Unable to help myself, I spun around, watching in the mirror as the knee-length skirt flared out.
“I look like a fairy straight out of an Irish tale.” My voice echoed with a wonder I hadn’t realized I could feel about my own appearance.
Somehow, they had worked magic with makeup, turning my dark eyes luminous. My lips, stained with a dark red that somehow made me look luscious, rather than vampirically pale, looked like they came straight out of a fashion magazine.
They worked that same magic on my hair, turning my straight, wash-and-wear style into gentle waves, like some ancient Earth pinup girl from the 1940s.
I had only one complaint. “I can’t walk in these heels.” I wobbled a few steps and turned a beseeching stare toward Drindl. “Can you find something more practical? I don’t want to trip and land flat on my face.”
She and the Poltien exchanged a glance. “We’ll see what we can find,” she promised.
As the two of them left, I stared at myself in the mirror for another few seconds.
“This is how they do it,” I murmured to myself. “They make you feel like a princess being swept off your feet by a handsome prince.”
That realization quashed some of my wonder, and I tried to shake off the rest of it, waving my hands in the air by my sides. “Don’t get fooled into thinking this is real,” I admonished myself.
From a small table beside the single bed—the room wasn’t much different from my space in the halfway house, except for being draped in dozens of different kinds of lace everywhere I looked—my wristcom crackled to life.
That’s weird.
Plofnid and Drindl had assured me my fancy new com wouldn’t work on Station 21—something about being on different wavelengths from the ones on Earth.
But when I picked up the com, it flashed a notification that I had a message. Confidential, it read. Play when alone.
Tapping in my code, I let it run. Roya’s voice emerged from the speaker—but without the customary accompanying vid. “Hi, Dee. We’ve been hoping we could get someone up onto Station 21. I need you to get into the station systems. Find a computer terminal—not the ones the humans are allowed to use, but the ones the Khanavai have access to. The first attached file contains codes that will allow you to log in. Once you’re in, all you have to do is upload the second file and walk away. It will send us all the information we need.” Her voice turned intense, earnest and pleading. “I know you don’t want to get in trouble, but please do this for us. Every woman on Earth deserves the chance to choose her own partner without Khanavai interference. Please. You’re our best hope.”
The message ended, and links to two different files popped up.
I clicked to close the message and swallowed down the fear that had been rising the whole time it played.
Roya was right—I didn’t want to get in trouble again. I definitely did not want to go back to prison.
But more than that, I didn’t want anyone else to ever be forced to participate in some weird marriage market—not if they didn’t want to.
Without thinking about it too much, I kicked off the heels I’d been wearing and slid my feet into my own sneakers.
Then, before Plofnid and Drindl could return and stop me, I opened the door and walked out, hoping I could find my way back through the station.
I had a mission to complete.
I just prayed I could do it before the Khanavai authorities caught up with me.
Chapter Twelve
Wex
Backstage in the auditorium, I scanned the growing crowd of human women, hoping to catch a glimpse of Deandra.
Everywhere I looked, there were human females in dresses of every color, bright enough to rival any Khanavai gatherin
g. They milled around, their bright voices filling the air.
I couldn’t find Deandra anywhere. Of course, she was awfully tiny. I raised up on my toes, even though I was already taller than all the females in the room.
Drindl had told me she and Plofnid planned to dress Deandra in green—after I had decided to let them know about my plan to make Deandra my own. They were thrilled, delighted to participate in yet another successful bride-match.
But there were no human females in green dresses.
Tapping a code into my wristcom to override our computers’ instructions to keep private details off the communications system, I retreated to the edge of the crowd in the back of the room and entered a query.
Locate Deandra Casto.
I waited impatiently, tapping my foot as the com screen showed a flickering line, indicative of its search.
A micro-moment later, the computer returned the results.
Deandra Casto not found aboard Station 21.
What? That could not be correct.
I pinged Drindl on my wristcom. “Do you have Deandra ready yet?”
I left the com open for vid, and the Blordl female’s worried face popped up to float above my arm, her expression worried. “We left to find different shoes for her, and when we returned, she was gone.”
“Gone?” I repeated.
Plofnid popped into the frame, standing on something so it appeared of an equal height with Drindl. “She left the heels she objected to behind and wore her own shoes. Running shoes,” it emphasized with a grimace. “With a ball gown.”
The Poltien was clearly incensed, but Deandra’s footwear was the least of my concerns.
Surely she wouldn’t try to hide on the station. Amelia’s flight had proven that even Earth wasn’t big enough for a runaway bride. Trying to flee on Station 21? That was pure insanity.
“I’ll see if I can track her down,” I said, then tapped the com off before either of Deandra’s flustered handlers had a chance to answer.
Enemy of the Alien Bride Lottery Page 6