As I stretched out in the bed, Zont’s arm reached out to snake around my waist and pulled me back to him. I snuggled into the warm comfort of his embrace.
“Glad you made it here,” he murmured.
“I am, too.”
Then we slept through the whole day and most of the next night.
When we finally woke, Natalie and Cav had both left messages on Zont’s wrist com.
“Vos wants to see us,” Zont told me as I sat up in bed and stretched.
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t have anything to say to him.”
Zont grinned at me. “Aren’t you supposed to let him—and me, too—know what you decided?”
I laughed. “You mean you haven’t guessed yet?”
He dove for me, grabbing me and rolling me over on top of him, then pulling me down into a deep kiss.
A kiss that was promptly interrupted by a buzzing on Zont’s com.
“Now, dammit,” Cav said.
“Okay, okay.” Zont keyed off the com and sighed before giving me one more kiss and setting me on my feet.
There were clean clothes in the closet, and I pulled on a black pantsuit remarkably like the one Natalie had worn down to Earth to pick us up.
As we walked through the station, hand in hand, I took in all the damage that had been done by the Alveron attack. Throughout the entire station, the bright colors of the walls had cracked, showing gray metal beneath.
It was a wonder we hadn’t suffered a hull breach, and all died.
“Well,” I said. “It’s not like the Bride Games can go on in the middle of all this.”
“The Bride Games are still on,” Vos said petulantly as he sat up in his hospital bed.
“The station is a wreck, sir,” Anthony told him, his tone anxious.
“There must be spaces on the station that were not destroyed.”
“Well, yes…” His assistant’s voice trailed off.
“You are in no shape to host another set of Bride Games,” I said. “And I say that as your doctor, not as someone you wanted to blackmail into participating.”
Vos turned his glare on me. “Everyone is expecting there to be another set of Bride Games. We have been advertising it.”
“After the Hordeships were destroyed, I spoke to Commander Gendovi,” Zont interjected. “There’s some indication that the Alveron Horde might have intercepted the Bride Games transmissions and determined exactly how important they are to us.”
I turned my startled gaze to him. “Really? Is that why they were following us on Earth?”
Zont nodded. “It’s quite likely, yes. As the only bride off the station, you were an easy—or at least easier—target.”
“Is Gendovi certain that’s what happened?” Vos asked.
“Of course not,” Zont said. “We’re still looking into it. In the meantime, the commander has suggested postponing the next Games.”
“We’ll see about that,” Vos muttered. “He can’t shut down the Bride Games just because he doesn’t want to go through them.”
As it turned out, Vos was right.
Despite their concerns that the Alveron Horde might have been tapping into transmissions not meant for them, Central Command was unwilling to cancel the Bride Games entirely—not least of all because doing so would be akin to breaking the Bride Alliance between our two planets, something the commander told me himself the next time I went in to check on Vos.
Commander Gendovi didn’t stay long, though—Vos was in high spirits and working to rope everyone into his next show.
“So I need to know,” the Games Administrator said to me when the commander was gone, “what have you decided?”
I finished checking his leg with the Khanavai instruments that Dr. Javant had taught me to use. “It looks like you’re healing very well,” I said.
“Do you choose Zont or do you choose to participate in the Bride Games?”
I leveled a serious look at him. “I saved your life, you know.”
I started to move away, and he grabbed my wrist. “We cannot allow the Alveron Horde to see that they have had any effect on us.”
For the first time, I thought maybe I saw something in Vos beyond his determination to gain ratings. “Is that patriotism I’m detecting?”
The Games Administrator huffed and looked away.
“I choose Zont,” I finally relented enough to tell him. “And if you want to, you can broadcast our mating ceremony—another wedding—to appease your viewers until the station is cleaned up enough for more Bride Games.”
Vos’s face brightened, but I held out a hand to stop him from speaking.
“But nothing extravagant. No one can be there except Cav and Nathalie, Commander Gendovi and Mia, Plofnid and Drindl, and Zont’s team.” I narrowed my eyes at Vos. “And no matter what kind of excitement you have planned for the next Bride Games, you had better make sure that Commander Gendovi and Mia end up together, if that’s what they want.” I tapped his injured leg for emphasis, and Vos flinched. “Got it?”
“Agreed,” Vos said, more than a little reluctantly.
“Good.” I walked toward the door but paused to look back. “You should arrange for your vids to be there tonight. We have already made arrangements for the ceremony.”
Vos’s mouth fell open, and I winked at him.
Then I went to find Plofnid and Drindl to help me prepare for my wedding day.
Chapter Twenty
Zont
Natalie had insisted on us observing some ridiculous human tradition that involved a groom not seeing his bride on the wedding day. “But we saw each other this morning when we got out of bed,” I protested.
Natalie simply laughed. “Too bad. We’re not counting that. You don’t get to see her for the rest of today. Not while she’s getting ready. Not until she comes down the aisle.”
“We don’t have an aisle,” I pointed out. “We have a room.”
Now I stood in that room, one of the few undamaged spaces in all of Station 21. Someone had decorated it in a riot of flowers, covering nearly every surface, even the walls.
I suspected Plofnid and
