Because I was certain that’s what happened to these women. Suspicious mind or no, nothing about the Bride Lottery added up.
A couple of the vid channels even did spotlights on one of the Khanavai grooms who had come down to Earth to hunt me down. I didn’t bother to read anything about it other than the lurid headlines, and I certainly didn’t watch the vids.
Khanavai men were hunting me down. That was all I needed to know. I was terrified enough already. Reading up on the war accomplishments of a giant alien who wanted to force me to marry him was not likely to make me feel at all better.
I just about gave myself a headache thinking about all of it. That’s when I switched over to reading ridiculous mystery novels. The problem with those, of course, was that I always figured out the mystery within the first few chapters. But the stories were a diversion from the relentless news about the Bride Lottery, the beautiful bride on Station 21, and the Runaway Bride back on Earth.
By the time we hit the Chicago Greyhound station, all I wanted was to sleep in a full-size bed and to take a long, hot shower. Not necessarily in that order.
It was late morning in Chicago—a full twelve hours after we’d been scheduled to arrive—and the sun was shining brightly outside, so at least I had a reason to wear my ridiculous sunglasses. I considered waiting until the bus was almost empty to exit, but then at the last minute, decided I would be better off exiting in a clump of people, just in case anyone was watching for me.
Not that I expected anyone to be here looking for me—my choice to run to Chicago had been impulsive and last-minute, so there shouldn’t be anything to lead them to me. Whoever they might be.
But as soon as I stepped off the bus, I knew exactly who they were.
They was an enormous, surprisingly gorgeous, hot-pink-skinned Khanavai male with dark hair and overly developed chest muscles—which I could tell because he was shirtless. Possibly because no one on Earth made shirts big enough to fit him.
Startled, I glanced down the rest of him. Apparently, we didn’t make pants big enough, either. He wore what we had all come to recognize as a traditional Khanavai warrior’s uniform. A kilt-like skirt with a belt and a cross strap made out of some kind of leather, decorated with various symbols of prowess in war.
That was another reason I hadn’t wanted to get involved with the Khanavai—they were too warlike. I had been to war zones when I traveled briefly with Doctors without Borders, and I’d seen what war did to people.
I was a healer, not a fighter. I did not want to be involved with anyone who wielded weapons. In fact, I wasn’t even willing to date police officers here on Earth.
No. If I were ever to get married—which I wouldn’t—I wanted someone gentle and kind.
I couldn’t have spent more than two seconds taking in his appearance. But I completely froze during those two seconds, and apparently, that was enough to catch his attention.
Even worse for me, it was enough to catch the attention of another set of multicolored aliens scattered around the station as if they were trying to blend in. Like that was possible, given their size and colorations.
All four of them began to converge on me, apparently tipped off by my reaction to them—which seemed odd, since I certainly wasn’t the only Greyhound passenger staring at the aliens in our midst.
For all I knew, the big pink guy—presumably their leader, given all of the pins and medals and other symbols he wore on his leather cross strap—gave them orders to capture me by any means necessary.
“Shit,” I muttered to myself, ducking into a women’s bathroom directly inside the entrance to the bus station building and hoping it would be enough to keep them from following me.
It wasn’t, of course.
Seconds later, I was surrounded by leering aliens in all the colors of the rainbow.
Chapter Four
Zont
I spotted the bounty hunters as soon as I entered the bus station in the human city of Chicago. It was difficult to miss them—no Khanavai on Earth had the benefit of blending in.
I had no idea how they established Amelia Rivers’ location. As soon as my team hit the ground in the pleasure city, they began retracing her steps.
Wex had been the one to track her to a bus station—apparently a relatively common mode of travel on Earth. I didn’t completely understand it. Why would Earthers still use such slow modes of transport when there were much faster means of getting around the world? Maybe not as fast as the methods the Khanavai had developed, but still, better than crawling along the planetary surface in a wheeled contraption designed to fit more people inside than could possibly be comfortable.
As soon as Wex passed on the information he gained from something called a ticket agent, I departed Las Vegas for Chicago. My team was still in the pleasure city in case the intel Wex had extracted from the ticketing agent was wrong. I told them to wait there and continue investigating any credible leads.
Now, I stood here waiting, planning how to introduce myself to my mate and dismissing the bounty hunters as utterly irrelevant. The slight anxiety I felt at finally meeting Amelia served to heighten my awareness. The bounty hunters didn’t have a chance.
I saw her the instant she stepped off the bus. Even from a distance, I caught her scent wafting toward me.
Mine, a deep, primal part of me growled.
The aerial vidglobe that had followed me through my entire search buzzed around my head like an annoying bug.
She had chopped off most of her golden hair and turned it a shocking red color, similar to some of my own people’s skin tones. She also wore eye coverings
