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
