I didn’t want to scare her with how hard she made me, how much she turned me on.
Being fated mates was more than just about being destined to be together.
It meant we were compatible—both spiritually and physically.
I ran my fingers through her matted blonde hair and smiled down at her.
She pressed her hand to my arm and her lips begged to be kissed.
I wanted to kiss them.
And unless I missed my guess, I thought she wanted me to kiss her.
Then she blinked and looked away.
“We should get up,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. Right.”
With my heart in my throat, I got up and helped her onto her feet.
“You did great today. Really great.”
“I have a great teacher.”
She smiled at me.
The moment lasted a little longer than it should have.
“I guess we should get cleaned up,” she said.
“No need. Computer. Deactivate program.”
The white walls vanished, leaving just the grid lines.
The smooth black walls faded along with the mud on our hands, bodies, and clothes.
The Shadow Realm was gone and we were back on the ship.
None of it was real.
It was all a hologram and a product of our imaginations.
I couldn’t help but feel a little sad the training session was over.
“Are you hungry?” I said. “I know I am.”
“Sure,” Emma said. “I’d like to see what a traditional M’rora lunch looks like.”
I wasn’t sure about a traditional lunch but looking at Emma now, I knew what I wanted to eat.
Emma
I couldn’t stop reaching up and scratching at patches of my skin where the shadow mud had touched me before.
It still felt itchy and scratchy even though I knew it was no longer on me.
The training session had turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected.
I’d seen the Rocky movies with the flowing montages of pain being inflicted on the title character.
That was what I expected, not a fun snowball fight.
Vai led me into the canteen and I was taken aback by how empty it was.
Multiple chairs sat around broad tables let me know how many crewmembers usually served aboard a ship like this.
There were five dozen tables arranged at regular intervals around the room, each catering to ten seats.
“This is one of three canteens we have on board,” Vai said.
“Three?” I said, flabbergasted. “And this is one of the smaller ships in your dad’s fleet?”
He nodded and motioned to the nearest table.
“How long did you have to travel to reach Earth?” I said.
“Three weeks.”
My eyes boggled.
“Three weeks in here? You came all this way to help rescue me? And you were on your own all that time?”
Vai shrugged his shoulders.
“I had Computer to keep me company.”
I’d seen how he interacted with the computer system and wasn’t sure it was much of a comfort.
I would have laughed out loud if it wasn’t for the image of him wandering these empty hallways alone.
All to reach and rescue me from his evil Shadow.
I was overcome with a powerful sense of relief that he had undertaken this mission.
It didn’t seem fair he had to make up for what his evil twin got up to.
I got the distinct impression the two entities were virtually different creatures altogether, no matter what they looked like.
The thoughts and feelings of one didn’t dictate the actions of the other.
But what did I know?
I was new to this situation and until a day and a half ago, I didn’t even know there was another intelligent species out there.
I shook the image of the lonely figure from my mind and focused on the situation at hand.
“It must be pretty good being the son of an admiral,” I said.
Vai shrugged.
“It is what it is. He was away a lot when I was young.”
“But look at the perks! An entire ship all to yourself!”
He smiled.
“I guess I am lucky in some ways.”
He approached a long panel with a series of openings.
It was only then I noticed something strange about the canteen.
“There’s no kitchen?”
“No one cooks on board. Although we usually have a programmer who can create new menu items any time we meet a new species or there’s an important meeting with officials.”
A programmer? I thought. What did that have to do with cooking?
It became clear when Vai began pressing buttons on the console.
“What would you like to eat?”
“Uh, something that’s not still alive would be good.”
Vai snorted.
“You eat living things on your planet?”
“Some cultures do. But in America? No. Everything is well and truly dead.”
“Good. Because the M’rora only eat dead food. I’ll order some of my favorite dishes and you can try them out.”
He turned to the machine and I took a moment to look him over.
He did sometimes remind me of the creature that’d poisoned me and attempted to bed me.
How could he not?
They looked virtually identical and it was only in the general way they expressed themselves that you could identify the difference between them.
Vai brought two trays of food and placed them in the middle of the table.
He returned to the machine two more times before he deemed there was enough food.
One tray was piled high with meat smothered with a brown sauce that smelled spicy.
Another had a thick soup that kept on stirring itself even after Vai removed the spoon.
Another was piled high with vegetables that looked similar to what we had on Earth.
One was similar in consistency to carrots.
It’d been sliced into sticks but weren’t bright orange but purple with pink flecks in them.
They tasted, strangely, like “purple”—the same way lemons somehow tasted like “yellow.”
I decided to steer clear of most of the meat.
I wasn’t used to this food and didn’t want to make myself sick.
“What do you think?” Vai said, eying me expectantly.
“It’s… good,” I said. “Well, some of it is. I’m a pretty fussy eater but I can eat most of this.”
“What is Earth food like?”
“Diverse. Like the food you have here. But I guess there’s no comparison to the food you grew up with, is there? Mom’s homemade food is always best.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
I was full and couldn’t
