11
Lily
“Liar. Liar. Bloody Liar!”I took my favorite romance novel off the shelf, the book with my all-time favorite, sexy, honorable, respectful alien warrior hero, my Atlan beast, and threw the damn thing across the room.
Reached for another. I’d brought two with me on this mission, thinking that maybe I would share them with Darius and try out some of the more interesting sexual antics. Hadn’t needed them. Still.
I glanced down at the graphic, the title, the dream.
This cover was so sexy. It would be a shame…
No. Nope. Goddamn it. When I got back to the moon base on Arturri, I was going to toss the rest of them.
“Grace Goodwin, you bitch. I am going to have words with you when I get home.” This author was a liar. There was no sexy alien hunk out here in space waiting to make all my dreams come true.
They weren’t big dreams, either. At least I didn’t think so. I wanted someone to love me, respect me, and believe in me. Believe in my capabilities. My courage. My brain. All I wanted was someone to have faith that I was capable of winning. Creating. Being more than what I appeared to be on my average, mousy, introverted exterior.
But noooo. In fact, Darius was so dead set against me going on this mission, he’d defied General Romulus and humiliated me in front of every Starfighter on the battleship, three generals, and my best friends.
Oh no! Delicate little flower Lily can’t go on that super dangerous mission. She’ll die! We’ll all die! Oh me, oh my, General Romulus, you need to send me instead. I’m a big, tough warrior. I can do it for her. Poor little Lily. She needs protection. She just doesn’t know how fragile she is.
Asshole.
And he’d been lying to me since I met him. I’d been so trusting, so blinded by orgasms and the promise of someone who actually cared about me, believed in me, chose me, that I didn’t ask. Didn’t want to know.
Well, a few quick questions after the mission briefing and a computer search later and I'd learned the truth on my own.
I wasn’t Darius’s first choice. Tycho, his brother, had been his fighting partner for three years. Three. Years. He’d died on a mission not long before I started playing Starfighter Training Academy. Perhaps a few weeks before I’d selected Darius, from all the game’s options, to be my partner on missions in game.
I’d been playing a game. Darius had been looking for a way to redeem himself and get back into a Starfighter uniform.
He and his brother had disobeyed a direct order. Jeopardized multiple team members. Most of the mission details were redacted, but I knew enough. Tycho had been killed, and Darius had been kicked out of the Titan program.
Until me. Until I beat the game—training simulation, whatever the fuck these aliens wanted to call it—and earned each of us a place inside a Titan.
I wasn’t important to him. I was a means to an end with a dose of on-demand sex on the side.
No wonder he hadn’t told me the truth about his past, his brother. Any of it.
I fought back tears and stared at the book in my hand. “I should have gone to Atlan, yeah?”
After this mission, I was going home. I had no reason to stay. Once Velerion was safe and the evil super villain, Queen Raya, was dead or captured or whatever was going to happen to her, I was leaving this shithole life behind. I didn’t care about this war. As long as children weren’t dying and some evil bitch wasn’t ruining the lives of innocent people on this planet, I was out. Conscience clear.
Done.
Finished.
The sex with Darius was great, no doubt. Better than I’d ever imagined it could be. But I’d been treated like a failure my entire life. Made to feel like I didn’t quite measure up. If I lost ten pounds, my mother encouraged me to lose five more. A master’s degree? Wonderful, but Connie Winthrop had a PhD. Ooh-la-la. And her sister? Penelope? Well, darling, she married into a barony and already had her third child on the way. Wasn’t that wonderful?
Totally, completely fucking wonderful, mum.
Too bad I couldn’t change my name to Penelope and manage, for once in my life, to please my mother. In preparing to come here, to leave Earth behind, I’d written them a cryptic letter and left my bills on autopay. Guess deep down I’d known this wasn’t going to work out.
I wasn’t going to fight this battle with Darius. I deserved better. More.
He didn’t have to love me. I could deal with that. But I would not tolerate being mollycoddled and disrespected. Treated like a child who didn’t know better.
I was not going to cry.