My deepest thoughts were to get it on with two men? I’d never done it. Sure, I’d thought about a threesome. What woman hadn’t? Sandwiched between two hot guys? I’d be down with it, but so far in life, I’d barely been interested in keeping one boyfriend, let alone two. But if it would be like that dream? I was okay with it.
“During the testing, I read your file,” she said. Her tone was crisp, professional. She was from Earth, but worked for the Coalition, at least the Brides branch of it. Her uniform was a dark rust color, unadorned and familiar.
“Four years in the Coalition Fleet. Impressive.” She moved to prop her hip against the table in the middle of the small room. “I assume I’d be more impressed if most of your time in service wasn’t sealed.”
“I’m confused. I don’t know what you’re talking about.” There it was. The standard answer popping out of my mouth on automatic pilot. I couldn’t talk about any of it. Not with her. Not with anyone.
But I had to get back out into space. I was suffocating here. Drowning in the minutia of a nine-to-five job. Drab apartment. Bills. Bullshit television shows. Surrounded by people I had nothing in common with. Earth? This just didn’t feel like home anymore. I wanted back in space and volunteering as a bride was how I was going to do it.
Chapter 3
Captain Dorian Kanakor, Prillon Warrior, Coalition ReCon Shuttle
* * *
I grabbed Captain Seth Mills by the wrist in my anger, but as I expected of a warrior, he pulled away and stepped close to confront me. He was nearly as tall as I, large for a human. And his strange blue eyes blazed with challenge.
And pain.
A pain I shared every day.
“What the fuck, Dorian?” Seth scowled at me, his voice carrying over the small number of warriors huddled around us. We were all sweat soaked and covered in grime from hours of battle on the freighter. But the room was almost silent as my crew and his ReCon team waited to see what was about to happen.
It wasn’t often the commander himself connected with us. Hell, it was even less often that one of us was assigned a bride.
“I need to speak with you, Mills. Alone.” I toned down the irritation in my voice, knowing that any challenge would surely be met with resistance, not the level-headed cooperation I needed for this insane idea to work. An idea that had just come into my head after hearing the commander’s news.
He studied me for mere seconds before turning to the co-pilot, a sassy Earth female named Trinity. “You get us back to the Karter.” He turned, meeting the eyes of his second-in-command, another large human warrior I’d come to respect. “Jack, you’ve got the con.”
I didn’t wait for their agreement and my crew needed no such instruction, the chain of command as natural as breathing. Leaving their curious gazes behind, I led the way to the very small supply storage unit at the back of the shuttle. This escape vessel wasn’t meant to hold many people. With all of ReCon 3 plus the survivors from my crew, the small ship neared capacity. But Seth followed me into the small space and I sat on a crate of emergency medical supplies. He sat opposite me as the door slid closed, sealing us in.
His calculating gaze leveled on me and he waited. Silent. Patient. I had no choice but to begin.
“My cousin, Orlinthe, was killed in battle a few months ago.”
“I remember,” Seth agreed. And he should. We’d all gotten drunk together more than once on the Karter over the last three years. When Orlinthe had been lost in battle to the Hive, ReCon 3 had been there, surrounding me and my fellow Prillon warriors, Earth whiskey in hand to drown the pain. Or at least burn it out of my throat.
“I was his second. I never tested for a mate of my own.”
Seth froze in the act of wiping grime from the sleeve of his armor. A lost cause since all he did was smear it around, but it kept his gaze off mine. “So? Go down to medical. Do it.”
“I don’t want to.”
He looked to me. Sighed. “Jesus, Dorian. You aliens don’t make any sense. Why are we having this conversation?” Seth’s head was tilted, impatience finally showing in the harsh line of his mouth and the tapping of his boot. He shifted on his seat, the butt of his ion rifle resting on the floor beside him, his grip on the barrel so tight his knuckles turned white.
“You have a mate, Seth. A matched mate. Do you know how special that is? How rare a gift?” I wanted to kick him now, wake him up. He was being a fool.
“Oh, no.” Seth’s eyes rolled back into his head and his c
hin rose at an odd angle before settling back into place, a strange smile on his face. Sometimes, human expressions were difficult to decipher, and I did not have the benefit of the psychic connection of a Prillon collar to help me understand. “Is this where you give me the lecture about how lucky I am? How I should get down on my knees and thank your gods for sending an innocent woman out into space to be my bride?”
“Yes.” So he did understand.
“No.”
“No?”
Seth stood and I did as well, the small space placing us nearly nose to nose as anger rose within me. How dare this warrior, this human, dishonor his matched mate? It simply wasn’t done. “Why do you dishonor your bride?”