Page 21 of The Marriage Bargain

Furious as I might be, though—and despite my brave words earlier—his warnings of an official breeder list rang in my ears.

I’d told him angrily I didn’t believe him. Truth was, I didn’t want to believe him. However, now that the first surge of wrath had cooled, I couldn’t help recalling that strange encounter with the alien at the gates of the Citadel. How he’d looked at me. How he’d asked if I was unentangled. How he’d brought up Tarra about to have their fourth daughter.

What the crap, I thought, suddenly seized by fear that Overlord Caide’s crazy story of a breeder’s list might be true. What the crap? What if he wasn’t making it up? What if the Asterions are preparing to really flex their muscles now that they’re firmly ensconced here? What’s going to stop them? Who’s going to stop them? What if my name is on some sort of creepy list that aliens—aliens!—are going over right now? Am I really about to be auctioned off to the highest bidder?

It couldn’t be.

Could it?

If it was…if there was any chance Overlord Caide had been telling the truth…what could I do? Run away? Run…where? There was nowhere on this continent that aliens from one planet or another didn’t rule.

I can’t run, I thought, fear gripping my throat. Suddenly, I found it hard to breathe, let alone drive. The gate was approaching. The same gate where I’d been stopped earlier before they let me in. Panic surged as I reckoned with seeing that same alien, knowing now that he might have been treating me so oddly because he was thinking about…breeding me.

I can’t face him, I can’t, my whirring brain spit out, at the same time it angrily fumed, I’m not something to be bred! I’m not an object, or an animal!

I didn’t want to stop. I didn’t want to face that alien male again. I didn’t want to—

Someone half stepped out of the guard shack as my truck slowed to a crawl. The gate opened and an arm waved me through. Freedom was in sight. My instinct was to stomp on the gas. Good sense overruled and I went through slowly, calm on the outside, but inwardly a complete wreck. However, once I was out of sight of the gate, I put the pedal to the metal and roared home as fast as my old beater of a truck could manage. Nevertheless, I couldn’t shake the sense that I wasn’t truly escaping anything, especially my own destiny.

* * *

Two weeks later, I found out that sense was absolutely correct.

Tarra was getting close enough to her due date that every strange pain made us eyeball her to see if it was the start of something bigger—labor, the real deal. Zyn laid out clothes and shoes before he went to bed in case a nighttime trip to the hospital was in order. The fallback plan for the kids was me, and I’d alerted my work that, any day now, I’d have to skip coming in for a couple of days.

Life was about as routine as it could be, given the circumstances. Then Tarra came home from her latest visit with her doctor, wearing a troubled expression. I noticed it right away, as soon as she came through the door. My heart jumped in my throat.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded. “Is it the baby? Are you okay? Is she?”

“What? Oh, yeah, we’re both great. Well, as great as I can be when I feel like a whale ninety percent of the time,” she grumbled, lowering herself into the couch with an “Oof.”

The same couch where the alien Overlord had spent the night, my brain reminded me, but I stubbornly forced memories of the golden-eyed alien away.

“You look like something’s wrong,” I said, keeping my voice down so my oldest niece, who sat at the kitchen table doing her homework, wouldn’t be alarmed or come over and try to eavesdrop. She attended the same school her mom and I had as kids, although it was better equipped and staffed these days, further into the alien occupation.

“I’m a little creeped out right now, but everything’s okay with the baby and me,” Tarra said, also keeping her voice low. “Delle, have you heard any rumors up at the eatery about, well, the Asterions coming up with an official breeder’s list or using human women as breeders?”

It was about the last thing I expected my sister to say. Honestly, I was so shocked that I dropped onto the couch next to her.

“No—not at the eatery,” I stammered, “but I have heard of it.”

“Where?”

“Where?” Did I admit the truth? I hadn’t necessarily been trying to hide the story from Tarra. I’d simply figured she had enough on her plate without dealing with my problems, especially if it was all a misunderstanding or blown way out of proportion.

“Do you remember the night a couple of weeks ago that I had to visit the Citadel to get some work stuff for Zyn? His boss…”

“Overlord Caide,” my sister supplied.

“Right. He met me in the office with the papers. He, um, he mentioned the list. I guess I didn’t say anything because I was hoping it was just rumors or something,” I said, plucking fretfully at a rip in the knee of my jeans.

“It’s not,” my sister stated grimly. “I wish it were.”

“Why? What do you mean? What did you hear?” I broke off messing with the rip and its loose threads to gaze quizzically at my sister.

“I had to wait a long time at my appointment today, and my doctor happened to mention she’d been overwhelmed lately with patients. I asked, Pregnancy patients? because we all know the birth rate is pretty low right now. That’s why I was surprised. She said no. She said the Overlords had come up with this novel idea of a—well, basically a breeder’s list, she called it. Matching Asterion males with human females. She said women were either joining voluntarily as they learned about it, since it’s a cinch that they’ll probably receive better housing and food and supplies with an Asterion Overlord than trying to make it on their own. Or they’re being conscripted and…forced to join.”

This can’t be happening.

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