Page 23 of The Pregnancy Pact

“You should eat,” he suggested. “Fasting will do nothing to alter our situation.”

Mute, I shook my head. If I hadn’t been hungry before, I certainly wasn’t now.

“Very well,” he said. “It is your choice if you wish to make yourself ill over this. It is nothing to be upset over. The Council’s spokesperson will reach out to me shortly with the news that they will be contacting Captain Osiris, telling him to void the marriage in his record books. All will be handled promptly.”

“Wait, our wedding was entered into the captain’s record books?” I spun, aghast. “You didn’t mention that earlier!”

Ellax gazed out at the stars, holding his mug of coffee, a drink aliens had found they enjoyed, and shrugged carelessly. “All of the captain’s major interactions are entered by his scribe into the ship’s record books, which are automatically sent to a central command on Asterion. It is a method of keeping our captains and ships accountable.”

“So, there’s no way of saying it didn’t happen? The captain can’t look the other way or keep it between the three of us? This is real, then?”

The alien’s golden eyes shifted to me, a frown creasing his dark silver skin. “Of course not. Why would you deem that a possibility?”

I sighed heavily. I’d hoped, best case scenario, the Asterion Council would respond with a message like, since only the captain and the two of us knew about it, it was no big deal and they’d ignore it like it never happened. Or annul it like it never happened. I’d had no idea our wedding had apparently been witnessed by the captain’s scribe, or had already been entered into official record books, and had now been seen by who-knew-how-many folks on Asterion! A calamitous feeling settled over me. Turning, I sagged my body weight against the window.

“We’re not getting out of this, are we?” I moaned. “We’re doomed.”

Ellax snorted. “Ridiculous. Why are humans so given to despair?”

I wanted to smack him, but didn’t dare hit him with anything more than a dark glare. Which he totally ignored.

“I will say it one more time. When the message from the Council’s spokesperson arrives, it will contain the best directives for tidying this mess.”

“You better hope it does,” I affirmed. “If it doesn’t—”

I trailed off. Not like I had anything to threaten him with. Luckily, a knock at the door filled in the silence of my dangling sentence. Ellax went to answer, casting me a triumphant glance along the way.

“Doubtless, this is the message we hoped to receive,” he said.

He was so confident, so assured. I wanted to take comfort in that. I also wanted to stick my tongue out at him behind his back. I did neither. Instead, my hand found its way to my mouth, and my thumbnail received a few nibbles until he closed the door and turned around, at which point I hastily dropped my hand so I wouldn’t risk being reprimanded again.

“Here we are,” he said. “A missive from the captain himself.” He unfolded it. Before reading, he paused to glance out the window. “I assume we must be past the asteroid belt if he has taken the trouble to write this himself.”

Inwardly, I was screaming with impatience. Did this Overlord really not care? Did he really not care that we were legally married, that it had been reported in the captain’s log and sent on to Asterion, and something had to be done? Did he really not care that the captain had taken the time and trouble to send us a handwritten note? Didn’t that mean bad news? Why else would the captain have gone to all that effort?

Unless it’s good news, I consoled myself in the brief few seconds that Ellax’s eyes dropped to the page and he began to read. It could be good news. Please let it be good news.

“By the divine stars!”

The soft exclamation, which I took to be an Asterion curse, ripped me in half. I practically felt the blood drain from my face as the Asterion lord’s golden eyes lifted from the page.

“Forgive me, Lorelai,” he said, his voice taught.

I knew. Deep within, all of my worst fears had instantly come true. I knew.

We were indeed doomed.

Chapter 12

Lorelai

Good news had been such an absent part of my life for so long that I wasn’t even truly surprised. Honestly? I would’ve been surprised to see a smile break across the Overlord’s face because of happy news.

“Wh—what does it say?” I stammered.

His face screwed up into a frown, tightened, then smoothed back out.

“The captain sends words that he put in a request to erase our marriage ceremony from the ship’s log, as you and I were requesting an immediate annulment or a reversal of our vows.”

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