Page 15 of Married to the Alien Mountain Man

Blast it all. But I did want her to say yes. Yes to me.

Even if it was just for now.

Even if it was fake.

She did not say yes. But she did not say no, either. When she tipped those sweetly sorrowful human eyes back up to me, she simply said, “My name is Jaya.”

7

JAYA

There was a very good chance that this was going to come back to bite me in the butt in a major way, but I didn’t automatically turn down Oaken’s offer of marriage. Instead, I asked if I could see his house and meet any of the other human women around here before I made my decision. I wanted to make sure the other women who’d been here for a while still had all their fingers, teeth, and faculties, and that they weren’t strapped to a breeding bench in a barn stall somewhere, being used as pets or ponies or hucows.

But Oaken eagerly agreed to show me his place, and even the warden – who didn’t seem like the sort to budge about anything he didn’t want to – said he’d be happy to introduce me to his human wife, Tasha. I figured those were all fairly good green flags. Hell, even Oaken himself was green all over, apart from his black hair, white eyes, and the dark gash of a wound on his noggin, of course.

Maybe it was a sign.

Or maybe the atmosphere here didn’t have enough oxygen after all, and my starving brain had decided to give up and go loopy on me. Looking for omens in something as goofy as the verdant hue of my maybe-soon-to-be-fake-husband’s hide.

Either way, I found myself on the back of the warden’s hover-vehicle – which he called a slicer – speeding through the mountains towards Oaken’s property. I’d assumed Oaken would come on the slicer, too, especially considering the limp I’d noticed before. But he’d said something about needing to walk back so he could “go get Nali,” whoever that was. Besides, once I was on the slicer behind Warden Tenn, it became clear that Oaken, with his trunk-like thighs, would not have fit with us.

I felt a twinge of guilt as I watched him get smaller and smaller through the visor of the helmet Warden Tenn had lent me.

During the ride, Lala was a hard little ball in my pocket, her legs folded neatly into grooves on her body. She’d scuttled out of the ship and latched onto me before I could leave without her. Not that I would have. She was my only real friend out here, and if things went sour, she’d be able to get back to the ship and try to tap into a comms signal to let somebody out there know I needed help.

Even having Lala with me, I was nervous. I’d vowed not to leave my ship, and when I’d said it, I’d meant that I wouldn’t go off-world unless it was on theLavariya.But even this small trip away from her had me chewing on the inside of my cheek with anxiety.

Luckily, we didn’t seem to go far. The slicer was fast, sure, but it was only a few minutes of speeding through the mountains before we emerged into a larger span of a lush, grassy valley. And in the valley, there were buildings. Simple but well-built wooden structures that looked to be a couple of houses separated by a stream, as well as at least one barn, some sheds, stalls, and various fenced-in pastures that held animals I couldn’t see very well from the slicer.

As far as I could tell, the sheds and stalls were blissfully empty of any chained-up human ladies. So, that was something.

“Here we are,” Warden Tenn said after he’d landed the slicer and powered down the engine. “This is all Oaken’s property. He’s resided here since he was brought to this world as a child.”

“Hold on. As a child?” I asked, yanking off the helmet. “I thought this was a penal colony.”

Warden Tenn dismounted and took the helmet from me. His voice betrayed nothing as he flatly replied, “It is.”

OK. Well, that was all kinds of messed up. I thought Oaken was some kind of accessory to murder. But it was sounding more and more like he’d watched someoneelsecommit murder when he was only a child, and had basically been banished for it. I found myself craning my neck to look back the way we’d come, but Oaken hadn’t yet appeared on foot.

“All the convicts came here as children,” Warden Tenn went on. He held out a hand to help me get down, but I ignored it. The slicer was big, but I didn’t find it too difficult to swing my leg over the seat and hop down on my own.

“That doesn’t make it any better,” I said. “In fact, that kind of makes it worse.”

Warden Tenn flicked his tail in a shrug-like gesture.

“It saved them from the mines,” he replied. “And I think most of them have made peace with their lots in life. Especially now that the bride program is underway.”

I snorted at that. Suddenly, the ooey-gooey hope I’d seen shining out of Oaken’s big, white eyes when he’d proposed made a hell of a lot more sense. He’d been here practically his entire life, cut off from his old world, his family, and, presumably, females of any sort. Getting to marry a human must have been just about the most exciting thing in the universe.

That twinge of earlier guilt very rudely turned into a full-on cramp.

“Silar, Fallon, Garrek… I think they’d all even describe themselves as happy, now that they are married,” Warden Tenn said.

“And what about you?” I asked, running my hands through my hair, made flat and sweaty by the helmet and the heat. “You said you’re married to a human as well?”

For the first time since I’d met him, Warden Tenn smiled. His face went from imposing and authoritative to so sincerely and openly warm that, for a moment, I didn’t even recognize him.

“Are you asking if, now that I am married, I am happy?”

---