Page 18 of Alien Wants A Wife

I let out a shaky breath, repeating those words to myself over and over again.

I’m not alone.

I’m not alone.

“Do you have a ship? Do you have coordinates? No!” Mr. Smith declares triumphantly. “The brothers don’t have a ship either. So, if you want to return home, you’ll do what I say. And I say that you have to complete LOVE GALAXY!”

Chapter Seven

Harlee

All opposition dissolves quickly after that. Briar and Lydia are clearly unhappy, but I can tell they don’t want to do anything to anger Mr. Smith further on the off chance he cuts his losses and leaves us here, on Ril II, with little chance of returning home.

He’s the only one with a spaceship. He’s also the only one with Earth’s coordinates. Maybe we could recruit another transport ship, but the brothers aren’t positive anyone else could find Earth even if they wanted to help. The universe is a big place. We could search for a thousand years and still not find the Milky Way Galaxy.

Lydia, Briar and I trudge after Mr. Smith and Chloe as they lead us back to their spaceship for something he calls the ‘individual interviews’. Getting from the main house to his ship isn’t as simple as it sounds, and if I needed any convincing that staying on Ril II is a terrible idea then this short walk would have done the trick.

As soon as we step outside, we’re accosted by the wind. It full-body slams me, and I slide back a few inches.

Mr. Smith and Chloe don’t pause; they charge ahead, having nowhere near as difficult a time as I am battling the wind. It’s almost as if they’re wearing invisible armor or as if they’ve got super grip on their shoe soles.

I bow my head, pushing forward. The wind grabs at anything it can—my dress, my hair, the water in my eyes, the breath in my nose. It’s also filled with a super-fine grit that rubs against my skin, feeling horribly like a sandpaper exfoliator.

The landscape offers little comfort, bare as it is of trees and plants. I don’t think anything could grow out here. There’s just Killan’s house and Mr. Smith’s lone spaceship. Everywhere else I look is nothing but the distance (and blurry) horizon.

The first time I’d come outside, earlier today, I’d been too nervous about meeting the guys to give the landscape much consideration. Australia has deserts, even if I’ve never been in one. That’s what this has to be, I’d thought—a desert in the middle of a freak windstorm.

Now, I know better, and it’s so much worse than a simple desert. There are no sand dunes. No signs of life. The wind had rubbed the planet’s surface completely flat, and its ground is as hard as marble.

I practically trip upwards when I reach the ramp, stumbling into the belly of the spaceship with a growing sense of relief. I hate that I’m glad to be here, the ship that stole me from my home. But it’s a hundred times nicer inside than being outside.

I’m rubbing grit from my eyes and nose, craving water so I can wash out my mouth.

My hair’s a tangled mess, and I’m pushing sweaty strands away from my face, hot and panting after the effort of walking only about twenty meters.

Lydia’s coughing, ragged, hacking breaths, hands pressed to her knees, as her lungs expel the grit she breathed. Even Briar’s looking more defeated than I’ve ever seen her. She’s glaring at Mr. Smith’s back as he makes his way deeper into the spaceship, but tears are running down her cheeks.

I wouldn’t say she’s crying. Not judging by the way she’s angrily swiping at her red eyes. Her tears are probably thanks to the wind. But her shoulders are slumped, and she keeps glancing behind her, toward Killan’s house, like she wishes she was back there instead of here. Or like she wishes the brothers had come with us.

I also wish that, but Mr. Smith ordered them to stay in the kitchen.

I got the impression he didn’t want the six of us mingling without him to monitor everything. I got the impression he wants to ensure our compliance by keeping us separated—at least for the first few days of filming.

That Roan, Killan and Sorin all stopped arguing against Mr. Smith when Briar and Lydia did reinforced in my mind their commitment to helping us.

It’s almost scary how fast I went from beingoh my God, the brothers are alienstothe brothers are our alien friends.Now, the only person I’m still freaking out about is Mr. Smith himself—the arsehole who pretended he was a Human lawyer to trick me into trusting him.

“Come on, Harlee,” Chloe says, gesturing for me to follow her. “We’re interviewing you first.”

Of us Humans, she’s the least windswept. There’s enough gel in her blonde curls to make them impervious to the gale-force wind outside. Her glasses protected her eyes, and I think she has starched her clothes, making sure they’ll stay wrinkle-free.

I’m impressed. She really knows how to dress for the occasion.

“Harlee can’t go on camera looking like this,” Briar says, her voice raspy from the wind. “Give us a minute to fix her hair.” And she pulls a comb out of her pocket. It’s identical to the one I’d used a few hours earlier, when I’d fixed my hair after the first time I’d struggled through the wind to Killan’s house.

“Good idea,” Lydia agrees, finally straightening. She’s pale, her lips almost white, but she gives me a tight smile when I meet her eyes.

“Two minutes.” Chloe holds up two fingers, demonstrating she means business, and then heads down the corridor. Some doors are already open, including the one Chloe walks through, following Mr. Smith. Other doors are locked, and there aren’t any handles or anything else to indicate how we can open them.

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