Page 11 of Matched to the Alien King
“Cut!” someone shouted.
“I’m not doing my results intro again,” Pete protested behind me. “It was golden. EvenIgot chills.”
“Who was it?” the Killian, standing a few chairs to my left and also facing the jungle, demanded. “Is anyone missing?”
Beyond him on the female side, stood Nera, sensing the tension and facing the rest of us with wide eyes.
“Uh, Maxx?”
“Someone screamed from the jungle,” I explained, remembering her hearing problem.
Immediately, she pulled a gun from…somewhere and aimed it with steady precision at the jungle. No one else seemed to notice, their attention riveted to the wall of thick greenery. The long red strips of her dress breezed up and around her head, giving her an ethereal, deadly quality.
Exactly like the Xenoxx warrior goddess, minus the scales.
Fuxx, she was beautiful.
She caught me staring and hiked up a slender shoulder. “What? Someone’s trying to kill me, remember?”
“Where were you hiding that gun?”
She offered me a little smile, the brazen glint in her brown eyes hardening everything south of my belt all over again.
This woman would be the death of me. And I couldn’t wait.
“Um, the contestants are all here,” a female crewmember said as she tapped on a holographic laptop. “Other than…well, you know. Emjay. I’ve got the crew’s roster right here.”
“Start calling names,” Umo demanded, plugging a lit e-cigar into his ugly mouth. “I want everyone accounted for.”
“With all due respect, sir,” the crewmember began, “none of us would dare wander off in the jungle, especially during film—”
“Just do it!” he shouted, his little orange body practically vibrating with rage.
“Yup,” she said in a shaky voice and then started calling out names.
“We should go in and do a sweep,” the Killian muttered.
“Knock yourself out,” I told him.
“The more eyes, the better.” He pinned me with a dark look. “Unless you’re too scared.”
I scoffed at him and rolled my eyes so hard I practically did cartwheels. “I’ve visited this jungle more than my fair share. The caterpillars are actually quite lovely. I wouldn’t recommend the exploding spaceships though.”
The Killian blinked. “What?”
“No, no one’s going in there,” Umo shouted as he came up the stairs, smoke curling up behind him, “because it sounds like no one’s coming out.”
Nera watched his mouth move carefully, never once breaking her deadly warrior stance. “Even if it’s one of your own? Because if it is, that ugly smell that’s wafting up your nose? That’s a lawsuit. Not your cigar smoke.”
Umo shook his little orange head like he was trying to unscrew it and puffed smoke even harder. “The crew signed contracts.”
“Yeah, for accidental dismemberment,” Pete told him incredulously. “What if it was me in there? The star of your show?”
“It’s not.” Umo strode past him and patted him on his abs. “And you’renot. Look at the numbers, kid.”
Except for Nera, everyone turned to the holographic screen at the front of the platform, the thing we’d all been glued to before we heard the screams. Some of the numbers by our names had stopped scrolling.
Nera had over four million votes.
