Page 1 of Matched to the Alien King
Chapter one
Nera
Therearedeadbodies,and there are really dead bodies. The difference? Big orange blobs that hover over the really dead ones, apparently. Blobs that look like misshapen pig heads with at least a dozen too many ears, some bad acne, and at least one midlife crisis.
Welcome to my current view…I guess? Yeah…either I was drunk, or I wasn’t drunk enough.
“Maxx, what is it?” I asked again in case he hadn’t heard me, or in case I hadn’t heard him. “Did the pig head get Emjay?”
My big purple alien king held me to him tighter and shook his head at Emjay’s floating body in the swimming pool. “No, I did. She came at me again. But we need to tell someone what’s happened here.”
“I can go to the crewmembers’ beach house—”
“Not by yourself, Nera,” he insisted. “Someone tried to poison you, remember?”
“Oh. That.” I sounded so blasé about it because the event hadn’t quite filtered through my thick skull and my dozens of questions yet. For one, why go through all the trouble of kidnapping me and throwing me on a reality TV show I never signed up for, only to try to kill me? “Wait,you’renot coming with me to the crewmembers’ beach house?”
He reached out to cradle my cheek in his huge palm, such a sweet gesture that my heart beat harder toward him. “Someone should stay here with Emjay.”
“Yeah. You’re right. Of course. Miekil?” When Maxx’s lightning bolt pupils flashed under the pool lights, I rushed to explain. “He’s smart enough to know what would happen to him if anything happens tome. Plus, he’s the one who saved me at dinner. I trust him to go with me.”
“Okay,” Maxx lamented with a tight growl.
I squeezed his hand for reassurance and then left him poolside as I went in search of Miekil in the contestants’ beach house. Of course the hundreds of years of hostility between the Xenoxx and the Killians couldn’t be erased in a single night, but hot damn. Some strides had been made. Okay, maybe more like baby steps, but at least they weren’t at each other’s throats right now.
I found Miekil in the kitchen with his head stuck in the refrigerator. Literally stuck. The tall green horns atop his head had caught on the edge of a shelf.
“Um, help?” he said, his head twisted at an uncomfortable-looking angle.
“I got you.” I maneuvered around his large frame and lifted the shelf up, or I tried to, but there was too much food stacked on top. My stomach growled at the wedges of cheese and fresh fruit and sliced meats, most of which I removed to help Miekil.
“Well, the good news is there’s no baryer fish in here,” he said.
Ah, yes, the food that was poisonous to humans. The food I’d nearly eaten just minutes ago.
“And the bad news is you got stuck?” Finally, I lifted the shelf and freed him.
“No.” He stood to his full height, at least seven feet, almost as tall as Maxx, and straightened the red silk sash around his otherwise bare green chest. “The bad news is there’s no baryer fish in here. I’m starving.”
I winced while we both piled the food back into the refrigerator. “Yeah, I kind of cut our dinner short, didn’t I?”
“It’s notyourfault someone tried to poison you, Nera. I was going to go check out the crewmembers’ beach house.”
“That’s where I’m headed too to tell them about Emjay.”
His eyebrows skyrocketed up to his hairline as we finished tossing in the food. “You’re coming with me? Does Maxx approve?”
“Uh, I do this thing called what I want.” It came out with more attitude than I intended, so I smiled to soften up my hangry snark a little. “But yes, he approves. In case someone decides to poison me again, you’re the protection while he stands watch over Emjay. And I’m so starving right now that I might justletsomeone poison me.”
He reached into the refrigerator again and, careful of his horns, pulled out some cheese slices for the both of us. “Here,” he said, handing me four. “And some for me too in case you thinkIpoisoned it.”
“I don’t,” I told him sincerely. “You’re one of the very few people on this planet I trust.”
He smiled then, a genuine one, and though it didn’t do a thing for me, someone, somewhere would be a very lucky person indeed to have his smile directed at them every single day.
While we stuffed our mouths with cheese, we slipped out through the back on our way to the crewmembers’ beach house.
Even though I’d just seen him, my pulse stalled at the sight of Maxx. Electric energy chased over my skin, peppering goose bumps up and down my arms despite the warm night.
