Page 77 of Havik: Warlord Brides
“You might not be so cold if you wore a shirt.”
“But then I could not do this.” He flexed his arms and pecs. Suddenly her mouth watered like freaking Niagara Falls.
“I’ll allow it,” she said, subtly wiping the corners of her mouth for humorous effect, despite wearing a helmet.
Havik grinned, all teeth and tusks, and turned his gaze back to the sunrise.
Thalia leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder and appreciated the solid weight of her husband. The words felt so strange to her. She rolled them around in her head. She never had a boyfriend or a serious relationship, but she jumped straight to marriage with the biggest, baddest red alien warrior around.
Regrets: zero.
The morning after he left his mark on her shoulder, they registered in a tiny office. If the clerk seemed surprised at Havik bringing in a new wife who was unlisted in the databank, no one said a word. A quick swab test determined their compatibility to be 99%, but Thalia didn’t care if it had been zero. Havik was her.
The future was nebulous, always shifting. Havik had his place in a new clan and informed her he wanted a dozen sons. She wasn’t against the idea of kids, but she wanted some time to get to know herself, maybe go to school and be a student. Kids could wait a few years. So much of her life had been about survival that it felt like pure decadence to do nothing more serious than sit on the beach and watch the sunrise.
She had never been to the ocean before, any ocean, and found herself enchanted by the sound of the waves and the play of light on the water. She was sure it smelled amazing, like salt and—okay, her creativity failed her. Fish? The river back in the city she grew up in had a fishy smell, so she just imagined that, multiplied by a ton. The armor filtered the air so the only thing she smelled inside the suit was her soap.
The ship needed a do-dad. Havik rattled off a very technical-sounding name while Thalia nodded. “Do what you gotta do,” she said, being a supportive-as-fuck wife. The technical what’s-it meant they had to stay on Rolusdreus while he hunted the part in a scrap yard and did the repair. Havik seemed to have enough mechanical knowhow to do the work with only the occasional call to Ren.
Basically, they were stuck on the hot, radioactive planet for a week. Havik rented a cottage in a settlement on the northern coast, which meant they had a beach honeymoon. The settlement was enclosed in a dome. To exit or enter the dome, a person had to pass through an energy barrier that cleansed them of radiation particles. Thalia was curious about the specifics, like how did the dome filter the air, but she was more interested in walks on the beach.
For the first time, she was on an alien planet. So far, her adventures in space had been ships, stations, more ships, and more stations. Boring. Well, except for when she got snookered by smugglers and put up for auction.
She loved discovering the subtle differences and the surprising similarities. Like gravity. Almost the same, believe it or not. The sky was a soft, hazy pink. The sun was yellow. The plants were green. Just when she forgot about being on another planet, she’d look up at the sky and her breath caught in her throat.
None of it compared to watching the morning sun rise over the water. She wished she could bury her feet in the sand but did not fancy getting radiation sickness. One day, she and Havik could go to a beach on a planet with a human-friendly environment. Maybe that planet could be Earth.
Thalia had been slowly warming up to the idea of returning to Earth. Not to stay. Hell no. But to visit. She never put flowers on the graves of her mother or Doc, but the idea now filled her with warmth.
“I require your assistance,” Havik said.
“Yeah? As much as I love being held captive in your bed, I need food. Breakfast before ravaging.” And she really, really enjoyed being his captive in bed, but woman could not live on love alone. At some point, she required coffee.
“Sustenance now, then you will accompany me to an appointment.”
She couldn’t argue with that. “Sounds mysterious. I’m in.”
The cottage was a quick walk up a narrow footpath up the hillside. In theory, walking through the energy barrier into the domed village cleaned the armored suit of radiation, but the suit went through an additional decontamination cycle. The cycle took several hours, which meant Thalia could only leave the dome once a day.
Inside the dome, Havik insisted that she wear a wide-brimmed hat to block the sun. Still in the fluttery, stars-in-her-eyes stage of their relationship, she found his overprotectiveness cute. At some distant point, it might wear on her nerves, but she enjoyed having him take care of her.
Yeah, that was what the cynical side of her warned, but Thalia suspected that she would never tire of being doted on. She soaked up his care and attention like the parched earth after a rainstorm.
For breakfast, Havik served a traditional Rolusdrean staple of a surprisingly spicy bean soup served with spongy bread. He sliced up a bitter green fruit she didn’t care for. Her experience with the local cuisine had been a success, other than Havik insisting on eating that bitter fruit with every meal. That, and the fermented yeasty paste he slathered on the bread. Ugh. She was all for new experiences and exploring food, but that stuff smelled rank. It was just as well that he limited his shipboard diet to instant noodles. She didn’t relish that sour yeast smell circulating through the ship.
“I don’t know why you lived off those instant noodles on the ship. You’re a good cook.”
“I am not. This is an easy meal to prepare.” He waved to the open soup carton on the counter.
“You don’t harvest heirloom, organic ingredients every morning at dawn? Gasp. I am shocked. Shook, even,” she said in a dry tone. A meal made for her by someone else, even just heating something right out of the package, was a meal made—or reheated, as the case may be—with love and therefore the best. “So, tell me about this mysterious appointment?”
“If you were eating instead of talking, you’d know by now.”
The big red tease. Still, Thalia slurped down her breakfast soup and shoved the bread in her mouth. “Ready.”
Despite being under a dome, the village had a quaint feel with narrow, twisty streets. Plaster walls were painted a riot of colors, everything from a soft white that glowed in the sun, to vivid blues, purples, and enchanting greens. No color seemed off-limits and it charmed Thalia to her core.
With no weather inside the dome, tables and chairs spilled onto the street. People seemed to live outside on patios, balconies, and gardens. Narrow alleys opened into unexpected courtyards, cluttered with greenery and benches.
