Chapter Sixteen

ELLE

I clapped a hand over my mouth the minute the words were out, though it was far too late to take them back.

Ashlyn was giggling in the corner, trying not to laugh too loudly. Nathaniel looked less cocky than before but not exactly angry, either.

“Maybe we should go talk on the deck?” He reached out a hand to me. “That way, we won’t wake Ayrie.”

I nodded and crawled out of bed, following them up to the deck. My muscles were so stiff and sore that I could hardly walk. I felt like a shambling mummy following the Vandwan family. I guessed it didn’t matter. I was alive, and I wasn’t going to complain about a few sore muscles.

The world looked washed clean in the morning. There was no sign of the terrible storm that had almost killed us. It was hard to believe so much had changed in a day.

As soon as we were on deck, Ashlyn surrendered to her laughter, bending over and holding her stomach. When she finally regained control over herself, she gave me a conspiratorial glance.

“That’s what I expected too, right? He had too much education and was a research scientist. He’s got to be a nerd.”

“What’s a nerd, Daddy?” Nathaniel’s face turned red at the little girl’s question.

“Kathryn, I’ll tell you later. It’s a grown-up thing.” Kathryn quickly lost interest in all the adults. She skipped over to watch a crewman raise a sail and began talking a mile a minute to him while he worked. Ashlyn looked at her fondly.

I turned to Nathaniel. “That was incredibly rude of me. You rescued us, and I had the nerve to call you a terrible name. Please forgive me.”

He cut me off with a laugh of his own. “Don’t worry about it. It’s a common first impression.”

“You love the attention, Nathaniel Lachlan.” Ashlyn turned to me. “Appearances can be deceiving. When you meet him, he turns out to have enough charm and charisma to make grown women swoon.”

“I thought Daddy didn’t do those things anymore?” Kathryn had started listening to us again.

“I’m not a pirate anymore, Kitty.” Nathaniel turned to Ashlyn, who still had a mischievous look on her face. “I don’t make women swoon anymore, either. I can’t help it if I’m devilishly handsome.” He gave Ashlyn a smoldering look.

Ashlyn’s cheeks turned pink, and she changed the subject. “How did you end up in the ocean? Elle, you must be tired still. Have a seat.”

She pointed to an area on the deck with folding chairs. The three of us sat down. Nat leaned forward, eagerly listening to me.

“Ayrie is my husband.”

I saw Nathaniel try to look at my back. “I thought there weren’t any women from Auxem left. Did they find a cure?”

Ashlyn’s horrified expression suggested she hadn’t heard about the problem. I explained quickly about the virus taking its toll on the Auxem women. The men had come to Earth looking for women to save their people, but they had recently discovered the men were also susceptible and the virus would take their fertility. We were heading back to Auxem with the initial shipment of women. If everything went well, Earth would send more to help the Auxem repopulate their world.

“You’re saying you’re not from Auxem.” Nathaniel had his arms crossed over his chest.

“No, Earth is my home planet.”

Ashlyn smiled. “I’m human, too.”

“How did you two meet each other? How could someone from Earth end up all the way on Vandwa?”

Ashlyn blushed. “Nat ordered me through a company called TerraMates.”

“It was the best decision of my life.” Nathaniel took his wife’s hand and squeezed it. They clearly loved each other. Even though I knew Sophie’s company was good, seeing an arranged marriage with fantastic results gave me hope for my relationship with Ayrie.

“Really? My sister-in-law’s the daughter of the TerraMates owner. They’re the ones in charge of sending women to Auxem.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Ashlyn looked scared. “I can’t believe Mrs. Lynch has a daughter. She doesn’t seem like the kind of person to get married herself.”

I tilted my head from side to side, considering what she was saying. “She might come across as tough if she’s interviewing you. But she has a sweet and kind side to her. Mrs. Lynch helped me get into the trial when they shouldn’t have accepted me.”

“I suppose.” I could tell by the look on Ashlyn’s face that she would never believe me.

“Sophie says that if the girls can’t handle a grumpy old lady during the interview, they’re never going to manage to live on an alien world while being married to a stranger.”

Ashlyn mulled it over. “She makes sense, I guess. I’m interrupting you. Go on, Elle.”

A sailor brought us a couple of trays filled with food. One had things I’d never seen before, and the other held food from Earth. My eyes lit up with surprise. “Are those crackers?”

“Even though I’ve been here for years, I don’t like eating Vandwan food all the time.” Ashlyn helped herself to some bread and cheese. “Thanks, Vess.” She nodded at the huge, muscled sailor who had brought us the trays.

“We don’t want to talk about us. We want to talk about you.” Nat gave Ashlyn a mildly irritated look. She stuck out her tongue at him.

“Ayrie’s my husband now, and we’re one of the first couples. Vandwa is a fuel and supply station for us. We came down to make sure everything ran smoothly.” I looked at Ashlyn and Nathaniel as I took a quick bite of bread and cheese. “We weren’t expecting one of the last-minute details to be our paralytic converter failing. Our shuttle crashed.”

“Holy shit!” Ashlyn shouted.

“Watch your language!” Ashlyn blushed and gave her husband a black look before glancing at her daughter. The little girl was blissfully unaware of our conversation as she played with the ropes.

“You seem to have survived.” Nathaniel put his elbows on his knees and leaned forward.

“I thought it was going to be a struggle to live, but parts of it felt like a vacation.” I explained how we had reached the island and had spent a few days there.

“But why didn’t Ayrie fly you guys off the island immediately?” Ashlyn drew her fair eyebrows together. “Wouldn’t that have made more sense than wasting your time out there?”

“I didn’t know Ayrie could fly at the time. After he told me, we flew out of there, but we went directly into a storm.”

“Nat, I said I saw smoke on the horizon.”

“I know.” Nathaniel rubbed his hand over his face like this was a familiar conversation. “You were right. But the weather was so bad I didn’t know what to do.”

“I thought the smoke might be you guys. We’ve been searching for you since you went missing, but we couldn’t find you.” Ashlyn looked slightly ashamed. “Ayrie’s brother asked us for help. I did see some humans falling out of the clouds,” she added.

“Ashlyn, there are people in the universe who are not human.”

She corrected herself. “Humanoid shapes, then. Nat didn’t want to take his ship into the storm.”

“I wouldn’t if it were my ship.”

“You were lucky we reached you in time. You wouldn’t have lasted long if the servarrs decided to attack you.”

Nat interrupted her. “Once we found them, they were safe. We were blasting the servarrs with sonic waves underwater and stunning them.”

“Are those the things that were swimming around us in the water?”

Ashlyn shuddered. “Imagine a shark that’s almost all teeth. They’re one of the nastiest predators on this side of The Barrier.”

I started to feel sick. “It’s a good thing you were using the sonic cannon, then.”

“Ashlyn believed there were people in the water. We thought it was better to be safe than sorry.” He turned back to his wife. “We would have protected them from a distance until we reached them.”

“I know, but what if we hadn’t found them in time? We might not even have found their bodies.” She stopped. Her eyes were full of tears. “I’m sorry. I’m a little hormonal.” Ashlyn put her hand on her perfectly flat belly.

“I knew you shouldn’t have come on this trip, Ash.”

“Stop it. I’m perfectly fine. I can’t help it if I cry easily right now.”

“I guess not.” Nathaniel gazed at her affectionately.

I was starting to feel like a third wheel. “I’d like to go check on Ayrie, if you don’t mind, and get a little more rest.”

“Of course. I’m sorry. We shouldn’t have kept you up here talking. Nathaniel, we completely forgot our manners!”

“No, no. I needed to talk to someone, but now I’m worn out.”

“Take as much time as you need.” Nathaniel patted me on the back. “If this wind keeps up, we’ll be back at the house by nightfall.”

“Okay. I’ll let you know if Ayrie wakes up. Thank you both so much. We would be dead without your help.”

I went to the set of stairs leading down into the hold. I only made one wrong turn finding my way to Ayrie’s side. When I arrived, he was still out cold. I crawled in next to him, ready to sleep again. I nestled in and fell asleep instantly.

AYRIE

Apparently, I wasn’t dead.

Elle had called me an angel earlier. Elle! The thought raced through me. I sat up, immediately hitting my head against the ceiling. I groaned and felt my forehead, which was already starting to swell underneath my fingers. I lay down again, feeling like an idiot.

“Ayrie? Are you awake now?” It sounded like Elle, so somehow we were still together, and she hadn’t left me. Yet. I slowly opened my eyes, keeping one hand against my head.

“Elle?” My voice sounded so hoarse that I could hardly recognize it. She held a glass to my lips, and I greedily drank until she took it away.

“Don’t drink too much at once. Ashlyn said it could make you sick.”

“Ashlyn?” Why did that name seem familiar?

“They rescued us. Why are you holding your head?” She pried my hand away. “It’s just a bump, you big baby. I’ll get some ice for it.”

She sat up in bed and was about to go before I stopped her from leaving by grabbing her arm. “No. Stay with me instead.”

Elle sat down next to me, gingerly kissing my head.

“I didn’t get an injury from the ocean, but I hurt myself by sitting up too quickly.” I shook my head. “The ceiling in here seems unusually low.”

“That’s because we’re not in a building. We’re on your friend’s ship.”

“Nathaniel?”

She nodded. “You’ve been sleeping for quite a while, so I imagine you need to go to the bathroom, get something to eat, talk to Nat and Ashlyn...” Elle started to get up again. I blocked her.

“Elle, just come here.” I opened my arms.

She stopped talking and stared at me. Elle gave an embarrassed smile and lay down, nuzzling her face against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her and closed my eyes.

I was in heaven.

After a few minutes of enjoying the feeling of her in my arms, I had to speak. “You saved me.”

“You saved us.”

“We saved each other.”

“I didn’t know I could swim that long, Ayrie. And it seemed like you would never stop flying.”

“We both survived. I guess we don’t have to get into an argument over which one of us saved the other.”

“No, we don’t.” Her voice sounded muffled because she was talking into my chest. “We don’t need any arguments today.”

She jumped up when we heard a knock at the door. Nat was yelling through the wall. “Where’s the guy who almost got himself killed flying through a storm?”