My beautiful Zara,
Your acceptance and marriage agreement have made me very happy. I can hardly wait for your arrival now that I know you are on your way. Your pledge to be my mate honors me deeply. I hardly dared to hope that you would accept me.
Now I will give my pledge to you. Dearest Zara, it is my honor and privilege to become your husband and lifemate, I promise that I will love and cherish you and mate with only you for the rest of my life. I will care and provide for you and our children as they come and do all in my power to respect and help you realize your dreams. I will be yours as long as I draw breath.
We will seal our vows with a kiss when you arrive my mate.
Korjh
Ellie drove Zara to the meeting spot in West Virginia in her SUV with two plastic trunks and two suitcases of everything she was taking with her to Modonne. It was just a rest stop along the West Virginia Turnpike. A big black Hummer with the windows blackened out was waiting there. A woman with close-cropped hair in a green uniform stood by the front bumper of the vehicle. She matched the photo that the Narovian Matchmaking Service sent her along with the vehicle license plate.
Zara got out of the car and approached her, “Penye Estiam?”
The other woman nodded. “Zara Maples? I will be your driver. Let’s get your things.”
Five minutes later they were speeding down the turnpike. Zara had barely had time to hug Ellie goodbye. Suddenly she was crying, and she didn’t know why. She wanted to be Korjh’s mate. She had signed the marriage contract. But now she was really doing it---leaving everyone and everything she had ever known---the only world she had ever known.
Penye didn’t say anything. Zara knew she could change her mind right up until the time she boarded the shuttle up to the starship that would take her to Modonne---to Korjh her new husband. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t do that to him.
That didn’t mean she had no doubts, that she wouldn’t miss her family and friends or the world she was leaving behind.
She had cried it out and dried her tears by the time they reached the helicopter pad that would take her to the secret Alliance Starbase hidden in the Monongahela Forest. On the helicopter ride, Zara closed her eyes and breathed deep calming breaths. When the copter landed, an automated cart unloaded her baggage and carried it to the waiting shuttle in the open hangar carved out from the side of the mountain.
There were five other women and two men waiting at the on-ramp as Zara went over to stand with them. An attractive young woman with short brown hair and hazel eyes came down the ramp with a bright smile.
“Welcome everyone, my name is Jenna Be’Kal, I am director of passenger relations, and yes, the captain is my husband. Come on up the ramp, and I will check you all in one at a time. When everyone is checked in, I will show you your seats.” Jenna strode up the ramp ahead of them and stopped in the doorway with her tablet.
Zara was assigned a cabin with a young woman from Baltimore. She was also on her way to Modonne to mate with a Narovian feline who had settled there. Naomi Nelson was from West Virginia about thirty miles from the Alliance Base there. A few generations back one of her ancestors had children with a Narovian feline.
Jenna seated them together on the shuttle to let them become acquainted. Zara felt better already knowing she was not the only Earther going to Modonne. She wasn’t the only one to gamble on love on another world out in the galaxy.
The trip up to the ship was mildly uncomfortable as they reached escape velocity. Once onboard the starship, Jenna Be’kal guided them to the observation bubble to let them all take a look at Earth from space. Everyone had seen pictures, but never first hand.
Next Jenna took them to their quarters before they broke orbit and started their journey to six different worlds where they would leave off and pick up passengers. She urged everyone to come to dinner or third meal to meet Captain Ba’Kal and the rest of the crew.
Captain Zeke Ba’Kal might have been a swashbuckler in another life. He was over six feet tall with longish pale blue hair and a neatly trimmed darker blue beard. Only his lime green cat eyes made him appear not entirely human. He was a Narovian feline humanoid.
Although he had told the story many times, he regaled the passengers with the story of how he found and rescued Jenna and five other Earth women from alien slavers. Of course, he embellished a bit, making it sound a little more dangerous than it was.
He had been reluctant to be mated at first because he didn’t think his itinerant lifestyle was conducive to a long-term relationship. But, once the hormones and pheromones start flowing, there is no resisting. Jenna assured Naomi that she would be pleased with her Narovian feline mate. None of them could miss the way the couple looked at each other.
It reminded Zara of the look in Korjh’s eyes in his videos. Some of the other women looked doubtful when she told them that Korjh was a former warrior and a cyborg. Zara could see they automatically thought ‘killer.’ Even Captain Ba’Kal looked doubtful.
Zara left the dining room that evening feeling uncertain about her decision to become Korjh’s bride. When she got back to her room, there was a new video waiting for her on the Alliance issue tablet that Korjh had arranged for her. She didn’t look at it right away as she sat on her lower bunk and hugged her legs, resting her chin on her knees.
What did they know? Korjh was thoroughly checked by the matchmaking service, the same as she was. That included a psych evaluation. Korjh would not have been allowed to settle on Modonne if he had been deemed dangerous. He would not have been approved for matching either. Narovian Match Making Service had been matching people from Earth for hundreds of years. They almost never got it wrong.
Zara sighed. There was no use worrying about other people’s misgivings about her decision to marry Korjh. None of them had met him or exchanged videomail with him for weeks as she had. They hadn’t looked into his eyes and seen the hope and longing. She couldn’t let other people’s misgivings rekindle her doubts.
Zara opened her purse and took out the new tablet. She almost dropped it when a life-sized hologram of Korjh displayed in front of her. Just as he started to speak, Naomi came into the room, and Zara pressed the stop button on the screen. Korjh’s hologram disappeared.
“Oh, my God! Was that him?” Naomi exclaimed.
“Yeah. I was expecting a video and got that. Obviously, Alliance tablets are higher tech than ours.” Zara told her.
“He’s gorgeous!” Naomi exclaimed. “Even more gorgeous than that hunky feline captain, even my Besdem is not that gorgeous.”
“He is gorgeous, but I saw what everybody thought when I said he is a cyborg. They think he is some kind of killing machine who can’t be trusted,” she said. “But he is a man with cybernetic enhancements.”
“Sounds like you’re having doubts,” Naomi said gently. “We all do. What we are doing is one giant leap of faith.”
Zara nodded.
“Even if you married him, you can still get out of it. Captain Zeke has a contract with the matchmaking service, and he makes the rounds about twice a year,” Naomi explained.
“But they said all sales were final,” Zara said.
“That just means you don’t get your money back. You can change your mind at any time,” Naomi said. “It was in the fine print at the end.”
“I didn’t read it all,” Zara admitted. “You only get one chance, unless your mate dies.”
“I read every word,” Naomi said. “Because with Narovian felines, there is no changing your mind once you meet them. The pheromones and hormones bind you biologically.”
“Well, I don’t want to change my mind. Korjh is right for me, I know it. I just start to have doubts when people give me that look when I tell them he is a cyborg.”
“That’s because they are bred and trained to be killing machines, to fight wars,” Naomi said. “Captain Zeke said some of them are just too dangerous to live in normal society. That’s probably one reason Korjh lives way out in the middle of nowhere.”
“He’s not too dangerous. It’s that people are scared of him,” Zara insisted. “It doesn’t matter what other people think. I’ve married him. A deal is a deal.”
“Good for you,” Naomi said sincerely. “I hope it works out for you. If you press that little icon on the bottom of the screen, that will take it out of hologram mode so you can listen and watch privately.”
“Thank you, Naomi. I prefer to see this privately,” Zara smiled, thinking she was going to like the other woman.