The journey was long and boring. Being locked up in a vessel in the middle of the outer space was exciting for the first few days, but after that, Aliyah got tired of doing and seeing the same things.
To her surprise, she was the last woman on the vessel. Apparently, Sumirion, the planet she was being taken to, was quite far from Earth and though they were traveling at speed unknown to men, it still took them several days, or rotations as they called them, to get there.
When they finally reached Sumirion, Aliyah had to admit she was a bit anxious. They hadn’t shown her any picture of her future husband, and though she had asked them a lot about the Sumirions, the Cetians had been quite sparse with their answers. They mostly told her the planet was inhabited by several species and they didn’t have information on the man she was to marry to answer her question.
She guessed that explained the expensive dowry she had been paid.
When she was finally invited to disembark the vessel, one of the Cetians accompanied her to the docking bay.
“I was told an emissary will come for you. This person will take you to the place where you will meet your future husband, and he should be able to tell you more about him,” the Cetian told her, as he guided her out of the vessel.
She nodded and with trembling legs, followed him out. From what she had seen, the planet was quite similar to Earth, and its atmosphere was rich in oxygen, which was certainly a relief.
They had arrived late in the night, and the place was almost deserted.
“Normally, we would have waited till the morning to introduce you to the person waiting for you, but we were told the man has been requested to leave as soon as we landed, so you won’t be able to see much of the planet when you first step out,” the Cetian explained.
“It’s alright. I’ll have the rest of my life to get to know it,” she said, with a faint smile.
“That’s the spirit,” the man cheered her words and guided her towards a lonely man standing at one end of the docking bay.
Vrak realized his communication device was buzzing when he moved the bales of hay from the vehicle into the barn. He had taken it out of his pocket when he started to move the bales and hadn’t paid much attention to it ever since. Winter was coming earlier this year, and he had a lot of work to do if he wanted to keep his animals safe.
With an annoyed sigh, he picked the device and looked at the screen to check who was calling.
“Kahm… how are you?” he greeted his friend.
“Vrak, I’m sorry to call you with such short notice, especially when I know you’re busy with the cattle, but I have a small emergency,” his friend said.
“What’s the problem?” he asked, getting straight to the point.
“I was supposed to go to the main docking bay to pick up the bride for the Sumirion warrior, but Selena isn’t feeling very well, and I don’t want to leave her alone,” Kahm explained.
“Do you want me to pick this woman up?” he asked, with a deep frown. The idea wasn’t very pleasant, but he couldn’t let his friend down.
“Yes!” the relief in his friend’s tone told him all he needed to know. “I really would appreciate if you could go and pick her up. You can bring her to my ranch, or you could take her directly to the meeting point,” his friend explained. “There’s a storm coming, and it would be better if you could get her to the border with Sumitera before it hits Terrion.”
“There’s no sense in taking her to your place, especially if Selena isn’t feeling well and the storm is coming,” he pointed out. If the storm was as powerful as predicted, there was a huge possibility they would be unable to communicate for at least a few days. “Warn the Sumirion warrior and send me the coordinates of the meeting point and I’ll make sure she gets there on time,” he assured him.
“Thank you, my friend, I owe you one.”
“I’ll make sure to collect,” he teased him.
They chatted for a few more seconds, and when he ended the call, there was a message from Kahm with the details.
The woman’s vessel would be arriving in a couple of hours, right after the sun went down, so he didn’t have much time to finish his job, take a shower and go downtown to the main docking bay.
He arrived just in time to watch the vessel dock, and he warned the officer he was there to pick up the passenger.
“Were you told to come?” the Cetian officer asked, with a cold tone. “The passengers usually leave the vessel in the morning, not right after they arrive,” he explained.
“Well, there’s a storm coming, and I’m here now, so I would appreciate if you would warn the crew I’m here to pick the passenger up. I don’t have time to wait until the morning,” he explained with a cold tone, towering over the other man. With his huge frame, it was an easy deed. He knew his presence unnerved most people and this time it wasn’t any different.
The man took a step back and cleared his throat, clearly nervous. “Certainly… I’ll warn them immediately,” he walked away, and Vrak paced the small room impatiently.
With the storm coming, there was no way he could have waited for the following morning. He needed to get the woman to the meeting point and deliver her to the anxious groom as soon as possible. Though he had left his androids taking care of his cattle, he wanted to be back in time to check on everything before the storm hit.
“The passenger will be here in a few minutes, citizen Vrak,” the Cetian officer announced, standing a few steps away from him.
A hint of a smile cracked Vrak’s lips. By now, he should be used to people’s reaction to his presence, but he wasn’t. Back on his home planet, he was just another normal guy, even females were big, strong and muscled like he was, and their huge black horns were seen as a sign of status, not as a threat, like most people not from Exterra saw them.
He had been a warrior most of his life and the scars from those days were still visible on his sturdy body, but nowadays, his only fight was with his cattle, to keep them where they were supposed to be. People shouldn’t be that scared of him, but most of them were.
He was sure the woman he was picking up would be terrified, considering how the other two human females he knew had reacted to his presence the first time they had met him, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Running his fingers down his long, dark hair, he waited impatiently for the woman to show up.
The closer she got to the man waiting for her, the faster her heart drummed in her chest. She had never seen a man so big as the one in front of her.
He had to be way over seven feet tall, and his whole body was massively built, with golden skin that shined under the yellowish light of the docking bay. It was impossible not to notice the tattoos all over his chest and arms, some amazing tribal symbols that did nothing to diminish his appeal.
But his most amazing feature was certainly his horns. Dark and shining like the purest obsidian, they reminded her of the ones she had seen on a painting of the Minotaur. Not that he looked like a bull; his horns and his obvious strength were the only features that resembled the creature.
By the time she reached him, the drumming of her heart was deafening, and despite her efforts to slow it down, she wasn’t able to. The weirdest thing was she wasn’t afraid of him. He awakened a maddening cocktail of feelings inside her, but she was sure fear wasn’t one of them.
“Aliyah, allow me to introduce you to citizen Vrak. He’s here to take you to where your future husband waits for you,” her guide explained, in a courteous tone.
She stretched out her hand automatically to greet him, just to pull it back, when she remembered they had been warned people around this side of the universe wasn’t too keen of personal contact with strangers.
She cleared her throat, nervous. “It’s a pleasure meeting you, sir,” she greeted him.
The man only nodded before he turned to the Cetian next to her. “Is that all her luggage?” he asked, pointing at the couple of suitcases she had brought with her.
“Yes, that’s all.” He took a few forms from the officer and handed them to Vrak. “Please read them and sign them. Our client is citizen Kahm, but since he sent you in his place, we would like to have your signature on the forms,” the man informed and after quickly glancing at the forms, Vrak signed them and returned them to him.
“Thank you. Can we go now?” he asked, in a forbidding tone.
He had barely looked at her, and she guessed he had been coerced to pick her up.
“Yes, of course.” He turned to look at Aliyah. “I wish you a pleasant life in Sumirion. Remember, you can contact our agency if you need, but we’re sure you’ll have a wonderful life.”
Chapter Four
Aliyah nodded. “Thank you, very much,” she said and turned around to follow Vrak, who had picked up her bags and was already reaching the exit.
She reached him when he was putting away her bags in some sort of vehicle. She guessed it flew or at least hovered, since there were no wheels on it and sighed, feeling a bit excited about all the amazing things she had seen so far.
“There’s a storm coming so I would appreciate if you could stop dreaming and enter the vehicle,” the man grumbled, as he waited by the vehicle in front of her, with the door opened.
Flushing a bit, she rushed inside of the vehicle, sitting on the comfortable seat. A few seconds later, the man was next to her pressing a few buttons and driving away from the docking bay.
The minute they reached the outside, the man next to her cursed.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, a bit startled with the violence of the man’s tone.
“It’s already snowing. I doubt we’ll be able to reach the meeting point before the storm hits Terrion,” he explained, his eyes locked on the road.
She frowned. “Is there a place where I can stay during the storm? Perhaps a hotel or something of the sort?” she asked, a bit worried too.
“I have no time to take you anywhere now. You can stay at my place. I’ll let Kahm know, so he can warn your future husband,” he replied, applying more speed to the hovering vehicle.
She opened her mouth to protest, but the stern expression on the man’s face dissuaded her. He wasn’t in the mood for protests.
Vrak was upset and not only because the storm was coming a lot faster than predicted. Something unsettled him. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew for sure it had something to do with the woman sitting next to him. She wasn’t anything like what he had been expecting.
Melanie and Selena were small, delicate women. The woman next to him was tall and delicate wasn’t a word he would use to describe her. Her blond hair, intense blue eyes, and fair skin were striking, and his body had reacted to her presence with a hunger he didn’t recall ever feeling regarding a female before.
The idea of having her under his roof while the storm lasted was torturous. But taking her to the meeting point would be senseless and dangerous. They would never get there before the storm hit and by then it would be impossible for the Sumirion warrior to cross the strait between the continents to pick her up.
Of course, he could take her to Kahm’s ranch, but then he would be stranded there since his friend’s property bordered the strait. He might be able to get there, but he wouldn’t be able to go back home, and the last thing he wanted was to be away from his own ranch during the storm, so he really didn’t have a choice but to take the woman to his place.
He would have to deal with the strange feelings she aroused in him. After all, she was promised to another man, a Sumirion warrior, no less. He had worked too hard on his ranch to risk losing all he had worked for, on this planet over a female.
He hurried to his ranch, eager to check on his animals and get as far away as possible from the woman. Hiding his reaction to her presence was a bit hard when all he was wearing was a pair of slim pants that clung to his body like a second skin.
Aliyah glanced at the man next to her and sighed silently. He wasn’t very happy, she could tell that much, but she had no idea why. She wanted to ask, but his stern expression didn’t invite friendly chitchat, so she decided to stay silent, taking in the landscape of the planet, lightened by two full moons, though they were slowly being hidden by heavy clouds.
She knew, from the informative chats they had on their trip there, the planet only had two continents, Terrion and Sumitera. They were in Terrion right now, a place inhabited by people from other planets that ran all sorts of ranches and provided food to the nearest planets, with soils not as fertile as the ones here.
Sumitera, on the other hand, was populated only by Sumirion and no one knew much about them. They lived secluded from the rest of the planet and didn’t encourage any kind of communication with the people on Terrion.
Considering what she knew about the planet, it wasn’t a surprise to see that the city where the vessel had docked was small and that it was surrounded by vast fields, clearly used for agriculture.
She had been told her future husband was Sumirion warrior, so she guessed he lived in Sumitera. Vrak would take her to the border to introduce her to the man. She had to admit she wasn’t in a hurry to get there.
Meeting the man, she would have to spend the rest of her life with, on a strange planet, surrounded by strangers wasn’t something one would look forward to. Of course, she had agreed to it, but that didn’t make it any easier.
She found herself praying the storm would last a few days. She knew it was a selfish pray, but she really needed the time to find out more about the man she was marrying.
After what felt like a couple of hours at high speed, the man left the motorway they had been on ever since they had left the city and turned into what looked like a private road. It was snowing a lot more, and their visibility was starting to be affected by it, even when the snow melted the moment it touched the windshield.
A few minutes later, a huge metallic gate opened up to allow them in, and she realized they were about to arrive at his place. It still took them a few minutes to get to the house, and by the time he stopped the vehicle in front of the building’s main door, the storm had intensified, and when she stepped out of the vehicle, the cold surprised her so much, it took her breath away.
He quickly invited her in, opening the huge door.
“Please, make yourself at home. My assistant will take you to a room, and I’ll see you later,” he spat at her, turning around and disappearing out of the door.
“What the hell…” she muttered, astonished by his rude behavior.
She guessed he had to check on his ranch, but he could have spared a couple of minutes to introduce her to his assistant.
Sighing, she looked around, not sure what to do. The place was huge. Considering his size, it didn’t surprise her, and as far as she could see, it looked like the typical single male’s house, with very minimalist decoration and only the most necessary of furniture.
She didn’t see a single piece merely decorative, and she wondered if it had to do with him or his culture.
“Greetings, may I help you?” a voice behind her startled her.
She turned around and looked at the woman standing in front of her with awe. She had no idea what species she was, with her light blue skin, humanoid features and an exquisitely built body, but there was no way of denying the woman’s beauty. Her hair was dark blue, and she had a furry tail of the same color. Her eyes were of a striking silver grey, and she was wearing a loose tunic of the same color.
Closing her mouth and taking a deep breath, she pasted a smile on her face. “Hi… my name is Aliyah Boyum. Citizen Vrak picked me up at the docking bay, and he was supposed to take me to a meeting point on the strait, but the storm changed our plans,” she explained, wriggling her hands.
“Welcome, citizen Aliyah. My name is Asim, and I’m citizen Vrak’s assistant,” the other woman replied, but the smile on her face insinuated she was a lot more than that to the man. “I’ll take you to a guest room. This storm is here to stay, and we’ll be stranded for a few days.”
“Thank you, you’re very kind.”
“Please, follow me,” she instructed, walking up the stairs.
With a slight frown, Aliyah followed the other woman to the upper floor and down the hallway. At the end of it, the woman opened up a door and invited her to go in.