Epilogue
Aton
Two months later
“The pizza will be here in thirty minutes,” my mate said. “You don’t mind staying in and watching TV?”
“Are you kidding?” Toni and I often went out with friends—Maridelle, Rojak and his mate, Kyra, or Lexi and Darak—and I enjoyed their company, but my favorite times were when we were alone. It didn’t matter what we did; being with her filled me with contentment.
I patted the sofa cushion, and she kicked her shoes off and settled next to me. “What a week! I’m so glad it’s Friday,” she said. “How was your day?”
“First things first.” I kissed her, a long, lingering one to demonstrate how much I loved her, how much I missed her every second we were apart. She stroked my horns, and a hot shaft of need blazed through me. I growled and nipped at her lip. “Unless you want to shock the delivery man, you shouldn’t do that.”
She giggled. “Okay…I’ll be good—until the food gets here.” She tilted her head. “So, give me something to focus on besides jumping your bones. How was work?”
“I referred two more people to Maridelle.”
“That’s five this week,” she commented with a sigh. “It appears as though her predictions were correct. More and more aliens are running afoul of Extraterrestrial Immigration.”
“When I first started bartending at the Stellar Dust Bin, I’d hear about one to two cases a week. It has increased, but I don’t know if it’s because people have come to trust me with their stories, or if immigration is policing more.”
“Probably both.”
I’d needed something to occupy myself while Toni worked, so I’d gotten hired at the bar where I’d met Rojak. I mixed drinks for people and listened to their stories. The ones who were having difficulties with the law, I referred to Maridelle.
After the close call Toni and I had had, I was sympathetic to the plight of my fellow extraterrestrials. They’d come searching for love and a new life, but it didn’t always go smoothly for them. Thanks to Maridelle and Andrea, Toni and I had been fortunate. My Earth citizenship had been finalized, and nobody could question my right to be here.
“No problems with Phillip?” I asked.
“Just the usual.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “Maridelle called the other day to confirm I still wanted to proceed with the plan to neutralize his influence. I told her I did. He’s bad news—let’s talk about something more cheerful.”
“How about how much I love you?”
“Oh, that’s a good topic.” She grinned, and then her eyes got serious. She stroked my cheek. “I love you, too. So much.” Her gaze slid over my body. “I should have waited to order the food.”
My horns throbbed. “Just so you know, you’ll be eating cold pizza.”
“Just the way I like it.” She leered at me. “How about a little TV while we wait?”
“Good idea.” I watched a lot of television and movies; they helped me to learn Earth customs and colloquialisms. I grabbed the remote and flipped to Terran News Network. Reporters and camera operators swarmed around a handcuffed man being led away by police. He bowed his head, averting it from the media.
Toni jackknifed. “Oh my god! That’s Phillip! Turn the sound up!”
I cranked the volume.
“After a two-month investigation, authorities today arrested New Los Angeles attorney Phillip Edward Markham IV on charges of extraterrestrial trafficking,” the newscaster said. “Markham has been a vocal opponent of alien immigration.”
The video switched to another man descending the steps outside a building I recognized as the courthouse. News crews surrounded him, too. “My client categorically denies all the charges.” The man kept walking as he spoke.
“That’s Phillip’s attorney,” Toni said. “This is serious.” She shook her head. “I had no idea Maridelle would go to this extreme.”
A reporter shoved a microphone into the attorney’s face. “Sir, the prosecutor’s office says they have computer records proving Mr. Markham masterminded a trafficking ring that arranged for pirates to hijack deportation ships. The pirates then sold the aliens to intergalactic slavers. What do you have to say about that?”
“My client is an upstanding member of the legal community and a founding partner of his law firm. We intend to prove all charges are false.”
Toni’s phone began to play the theme song from a movie called The Godfather. She swiped the screen. “Maridelle? I’m going to put you on speaker. Aton is here with me.”
“Have you seen the news?” Maridelle asked.
“We’re watching it now,” I said.
“I don’t know about this…trafficking? Slavery?” My mate hugged her arms to her stomach. “I hate that Phillip used Aton for revenge, but I only wanted him to leave us alone. I agreed to neutralize him, but this is going too far. This kind of thing won’t only strike at him, it’s going to devastate his family. He has children. Siblings. Everyone who works for him at the law firm will be affected. Call it off, Maridelle. If Andrea hacked the records and planted evidence to implicate him, couldn’t she hack back in and clear him?”
“Did you ever tell Phillip Aton had been freed?”
“No, of course not. You said he needed to keep a low profile, and I didn’t want to rile Phillip up again.”
Since my arrest and release, I hadn’t visited my mate in court. We both had agreed it would be best if I avoided Phillip, so I’d stayed away from the places where I might have encountered him.
“So as far as Phillip knew, Aton was on the deportation ship?”
“Yeah.”
“Toni,” Maridelle said, her voice more serious than I’d ever heard, “Andrea hacked Phillip’s private records and accounts, but she didn’t plant evidence, this is what she discovered. Phillip really did sell extraterrestrials into slavery.” She paused. “Are you sitting down?”
“Yeah…” My mate looked sick.
“The ship Aton was supposed to be on? It was hijacked. It never arrived at the satellite detention center.”
“Oh my god.”
“What authorities aren’t saying yet, is that they’re trying to find out what happened to all those people. Andrea is working on it. She’ll come through before the authorities do, but this is real.”
“I want to help,” Toni said. “I want to work with you two on this now and in the future. We need to protect people.”
“I want to help, too,” I said. It was personal to me. I could have been one of them.
“We can’t allow this kind of stuff to go on. Maybe we can get others involved. Start some sort of network operating behind the scenes. Recruit more hackers to assist Andrea,” my mate said.
“I can’t say no to that. Let’s meet and talk some more,” Maridelle said.
“Let’s do it.”
The call disconnected, and the smiling newscaster had switched to a story about a puppy adoption service, so I turned off the TV. I could tell my mate was upset. “Come here.” I held out my arms, and Toni launched herself. I held her and rocked her.
“All those people…” she said. “How could Phillip do that?”
“I don’t know, but, we’re going to help Maridelle and Andrea ensure trafficking stops now.”
She buried her face against my chest. “When I thought they were going to deport you to Dakon, that was bad. Then I learned you were headed to a satellite detention facility, and that was worse. If you had been on the ship hijacked by pirates, you would have been gone forever.”
I tipped up her chin. “No matter where I went, how far away, I would find a way to come back to you.”
The doorbell rang.
“Pizza,” we both spoke.
After paying the guy, we put the pizza in the kitchen, and then Toni and I went into the bedroom where we allowed our actions to speak louder than our words, although we were pretty vocal in our love for one another.
Afterward, we held each other and discussed plans to change the world and provide freedom and security to extraterrestrials. “Together, we can do it. We might have to violate a few laws, though,” I said.
“You rule breaker you. I love that about you.” She tapped my arm and grinned. “Did you know we scored the same on our IDA personality compatibility test?”
“Exactly the same?” I rolled on top of her. “Did you say you liked cold pizza, too?” I joked.
“I love cold pizza.” She wound her arms around my neck and nibbled on my ear.
We engaged in relations again, but we never did eat the pizza that night. We did, however, conceive our first kit, a daughter born nine months later whom we named Maverick.
* * * *
Thank you for reading Aton: Dakonian Alien Mail Order Brides #2. I hope you enjoyed Aton and Toni’s romance. Many of the secondary characters in this book are featured in other books. The mysterious Andrea is a key secondary character and has a big role to play in . Maridelle also first appears in that book. Sunny Weathers and Darq, who appeared in the TV show Aton and Toni watched, have their own book, . Lastly, Jessie Hancock, the IDA match coordinator, and Caid star as heroine and hero in . Read on for an excerpt from their romance.
Caid: Dakonian Alien Mail Order Brides #3