If I could have predicted how my life was going to turn out, I would have guessed I’d graduate college, take a job at the UN, meet a nice guy with a respectable income and a collection of signed football memorabilia, and maybe have a baby or two. I’d live in the city for a few years before deciding to move to the New York suburbs in a pleasant two-story with a small yard and a one-car garage, and I’d probably get a collie because I’d had a childhood obsession with Lassie. My car would be a clean sedan, my friends would be secretly wishing they were still twenty, and my retirement fund would increase exponentially every year.

Instead, I’d ended up on a spaceship full of aliens and macho soldiers on my way to a strange planet in a completely different galaxy.

The bedroom I’d been assigned for the journey was less like a bedroom and more like a hospital room with its thin cot and blank walls, but at least I had it to myself. As the only woman aboard the entire ship, I was granted privacy the others were denied. Attached to my bedroom was my very own bathroom, which was so cramped that I couldn’t even fully extend my arms on either side, and I also had been given my own stash of toiletries, standard-issue NASA jumpsuits, and other necessities. I was not woken at all hours of the night as most of the A’li-uud and all of the soldiers were to change shifts or assist with something. Even my meals were plated better, and there was a standing offer to serve me in my room if I preferred to eat alone rather than in the company of the men. I knew the special treatment was a show of respect, but I felt more isolated than I’d ever felt before in my life.

It had been two weeks since we’d left Earth. All of the A’li-uud had been rounded up, most brought back to their original ships and the rest brought onboard ours. I hadn’t realized just how many aliens had come to Earth until they were all gathered at NASA’s airbase outside of Tucson for a mass blast-off. Twenty-one ships scattered the landscape, all varying in shape and size and all impressive in their own right, with thousands of blue-skinned extraterrestrials milling around them. A huge chunk of the military was in attendance, mainly for security’s purposes, but the expression of unrestrained awe on every human face I saw told me they were also present out of sheer curiosity. I couldn’t blame them. It was like looking at a scene from a science-fiction film. The dry desert air was filled with the clacking of aliens speaking A’li-uud. It was impossible to look anywhere without seeing a crowd of tall, shirtless creatures, most with flowing white hair and all with dramatic white eyes. Ships whirred and hissed and shot rays of turquoise light brighter than the pounding midday sun in every direction. It was the only time I’d ever wondered if I’d completely lost my mind and entered a world of hallucinations.

When Dane had demanded I join the other humans who’d be going to Albaterra, I was certain I’d heard wrong. When I realized I hadn’t, I was certain someone from the Board would have protested. When they didn’t, I was certain it was a joke they’d somehow planned.

I was wrong on all counts, and I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

In the two weeks onboard the spacecraft since takeoff, I had realized I expected too much from life. Clearly, simplicity was a demand too great for life to meet, and it was my responsibility to adapt. So, I did. I stopped expecting General Morgan to behave respectfully toward me, I stopped expecting to be updated on the plan once we landed on Albaterra, and I stopped expecting to like freeze-dried chicken. Just like that, I had all the simplicity I needed.

Except for my infatuation with Dane. That grew more complicated by the day.

He’d become unpredictable. The first few days onboard, he’d been swept up in the demands of captaining a ship he was unfamiliar with and determining how much he could entrust to the soldiers. Most of the time, he was in the control room with a handful of A’li-uud and a human or two, and he tended to speak only to the warrior I’d since learned was named Lokos. It had been easy for me to overlook his behavior in light of the new and unexpected circumstances. As the days wore on, though, he seemed to throw himself deeper and deeper into his captaincy, and he almost completely ignored me.

General Morgan, on the other hand, had never been more attentive, and it was beginning to wear me down.

“I never thought I’d say this because these things always make my balls sweat,” he grunted on the second day into our journey, “but I’ve got a whole new appreciation for jumpsuits.”

I turned around at once and found his eyes lingering on my rear end. “Try stuffing a towel down there to soak up the sweat,” I suggested. “It might make you look like you actually have something to brag about.”

He left me alone for four days after that thanks to the loud chorus of laughs from the nearby soldiers, but, when we’d officially been in space for a week, he pulled me aside in the cafeteria.

“You know,” he murmured, that same leering look on his face I’d grown to hate. “I think you look a little tense. Seven days on a ship surrounded by men has to have wound you up. What do you say we do some stress relieving?”

“Sure. I vote for yoga, but you have to be the downward dog,” I retorted.

Now, smack on the two-week mark, he was back at it again. I was stretched across my cot with a Star Trek novel in my lap—hoping to somehow prepare myself for what was to come, I suppose—when the door to my bedroom swung open. I looked up in surprise at the sudden intrusion and, to my displeasure, I saw General Morgan standing on the threshold.

“You sure look comfy,” he commented, resting his forearm on the frame and tilting his head almost inquisitively.

“Excuse me, this is my room,” I snapped. “You could at least knock.”

“There are a lot of things I could do. Maybe you should lock the door if you don’t want people coming in. A gorgeous, curvy woman like you shouldn’t just let anyone into your bedroom.”

“I don’t,” I sneered.

He grinned to show he was joking, but he only succeeded in looking predatory. “Listen, Roxanne, I feel like we started off on the wrong foot all those months ago. I think we could actually be good friends if we’d just let bygones be bygones. What do you think?”

I closed the book with a snap and kicked my legs off the bed, placing my feet squarely on the ground. With a glare, I said, “First of all, like I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s Ms. Rigby. We work together, and things need to be professional. Which pretty much answers your question.”

“You don’t make the alien call you Ms. Rigby,” Morgan pointed out snottily, straightening up and crossing his arms over his wide, puffed-out chest.

“There’s a language barrier as it is. I’m not about to make communication even more difficult with proprieties. Besides, he asked me to call him Dane, and it would feel strange to call him that while he’s calling me Ms. Rigby.” It was true. I would have felt like a teacher or an elderly neighbor if that had been the arrangement.

“Yeah, whatever.” He rolled his eyes. “Soon you’ll thank me when we get to the freak planet, and I stop the alien from ripping off your head.”

I was suddenly struck with the memory of my head close to Dane’s, mere inches apart, near enough to smell his unique scent. My insides squirmed at the thought, and I squeezed my legs together involuntarily. If I told Morgan I’d nearly kissed the freak alien, his head would have imploded.

“I’d really like to be alone right now, General, if you don’t mind,” I said purposely. Even with Morgan standing so near me, I was unable to will the memory of Dane and me in the conference room from my mind, and a deep, knotted ache curled in my groin.

He snickered but dropped his arms and stepped backward. Before turning away to leave, though, he stopped. “I’m getting a little sick of this hard-to-get thing, just so you know.”

“Goodbye, General,” I barked.

He stalked down the hall, out of sight. I sprang to my feet to close my door, but, before I could, I heard footsteps approaching in the corridor. Thinking Morgan was coming back for another round, I stuck my head out to yell at him to go away.

Bright white eyes looked back at me.