Alyssa

“Could it have been your crew?” I venture to ask. “Any reason they would want to strand you here?”

The enormous purple warrior alien snorts with derision above me. “I trust my crew with my life. They have put their lives on the line for me countless times. Of course it is not them. No. This is the handiwork of something else — something very specific and indigenous to the area.”

I stare at him expectantly.

He lowers his bright eyes to lock on mine. “The Merrel,” he growls.

There is a short pause. “I feel as though you expected that to have a lot more impact as a statement than it did,” I say. “I don’t know what a Merrel is.”

“Right.”

“That really meant nothing to me.”

He walks slowly towards the remains of his ship, barely contained rage sending ripples of tension through his visible muscles. The sight makes me feel something strange. Not unpleasant, but surely unexpected. “The Merrel live here on Aeo. They are not as intelligent as the Mahdfel but they have a complex society.”

“Oh,” I say, “that’s fascinating. Why do you think this was them?”

He rolls a shoulder, grimacing as if he can’t quite bear to look the destruction in the eye. “The Merrel are a species particularly into machinery.” A pause. “Actually, that is an understatement. The Merrel are obsessive when it comes to all things mechanical. It is an impulse I don’t understand.” For some reason his gaze drops to his own legs, covered up fully in thick leather, and then returns to me.

“They are in the habit of stripping ships?”

“If left unattended completely, it’s possible that they could not resist.” He growls to himself. “I would have thought they had more self control than this, but it has been many, many years since I came to Aeo. Perhaps without the influence of the Mahdfel and the Firosans, the Merrel have succumbed completely to their base desires.” He rubs at his defined jawline and I let myself stare while he isn’t looking at me.

“Uh, these Merrel,” I say. “Are they scary? Are they tough?”

He tilts his head back and at first I think he is letting out some strange war cry, but then I realize it’s a hoarse laugh. The actual mirth in it makes my own lips twitch too, until I am resisting snorting with laughter at Tyr’s laughter. “What?” I ask. “What??”

“Tough? Scary? Maybe to a human. They are … you have your Firosan in-ear translation device, yes?”

I look up at his gigantic body and I stumble over my words, not for the first time today. “Um, yes, I do.” I tap at my ear, containing the tiny piece of tech the nurse gave me back on Earth. “Is something not working?”

“The AI is implanted with intimate knowledge of nearby known societies; you can ask it.”

“I prefer to be referred to as ‘her’,” a smooth voice in my ear states, making me jump almost out of my skin.

“Holy crap,” I yelp. “I wasn’t expecting that. This is an AI? In my ear?”

“That’s right. You can call me Aphrodite. I am an advanced artificial intelligence. And General Tyr is correct: you can ask me questions about known cultures. I know far more about the minutiae of life on Earth, for example, than you do.”

“Oh,” I say, noting the way her voice sounds as smug as any human. She is definitely far more advanced than any AI back on Earth. I wonder if she can hear my thoughts … but she says nothing, so probably not. That’d be crazy.

Tyr is looking at me expectantly, so I continue. “Miss AI — Aphrodite — would you tell me what the Merrel are?”

“Certainly. In terms you understand: the Merrel are a species estimated to be one or two millennia less advanced than the humans. A Merrel has a curious mind, and they tend to love to deconstruct things and put them back together. While they have little in the way of philosophical awareness, which is how one tends to track sentience in a species, the Merrel have a perfectly advanced language, and are projected to unlock spaceflight far sooner than any of their peers in the universe because they value mechanics and engineering above all else.”

I listen with my mouth slightly agape.

“I, for one, am very much looking forward to tracking the species progress of the Merrel. Anyway — to answer the question you asked, no, they will not scare you. Humanity tends to be the most scared, by my research, by young pale females with long dark hair. That is not what they look like.”

I laugh out loud at that one. “Yeah, we like our horror movies.”

“The Merrel look more like porcupines than anything else I can find living on Earth. They are bipedal when working, but sometimes walk on four legs. I imagine that they will be considered ‘cute’ more than frightening.”

“Aww,” I say, imagining them.

“They have spines on their back like porcupines, but they can shoot them at will. They are tipped with a powerful paralyzing agent. It is a powerful defense.”

Less cute. “Do you know where we can find them?”

“General Tyr is already on his way there. You must utilize your fastest running speed to catch up with him before he is out of sight.”

“What?”

I look around and catch the purposeful stride of the purple general.

“Tyr!” I cry, and take off at a run until I catch up, puffing and panting more than I care to admit. “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

He grunts. “I expected you to remain at my side. It would be foolish to become separated, after all.”

I shoot a glare up at him that he doesn’t acknowledge. Maybe it’s good, actually, that this is not the Mahdfel I am mated with. Yes, he is impossibly sexy — he has the body of a god, nothing like anything that exists on Earth, and the determined facial features of a confident man who truly knows what he wants, and how to get it — but he is impossible, and infuriating, too. It’s clear he isn’t used to other people being in his life, and he doesn’t want to change that.

But, still, he is the only person I know (except the AI in my ear, I guess?) in my new life, and I try to convince myself that the thought of my eventual separation from him is making me anxious because of the unknown. And not because I feel myself strangely, and completely, drawn to him.

It’s definitely not that at all.

“They took the comms system,” he finally snaps. I look uneasily over at him.

“That’s bad,” I say aloud, as if I’m waiting for his confirmation.

“Yes,” he says through gritted teeth. “That’s very bad.”

“Will the king be worried about us?”

He clenches and unclenches his fists by his side. His strange electrogun strapped firmly to his thigh. I would feel safe with Tyr even if he didn’t have a weapon, and that’s a nice thing to realize. Without him I would be stranded on this alien moon with literally nothing but my wits. And, though I have them, they aren’t quite enough to survive on a planet covered with predators I’ve never even imagined before.

“The king will be incensed,” Tyr says finally. “I should have left one of my crew members to guard the ship, but there are three of them, and I do not like to leave a man on his own in an unfamiliar scenario. I made a mistake. I underestimated the Merrel and overestimated the simplicity of this task.”

“Ah,” I say, which isn’t helpful but I don’t know what to say. “Do you, uh, do you think my alien mate guy is worried about me?”

“No,” he says without looking at me. He glances in my direction as my brow twitches.

“Fair enough,” I say.

“No, I mean … he will know you are with me. He will know you are capable enough.”

“Oh?”

“Since he signed up for the Lottery on purpose with his own hands, he will have information about you sent to him to prepare him for your arrival.”

What a weird way to put it.

“Right, OK,” I say. “Could you slow down a little? It’s just…” I stumble and he whips out his thick arm to steady me before it even registers with my consciousness that I’m about to fall. “Thank you.”

His hand is on the small of my back, and I can feel the heat radiating from his skin. The hand stays where it is for several seconds more than is appropriate, and I turn to look up at him.

He is staring down at me. Unblinking. His features twisted into a careful frown. I swallow, unable for a second to move, or speak.

Electricity crackles and for a moment I wonder if his weapon is on, but it’s not — it’s Tyr who is making the hairs on my skin stand on end.

He removes his hand and the tingling feeling dissipates instantly, and I look away, clearing my throat.

“Are we almost there? Wherever we’re going. I’m not even sure…” I am at risk of beginning to babble. “Maybe I should go wait at the ship — I’m just slowing you down.”

“No,” he says firmly. “You must come with me. It is too unpredictable out here.”

“Fine,” I say, equal parts disappointed that I have to keep doing this ridiculous half-jog to keep up with him, and pleased that I don’t have to be alone. The feeling that shivers through my body whenever Tyr looks at me is almost addictive. I’m not ready to give that up yet, especially as it gets more intense each time…

This is ridiculous. I don’t know why I am allowing myself to indulge in this fantasy. Sure, the general is tall, handsome, smart and honorable. Pretty much everything I have ever wanted in a man — sans the attitude, but we could work on that — but he is not my genetic match.

That means that if we had a kid, the pregnancy or the labor would probably kill me. It would shatter relations between our allied planets, as I am only the second human to arrive here, and I would be denying my actual match his child, which sucks for him.

The thing is, if I’m willing to be with a Mahdfel in that way, I should do my duty at the same time and be with the right Mahdfel. I’m sure my mate is fine.

He won’t be quite like Tyr, that’s for sure, but he’ll be fine.

I hope.

“It is not far from here,” he says, pausing in his strides so I have the chance to stop and catch my breath finally. He squints and scans the horizon. There are flatlands leading to mountains to the right and thick, beautiful but imposing forests on our left. I know which way seems safer, but instead we turn left and Tyr ducks beneath the huge damp leaves of the forest.

“How long?” I ask. I don’t want to admit it, but just ten minutes of scampering along next to him has really drained me, especially in this humid, damp air. If it’s much farther I’ll need to chill on the pace.

“A half day,” he says finally.

“What? I thought you were going to say twenty minutes or so. Dammit.” I look down at my impractical faux leather ankle boots and then back up at him and glower. “Alright, big guy. You’re going to need to try walking slower.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” he says, to my surprise not giving me any argument or rolling his eyes at my relative puniness. I appreciate that — maybe he isn’t so superior as he seems. “We will walk until the chill comes, and then we must rest.”

I frown a little. “That translation seemed to come through wrong, hang on. Aphrodite?”

“No, that’s what he said. ‘When the chill comes’ is what they say on Aeo. The light doesn’t dim much here on the moon, but the weather goes from humid and temperate to almost freezing. Instead of night and day, like on Paxia, they have the warm and the chill.”

I look at my outfit and make a face. It’s not uncomfortable and it’s not impractical, but it’s far from ideal for such a cold temperature.

“Luckily organics can share body heat.”

“What?”

Tyr looks at me and I blush furiously, jabbing my finger at my ear so that he nods, and picks up his pace again.

“I don’t believe I said anything hard to comprehend. Let me know, so I can alter my output.”

Wait. Am I being messed with by a disembodied robot voice? While I wander a tropical moon forest next to the most beautiful purple alien general I have ever laid eyes on?

Yeah, OK, this is the weirdest day of my life.

“Are we about to freeze to death? The AI says the temperature is about to plummet,” I mention to Tyr, nervous.

He shakes his head. “AIs know nothing of real life. How could they?” He sounds more annoyed than I expected that statement to make him. “I can build a tent. A general is never so unprepared.”

“Aphrodite, I don’t get the impression General Tyr trusts you,” I joke. But the military man doesn’t look like he’s ready to laugh. I keep quiet.

“Tyr has his reasons,” Aphrodite says. “He is one of the only Mahdfel who does not keep me in his own ear.”

“Oh…” I say. I hadn’t realized that, but of course the Mahdfel have translator and helper AIs in their ears as well. That’s how they can understand the other species, like me. So how can Tyr hear me?

As if knowing what I’m thinking, the AI speaks again. “He has an outdated AI. I am version 8 — Tyr uses version 2. It cannot converse so well, but it can answer basic questions and fulfill basic orders.”

Why limit yourself like that? I don’t want to ask because, obviously, Tyr can hear everything I’m saying. But he can’t hear her. I hope that the AI will understand that’s what I want and keep talking … but she goes silent.

It’s for the best — I don’t want to be invasive.

But now I’m pretty damn curious.

* * *

How long have we been walking? It feels like forever since we’re wading through the thick air and lifting our knees high to avoid the tangling roots, but it really can’t have been more than a couple of hours.

I feel it then. A rolling chill. A breeze at first that seems to sweep away the uncomfortable heat hanging in the air and eliciting a moan of pleasure from my lips — which makes Tyr glance with raised brows in my direction in a way I can’t ignore.

After the chill sweeps across us, the air remains cooler. Comfortable and almost perfect. I turn to mention to Tyr that this is totally bearable, with a big smile on my face, but then another breeze passes over us and I shiver uncontrollably.

The temperature has dropped something like 30 degrees in less than a minute. My body barely knows what to do, and the sweat shining on my limbs is suddenly cold to the touch.

“This is it, the chill is out. We can walk no further.”

“Is it unsafe?” I ask, trying to stop my teeth from chattering.

“It’s unwise,” he says simply.

He said he had it covered, but it didn’t really occur to me to think of it much until now. What did he mean by that?

“So, what do we do?” I ask, suppressing my shivers as well as I can. “Do you somehow have a hotel hidden in those impossibly tight pants of yours?”

I said it to be playful and maybe eke a smile from his stony features, but Tyr just wordlessly pulls a package from the leather sash around his middle, and opens it out.

It billows almost instantly into a tent-shaped ball that settles gently onto the forest floor. When it touches down, there is a beat and then four tendrils shoot from four loosely defined corners and plunge into the soft earth below, hooking it firmly into the ground.

“Oh,” I say.

“What is a hotel?” he asks, detaching the tent flap so that it hangs open to reveal the empty interior.

I reach out and touch the material to find it soft and springy as spider silk, cool to the touch. “Will this keep us warm?” I say, ignoring his question.

He turns to me. “Paxia does not have weather quite this cold. She keeps us moderate as best she can.” He’s talking about his planet like it’s a woman. It must be a translation quirk, and I find it pretty sweet. “So we will have to find out.”

“That’s not too encouraging,” I say, realizing that he is holding the tent flap open for me. I bend over at the waist and wiggle my way through to the inside, which feels far more spacious than I was expecting.

The floor that stretches over the earth has trapped some air inside it so it feels impressively cushioned, and I bounce around with a smile on my face. “This is so cool,” I tell Tyr as he climbs in beside me, avoiding eye contact.

And suddenly it feels as though the tent has shrunk. It’s no longer ‘fairly spacious’ as it was for just little me, it’s now gone firmly over the line to ‘cramped’.

On every inhale I can smell him. He’s taking up all of my air, and it’s barely possible to look away and see no part of him. We’re stuck in here together, and there is still a chill in the air, so I don’t particularly want him to move too far away, either.

I wonder if I should feel bad for betraying my future husband — or lifemate, or whatever they call it here — by secretly thrilling at my close contact (get it?) with Tyr. But then I remember, and I could just about kick myself for it: I’m not here to make friends at all. So, in a way, why should I care about the potential future feelings of my potential future partner?

Just as long as I get that cure through the transporter before it’s too late, I’ll have done what I came here to do. I would like to stay out here in space. Ever since I was a little girl I was fascinated by the idea of space and aliens, and when the Suhlik attacked everyone else was freaking out, but I was wide-eyed and inspired … knowing that one day maybe I could live out there among the stars. Far, far away from Earth. And maybe I could be one of the first ever people to do that.

Plus, I know that I could be a useful asset in the Suhlik wars. I know that I could help. If I can, I’d like to stay and give the Mahdfel a hand as a doctor or a chemist.

But if the guy I’m supposed to start a family with sucks? I’m out. I’ll figure something else out for my future.

I lie back on the soft floor of the tent and look up at the ceiling. The material is soft and comfortable, but there’s still an undeniable chill in the air that I am already starting to feel in my toes; an ache that only threatens to get worse. The tip of my nose is icy.

Next to me, General Tyr sits cross-legged and looks down at me with a frown, as if I am taking up too much space. Which I totally am, but so what? He’s huge and powerful, he could just roll me over with his smallest toe if he wanted to.

“Is that how aliens sleep?” I ask him, nodding to his stiff, upright seated position.

His beautiful, bright eyes narrow to slits that remind me of a glowing orange sunset. “I don’t know,” he says, “you tell me, alien.”

For some reason, this makes me snort with laughter and I cover my mouth with my hand to try to stifle it. But he cracks a smile too and glances away. The smile is gorgeous; it lights up his stoic face and turns him into something magical, ethereal and impossible.

My cheeks hurt, and I find it hard to look away from him. It is truly like looking at the setting sun. It’s so gorgeous that you tell yourself it’s OK to stare straight at it … but something in the back of your head is still telling you that it’s a bad idea; to look away.

I can hear the echo of my mother’s voice telling me to look away, and I am reminded of my mission.

“Tyr,” I say, and with a flush in my cheeks I realize I was about to ask him what the consequences would be of hooking up with a Mahdfel I wasn’t supposed to, but obviously he would know I was talking about him. I clear my throat, and when his eyes land on mine again I try something else. “Why not lie down?”

“We should eat soon,” he tells me. “There was food on the ship, of course, but the entirety of the kitchen was removed without trace.”

“Huh,” I say. “That’s pretty inconvenient.” Something occurs to me. “How long will it take to repair the ship, if we do manage to salvage some parts?”

He grits his teeth. “My crew and I? Could be months.”

I sit up so fast that I bounce my forehead off the stretchy material of the roof, and then lie back down fast with a squeak of surprise. “Months?” I repeat, staring up at him.

My mother doesn’t have months.

Which means I can’t stay on this godforsaken frozen rock for that long. Non-negotiable. I will put on a damn space suit and walk through the void to the nearest military base if I have to.

I don’t know what to do. I bury my head in my hands and let out a groan. I’ve never felt this helpless before in my life.

To my surprise, a large hand comes to rest on my shoulder, and I look up into the general’s eyes. I feel calmed.

“Is something wrong?” he asks low, which makes me laugh. I am exhibiting so very much body language right now, but perhaps he just can’t read it.

“My mother. She was just given a couple of weeks by her doctor. She’s tough, so I think she’ll last a little longer than that — my dad used to call her a spitfire. In fact, he called her that so much I thought it was her name.” I smile at the memory. “But I need to get her the cure and send it through the transporter before then so it can set in. The virus is ravaging her from the inside out, but the cure will, well, it’ll cure her. It’s not too late.” I take a couple of careful breaths. “Yet. It’s not too late yet. In a month or two, it will be too late. I can’t handle that.”

He is still staring at me.

“Sorry. You probably don’t care much,” I say, shaking my head. “I bet you think I’m being pretty weak and pathetic right now.”

To my surprise, again, he tilts his head to the side and his brow furrows. “I don’t think you’re being anything,” he says. “My parents died, and it was very upsetting for me. Is that unusual on Earth?”

“No,” I say quickly. “I guess I just figured that you aliens were above, you know…”

His lip twitches upwards. “Mourning? Or feelings in general?”

“Uhhh,” I say.

“It’s understandable, if not wise, to overestimate the Mahdfel,” he says softly, and he is rubbing my shoulder. When I notice, a prickle of heat travels across my body from my center outwards. It’s a very unexpected, compassionate act coming from someone like him, and that thought alone threatens to drive me wild.

To say it’s been a while would be an understatement. My incredible workload, along with my worries about my mother, has really gotten in the way of any romance there might have been in my life.

And I haven’t been more aware of how long it’s been until this moment, with a powerful general’s firm touch against my shoulder … and eventually on the exposed, cool skin of my neck.

Does he know he’s touching me there?

Does he understand the connotations of touching me there? His touch is so featherlight, so gentle and yet impossible to ignore.

So deliberate.

I look up at him and swallow.

“We will figure it out,” he says. “Your mother will not pass away until she is meant to.”

The sentiment is there, even though I would have preferred it with a little less insistence on my mother’s mortality. I smile warmly up at him.

His face is close to mine. His gaze is unfaltering. I can feel the heat radiating from his body, like the nostalgic comfort of a log fire in the winter. Like it’s only been hours and already he is my sturdy, chiselled port in this storm.

He’s so close that he must almost be able to taste the tripping pulse in my throat through the air between us, but then a branch outside snaps … and then another one … and he jerks away as if a magical spell has been broken and looks wildly around with a furious expression on his face.

The tattoos on his skin — intricate swirling and winding patterns that I just want to trace with my tongue and find out everything about — stop glowing silver and snap back to his usual dark purple color as if they had never appeared and he moves his relaxed pose into a coiled squat, ready to pounce.

“It’s probably just an animal,” I whisper.

He turns back to me. “But what if it’s not?”

The mere thought makes me shiver, in a very different way than I was just seconds ago.

“Stay here,” he grunts, and disappears through the tent flap.