The only wedding I’d ever been to was my cousin’s when she married her high school sweetheart. I’d stood beside her as a bridesmaid and smiled while she took her vows, and I’d stood beside her as a shoulder to cry on and held her left hand while she signed her divorce papers with her right twenty months later. My parents were never married, and I was an only child, so weddings just weren’t part of my lifestyle growing up. There was a general idea of what to expect at a wedding, though: bouquets, elegant white gowns, speeches, throwback oldies music.

This wedding wasn’t anything like that.

There were chairs divided into two blocks separated by an aisle, as usual, and a gorgeously-decorated altar at the head of the site, but that seemed to be the extent of the normal expectations. Everywhere I looked, bright blue skin shone beneath a milky-white sun. The altar was adorned with silky fabrics flipping in the breeze and vividly-colored flowers unlike any I’d ever seen before. Whatever instruments provided the music now flowing through the air were foreign to my senses, and the sounds they gave off were so mystical and ethereal I felt them rather than heard them. A tangy smell of cactus-like plants kept wafting across my nose rather than the sensual scent of roses or regal aroma of lilies as one would ordinarily smell at a formal event like this. To cap it off, we were sitting in the middle of a never-ending desert with golden dunes in front of us and peachy clay walls behind.

Edie was my date to this function; or, rather, I was hers. She was seeing a Corporal in the Ka-lik’et human colony where we lived, but he was on-duty for the ceremony and unable to attend until later in the reception, so she’d asked me to accompany her. I’d been a little leery at first, mainly because I didn’t know the bride or groom and felt like I’d be an intruder, but I’d ended up agreeing when she’d begged me in her energetic Edie way. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only other stranger in attendance—Edie told me Phoebe and her A’li-uud mate weren’t even sure who half the guests were—and there was a handsome upside to accompanying my friend.

The A’li-uud across the aisle was the most attractive I’d ever seen, and I’d been an Albaterran colonist for over a year. I’d only gotten a brief glimpse of the groom, but, from what I could tell, the two were carbon copies of each other—slanted opaline eyes, frosty waist-length hair, rich sapphire skin and cheekbones sharp enough to slice a diamond in two. But there was a noticeable difference between them, something I picked up on right away. The quick glance of the betrothed A’li-uud revealed an evident rascal of an alien in his smirking mouth and narrowed gaze. Looking at the other, the one mere feet from me, was like looking through a mosaic glass to see the brooding, reserved man on the opposite side. He was mysterious and hidden, his personality not lain out to bare before all but tucked safely away in his depths. And he was powerful. I could feel it radiating from him every time I so much as looked in his direction.

“You like what you see?”

Edie’s voice pulled my attention from the A’li-uud, and I flushed. Luckily, the sun was so bright and hot I was already pink with heat all over. “He’s good-looking,” I admitted quietly. I wasn’t shy to say so, at least not to her.

“He’s an Elder,” she said, grinning at me knowingly.

I whipped my gaze back to him with surprise. He wasn’t wearing the intricately-embroidered robes common of Elder wardrobes, instead donning just the boots and jodhpur-style pants of Dhal’atian warriors and leaving his torso naked. If she hadn’t told me, I wouldn’t have expected it. I knew the last Elder of the kingdom had died, of course, but the new Elder hadn’t been in public often enough for me to see him during the hours I wasn’t holed up in the colony salon.

“Are you sure?” I whispered. “He’s not wearing the fancy robes.”

She nodded soberly. “I’m sure. I even asked.” I felt her elbow nudge me in the ribs. “You should ask him to dance tonight.”

“Yeah, right,” I retorted sarcastically. “The Elder and the hairdresser. That sounds like a match made in Heaven.”

“Maybe not Heaven, but it could be a match made on Albaterra,” she replied with a chuckle. She motioned to the altar in front of us. “See? It’s common here. Besides, I bet he’d be right up your alley.”

Edie and I didn’t actually know each other as well as her words suggested. We became friends only a few months ago when Phoebe, the bride, left the colony and took up with her A’li-uud boyfriend. Edie started coming into the salon out of boredom, looking to change up her hairstyle more often than Katy Perry, and, when we realized we clicked, she latched onto me like a leech and never let go. I didn’t mind. I liked Edie’s vivacious spirit, especially because I could only take so much of the other hair stylists before I started feeling like I was losing my mind. They were a little too superficial for my taste. Edie was superficial too, but her heart was so kind it was an easy flaw to overlook.

There was movement behind us, and we turned in our chairs. At the base of the aisle was an A’li-uud with broad shoulders, rippling muscles and smooth, flowing hair, and on his arm was a pretty blonde smiling so brightly she matched the sun with her glow. She wore a ground-sweeping gown of emerald silk rather than the traditional white dress, but I preferred it. Surrounded by the unusual alien atmosphere, it seemed fitting, and it brought out the pale azure tint of her eyes. The music billowed out everywhere, wrapping us in melodic notes, and bumps rose on my skin from the sheer touching weight of its emotion.

Step by step, the couple strode up the aisle toward the altar, toward us. The rest of the guests twisted in time with their progression, but I remained turned to the back. Someone was behind the seats, lingering near one of the poles supporting the nearby reception tent. More focused scrutiny showed the lingerer was a female, her skin as blue as the groom and his doppelganger Elder. Her face was beautiful, angled and pointed and as regal as a queen, but her mouth was twisted in certain rage.

I pressed my knuckles into Edie’s thigh, trying to get her attention without interrupting the ceremony, but she shifted a few inches out of reach. The perplexing female suddenly met my eyes. I froze, caught, before remembering it wasn’t me who was encroaching on the wedding.

She raised a single finger to her lips, her eyes boring into me fiercely, and then disappeared behind the tent in the blink of an eye.