Selena’s romantic heart yearns for a love unavailable to her in the slave colony. She finds the courage to make her alien masters notice her—right when two generals have been promised a human bride. Selena must give herself to not one, but two husbands.
General Hern’s act of valor has earned him any reward he wants. He requests a human bride, one he intends to share with his equal, General Xaroth. Their opposing philosophies has divided their troops and harmed the Dak-Hiliah Empire. Hern wants to use a human woman as a tool to finally bring them together. He never intended on falling in love with her.
General Xaroth has the same goals as Hern for the Dak-Hiliah Empire. He merely pursues them without any of Hern’s foolish compassion. Xaroth knows Hern is offering to share this woman with him to temper his callous methods. He’s not about to let himself be influenced…and certainly not by a woman as gentle and alluring as Selena.
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“They’re going to catch you, and you’re going to get collared,” Selena’s older sister Lucretia said while balancing her baby on one hip.
Selena folded a towel and clean undergarments into a tattered mesh laundry bag without looking at her. “Don’t jinx me.” She grabbed her toothbrush and the box of dental powder, but then thought twice and put them back into the locker beside her bunk bed. The thin cardboard box let the powder spill out everywhere. The last thing she needed to do was give the sentinel robots a trail to follow.
“Don’t go,” Lucretia said, with mounting frustration in her voice. “This is the worst possible time to be taking this risk. You’re almost guaranteed to get caught.”
Selena stood and hoisted her bundle of bathing supplies over one shoulder. “Even if I get caught they know I’m not escaping. The latrines are disgusting. I just want to bathe somewhere nice for once.”
“Would you stop being idiotic? His ship came in last night. That bastard’s on the planet’s surface somewhere. I mean—can’t you at least wait until he’s gone?”
One side of Selena’s mouth pulled up in a smile. Her back was to her sister, so the devious grin remained hidden. She turned to her with a neutral face and gave her shoulder a squeeze.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
Lucretia groaned, and small wrinkles formed on her forehead. She was only four years Selena’s senior, but looked nearer to ten. Selena felt she was having her babies too close together. At 28 she’d already mothered four children, averaging one a year. She’d followed their alien master’s orders to a fault, Selena felt. But then, Lucretia always did what she was told. For Selena there were some things even more terrible than the ire of their masters.
She dashed out of the massive living quarters before her sister could come up with another argument. Her legs became shaky when she arrived at the back of the Quonset hut that was used as the slaves’ meetinghouse. Just down through the ravine and over the gully and she would be officially outside the boundary.
Before she could will her feet to a sprint, a sentinel robot rolled by her on metal tank treads. It didn’t turn its cylinder head in her direction since the dense things couldn’t tell when someone was poised to escape. Selena waited until it rounded a corner and then darted for the gully. She had seven seconds before the next sentinel appeared. She managed to get out of sight with scant seconds to spare.
She huddled in the brush on the other side of the gully while gasping for breath. Two. Three. Four seconds passed without any sounds from a pursuer. Selena lifted her head from the leaf litter to look back. The path behind her was clear. She placed a hand to her chest and tried to will her heartbeat to slow. The first hurdle was cleared. It looked as though she’d have an uneventful bath in the beautiful mountain lake, which was fine enough.
She peeled off her clothes and splashed into the water.
“Oh God, yes!”
A laugh erupted from her. She didn’t care about being loud. The dismal slave colony was far behind her. She let her pale skin become shocked by the cold water and then dunked her head. Streams poured from her long auburn strands of hair when she stood.
She went deeper to swim on her back. Her small breasts poked out of the water catching dapples of sunlight screened by overhanging bows. She could stay until dinnertime at least. That was the only ritual in the drudgery of her slave life where she’d be missed. Then she would just have the challenge of hiding her pruned fingers from her seatmates.
In an hour’s time she’d finished the actual task of bathing. Working in the communal gardens had crammed dirt beneath her fingernails and coated her with a layer of grime that had to be scrubbed clean. She shampooed her hair with her ration of soap powder. Now, cleaner than she had been in weeks, she let herself languish in the shaded shallows. The forest was full of bird song around her and the sky was a gorgeous blue painting with plump airbrushed clouds in staggered clumps. Selena let her mind wander.
In her daydream a handsome alien, similar to Lord Elentinus but with eyes far less cruel, walked up to her as she sunned herself on the beach. She was wearing a cotton yellow dress she’d had before the war.
“You know, women who are disobedient get forced to marry one of the Dak-Hiliah,” the dream alien would say.
Selena would sit up with a serious face. She’d try to be strong before her enemy since she imagined all the Dak-Hiliah were warriors, and wished for fierce women to complement them.
“Maybe I want to be a bride.”
“Are you a fool?” he’d ask, while not yet knowing whether to take her seriously. “Haven’t those renegade ex-wives in the colony warned you about us?”
She thought briefly about the Russian women who’d been exiled to the colony after running away from their alien husbands. Selena tried her best to avoid listening to their horror stories. The dream of a good alien husband was all she had.
“I’ve heard other things, too,” Selena would say to the handsome alien. “I heard that Lenora Winquist was happy with her husband. Your rules changed, didn’t they? I heard you’re not obligated to be cruel to your wives anymore.”
Then he’d kneel so he could take her hand. “It’s true,” he’d say. “I would be kind to you.”
Selena gave a languorous sigh. She’d had many variations of the fantasy, but this was the first time she could daydream without the fear of interruption. She imagined the handsome alien plucking her up in his strong arms and carrying her away. Away from the colony. Away from the obligation to breed with smug overfed boys who thought their rarity made them better than her. Away from filth and endless days of tedium.
Something that sounded like a deer was crashing through the forest on the bank leftward from her. Selena swam toward the din to catch a glimpse. She traversed some frighteningly deep water to make it to a sandbar where her toes could touch bottom. Twelve feet up was a ridge that dropped steeply at the water’s edge. Selena shielded her eyes from the sun and gazed upwards.
A big man emerged from the trees. Selena realized his blue skin with a jolt to her middle.
She ducked and waded as fast and quietly as she could into the shadow of the ridge. Her heart thumped with enough power to make her feel like her chest expanded with every beat. She covered her mouth with a wet hand and tried to compose herself.
The alien hadn’t seen her. She was almost sure—his eyes were raised up, like he was surveying their conquered land. He wasn’t Lord Elentinus. Their master had shorter silver hair and a coolly evil expression that never seemed to change. This man had strands of silver and brown spilling far past his broad shoulders. He looked a bit younger than Elentinus, too, and his expression was neutral.
Selena’s heartbeat wouldn’t slow. He was handsome. She’d caught that with just a glimpse, and it made her blush now. This might have been her fantasy husband in the flesh, and here she was, hiding.
She closed her eyes tight. To reveal herself would be idiotic. She was an escapee right now, and this was the enemy. She risked getting the shock collar—a pain so severe it made other slaves urinate on themselves and choke out blood-curdling screams.
But then…why did she come out here? Wasn’t she trying to get caught? Was that a real plan or just another of her daydreams? Here was an alien, a potential husband, someone who could take her away from her miserable fate.
This alien might just be someone who would cherish her. Wasn’t that worth the risk of the shock collar?
Selena unfurled her clenched arms from her body and swam out of the shadows. Her stomach felt like it had tied itself in a knot. She turned with her lower lip trembling to look up at the ridge.
The alien locked eyes with her at once. That was it. He’d seen her. There was no turning back.
She kept one arm over her breasts which were already hidden by the water. With the other she sheepishly waved. It was a weak twiddling of her fingers accompanied by an even weaker smile. She knew how stupid it was even as she did it—but she had to do something. The alien had to know she was allowing herself to be seen, and not someone caught in an attempted escape.
He said something. Selena was close enough to hear him, but the words were nonsense. This surprised her. She assumed they all spoke English the way Elentinus did.
The alien didn’t seal his lips after uttering the foreign words. He stared at her agape and transfixed. Selena saw his eyes swimming over her face and bare shoulders. She couldn’t tell if he liked what he saw. There was no indication of pleasure. She wasn’t even sure if she repulsed him or not, until he swallowed while slowly blinking. It was as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. For a moment Selena felt like a pixie or a water sprite.
She lowered her idiotically waving hand and returned his stare. He might not have been a warlord, like Elentinus, but he was certainly at least a warrior. He was wearing a black mesh garb with silver armor attached, and what looked like guns on his hip and shoulder. He was muscular enough to have his definition come through the costume. His face was movie-star caliber (even if the old magazines she had for reference were sun-faded) he had lovely full lips and kind eyes. Of course, his flesh was blue with pink markings and he had horns on his head and shoulders. Selena could easily ignore his alien features to focus on the handsome man beneath them.
They’d examined each other for several minutes. Selena’s eyes lowered. What now? The alien started talking to her, recapturing her gaze. It was all gibberish, but he said it with subdued tones. She sensed no harshness—in fact, it almost sounded like poetry.
Someone else broke through the thick woods behind him. Selena’s heart rate revved up again. She recognized this second alien as Elentinus’ obnoxious manservant Hor-Denay. He addressed the stranger first with kind alien-speak. The handsome alien tipped his nose toward her while saying more foreign words. Hor-Denay fixed on her with a scowl.
“What are you doing out here?” he said in English. “Do you have permission to be here? What’s your name!”
Selena’s teeth chattered as she tried to find her voice. “I—it’s Selena.”
“Clothe yourself!” He turned back to the stranger and spoke to him in their language. As he did he pulled a small device from his armor and pressed a button to activate it. He yelled into it with angry alien words.
Selena’s stomach sank. She felt paralyzed, but knew she had to rush to the bank to dress. Before she could the stranger met her gaze once again. His eyes appeared sympathetic. His beautiful lips formed a soft smile, and then he lifted his hand to twiddle his fingers the way she had.
Selena got a pang in her tense middle.
Then the aliens were pushing through the brush and trees to go. Selena splashed toward the bank as fast as her limbs would move her. She dried herself speedily and managed to throw on her clothes before the first of three sentinel robots thundered over the ground to snatch her.
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