Page 2 of You're Not My King!

He made a noncommittal sound, and swiped the screen on his e-tablet. “Do you understand what we do at A&R?”

“Can’t say that I’m familiar, no.” I shrugged. “I’m not trained in alien abduction, so I have no guesses either.”

Alien dude spared me a glance over his monocle, a mocking smile tugging briefly at his lip. “Mh-hm.”

I blew out a slow breath as he took another scan of his pad. I must’ve had a copy of War and Peace for notes because it wasn’t until I started tapping my foot and humming “The Final Countdown” that he sighed again, finally gracing me with his—clearly divided—attention. “Here at the A&R Space Facility, we use advanced technology and analytic methods to study, assess, and prepare your kind for distribution.”

I blinked. “You’ve lost me.”

He rolled his eyes as if I were the bane of his entire existence, one of his perfectly manicured talons tapping impatiently against his tablet screen. There was zero sympathy for the fact I’d been taken from my home and experimented on—not a single glimmer—but at least I was getting answers. They’d only taken a month, and it was like pulling teeth, but the bar was on the floor, at this point.

“You were taken from Earth and tested for the sole purpose of being rehomed,” he said, slowly. “It is a very precise process. We monitor each subject’s life on Earth before extraction, as our aim is to adopt only the highest-achieving humans—intelligence and education are the most important traits. It is why we also limit ourselves to several prospects a year so as not to raise suspicions or be the cause of your kind’s demise by claiming your elites.”

“Pft, yeah, ’cause all the rocket scientists suddenly disappearing would be carnage, right?” I laughed, humorlessly, honestly impressed at how straight he kept his face. But hold on, “highest-achieving?” That didn’t make a lick of sense. I was as dumb as a box of rocks; there was no way they’d picked me from the bunch.

Of course they hadn’t.

I remembered the masked dudes who had brought me here, how they’d hesitated in that alley, cursing in their native language when I was the oneleft behind while my sister, the fucking vet, had escaped. She definitely would have been useful if fancy degrees and cleverness were the entry requirements. But I didn’t want to think about it. All it would take was picturing her face as they’d dragged me away—eyes filled with relief and lacking any remorse—and I’d be wallowing in self-pity.

It shouldn’t have been a shock that not even the fucking aliens wanted me. Being a mistake was my MO.

“I wasn’t supposed to be taken.”

“Correct.” He sneered as if it was my fault that the human-nappers were incompetent. “It is the reason you are standing here, and were not boarded onto a ship early this morning.”

“A ship to where? Earth?” I asked, my voice belying the laid-back attitude I was going for. But any hopes I had were dashed when the dude shook his head, scoffing as if I was ridiculous.

“Under normal circumstances, depending on the skill you possessed and providing you passed every assessment, you would have been distributed to whichever planet in our galaxy suited your specialization. Of course, it isn’t uncommon that even extraordinary humans, by your kind’s standards, fail to meet expectations. In that instance, the decision would typically be made to send the subject to one of our two… reject planets.”

“Lovely,” I snarked, earning a dry glare.

“If a subject fails our testing process, but is alluring in appearance, they are sent to the planet of pleasure”—he paused, probably for dramatic effect, before tacking on—“Fu-huk-yoo.”

I short-circuited. Did he just… “Excuse me?”

“If they are not,” he continued, despite my spluttering, “they become a citizen of the planet of trade.”

“Trade in what exactly?” I grimaced, and the alien dude ignored me.

Again.

“Your case falls far outside those simple guidelines, and even our reject planets have standards—albeit, significantly lower than others—so careful deliberation had to be made. We never prepared for the unlikelihood of such a gross error in our system.” He leveled me with a condescending look. “Thanks to you, we will strive to be less negligent in future.”

Shots fired.

I plastered on a fake grin, pinning him with a wink and a halfhearted finger gun. “Glad to be of assistance.”

There were no words to describe the resignation behind the alien dude’s bland stare. Clearly, he hadn’t signed up for the sass-back. Well, newsflash, bucko, I’m not on a stage, waiting to be roasted, so tough titty.

“For now,” he barreled on. “Taking your appearance and skill level into account, it has been decided that you would thrive best among the lee-zurd species on Yoo-suk.”

“You… suck?” I repeated, and he nodded. “Oh, okay, cool, just wanted to be sure my brain hadn’t collapsed. Um, where exactly is?—”

“The planet of trade,” he added, a hint of smug delight in his otherwise droll tone. “It is the least civilized of the two—entirely without technology and indoor plumbing. You will have great difficulty lowering our IQ average from there.”

“Oh, don’t hold back,” I deadpanned. “Tell the audience how you really feel.”

He flicked his eyes from left to right before they landed back on me, his brows creasing. “There is no one else here.”

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