Page 56 of The Alien I Fell in Love with on Walpurgis Night

“Precisely. Your mother has arranged a fine match with Aru.”

“I’ve met her. She’s a decent woman.”

“But?”

“I don’t know if marriage is for a man like me.”

“You’d let your mother, sister, and our House down?”

“There are many other men in the Empire in need of a good wife.”

“But not in House Zu. It’s your duty, Axl.”

“Will you force me to do this too?”

“Will you break our imperial succession because ‘you don’t feel like being a husband?’ You know I would rather see you married to no-one. I thought, at first, that was the reason you had brought the human to the Empire. To keep her as a sex slave and satisfy your mother for an illegitimate heir that could be passed off if her skin was the right color.”

“And you would have let me have a sex slave?”

“Oh Axl, you know I would have if it meant nothing between us ever changes.”

“I’ve told you many times, what happened before you married can never happen again.”

“I know that better than you, but it’s still within my control to keep you from hurting me. It doesn’t matter that it’s been decades since you touched my naked skin,” she runs one of her hands down her neck, “I remember it like it was only moments ago.”

“To protect your own feelings you will deny me my freedom to choose a wife?”

“What are you talking about, ‘your freedom?’ You have ‘your freedom.’ You can choose any woman within reason to be your wife.”

“What if I wanted to marry Madame Georgiana?”

“The human?” she says with disdain. “You cannot marry a human. You can keep her as a sex slave.”

I don’t answer.

“Humans are not Alliance citizens, Axl. Perhaps you were bewitched on Earth.”

“According to my medical scans, I’m as healthy as ever. Never mind, you’re right. I’m just a foolish man. Now are you going to tell me why I was near Earth in the first place. What was Ros’s crime? I checked his record; he didn’t seem like a criminal.”

“You’re wrong. He was the worst kind of criminal. He was secretly transporting Alliance women to Earth for pleasure. He had been doing it for decades.”

“What?”

“Yes. He was covertly transferring maximum class women to and from Earth for a few days of carnal pleasure with human men for UCs.”

Regret washes over me. “That’s why there were two life signs.”

“Yes,” the Empress laments. “But women should not want to leave the Empire. Whoever that woman was who died with Ros, may the goddesses forgive her, was a sinner.”

It didn’t occur to me at the time that one of those life signs could have been an Alliance woman. I put my head in my hands. “This can’t be happening.”

“It’s the goddesses’ will. Now you marry Aru. Your human has been returned to Earth completely unharmed and unaware of what happened to her. And you remain my faithful servant. Everything is as it should be.” When I don’t say anything the Empress continues, “Come now Axl, why all these emotions? You, of all people, cannot marry a human. You carry the weight of the Empire’s morality. Everyone respects you. And you have more freedom than most men. And most importantly, I adore you. Why can’t you be happy with that?”

The Empress really has me now. I killed an Alliance woman without reason. “What if I marry the human?”

“Nonsense. Why would you shame yourself and House Zu?”

“But what if I did?”

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