Page 24 of The Marriage Bargain

Back home on Asterion, the weather was mostly warm and mild. Unluckily for us, the Interstellar Coalition would have divvied out this section of Earth to us, where the winters—even as they receded into springtime—were still cold and uncomfortable. Snow had melted, but not all of it. I was eager to trade in my thick parka, fashioned after the human’s design for winter wear—for something lighter and more flexible. The original inhabitants of this place warned us it would be a while, yet.

Rounding a corner in the trail, I came to an abrupt halt, thoughts of weather instantly fleeing. She stood with her back to me, wearing a puffy pink coat with quilted stitching that reminded me of the gorgil fish in wealthy Asterions’ ponds on my home planet. The coat covered her hips, to my dissatisfaction, but enough of her legs showed in the shape of her pants and her tall boots that my eyes hungrily chased their lines. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail, and on her head was a soft green cap, the color of the moss that clings to trees. Her hands were in her pockets and her gaze was rapt on the dry waterfall, which was nothing more than a sad jumble of rocks. She was so intent on the view that she didn’t hear me at all.

Not wishing to frighten her, I cleared my throat as I moved forward again, deliberately letting my own boots brush against the bare foliage. She startled and turned about, the fading sunlight winking off her glasses.

I will not say my breath caught when our stares met, but I did feel a definite curious tightening in my chest, that I had a difficult time naming. Tension? Desire? Attraction? Yearning? All of them, perhaps? Certainly, I was affected.

She was too, but maybe not the same way. I registered her nervousness in the downward flash of her gaze, in the way her throat moved as she swallowed, in her shuffling side step as I approached.

I stopped in front of her. She glanced up, offered me a small smile.

“Evening, Overlord Caide.”

“Hello, Delle.”

A heavy silence fell but didn’t linger. Drawing a breath, she turned her chin to look out over the rocks again.

“I’m sure you probably have a guess as to why I, uh, asked you to meet me here.”

“I do,” I answered slowly. I did indeed, but I didn’t want to jump the gun, as the Earthlings said, so I waited for her to explain.

“It—it’s about the bargain you made me. The other day.”

I waited for more, but she only swallowed again and fidgeted her feet, scuffing the dirt.

“Yes?” I finally prompted.

“Well—well, I was wondering if…if the offer still…stands.”

Finally, she looked at me. Color stained her cheeks—a sure sign, I’d learned from my time on Earth among humans, that she was embarrassed. Recalling how she’d rejected my marriage bargain when I first made it, I could understand why, but I didn’t mock or belittle her. No, I still wanted to marry her. She was the perfect solution to circumventing my father.

“It does,” I replied slowly. “Have you changed your mind, then?”

“Well, I didn’t want to!” A flash of the old Delle returned, the Delle who struggled to rein in her temper and maintain an air of submission to her Overlords. The Delle I was most attracted to, with her flame and fire and grit. “I had no intention of marrying an Overlord or ever hooking up with one. But my sister confirmed there is a breeder’s list going around, exactly like you warned me about. I don’t want—I can’t…”

She fumbled for words, eventually spitting out, “I can’t believe it’s happening, but I guess it is. I’m not some alien’s sex toy or baby making machine. Sorry, no offense to your people, but I’m not. And I’m not going to be. I’d rather be dead. However, instead of killing myself, I thought maybe I’d see if your bargain still stood. Like you said—we could help each other out. You marry me and get my name off the list, and I defile your lineage so your father leaves you alone. And at some point, down the road, we separate and go our different ways, okay? Once the danger’s past we can split up like nothing ever happened?”

The added term to the bargain threw me a little. I hadn’t considered an eventual end to our alliance when I’d proposed the bargain. Asterion unions didn’t end, except by the death of one mate. From what I understood, human marriages were meant to be the same, but, before the war that decimated their populace and planet, a thing called divorce was quite common.

“Is that what you want?” I inquired carefully, uncertain why her proposal stung like it did.

She didn’t want me. At all. I had been kind to her, I thought. But she only saw me as a way out of her predicament, and certainly not a permanent one. I suppose, were I to be brutally honest with myself, I had been hoping there was a part of her that longed for me like I longed for her. I had been sorely mistaken.

“Is that what I want?” Delle took up the question, breaking into my line of thought. “I didn’t want any of this. I didn’t want to be put on an alien breeder’s list. Didn’t want to be forced into marrying an Overlord. I want to live my own life. But I guess that’s not gonna happen, is it? So, yeah, barring living my own life, here’s what I want. You help me. I help you. When the danger’s past—for both of us—we separate. Get divorced. It’s like nothing ever happened. Because we won’t have sex. We won’t fall in love. We won’t have kids together, or anything like that. Right?”

In my own mind, I’d already reconciled the term that there would be no sex unless she wanted it. But I couldn’t help the sting—again—when she said not having sex was part of the bargain. I decided to take a chance. Mustering up my self-confidence, I stepped closer to her.

“May we put a stipulation on that?”

“On what?”

She seemed uncomfortable with me standing so close, but, to her credit, held her ground and didn’t back away.

“On the no sex?”

Her nose wrinkled in a way that made me want to do something very foolish, such as lean down and kiss it.

“You’re going to demand sex? It doesn’t work that way.”

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