Page 2 of Alien Triton's Prize

Andhe’d just claimed he was my husband-to-be! What?

That meant I was either very lucky or very unlucky. Imagine having all that virile masculinity in bed with you every night but not having anything to ride on—

Whoa. Why did I even think that? Super inappropriate!

My thoughts were interrupted when he stood to his full height, his long, sinuous, strong tail lifting his upper body high above the ground so that he towered over me.

I found my voice again and replied. “I…I think there must have been a mistake. I’m not here to get married.”

“Were you not sent by Starlight Brides?”

Starlight what-now? “No. I was sent by StarlightLottery. I’m not a bride.”

For a moment, I thought he was going to develop legs and charge at me. But he didn’t need legs to move quickly on the ground, just as he didn’t need an extra pair of lungs to breathe in air instead of water. His powerful tail did all the work as he slithered toward me like a giant snake. He moved fast, too, much faster than I thought ocean dwellers would be able to on land.

In other words—fuck!

I backed away, suddenly imagining myself wrapped in the coils of his tail like he was a long-extinct fabled anaconda of Earth.

I found myself surrounded by scales; not reptilian ones, but fishy ones that shimmered with lethal iridescence. He didn’t squeeze, though. Nor did he swallow me whole.

“I requested a bride. You are Vera, so you must be that bride. You are human, so you are compatible. I did not make this trip for nothing.”

I don’t know where I found the bravery, but I shoved back from him, my hand landing on a chest that was strangely smooth. At first, I thought that he didn’t have scales there, but I was wrong. He did, but the scales there were smaller and so fine and perfectly fitted with each other that they looked smooth, giving the illusion of skin.

“Look!” I shoved my phone, which was on the last of its battery, in his face. “See? It says right here. I’m a botanist. I specialize in marine plants, specifically those of brackish variety. I’m not here to get married. I’m here for a job.”

As he glared down at my device, the words on the screen began to change.

The Starlight logo stayed the same, but the wordLotterywas replaced by the wordBride.BotanistandJobnow readWifeandBreeder.The name of the company I was supposed to work for disappeared and was replaced by glyphs I could not read.

“What the fuck!” I stared at the screen in disbelief. There was something fishy going on.

He frowned and leaned in to look at the contract too. He blinked, and I saw that he had an extra set of eyelids that opened and closed sideways. They were clear and most likely protected his eyes from the water.

Humans didn’t have that. No wonder Starlight Lottery—or Brides, or whatever—had insisted on fitting the special high-tech lenses to protect my eyes from being underwater for prolonged periods. I’d insisted that my job probably wouldn’t require me to spend hours at a time underwater, but they’d known. Sneaky bastards.

“I cannot read your language, but I am seeing words change. I think you’ll find it difficult to file a complaint now that you arehere and they are gone.” His face softened as he brought out a large conch-like shell, which he kept on the only thing he wore: a harness.

“This is my copy of the contract.” He turned his shell around and showed me the screen. Oh! It was a phone. On it was a picture of me and a bunch of words I couldn’t understand. “According to this, we were married the second we both signed it.”

Then, as if to laugh at me, the sun, which had been shining just a moment earlier, hid behind a cloud, the wind picked up, and a single fat raindrop landed smack dab in the middle of my forehead.

Chapter 2

Cetius

I looked up at the clouds suddenly gathering in the sky. I should have expected this: the weather was mercurial on most of Aquaria, and it didn’t ever take much for a sunny day to turn into tropical storms here near the planet’s equator. The wind had already been starting to pick up while I was waiting for my bride to arrive.

I’d known I had been matched with a human, but nothing could have prepared me for just how small and defenseless my Vera was. She had neither scales nor spines to cover her and protect her from the sun’s damaging rays, and she appeared to have been born with only one set of eyelids. Did Starlight Brides really believe she was the right match for me?

I wasn’t the first male of my kind to request a bride from the galaxy-wide mail order bride company and I wouldn’t be the last, not with our lack of females. I’d never heard of any instances where the female was not compatible. It was one of the things the company guaranteed. Considering the steep price I’d paid for Vera, she’d better be.

Except my female was sure she was here for a job and not to be my wife. I’d also seen the words in her contract change right before my eyes.

But I’d paid handsomely for a compatible female, and I wasn’t returning home without one. Especially since I’d already confirmed that Vera was on the planet and safe in my care when I saw her walking my way earlier. If anything happened to her now, Starlight Brides would never entrust a female to me again.

Vera’s skin was pale and smooth. Tiny spines too soft and fine to hold up on their own sprouted intermittently over her body; they were so thin and downy they’d never protect her from anything. The longer quills on her head—hair, or was it fur?—were too soft to offer any protection either. They were the color of dappled sunlight filtering through calm waters, blowing wildly in the wind right now even though the storm had not yet started in earnest. Her eyes were the same gray as the storm clouds that blew in from the ocean.

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