Page 59 of The Alien's Major Dilemma

"Headache," she muttered. "Fucking headache. This is bullshit."

Her mate snorted in agreement. "I'm sure it could be worse," he said.

"Probably," she agreed. "And it took longer to kick in this time. Are you sure your people don't do the super tiny healing bots thing like the Orvax? Cause those would be really handy right about now."

"Nope, not for the Chelions. I think the Dragor might have something like that but I've never learned anything more than basic field medic stuff for them. Not that they're likely to be on the field if there's a battle but accidents happen."

"Ya know, the more I hear about the Dragor, the more I dislike them," Marissa said with a frown.

"I'm not exactly much of a fan of them right now, either," Cooper said.

She cracked an eye open and winced at the light but studied his face before she closed it again. "You doing okay with some of what you've learned?"

"I'm still processing it," he said with a shrug. "And I don't know how much of what I've learned is applicable to what I know about my people right now, today, and how much of it is misunderstood lessons from a lost expedition."

"There's probably a lot of bullshit to work through before you get to the truth," she said.

"There always is. And I probably won't ever get to all of it. I do have a lot more questions to ask Ae-cha and Zoric. I'm not even sure I know where to start."

"You asked Zoric if they followed the old naming conventions. Maybe start from there? Did you recognize his name?"

"I recognized both their names," Cooper said, and laid down next to her. The bed was too small for them to both lay flat but neither of them had minded being forced to cuddle. "They're not perfect vocalizations, of course, but they're close enough to names that I learned about as a nymph. They would be seen as odd choices for a Chelion back home."

"Odd how?" She sighed when Cooper stroked a hand down the side of her face and a gentle wave of cool relief slid across her head. She'd mentioned what had happened when she'd tried to help Captain LaGrange and he'd been trying to replicate it with varying degrees of success.

"You'd consider them villains," he said. "Ae-cha Da was the name of a Chelion princess, back when our societies were separated into warring tribes and city-states, who used then betrayed her harem to the Dragor so she could flee. Zoric was a general who assassinated a Dragor diplomat to plunge our people into almost five hundred years of war."

"Did your people have space travel back then?"

"We've always traveled among the stars," Cooper said. "I know your people are pretty new to the whole idea but as far back as we have records, we've known about and interacted with other planets."

"I wonder if they have different stories about those names," Marissa asked. "They seem to have a much different view of the Dragor than you do."

"That seems likely. Which gives me an idea of how long they've been on this planet, honestly, and I withdraw my assertion that they're impossible. Unlikely, sure, but not impossible."

"The more I learn about aliens, the more I think all of you are so unlikely that you're a near certainty."

Marissa opened her eyes, the throbbing in her head had eased enough that she didn't wince at the light, and grinned at Cooper's frown.

"You will explain that?"

"Hollywood logic, mostly," she said. "If something can't miss, then it's going to fail every time. If it's an impossible shot or has million to one odds, it will hit every time. You're all so unlikely that you have to exist."

"I begin to understand why I found your people so hard to decipher at first," Cooper said with a solemn nod. "You're all insane."

Marissa laughed and kissed him. He kissed her back and soon they were well on their way to giving her another headache when there was a knock on the door.

Cooper pulled away and rolled off the bed to stand up and Marissa let out a frustrated breath.

"I don't know if that's the worst timing ever or the best," she said before Cooper answered the door.

John stood on the other side with a grin on his face. "Was I interrupting?"

"Yes," Marissa called from the bed.

"Good," John said. "You're supposed to be resting. Except now when you're supposed to be heading to the conference room."

"You're a real buzzkill, you know that?" Marissa said, standing up. "When am I supposed to be in the conference room?"

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