Page 2 of Chosen By the Alien King
“No, she can’t come here, but as long as the wedding is aired on TV, I think she might forgive me for not being invited.”
“Okay.Tomorrow,” I agreed with a smile.
I was about to dive in for another kiss like the selfish, horny fangirl I was, but a loud bang split Maxx and me apart and silenced everyone’s excitement.My pulse jolted at the sound.It came again, near the direction of the crashed ships.
“Stay close,” Maxx commanded, gripping my arm.
Murmurs rippled through the cast and crew as we all stared down the beach.The sounds were too far away to tell what was happening, but when the bang came again, I knew exactly what it was.
“Mike,” I said through gritted teeth.
“What’s he doing?”Maxx asked.
“Taking his anger out on my ship.If he can’t have it, no one can.”
Shrugging, my pilot, Darc, strolled up to me with her hands in her pants pockets and a few tear tracks on her porcelain skin.“Either that or he’s pissed I crashed it.”She pulled me into a sideways hug.“You made me cry, Captain.I never cry.”
I touched my head to hers, some of her short pink hair fluttering into my cheek.“Sometimes it’s all I do, but today they’re happy tears.”
“Good,” she breathed.
Philip, Mosely, Miekil, and Pete came to join us, all part of my crew, in one way or another.Intentionally or otherwise, they surrounded Rain with my cat, Major, perched on her shoulder.Rain kept her gaze cast downward at the sand, her human-like lashes clumped together slightly with unshed tears.She glanced up and caught me staring, and a big, watery smile dashed across her face.
I quickly looked away, wanting to stay in my happy bubble without her popping it.
Mosely, my muscley engineer, parked himself in the sand between me and the continuing loud crashes.“Want me to go tear his limbs off and save our ship?”
“No.”I focused on Maxx again as a flicker of hope ignited inside me—hope that maybe, together, we could conquer the darkness known as Earth Space Fleet and live happily ever after.“We all have a wedding to plan.”
“It seems like the drama’s over, everyone,” Umo shouted.A curl of cigar smoke wafted up out of his orange head, still facing the direction the loud bangs were coming from.“At least the part I have no control over, so take your places.We’re going live, again, in sixty seconds!”
“But Umo…” Pete whined as he rushed toward him, “the great reveal of who lived through the shipwreck already happened the first time we went live.Can’t we just give everyone a break?”
“HA!”Oreo shouted from…somewhere.
Everyone winced at the shrill volume and panic in her voice even though she was nowhere to be seen.
“Give everyone a break to go plan a wedding, I mean?”Pete amended.
“No.”Umo puffed smoke directly up into Pete’s face.“The show must go on.Forty-five seconds, everyone!”
A mad scramble erupted across the beach as everyone rushed to the stage, except for my crew for obvious reasons, and Maxx and me and very hungry caterpillar number one in his jar in the sand.I’d been hurrying for the last several days.Weeks, even.I just needed a moment of calm with the alien warrior king who’d chosen me.
While my crew and Rain idled closer to the continuous banging noises, Major reached out from Rain’s shoulder and tapped my head twice, a little kitty smile on his cute kitty face.Either that was acongratulationstap or agood slavetap.Hard to tell with him.
Laughing, I gazed up at Maxx.“You’re sure about this?Because my emotional baggage has emotional baggage, and I wasn’t that great at marriage the first time around.”
One side of his mouth curled into a smile, and he grazed his fingertips along my jaw in a tender caress.“I’ve never been surer about anything in my life.And your ex-husband could never love you like I do.”
I leaned into his touch, soaking his words into my soul.“It was a marriage of convenience because I got pregnant.”
“Well, that’s not what this is.My heart belongs to you whether you carry my child or not.I would have asked you to marry me regardless, and not just to get rid of Earth Space Fleet on live TV either.”He shook his head slowly, his gaze searching my face.“You are everything to me, Nera.”
I collapsed into a sniffling puddle in his arms, the truth of his words settling into my bones, strengthening them with my overwhelming love for this alien warrior king.A Faid.My love for him had even eclipsed that part of him, a shock to no one more than me.
“Fan favorite Nera Cotrobin,” Pete announced from the stage.“Did she survive the shipwreck?Or did she succumb to death’s greedy hands?”
I figured I had about forty-five dramatic seconds before I had to step on stage and prove I was very much alive, even though the audience already knew because of Maxx’s proposal.
