Page 11 of Alien Prince's Claim

This was my third time as a Reserve, three months in a row, and I was beginning to get comfortable with the setup.

After failing to be chosen, the Reserves were taken back to the changing rooms where I could put my original clothes back on — a comfy pair of jeans one size too big (I liked to be reminded I had lost a ton of weight recently as it was supposed to help with getting pregnant, should that day ever arrive) and a baggy red t-shirt with “BULLSHIT” written across it in faded white lettering.

They were my comfort clothes and they never failed to make me feel better about myself.

We were allowed to wait in the Management kitchenette.

The wait for the next ship out could be a long one and I supposed they felt I had already suffered enough humiliation that I shouldn’t have to wait in a busy spaceport terminal.

There was nothing quite so disappointing as watching other females from other species head back to the Central Space Station and filter off, back to their home planets.

They were all pumped full of seed and it was guaranteed they would test pregnant over the next few days.

I would observe them as they shone with some kind of magical internal light of motherhood while I sat sad and forlorn to one side on the “empty” team.

The first time I acted as a Reserve, I had felt depressed for two weeks — which was why I had filled up on cookies and coffee in anticipation of said emotion.

Finally, I managed to console myself that my time would come — and in fact, had to come in eighteen months when my appointment finally arrived.

Then I enrolled to be a Reserve again and exercise my ass off, burning all those extra calories I had piled on.

I read self-help books to get myself tuned mentally for the next time I would come to the Seeding Facility as a Reserve (and not get Claimed).

The chances of a female dropping out were tiny — after all, they’d had to go through the same tests I had and that was not something for the faint of heart — but it was better than sitting at home waiting for my appointment to come.

I’d always been proactive by nature.

The idea of just sitting around waiting for something to happen and come to me was as alien to me as, well, aliens.

I got halfway through the biscuits (hey, I wasn’t going to be Claimed for at least another month, so I had plenty of time to lose the feeling-sorry-myself weight I was guaranteed to put on) when the door to the shared kitchen opened.

A pair of females entered the kitchenette, gibbering among themselves.

I knew they weren’t Management right away.

They weren’t wearing the plain gray uniforms for a start.

I suspected the uniforms had been designed to be unflattering to avoid interest from the alien males.

Males in the midst of Steyatt often lost control of their senses and were more easily deterred with ugly and undesirable clothing.

The females that entered the kitchenette wore their own version of comfort clothes and were each as different from each other as they were from me.

One had bright red skin like she’d been out in the sun all day and had a bright blue tuft of hair shaped like a mohawk over the top of her head that stretched all the way down to the crack of her ass.

It looked pretty damn badass to me.

Her clothes were plain but tight to show off her toned, athletic physique.

I suppose she was doing the same thing the gray Management uniforms were, only in reverse — directing onlookers’ attention to her best assets rather than her worst.

Next to her was a purple-skinned behemoth.

She was at least fifty stone but she wore it well.

An artist might have drawn her with circles.

With the color of her skin, she reminded me all the world of a hippo.

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