by Nia Mars
Oookay, that’s not weird. Yeah.
I try to control my reactions to the food, but I don’t fully succeed. I wish he would leave so I could stop feeling like a freak. I want to savor every bite, want to spend the rest of the day in the sparkling kitchen with my meal, moaning to it in sweet abandon, but I hurry up instead.
“Thank you,” I say when I finish. “That was great. I really appreciate it.”
The ever-present frown lines between his brows smooth out, and he looks...happy? Yes. For the first time since I laid eyes on the man, Krek Koah looks happy, and I am gobsmacked. Because if he’d been handsome before, now he is breathtaking, his handsome face all lit up, his indigo eyes sparkling. I try not to stare, but it’s going about as well as my attempts to not moan.
I drop my gaze to the utensil still in my hand, just to give myself a break from looking at Koah. The spoon/fork is the color of cardboard, but more dense. I can’t imagine anyone making disposable utensils. God, the waste. I want to stick it into my pocket and take it back with me to Earth.
I have to know, so I hold the thing toward Koah. “Is it paper?”
He shoots me a puzzled look. “It’s protein and supplements.”
He comes back, taps the table, pulls another one and starts eating it, crunching it between his teeth.
I try mine. Oh. Not much of a taste, but definitely edible, kind of like a dense, dry cracker.
I could cry thinking about all of us last night in the alien hospital, when none of us had any idea about this, and we’d tossed our perfectly edible utensils. The idea of wasting that much food is killing me.
“Cuts down on the waste we have to carry,” Koah says, finishing his. “And we get some extra vitamins.” He nods toward my empty bowl. “Those are made of a protein powder too, but not as good. They can be eaten in an emergency, but that’s about it. The only part not edible is the self-heating foil cover.”
He shows me the slit in one of the cabinets where he deposits my empty bowl before I have a chance to take a bite out of it, then we’re moving on as the private tour of the ship continues.
I try to remember everything. Someday, I’m going to need a ship like this to take me back to Earth. And if nobody offers one—if Koah reneges on his promise—I might have to steal it. Or, more realistically, become a stowaway.
“And below all this is storage, along with everything that keeps the spaceship running.” He explains in more detail, talking about converters and amplifiers, but my brain is on information overload, and I barely catch half. Which is just as well, since I can’t make any sense of even that.
“Would you like to rest?” he asks as he leads me through another doorway. “These are my private quarters.” He’s pointing at the bed.
That wakes me up. Is he laboring under the misconception that I’ll be sleeping here with him?
My face probably projects no way, no how, because his darkens. I can almost see him remembering how I had not accepted him earlier, whatever that means.
“I will quarter with the crew.” He says the words as if they have thorns, tearing his throat on their way out, as if they’re sharp enough to make his mouth bleed.
Okay. Let’s think about this. He’s the president/king/warlord. I’m the Oath Forger. I’m supposed to accept him. Did he mean sexually?
Maybe sex is more casual in the Federation. More like shaking hands on a deal on Earth.
My mind grinds to a halt.
Body-wide tingling commences. Krek Koah. Me. Naked.
Don’t go there. Do not think about that. Think about more practical things. Will he lose face in front of his crew and guards, if I don’t share this room with him?
He has offered me his protection. He has promised to return me to Earth after this little trip to Merim, if I so choose. I have a good thing going here. Let’s not mess it up on the first day. I might need more favors from him. I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m heading toward. Let’s not alienate the one friend I have.
I’m using the term ‘friend’, as loosely as possible.
“You can stay in the room with me,” I say the words carefully, and immediately his gaze fills with heat. “But that doesn’t mean that I am accepting you.”
The heat doesn’t go away.
I feel like he needs clarification. “I will not have sex with you.”
His breathing stops. His indigo eyes snap wide. “Ever?”
He’s all intense focus and mountains of muscle, and overpoweringly male, and clearly interested. He’s the most attractive man I have ever met. Being next to him makes my body hum. I have no idea how long we’ll be together, how long it’ll take to reach Merim, then travel back to Earth.
I’m a twenty-three year old healthy woman, and I’ve never had sex.
He’s a krek, presumably rich enough to be able to afford birth control, and presumably he has some on the ship.
Also, he promised to kill the pirates.
“I can’t rule out ever.”
He breathes again.
Chapter Five
KOAH IS HOT. And not just in a general, would-cause-a-riot-at-the-Dallas-Colony way. I mean he gives off an immense amount of heat when he sleeps. Naked.
He undressed and was under the covers before I found my voice to protest. I swear.
So now I can’t sleep because I am afraid that I will roll against him. If I do, I might catch on fire.
I keep myself awake by watching him. The thin white sheet that covers both of us has slipped to his waist. Only his upper body is visible, and thank God for that. His upper body is more than I can handle.
I want to wake him up and ask what an Oath Forger is. But since I’m pretending to be an Oath Forger, I can’t very well ask that question.
Oath. Forger.
From what he said, I should have gone straight to the capital to be received. From the way the crew and his guards kneeled, Oath Forger is definitely a high position. Koah has treated me so far as if we’re equal. I didn’t bow and scrape before him, and there were no consequences, even though he’s krek.
When I called him simply Koah, he didn’t look as if I’d broken protocol. He seemed to like it.
He seems to like me. Case in point: I am in his bed. Also, he looked stricken when I said we weren’t having sex.
I am so confused I could scream.
I think he believes that I’m the Queen of Earth, going to Merim to join an interstellar alliance with five kreks. Oath Forger could simply mean a person who is going to forge an oath of partnership.
Except, none of that explains why I am in his bed! Are alliances in space sealed with sex? I try not to think of the fact that there are apparently five (!) kreks.
Maybe monogamy is not prized around here. Maybe everyone just has sex with everyone else. Or maybe I am just handy. Maybe Koah has never had sex with an Earth woman before, and he’s been looking forward to the opportunity.
It’s not like I have had sex with an alien. Or an Earth man, for that matter.
I came close a couple of times with Ben, but birth control is an expensive luxury I am not able to afford. There aren’t enough pills to go around, so the colony provides birth control assistance only to couples who live together. Everyone else is supposed to practice abstinence. There’s only so much room in our underground tunnels.
For a while, after the invasion, society fell apart. But then, around when I was born, there was a push to return to traditional values. Families (small). Schools. There’s talk that next the government will focus on religion, but they haven’t sent a survey about that yet.
“Are you unwell, my Ava?”
My eyes snap from his hard chest to his penetrating indigo gaze.
“I’m fine.”
“You are not sleeping.”
“A lot has happened today.”
“I could comfort you.”
I’m pretty sure he means with his penis, because, yes, the sheet is definitely tenting.
He’s a complete stranger, but
he’s looking at me as if he has known me all my life. The weird thing is he doesn’t feel like a complete stranger to me either. Maybe space travel has scrambled my brain.
Since I can’t ask Koah to tell me about the Oath Forger, I ask him something else. “Tell me about The Five.”
Confusion crosses his face. He’s looking at me as if I’m a puzzle. Have I made a mistake? Have I given myself away? If I do give myself away, will he send me to the Institute so I can be studied along with the others?
His eyes never leave mine. “I am Koah. Krek of Nador. Head of the Worben Alliance.”
Since none of that makes any sense to me, I wait for more.
“Tiam is Krek of Nezid. Head of the Ternel Alliance.”
I nod at him to go on.
“Dason is Krek of Besnec. Head of the Etir Alliance.” He pauses. “Uthan is Krek of Dier. Head of the Gefel Alliance. And Roax is Krek of Won. Head of the Kered Alliance.”
He works to keep his face expressionless, but I can hear the disdain in his voice as he says each man’s name.
I hazard a guess. “The five alliances make up the Federation?”
He nods. “Despite the fact that we have some ongoing disputes. We have been at war with each other for the past hundred years.”
“Like a civil war?”
He nods again.
“Are all the kreks men?” I ask next.
His gaze turns troubled. “Would you prefer women?”
“I guess I don’t care. But it would be nice, wouldn’t it? At least some women. Why do men always have to rule?”
“At this time, all kreks are men,” he says. “The Krek of Won, before Roax, was a woman. His aunt. And Dason just took his position. His mother ruled before him.”
I like that. Sounds like maybe the Federation is not just one big misogynistic gentlemen’s club.
When I relax, so does Koah.
“Why do you call the galaxy the Milky Way?” he asks.
Lily listens to old YA audiobooks on her comm unit in the evenings sometimes, so I know the answer. A lot of those books feature Greek gods.
“Zeus, a god the ancient people worshipped on Earth, had an affair with a human woman, and she had a son. Zeus took the baby, and while his wife Hera slept, he put the little boy to her breast.” Creep. “He thought drinking Hera’s milk would make the boy immortal. The wife woke, basically shoved the kid away, and her milk spilled.”
“What does that have to do with the galaxy? Did your ancient gods live among the stars?”
“These gods lived on top of a mountain, actually. Mount Olympus. I think ancient people just thought the galaxy looked like milk spilled in the sky.”
He quirks an eyebrow at me. Fine, so my explanation is not the height of logic. It’s all I have.
“What is the war about?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “What all wars are about. Control of territory. Then at some point, too many are killed on each side, too many atrocities are committed. You go past a line, and there’s too much hate to ever make peace with the other side.”
His voice holds an edge of bone-deep exhaustion.
I have a million more questions, but I keep my mouth shut and close my eyes. I should let him sleep.
When his breathing evens out, though, I quietly slip out of bed.
The door opens as soon as I near it.
I don’t think I could get lost on this ship if I tried. I’m guessing this is a very small ship as far as spaceships go, probably just for the krek’s personal transportation. The pirate ship had certainly been much larger. It had a huge holding tank.
I head toward the kitchen. I can’t resist the ridiculous amount of readily available food. I’m not going to eat anything; I’m not that greedy. I just want to look at it. I think the sight might settle my frayed nerves.
The kitchen is straight ahead. The light is on since Captain Embrin is in there. She’s watching a small display panel on the wall, the rapidly changing images of news footage.
As soon as she sees me, she drops to one knee. Her head dips as she asks, “How may I serve you, Oath Forger?”
“Please, sit back at the table.”
When she does, so do I.
She’s not pretty by Earth standards. Her nose is too long, her upper body kind of barrel shaped. She wears her light hair close-cropped. Curiosity brims in her small, lime green eyes, reminding me of Lily who views the whole world with a bottomless inquisitiveness.
The thought of my sister squeezes my heart, and it must show, because Embrin immediately looks worried. More than worried, stricken.
I smile at her. She’s about my age. “You must be brilliant to be the captain of the krek’s ship so young.”
I’m glad she doesn’t know that I’m just a borderline-illiterate scavenger.
She blushes. “It is a great honor to be chosen. He is the greatest of all kreks. He’s a brilliant military mind. I can’t believe I get to learn from him.”
She is gushing and she knows it, so she blushes again.
In love with Koah maybe? Has she been to his bed? But she doesn’t look like she hates me because I’m there now. She looks at me with admiration as she says, “I can’t believe you are here.”
Neither can I.
“We almost lost hope at the battle of Harek. Krek Koah liberated the entire planet with just a hundred warships. When we were shot down, I thought it was over.”
The memory still has the power to make her go pale.
My mind won’t let go of the thought that Koah liberates planets. When he takes me back to Earth... When he sees how bad things are...
At that moment, I feel more hope than I can remember feeling in a long time, if ever. That hope sings through me and makes my heart tremble.
“He gave himself up to the enemy to save the crew,” Embrin tells me. “Then he fought his way out of prison and disabled the ground-based weapon systems.”
All I can think is: It’d make all the difference, if Earth had some of those ground-based weapon systems to use against the pirates.
Whatever I have to do, I’ll make sure we get that.
The newscaster droning on in the background says something that draws the captain’s gaze back to the screen. The footage is showing a planet under an incomprehensibly violent attack. Explosions, fire, smoke, utter destruction.
“They’re too far away for us to help them,” the captain tells me in a grim tone, her fingers curling into fists on her knees. “They’re in the Outer Territories. It’s a mining planet.”
The Outer Territories. That’s where Earth is, as far as the Federation is concerned. Had they watched while we were invaded, on the news, like this?
I want to scream and cry at the same time. I want to do something. Impotent anger has me grabbing my seat until my knuckles hurt. “Why can’t anybody stop the pirates?”
“They are willing to sacrifice what we are not. The lives of their victims are of no account to them. They have some slave trade, but it’s mostly restricted to a couple of factions. Their true end game is the rare minerals needed for our ships, our energy production, and our electronics. And they’re good at getting to those minerals. They have more funds than some of the smaller planetary alliances.”
“Are the planetary alliances the same as the territories?”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I forget how far away your planet is. Are you not familiar with the Federation?”
“My planet has only recently been discovered.”
“Tens of thousands of planets make up the Federation. Most of those planets are either outposts with a small scientific research station or with a single mine or two. Some of the mines are run almost exclusively by robots, so there might not be a single person on planet.”
“Why aren’t all the mines run by robots?”
“Some mines are in areas where sun flares knock out electronics and communications on a regular basis. There we make do with more old-fashioned mechanics and actual people.”
Okay, I can see that. I nod, and she goes on.
“A few hundred planets form each planetary alliance, in order to ease trade tariffs and so on.”
“There are five Alliances, each governed by a krek.” This much I know already from Koah.
It’s Embrin’s turn to nod. “The five Alliances make up the Federation. And then there are the Outer Territories, also called the Frontier, mostly controlled by pirates and other riffraff. For the most part, the pirates don’t occupy any one place, but live on their ships instead. True pirate settlements are few and far between. When they find a weak planet, they scavenge. They strip it down to the bare rock, if they can.”
“But stronger planets can fight them off?”
“Sometimes. Then there’s the Nulean Empire in the Outer Territories. The Emperor keeps to himself. He has agreements with the pirates and wants nothing to do with the Federation. He’s strong enough to hold his own.”
The ruler or rulers of the planet we are watching on display clearly aren’t strong enough. I watch the horror unfold on the screen, knowing that nobody on the surface, or even under the surface, could possibly survive that kind of annihilation.
When I can’t watch anymore, I push to my feet. I say goodnight to Embrin and go back to bed. But not before I take the foil packaging of the captain’s dinner from the table and put it into my pocket. She’d just toss it anyway.
I slip into bed without waking Koah. His face is softened in sleep. And I realize... Wait a minute. Does he look like the man in my dreams? Oh my God. Yes!
Then I hesitate. Maybe I just think that he’s the dream guy because I’ve started to like him. The stupid magazine picture keeps messing up my memories of the dreams.
I watch him, his eyes closed, his massive chest rising and falling with each breath. The straight nose, the eyes fringed with indigo lashes, the pronounced, square jaw, the masculine yet sensuous mouth...
He really is the man in the dreams. I think I hadn’t realized that before now, because Koah is larger than life, filled with energy and charisma. He’s a thousand times more than any dream.
He wakes up when I pull the covers over my shoulder. He is instantly alert. “Where have you been?”
