Darak

by Cara Bristol

  “I wish you could meet my parents,” I said. “Perhaps we could arrange for them to visit Earth—or we could go see them on Dakon.”

  “Either one—or both! I want to meet your parents, and I’d love to see your planet.” Her eyes lit up.

  “I would like to show it to you. The spaceflight requires three months, so it would take a minimum of six months just for going and coming back, plus time spent there. Can you leave your bakery that long?”

  “We’ll make it work. We’ll plan for it,” she said.

  I’d left my planet with the realization I might not ever return, so I could accept Lexi’s life and livelihood required us to live on Earth. She was worth more to me than anything on Dakon, but I would still miss my home planet. “Thank you.” I hugged her.

  Lexi rolled on top of me. “Now,” she said. “If we’re going to get married, we need to start planning. Let’s rehearse our wedding night again. Once more from the top.”

  Epilogue

  Lexi

  Six months later

  “Well?” I watched Darak’s reaction as he taste-tested the latest cake flavor.

  He grinned. “Just like Mom used to make.”

  “Do you think people will like it?”

  “The Dakonians will.” He chuckled.

  “What about the anise icing?”

  “It’s different, but good. It gives it a spicy little kick,” he said.

  I leaned across our kitchen counter and kissed him.

  “What was that for?”

  “You had frosting on your lip.”

  “Is it all off?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Better make sure,” he advised.

  I kissed him again. I couldn’t get enough of touching this man, my mate, my fiancé whom I’d be marrying in a month. It was a wonder I got any work done.

  The bakery business boomed bigger than ever, and I’d had to hire and train staff for a new shop—Darak had bankrolled a second Your Just Desserts. Turned out, my man was richer than dirt—richer even than my mother because he had unlimited access to illuvian ore.

  “Thank you for bringing me a bit of home.” He held up the cupcake I’d baked special for him. “Getting the ingredients couldn’t have been easy.”

  “No problem. Piece of cake!”

  It had been said everyone was connected by six degrees of separation—or fewer.

  My sister Toni’s attorney friend Maridelle Owens had a client named Starr Conner who’d gone to Dakon as one of the first mail-order brides. Starr’s friend and fellow bride Andrea Simmons was quite the operator. She had a bit of a black market going between Dakon and Earth. She’d arranged for me to receive a shipment of macha flour. I’d surprised Darak with a macha cake.

  Macha was going to be the new flavor at Your Just Desserts—and one of the cakes at our wedding.

  I took a bite of a cupcake.

  “This is my fight song, take back my life song…” My tablet rang out with an oldie tune. I pressed accept, and Toni appeared on the screen, her demeanor bland. Like our mother, she’d mastered the poker face—except my sibling used her superpower for good instead of evil. However, I knew my sister, and her lack of expression was revealing in its unrevealingness.

  I leaned a hip against the counter. “What’s up?”

  “Any word from Mother with regard to your wedding?”

  “Actually…yes. She contacted me to say she’ll attend.” The conversation had been formal, stilted. It was hard to tell if she was still angry and appalled because formal and stilted was her normal personality. However, she had reached out. For her, that was a major concession. We would never see eye to eye and would always have “issues,” but a bond still existed beneath the load of baggage. I wanted my mother at my wedding—under certain conditions, of course. “I told her I was happy she was coming, but warned she had to be civil to Darak. She did apologize for threatening to have him deported.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Amazing, but true. I doubt she meant it, but the words were there, and I’ll take what I can get. How are you two getting along?”

  “We’re talking. I think she accepts Phillip and I wouldn’t have been a good match. She took me leaving the firm better than I had expected.”

  Jilting the founding partner of her law firm had strained working relationships a tad, so my sister floated away on her golden parachute, landed safely, and hung out her own shingle.

  I glanced at Darak then back at my sister. I folded my arms. “Okay, enough chit-chat. Spill it! Why did you really call?”

  She broke into a big smile. “The Intergalactic Dating Agency found a match for me!”

  I squealed. “Toni! That’s wonderful! Oh my gosh! When? Did they tell you who? What planet, I mean?”

  She chortled. “I’ll give you one guess.”

  My eyes widened. “Dakon? Your date is a Dakonian?”

  “Yep. They said his name is Aton.”

  I glanced at Darak. “I don’t suppose you know him?” I didn’t expect that he would. He’d said his planet was small, but it couldn’t be that small.

  “Actually, I do,” he said. “But not well. He belongs to another tribe. I’ve met him a couple of times. Like me, he had always come up empty-handed during the drawings for Earth females.”

  “So, if he’s coming here, he’s serious about finding a mate,” I surmised.

  “All Dakonians are serious about finding their mates,” Darak said.

  “Any tips? Anything special I should know?” my sister asked.

  “If the Fates have chosen him for you, he will bond with you right away,” Darak said.

  I still didn’t buy the whole Fates thing, but whatever. Darak and I had certainly bonded right away. He’d considered me his mate as soon as he saw me, and although it had taken me a little longer to warm up, I’d fallen head over heels pretty quickly. I eyed his horns. Should I tell Toni their horns weren’t window dressing, they were sexually responsive?

  I wiped a hand over my mouth to hide a grin. Nah…I’d let her find out with Aton for herself. But, I did have some advice.

  “Don’t introduce him to Mother right away,” I said.

  “Oh hell, no,” Toni said. She tilted her head. “I haven’t even met him yet, but assuming we like each other, and he’s amenable, he’ll come as my plus-one to your wedding.”

  I grinned. “Of course! What would a wedding be without an alien?” I sobered. “Seriously, I’m thrilled for you. You deserve a great guy. I hope your Aton is as wonderful as Darak.”

  Toni raised crossed fingers. “Thank you. I’m so happy for you, too.”

  We disconnected, and I wrapped my arms around Darak’s neck and kissed him. Indeed. What would a wedding be without an alien?

  Out of a half-baked plan to teach my mother a lesson, I’d found true love. Sometimes you could have your cake and eat it, too.

  * * * *

  Thank you for reading Darak: Dakonian Alien Mail Order Brides #1. Find out what happens when Lexi’s sister Toni meets her alien in Aton: Dakonian Alien Mail Order Brides #2. Read on for an excerpt…

  Chapter One

  Toni

  “He’s not coming? What do you mean Aton’s not coming? The ship from Dakon isn’t arriving on Tuesday?” I stared into my picto-phone at Jessie.

  “The ship will land on schedule, but he won’t be on it.” Her mouth compressed into an unhappy line. “I’m so sorry. The Intergalactic Dating Agency accepts full responsibility for the snafu.”

  I leaned my elbows on my desk and rubbed my throbbing temples. This was turning into a very bad day. First, there’d been the unpleasantness in the courtroom with Phillip, and now this. When my assistant had said I had a call from Jessie Hancock, I’d expected good news from the IDA couples’ coordinator.

  “I’ve waited three months,” I said. After signing up with the agency and completing the personality and readiness assessmen
t, I’d been matched with an alien named Aton right away but had to wait for his ship from Dakon to arrive.

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  “So, when will he get here? When’s the next ship?”

  Jessie’s professional composure slipped, and she looked pained. “Another one lands in two weeks, but he won’t be on that one, either. He’s not coming at all.”

  “What?”

  “Alien Immigration didn’t approve his visa.”

  “Why?” Mentally, I ran through the possible reasons Immigration would deny admission to Earth: criminal activity, poor physical or mental health, drug abuse, terrorism, species discordance. A couple of tragic incidents of spontaneous combustion had revealed the biological incompatibility of some alien species with humans. However, that didn’t apply to Dakonians. Quite a few had already arrived—my own sister was engaged to one. Nor could I believe anyone from Dakon was a criminal, a drug abuser, or a terrorist.

  “They didn’t say. I appealed, but I doubt anything will come of it. They’re not exactly cooperative over there.” She sighed. “Their bureaucratic red tape and general obstructionist attitude complicates my job considerably.”

  “What happens next—wait a minute…” I sat up straight in my chair. “Visas had to be approved by Immigration before the aliens boarded the ship, didn’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the whole time you were telling me you had a perfect match for me, you knew full well Aton wasn’t coming!” I was getting steamed.

  “The Intergalactic Dating Agency only found out today. Immigration had informed us his visa was granted. This morning they sent us a redacted passenger list. The IDA promised you a date, and we guarantee our matches. We will find you someone else.”

  “It won’t be Aton.” It was crazy to mourn for a man I hadn’t met, of whom I knew only the barest details: name, age—thirty (five years older than me), and planet of origin—Dakon. But, I’d hoped, dreamed, planned. In my head, I’d spun romantic outings, intimate dates, and fun trips to welcome him to my world, to make him feel at home. I felt like an adoptive parent who’d expected a baby for nine months only to learn two weeks before the due date they weren’t getting one after all.

  Note to self: Don’t count your aliens before they land.

  “No, it won’t be Aton,” Jessie admitted.

  “Will he be a Dakonian?” I’d had my heart set on a tall, horned alien hottie.

  “I can’t say off the top of my head. We’ll need to re-run your assessment tests through our system.”

  “You should still get the same results. My personality and needs haven’t changed.”

  “But the list of available men has. Your results are matched against their results.”

  “Oh.”

  “I promise you’ll be pleased with the selection.”

  “Didn’t you say Aton and I were a 100 percent match? Who could be better for me than him?” On our compatibility test, we’d scored the same on seventy-two out of seventy-two points.

  She winced. “It’s a violation of agency policy to give actual numbers. I never should have shared that information with you.”

  Loose lips sink ships. Good thing she wasn’t employed in military intelligence because she’d spilled the beans on a lot. “You told me no couple had ever scored the way Aton and I had.”

  “True,” she conceded. “However, I’m hopeful we can get you 90 percent or better. That’s very good. Few Earth couples achieve that degree of compatibility. Usually it’s around 60 percent—at best 75 percent.”

  “Which might explain the 50 percent divorce rate,” I said dryly. And that stat only applied to couples who got married. Population demographics had shifted so women outnumbered men by quite a bit. With an oversupply of female fish in the sea, men were disinclined to settle down with one woman, let alone get married.

  Hence, when you got a man, you did your best to hang onto him—even if he was an emotionless stuffed shirt thirty years your senior. That was, until you saw the alien hunk your sister brought to your wedding, discovered you had options, and realized what a huge, huge mistake you were about to make.

  My sister had met her alien beau through the Intergalactic Dating Agency. The service recognized the need for marriage-minded men and rose to fill it with aliens willing to emigrate and commit.

  “It’s possible to be too compatible. Like ions—opposites attract, likes repel. Now that I think about it, you two were too similar, and finding someone more dissimilar will be better for you,” Jessie said.

  She was trying to cover her butt. After saying the agency would match me with someone almost as compatible, now she claimed compatibility was overrated. Was she lying then, or was she lying now? I hated being so suspicious, but as an attorney, I could recognize a song and dance a mile off, having performed a little legal soft-shoe myself.

  Jessie shifted her gaze away from me and squinted off to the side, as if she’d split her computer screen and was scrolling through and reading. Her brows furrowed. “Yeah…the whole maverick assessment worried me anyway,” she muttered.

  “Maverick? What you talking about?” I said.

  Pursing her lips, she leaned back in her chair. “Nothing,” she said brightly.

  She was a terrible liar. It wouldn’t take a minute on the witness stand to get her to crack. I folded my arms and let silent skepticism do the work for me.

  Jessie wet her lips and dropped her gaze. “I can’t share any more of the results with you. It’s against agency policy. I’ve said too much already.”

  I arched an eyebrow and waited.

  She fidgeted.

  “He’s not coming here, anyway, so it’s not like you’re sharing information about a client.” She needed only a little coaxing because she wanted to tell me.

  She glanced left and right, and then leaned forward. “This is the last bit I can tell you. I can’t reveal anything more,” she whispered. “Aton’s personality assessment results showed he had a penchant for nonconformity. If the rules don’t work for him, he’ll go around them or set his own.”

  “Could that have been why Immigration denied his visa? Does the agency share test results?”

  She shook her head. “No. Our assessments are internal documents held in strictest confidence.”

  Not so confidential. If she’d told me, who else might she have squealed to? Immigration probably had the info.

  “It could be he didn’t obey their rules in applying for the visa,” she suggested. “You have to follow the procedures to the letter. If you miss dotting a single I or crossing one T, they’ll deny the application. They look for ways to keep people out rather than letting them in.”

  “Do you have any idea what sort of rules Aton might have broken?”

  “I don’t know if he broke any,” she said. “The assessment only showed a high degree of potential for nonconforming behavior.” She folded her hands. “Listen. I promise you, we’ll find you another date. It’s possible there’s a match on the ship from Dakon arriving in two weeks—or in a group of aliens from a different planet.”

  “Aren’t they already spoken for?” I’d been informed of my match’s identity months ago.

  “Not all of them. We don’t throw humans and aliens together willy-nilly. That’s not how we operate. There could be a man arriving who didn’t match any of the profiles in the existing female client database. Not everyone gets matched immediately. However, we get new applicants all the time. The program is very popular.”

  Suddenly, she was all business. “Don’t worry. Your match will be expedited. I’ll be in touch as soon as your date is identified.”

  The picto-phone screen blanked out.

  Aton, a maverick? That sounded…exciting. Sexy.

  If our personalities were supposed to be alike, and he was a rule breaker, didn’t that imply I was a nonconformist?

  Well, that punched a big hole in the accuracy of the agency’s tes
ting. Nobody adhered to the rules more than me. My whole life I’d conformed to what other people expected of me—and by other people, I mean my mother—to the extent that my life wasn’t my own.

  Jilting Phillip at the altar was a minor aberration. Okay, not so minor, but still an exception. Joining the Intergalactic Dating Agency was my boldest move, but it didn’t violate any rules, other than pissing off my mother to the extent that she’d nearly disowned me. And I’d opted out of the partnership at my old law firm to open my own office. Anomalies every one. I was no rule breaker.

  My sister Lexi, on the other hand… Look up maverick in the dictionary, and you’d see her picture. I tapped her number into the picto-phone.

  Giggling, she appeared on the screen while Darak, her Dakonian husband-to-be, nuzzled her neck.

  “This is how you answer? What if it had been Mother?” I said.

  “I recognized your ringtone. If it had been Mother, I would have made sure we were naked,” she replied.

  See? I worried about proprieties, and she delighted in flouting them. Maverick all the way.

  “Darak…” She laughed and squirmed in his arms as he continued to kiss her.

  A pang shot through me. I’d never seen a happier couple than those two. I was thrilled for her, but envious. I wanted my own alien who would be as devoted to me as Darak was to my sister.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “He’s not coming,” I replied.

  “Who’s not coming?”

  “Aton. His visa didn’t get approved.”

  “Oh no.” My sister was all concern. “Wasn’t he supposed to arrive this week?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “And you found out today?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing like a little notice, huh?”

  “Exactly. The Intergalactic Dating Agency claimed they just got notified by Immigration there’d been an error.”

  “So, what happens now? Are they reprocessing his visa application?”

  “The IDA has filed an appeal, but the coordinator said they’re going to find me another match.”