by Ashley West
His fingers and toes were a bit longer than the average human, but apart from that, he was one of the most beautiful things she’d ever seen in her entire life. When he turned away from her to reveal the line of his spine and his tight, decadent behind, she took in the pronounced nodules of his spine before they were covered by the long braid of deep blue hair that dropped below his waist.
She supposed it could have been worse. At least the man wasn’t hideous; but when she came to terms with her current position, she would have to admit that his looks were the least of her concerns at this point. He was a prince – which meant that if they married, she would be a princess.
She had no idea how to be a princess…the very thought was laughable, and she knew that if Jordan still lived, he would be laughing hardest of them all. He knew how clumsy, ungainly and blunt she could be. If there were anyone less suited to be the wife of a prince, she hadn’t met them.
She watched the medical personnel check the prince’s magnificent body over before they moved away. He then reached for his black body suit, which was provided to him on a tray by one of the five impeccably dressed attendants in the room. As the prince fastened the front of the garment, every occupant of the chamber immediately stepped away from him, inclining their heads deeply in respect. For a moment, Danielle thought they were going to kowtow to him – at least until she appeared.
Walking through the door with posture that would have brought Victorian tears of joy was one of the most gorgeous women Danielle had ever seen. Of course, the prince’s people as a race didn’t really seem to have physical flaws – but this was the first time she had seen one of their women up close, and she was without compare.
Perhaps a foot shorter than the prince himself, her hair was the same shade of cobalt blue, piled atop her head in an intricate updo of curls and sleek whorls set with gold combs. The black and gold gown she wore contrasted sharply with her pale skin and fit her slender form, adhering to her every curve and trailing in an expansive train behind her. Her face was painted with a series of blue cosmetics that enhanced her eyes and the full shape of her mouth; eyes, Danielle noticed, that changed color just as often as the prince’s.
She certainly made Danielle, still naked inside her tube, feel completely second rate. And if that wasn’t discomfort enough, the moment the newcomer laid eyes on the prince, she strode towards him to embrace him warmly. Though Danielle hardly knew the man, it was enough to make her stomach clench in envy.
Was she supposed to compete with that? Impossible? She was now in a foreign place, without a single scrap of knowledge on how to conduct herself or how to act. As ready as she’d been to leave theEearth, she certainly hadn’t been ready to be chosen as wife to a prince. Now, it seemed as if she was second wife, which in and of itself was the most intimidating idea in the entire cosmos.
While she was still caught up in her whirling thoughts, the lid on her capsule released, along with the restraints keeping her inside. With nothing holding her upright, Danielle fell from the confines of the tube in an ungainly heap of limbs, naked as the day she was born.
She could feel everyone’s eyes on her and felt herself turning crimson. This could not be happening to her. At that moment, Danielle would gladly have re-entered cold sleep for an eternity. What she expected was for every single person present to burst into laughter. Instead, four doctors immediately rushed to her side to help her to her feet. She found that her legs were unable to support themselves, and had to let them hold her aloft. They worked with unparalleled speed and efficiency, injecting something into the cold sleep nodules that felt like liquid ice entering her limbs even as it pumped energy into them. Within moments, each nodule had been removed and she was standing of her own accord –and staring right at the couple she’d been observing from within her capsule.
Danielle didn’t think she’d ever been so embarrassed in her entire life. She used one hand to cover her breasts and the other her exposed womanhood. To her further humiliation, the prince smirked at her discomfort, his eyes travelling over her from head to toe.
It was the final straw. Danielle had gone along with everything that she’d been told since the moment she’d been taken from her apartment. She’d even had hope that leaving behind everything she had lost might be a positive move for her – but for her to be where she was, completely ignorant of everything around her, with the man who was supposed to be her husband laughing at her misfortune – she couldn’t let it stand.
“It’s not funny!” She snapped, her eyes narrowing in ire. If she’d have been smart, the shocked gasp from the attendants in the room would have kept her from continuing, but Danielle paid them no mind. “This is monstrous! For the love of God, give me some clothes! I won’t be paraded around you people like some sort of side show freak!”
As her words echoed around the chamber, the doctors and servants stared at her in abject horror. Prince Kael’s expression had changed from one of amusement to distinct displeasure, and in an instant, he moved to take a step forward and Danielle’s heart leapt into her throat. Before he could get very far, however, the woman beside him reached out to take his wrist lightly, drawing his attention. She spoke to him in an unrecognizable language, her voice like water cascading gently over a fall, and with a low epithet, the prince glanced at Danielle before turning on his heel to stride from the room in a huff. All his attendants hurried after him, leaving Danielle alone with the woman and the remaining doctors.
In a smooth motion, the regal creature reached behind herself to unhook the long cape she wore on her shoulders. As she raised the fabric, it glittered in the fluorescent light of the chamber. Moving forward, she draped the lightweight material over Danielle’s shoulder, affectively hiding her nude form from view. A faint, floral scent washed over the young woman and all at once, she was a mere foot from her rival, her eyes locked with a pair that flashed from gold to mossy green. “There, there. That’s better, now, isn’t it?”
All Danielle could do was stare at her. The mysterious woman, however, seemed merely to take this in stride. A small, warm smile spread across her face. “My apologies. I know this must seem very strange to you. My brother can be a bit…callous when it comes to teaching our customs.”
Brother. The Prince was her brother. Danielle felt the knot in her stomach slowly ease. So she wasn’t second wife after all –at least, not that she knew of. “My name is Kaia Xevan Al’Hazzar…and I believe we will soon be sisters.” She wrapped a slender arm around Danielle’s shoulder, her smile never wavering. “I’m sure you have many questions. Please come with me.” Gesturing towards the doorway, Princess Kaia nudged her forward gently.
Hesitating only slightly, Danielle followed her out of the room and into the ship’s corridor. Though the vessel had been alive with activity before they’d left Earth, now the place was completely deserted. It appeared that she was the last one to leave. Clutching the princess’ cloak about herself tightly, the young woman allowed herself to be led down long hallways, taking innumerable twists and turns, until finally, the glow of natural light shone from an archway ahead.
Danielle stepped into a blast of warm air. When she turned from the ship in which she had spent the last two years of her life sleeping, she got her first glimpse at her new home.
The sky was an immense smear of purple, with no less than three suns blazing down upon the surface of the planet below. Against the deep backdrop of the incredible sky lie a city that stretched as far as they eye could see – gleaming, white buildings that looked to be carved of marble for miles and miles. Some were barely a few stories high while others looked as if they expanded far into the atmosphere.
While hovercrafts were an idea that had just caught on in most of earth’s territories, here they were rampant. Everywhere you looked there was some sort of vehicle flying through the air. Indeed, it seemed as though no machine touched the ground, as people covered it in its entirety, milling through the streets as they went about their daily lives.
/> Danielle was shocked to see that all Garinians were not of the same pale hue as those who had come to Earth. The people here hosted a variety of skin colors, from the palest of hues to dark reds and ruddy greens. The young woman gaped as she attempted to take in the diverse landscape, as expansive as it was beautiful.
“Welcome to Garinia.” The princess murmured beside her, before leading her carefully down the ramp and onto the surface.
They were immediately joined by an entourage of no less than ten immense guards, all dressed similarly to those who had flanked the prince during his travels on Earth. When Danielle hesitantly asked what their uniforms signified, she was surprised to find that, unlike her brother, the Princess did not make her feel guilty or ill at ease for asking questions, and so, she let them fly in their multitudes, all while they were led through the immense capital city of the planet.
The world itself, Danielle learned, was called Garinia, though the Garinian empire spread far beyond a single planet. They had actually colonized several more worlds, and each time they conquered one, they absorbed its races and their attributes into its culture. This accounted for the amazing diversity of the Garinian people. Those who hosted paler skin had, at one time had family of royal lineage, and Danielle soon discovered that an indicator of the purest royal blood was the ever changing eyes that both the princess and her brother hosted. When she had children, Kaia explained, they, too, would carry the trait.
Danielle did her best to pay attention, which was hard when everything she passed demanded her senses. There were new sights, new sounds and smells – all of which she wanted to explore. But the princess led her on, through the streets of the city, where people made a wide berth, bowing as she passed.
Danielle tried to keep up as the regal woman gave her short history of the empire. For every two human years, the Garinians passed through one cycle of the moon, and it was through moon cycles that they measured the time that passed. In this way, the empire had recorded thousands of moons of history, kept in the many citadels around the city. They, Kaia explained, were the tallest buildings – those that rose high into the skies. The Al’Hazzar family had been in power for a vast majority of the empire’s existence, and the four Al’Hazzar children, including the crown prince, were of the purest royal blood, though more than half their number had married into the nobility of worlds they’d conquered.
The young woman tried to push aside the fact that she was no one’s nobility – and instead continued to focus on the wonders around her. She was ushered through the immense courtyard of what could only be the royal palace, edged on all sides by fountains and sculptures depicting the history of their people.
The building itself could have been as big as any skyscraper on Earth – bigger even – and it was the length of at least two football fields. As Danielle hurried through its immense arches, she felt dwarfed by its size, and the values it represented.
Her steps echoing off the gleaming floors, Kaia led her down the gargantuan corridors until they found themselves on the threshold of a room that seemed utterly stark in comparison to the grandiose palace in which it was located. Surfaces made of a steel-like material gleamed as several unidentifiable machines whirred and clicked lowly. When the princess entered, everyone working immediately stopped what they were doing to bow deeply. Kaia inclined her head respectfully, before indicating that their guard should wait outside.
When the door closed behind them, Danielle felt like a trapped rat. However, Kaia remained by her side, talking to her encouragingly as she was tended to by numerous scientists. Nothing they did hurt overly much, and the Princess explained to her why their actions were necessary. Some alterations had already been made to her genetic makeup to ensure that she could endure the atmospheric differences between Earth and Garinia.
These had been the basis upon which everything else would be built. In a single hour period, things that the young woman would never have been able to imagine were implanted into her. She was given hormones to ensure that she would be fully sexually compatible with her new husband, and to provide the ideal environment for their children to develop. Her metabolism was slowed to adjust to the Garinian cycle to ensure that she would age at the same speed as everyone on the planet – something Kaia assured her was being done to every human who had arrived.
When Danielle found out the average life cycle of a Garinian was close to two hundred human years, she felt a little faint. What on Earth would she do with so much time? She’d been struggling to deal with the time she’d had on Earth, and now her allotment had been tripled. The rest of her time in the medical bay passed in a blur as she tried to contend with the changes in her body. Synapses fired that she didn’t even know she had, she was hungry, hot, cold and panicked all at once.
At one point, Kaia took her hand, patting it gently and assuring her that everything would be fine – and unlike her brother’s intimidating gaze, the princess’s eyes were oddly comforting, even in their flickering, ever-changing nature.
When they were done in the medical bay, Danielle was fitted with a simple white tunic that revealed the entirety of her spine and laced down the back, along with a flowing pair of pants in the same color. Kaia promised her that the clothing was only temporary – that she would soon be outfitted in a manner befitting a queen; but that there were certain measures they had to take first. Then, they were off again, through the huge maze of palace rooms, until they reached a wing that seemed quieter than the rest.
Their ever present guard paused expectantly outside an immense, ornate gold door, bowing deeply, and without ceremony, Princess Kaia pushed the door open to glide inside. When Danielle followed her, she was surprised when a high, childish voice shouted an unintelligible phrase.
She had no time to take in the simplistic, clean beauty of the princess’ quarters before a small, pale-skinned figure darted across the room and into her arms. It was as if all the ceremony and pomp melted away from the woman, and a wide smile spread across her face as she lifted a Garinian child into her arms.
He was her son – that much Danielle could see even before she introduced him. He had the amorphous eyes that marked him of royal heritage, with skin as pale as his mother and uncle, and the same sharp, lovely bone structure. However, there were also a handful of attributes that very clearly marked him as a mixed race. Two tiny, jet black horns protruded from the child’s head, and small claws of the same hue jutted from the tips of his fingers. As his mother smoothed back errant strands of platinum blonde hair from his forehead, a long, prehensile tail swished behind him, and Danielle tried not to stare. Kaia cooed to her son in her native tongue, even laughing when the small child took one of the combs from her hair, sending navy curls spiraling down her back – almost to her knees.
“My apologies.” She eventually turned back to Danielle, switching to English. “This is my son, Hadric. He does not yet have his onmilingual chip implanted, so he won’t understand English.” She shifted the boy to her hip before raising his hand in greeting. “But he says hello.”
Bashfully, Hadric hid his face in his mother’s shoulder, and Danielle laughed softly as Kaia lowered him to the ground once more before scooting him off in the direction of the waiting nurse in the far corner of the room. Once the child had disappeared, the princess turned her full attention to Danielle once more.
“How old is he?” The human woman inquired softly, wondering what she and Kael’s children would look like – if, indeed, she produced them as was expected of her. If they were half as adorable as Kaia’s children, she supposed there were worse things. She’d never envisioned a family for herself but that notion, obviously, had flown out the window.
“Two moons. He was born shortly after Kael left for your planet.” Christ. Now that she knew what a moon was, she realized that the prince had been away from his home world for two of them – four years.
She couldn’t imagine all that he had missed – just to reach their little corner of the universe. “You will soon
have children of your own, Danielle.” Now Kaia was carefully removing the remainder of the combs from her hair, letting the rampant, glossy locks tumble down over her shoulders. Danielle couldn’t help but think she was an absolute vision –and how dowdy she must look in comparison. “You will, after all, be a queen. But you must also understand that, as queen, you will have a responsibility to the people of Garinia, and to your king. That responsibility will require knowledge…information that you must learn as quickly as you can. For this, you will be provided with a tutor who will teach you of our culture and customs – as well as our tongue. Do you understand?”
Understanding wasn’t the problem. With every duty that was heaped upon her, Danielle wondered more and more: why her? She was just some random pick of a pool of immune women from Earth, wasn’t she? “Princess…” She began, hesitantly. “I’m no one’s queen. I’m not nobility…and I’ve just come from a place where I’ve watched my people die ceaselessly. I’ve barely recovered from my own losses…how on earth am I supposed to be the Prince’s wife?”
“Not on Earth.” Kaia returned crisply. As she raised her arms, two servants hurried forward to help unlace the back of her ornate dress. Her eyes melted from violet, to gold, and then back again. “You are no longer on Earth, Danielle; so whatever rules that bound you there no longer apply. When you return, everything will be changed. Everyone you know will be gone and you will be heralded a hero for saving your species from extinction. Is that not a queenly accomplishment?”
The young woman’s cheeks flushed as the servants helped Kaia undress entirely. Of course, there wasn’t a single blemish on her pale, perfect form. Her breasts, Danielle noticed, had no nipples – it was a trait she had noticed in her brother as well; but aside from that, she looked no different than a long-limbed human. An exceptionally beautiful, statuesque, long-limbed human. People here, Danielle noted, seemed not to mind being naked in public.
