by Lisa Lace
“Welcome back.” Priya didn’t greet me with a smile. “What did you find out?”
I hadn’t been gone long, but the room seemed smaller and more cramped than I remembered. I didn’t like Priya living here. It was one thing to play in the place for a few hours as a child, but it was quite another to live alone in the tiny, dingy space as an adult.
She looked surprisingly happy to see me, which caught me off guard until I remembered I was the only person she had seen in a long time. If I had been alone for as long as she had, I would have been pleased with any company too.
“I only bring bad news.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“They separated the men and the women. The women are all in the First and Second wings. The men are in the Third and Fourth wings. Pirates are roaming everywhere on the ship.”
“How did you manage to figure this out without getting caught?”
I shrugged. I didn’t think I should share everything with Priya. “I ran into a pilot who is friends with one of my brothers. His name’s Jassan. Apparently, there’s a rumor that Anders left the ship. A fighter escaped right after the pirates took over, but no one knows for sure it was him.”
“Do you think it was?”
“It certainly sounds like something my brother might do. He’s a bit of a wild card.”
“But how could they have evaded the tractor beam? I thought everyone was stuck until the tractor beam is turned off.”
“He’s good with computers. He has talent, but all he’s done before is hack into places and annoy our father.”
“We’re not alone out here. Maybe there’s more hope than you think.” Her black eyes flashed a challenge at me.
“We might be lucky. That wasn’t the only thing Jassan said to me. They already killed one of us.”
“Are you joking?”
“Nope. The pirates would rather shoot first and ask questions later. They don’t need the men for anything. It doesn’t matter if we can answer them or not.”
“You shouldn’t go out there again.”
“It’s not dangerous for me, Priya.” The look on her face told me she didn’t believe me.
I had the irrational urge to tell her not to worry. I knew she hadn’t been worried about me. We were strangers. I didn’t know how to explain anything to her without telling her about the passageways, so I decided I shouldn’t tell her anything.
“I hope it’s not. You’re in time for dinner.” She gestured to a pile of dried food and water.
“It looks delicious. A five-star meal for people stuck in the basement of a starship.” A grin spread across my face. “I’m hungry, but I have something to show you first. You’ll have to follow me. It’s not here.”
“Is it a present? I don’t like surprises anymore.”
I wondered what she meant. “Don’t think of it a surprise. It’s something that will make your life better.”
“Is it safe to leave with the pirates on board?”
I nodded. “I promise nothing will happen to you.”
I knew she would have to trust me to leave the safe life she had built for herself. She studied my face for a long time with a worried look in her eyes.
She seemed to come to a decision and nodded. “Okay, Allex. Lead on.”
Chapter Five
PRIYA
I didn’t know if it was the right decision to trust Allex and let him take me somewhere unknown. For all I knew, he was going to trade me to the pirates for credits. There might be a cop waiting for us so he could claim a reward.
I suppose I was a sucker for an honest face. I didn’t exactly trust Allex, but I didn’t think he was a pathological liar, either. When we went through the door and emerged in paradise, I knew my instincts were right. I gasped and put my hand over my mouth, looking around me in awe.
Allex grinned at me. “Do you like it?”
“I can’t believe this place has been here the entire time I’ve been eating dried food. I looked for the greenhouses, but couldn’t find anything. Why do they hide this from people?”
He shrugged. “I guess we’re paranoid.” Allex gestured with one hand. “We have fields like this that go on for acres. There’s enough fresh food here to feed the entire ship for a few weeks. It’s just enough for us to make it to the next supply stop.”
“It doesn’t matter that I didn’t know about it before. From now on, I’m not going to eat another piece of dried food until I get off this ship.”
The mention of me getting off the ship made us both silent. I looked away from Allex, taking in the beauty surrounding us.
“Pick anything you like, Priya. One person won’t make us run out of food.”
I moved toward a patch of tomatoes. They were ripe and ready to eat. I pulled off my backpack, filling it with the most delicious dinner I could imagine since boarding the mothership.
The ceiling was so far above us that it was difficult to see. Special lights mimicked the light of the sun. It felt like real sunlight — warm, yellow, and bright. Butterflies flitted here and there, and bees buzzed from flower to flower.
A slight breeze from the air exchangers ruffled my hair. I raised my face to the warmth of the ‘sun,’ keeping my eyes closed. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the light while hiding in the darkness.
“Priya, you’ve been in the dark too long.” When I opened my eyes to look at him, he seemed concerned. “You’re probably deficient in Vitamin D. You should come here every day to take care of yourself.”
“What do you know about it?”
“I’m a doctor.”
“Of Auxem medicine? Does your knowledge apply to humans?” I hadn’t expected him to be a physician. I hoped he was nothing like Jerry, my asshole ex-boyfriend. Was the hunky guy next to me really a doctor, too? He had looks, kindness, and brains. People like him weren’t supposed to exist. The tone of my thoughts must have come through in my words, and he frowned.
“What’s that supposed to mean? We’re physiologically very similar.”
“I’m surprised. Aren’t you a little young? You don’t seem like the type.” I felt my eyes bug out when I realized my thoughts had popped out of my mouth without my permission.
“What?” He looked outraged and offended until he started to laugh. He couldn’t stop laughing, and soon I was giggling with him. I couldn’t help it. It was contagious.
When we finally stopped, he spoke. “I guess I should take it as a compliment, although it felt backhanded at best. I’m the youngest one in my family.”
“The baby?” I checked him out without letting him know I was checking him out. He certainly wasn’t a baby anymore.
“Everyone told me I was too young to do almost everything.”
I sympathetically nodded as I pulled the warm, soft fruit off the plants, wandering up and down the rows with him following me.
“When you said I was too young to be a doctor, I had heard that many times before. It felt like an insult.”
“I can see why. You must have quite a family. Are they pretty hard on you?”
“Oh, no.” He wasn’t convincing at all.
“Do you want to tell me about them?” I thought he would almost certainly clam up like he had earlier, but to my surprise, he answered my question. The lights were relaxing, and we seemed to be getting along.
“Arnon is the oldest. He doesn’t laugh much. He helped raise all of us after my mom died. Ayrie is next, and he’s never been serious at all. Anders is the pilot I mentioned. Avren is a geneticist. I’m the youngest, and the only doctor, I promise.”
“I believe you. I was just kidding.”
“I hope you weren’t kidding about me being good-looking.” He couldn’t resist teasing me. I blushed. I liked his smile, but I was not interested in him at all.
ALLEX
Her eyes narrowed. “No, that wasn’t what I said. I was talking about you being too young to be a doctor. I’m often told I look too young for my age. It got annoying qu
ickly because people wouldn’t take me seriously.”
I stared at her. “It’s like you read my mind.” I was surprised she understood what it was like to be me.
Priya nodded. “It’s hard. It’s not like you’re a teenager. If you’re healthy and look young, it shouldn’t mean people treat you like a kid.”
The feeling of being understood felt foreign to me. I couldn’t believe an annoying human was making me feel like she got me. I wandered over to where I remembered we grew lettuce. It was still in the same place. “Do you want some fresh greens?”
“I’ll eat anything instead of rations.”
“I bet. You want a shower, too, right?”
“Don’t promise things you can’t deliver, Allex.” Priya gestured angrily at me with a head of lettuce. “You’re going to get my hopes up.”
It was probably a mistake to mention it, but she didn’t seem like a criminal. I didn’t think she was luring me so she could betray me later. Although I had no particular reason to trust her, I realized I did. “There’s a staff shower on this level. Let me check the schedule. You might be able to use it as soon as tomorrow. We can come back before the workers arrive.”
Priya stared off into space, dreaming about cleaning herself. “I haven’t had a shower for a long time. Sponge baths get old quickly.”
My mind helpfully supplied me with an image of Priya naked and washing herself. I started getting hard and quickly turned away from her, looking for something else to think about.
An hour later, we sat in the orchard under an apple tree eating some fresh produce. Priya looked like she was in heaven. I almost couldn’t stand the way she was enjoying her food. Her lush mouth and those red lips were simply too much.
When she started working on an uncut cucumber, I had to put one of the handkerchiefs from her backpack on my lap to conceal my desire for her.
“How many brothers do you have again?” She popped a cherry tomato into her mouth.
“Four. Arnon, Ayrie, Anders, and Avren.”
“Five brothers with names starting with the letter A. Are they all as handsome as you?”
I felt a surge of energy go through me. Priya was flirting with me.
“I guess so. We’re all pretty good looking, I think.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Priya muttered under her breath. She sat up straight as if she had just realized something. “Wait a second. There’s five of you?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I’ve heard there are five princes in the Auxem royal family.” She had figured it out. I had wondered if she knew enough about us from the news to read between the lines. “They’re supposed to be gorgeous, and all have names beginning with the same letter.”
“They’re just ordinary people, Priya.”
“How do you know?”
“I’m one of them. It doesn’t have to change anything.” I didn’t like the look in her eyes.
“It changes everything, Allex. Maybe I should address you as Your Highness.”
I felt my eyes get big. “No, you definitely should not.”
She wasn’t eating anymore. She was staring at me.
“I’m the same guy who somehow became your roommate after a violent blow to the head. Just pretend this last minute of conversation never happened.”
“But you’re not the same. You’re...”
I wondered how she was going to finish her sentence, but she never did. She started to pack up the uneaten food into her backpack.
“We should get back.”
“Priya, please.” I wasn’t sure what I wanted from her.
“Allex, let’s get out of here. It’s dangerous to be out too long.”
She was used to hiding herself. It bothered me. In my head, I understood she was technically a criminal, but interacting with her made her real to me, instead of just another number on a piece of paper. I followed Priya as she made her way back to her home without any help from me. I was glad she had already memorized the path so she’d be able to find it when I wasn’t with her.
Was I going to turn her in when the pirates were gone? The more I thought about the idea, the more wrong it seemed. Maybe I could ask Anders to drop her off on a different planet. Once she was off the ship, she wouldn’t be a stowaway and couldn’t be charged with a crime.
All I had to do was wait for the right time to suggest it to her. She didn’t deserve a severe penalty, no matter what she had done.
I didn’t want to imagine her going to a planet where I would never see her again. I knew it wouldn’t feel good. In fact, I was afraid it would make me miserable.
I watched the swaying of her lovely hips and full ass as I followed her down into the darkness of level ten and wished things were different.
When we returned to her home, we both retreated to our respective beds. Priya started clearing out her backpack and arranging the food. Once she put away the vegetables, she began cleaning the room, even asking me to move so she could wash the floor. The whole place was spotless when she finished.
Neither of us felt any better. Priya was upset I was a prince, and I had experienced that reaction so many times that I didn’t expect her to talk to me much. She wasn’t going to treat me like a peer now. I was sad, but I understood. It was easy for people to put royalty on a pedestal, but it was lonely up there.
If I was honest with myself, I was experiencing something more powerful than sadness. I felt like I had lost a friend, but Priya and I weren’t friends. I didn’t know what we were. I had no reason to feel this way.
Somehow, I had to use my head to think my way out of heartache. And I was starting to feel soreness in my wing pockets, which meant I needed to take them out tonight. I wouldn’t be able to fly, but I could pull the wings out and flap them around.
I was one of the few Auxem men who had survived infected wings. It happened when I was a teenager and my wings had recently emerged. Everyone warned me I needed to take them out every few days. I thought I knew better, they became infected, and I almost died.
Whenever I took them out, the pain was far worse for me than for anyone else. I loved flying as much as any other person from Auxem, but I recoiled at the thought of taking them out. I didn’t want to go through the agony.
But how could I do it without Priya seeing me?
Our father, the king, had issued an edict saying all Auxem men must keep the existence of our wings a secret from everyone, especially the humans. We were afraid that if they knew about the trauma that often befell our wings, they would never agree to have our babies.
It had happened before. We had an agreement with a planet before Earth, but when they discovered the monumental struggles that come with our wings, they kicked us out the door.
Priya could not find out about them. I would have to wait until after she fell asleep. As long as I moved far enough away, she wouldn’t hear my cries of pain.
I always cried out. I couldn’t help it. Usually, I had something to bite down on, which muffled the noise. I didn’t think I could deploy my wings without making any sound.
She would never know, and our wings would remain a secret.
Chapter Six
PRIYA
The truth was out. Allex was one of the five Auxem princes and one of the hottest bachelors in the galaxy. Three of his brothers were already married and off the market. He had shared a lot of information about his brothers while we were picking vegetables in the greenhouse. They seemed important to him.
I had flirted with Allex without knowing who he was. I didn’t want to remember where my dirty mind had gone while thinking about him. But I knew it involved him putting his hands all over my body.
I shifted in the dark, lying on a futon and feeling hot at the thought of him touching me.
I had to stop thinking about him like that. It hadn’t seemed like a big deal before because he was just another guy to me. Now that I knew he was a prince, it felt a little inappropriate.
He had been s
o kind while showing the greenhouse to me that it was changing how I thought about him. He seemed like less of an asshole now and more like a nice person. Unfortunately, it seemed more likely he would turn me in now because he was such a high-profile person.
A person of importance had more credibility than a nobody like me. If he said he had found me as a stowaway, they were going to charge me. I was on a starship without a ticket. They didn’t need much more evidence than that.
I needed to stop thinking about Allex and get some sleep. I didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. Allex was supposed to do some more reconnaissance, and perhaps if I got lucky, he would let me come with him. I wanted to do something to help.
I nodded off imagining Allex snuggling with me and holding me tightly.
Something woke me in the middle of the night and I didn’t know what it was. I listened to the evening sounds, wondering if a pirate had made their way into our quarters.
I didn’t hear anything more. I wrapped myself tightly in a blanket and noticed a peculiar silence. I could no longer hear the pirates, and there was no noise coming from anything but me. I couldn’t even hear Allex breathing. I hadn’t realized how comforting the sound was; it was a reminder I wasn’t alone anymore.
I must have awakened when I heard Allex leave. Where was he going? What was he doing? And why was it happening in the middle of the night?
I felt betrayed. I had thought we made progress today in becoming friends.
I crept out of the maintenance door into a brighter area near the pipes. Allex had only been gone for a minute. I should still be able to see him.
A shadow moved far away in the space between the two largest pipes. If it was Allex, I would have to move quickly or I would risk losing him in the darkness.
I felt a fleeting fear of getting lost; all the pipes looked about the same. But I needed to know what Allex was doing. Before long, I was so close that I didn’t have to worry about losing him. My biggest concern was him hearing me. I slipped off my shoes, carried them in my hands, and stayed as far back as I dared as I walked softly on my bare feet.
