Some medical person had put a piece of metal against her neck and then she’d gotten very calm. She vaguely remembered them explaining to her that Angus was healing from his wounds.
But what wounds?
She had wondered then and still wondered now. Nate had ordered her not to worry about it, but he couldn’t order her to forget. Angus and Agent Black had never fought at all.
Among her many problems, she’d quickly discovered her weakness for Angus MacNamara was a matter of public record here. Everyone she encountered treated her like his concerned wife, though she was as far from that as it was possible to be in any of their blessed universes.
At least Angus didn’t know she had ever worried herself ill over him being in that box. Goddess willing, she’d keep her pride and figure out how to keep him from finding out.
She opened the door and found Toorg waiting patiently. He nodded and for once said nothing to her at all.
“I guess I’m ready now. Let’s go see the lasses,” she said in resignation, watching his face beam his delight.
3
“Toorg!”
Erin rolled her eyes as a chorus of female voices called out in welcome when they entered the draftees common area.
“I am Toorg,” she heard him answer proudly, smiling and waving at his adoring fans.
She also watched his concerned gaze slide to the light mocha-skinned female staring out the window. It covered every inch of the woman before he could make himself look away. It was the same reaction Toorg had every time they entered the room and Prudence was hiding away from everyone in her own thoughts.
Fifty-seven of the fifty-eight females in the draftee area always called out to her handsome guard, but Toorg seemed only interested in the one who never even turned his way. The alien’s reaction had convinced her beyond doubt that males from every planet were all the fecking same. They wanted the hunt more than the catch.
The good-looking alien could have crooked a finger at any of those who called his name and had an abundance of what he so obviously wanted. But no—feck no—Toorg wanted the one who ignored him. Handsome bastard had no idea that Prudence was still reeling from finding out her entire family had been slaughtered in cold blood. She was only here because their murders were after her as well. The woman was grieving her kin and grieving them hard. No blond alien god with chiseled muscles was going to hasten that kind of mourning along.
She looked at her sad alien and tried to harden her heart. “I’ll be here a while, Toorg. Lock me in and take yerself a break.”
“I am Toorg,” he whispered softly, nodding his head in agreement.
Sighing, Erin reached out and rubbed his muscled arm. Feck her soft heart. “Prudence’s still hurting, Toorg. Give her time. She lost her entire family and now feels all alone in a world she has to leave shortly.”
“Pretty,” Toorg whispered even more softly.
She had quickly learned the boy understood all language perfectly. He wasn’t slow in any regard. He just had limited verbal responses to offer back to things. “Pretty” was what he secretly called Prudence Sheffield. Though when ya got right down to it, the one word said what was most important for a woman to know anyway.
Bowing his head in resignation, Toorg left and closed the door of the women’s common area behind him. Erin rolled her eyes at his depressing exit. She should be pissed over feeling sympathy for her guard dog—majorly pissed—and she was in some regards. But then she’d see Toorg looking all sad and dejected over Prudence, and something in her always melted. Her urge to fix his situation was enough to make her scream. The only reason she didn’t cut loose was that she’d scare all these other fecking condemned females.
Bracing herself for what she had to do, Erin walked chin up into to her office and came back out. She glanced at the paper in her hand and finally made herself read the name on it aloud. Though she’d done this once before today, it still didn’t feel any more right. She wondered how her predecessor ever developed the stomach for what they had to do here.
“Mia Johnson, yer number has been chosen. Come see me in the office in fifteen minutes.”
Ignoring the one squealing woman, and the fifty plus ones groaning in complaint because their boredom would continue, she stomped back into what Nate had called her “office”. It was a tiny room with a view of the same fecking rock Prudence currently stared at. It didn’t have a proper desk, just a slim table. A magical tablet came up and out of one arm of her chair when she needed to write something down. Well, if ya called what she did writing. She had to use a thumb and a couple fingers to peck it out of the alphabet on the screen.
Erin sighed out the irritation she was feeling and turned her seat to face the window. Prudence wasn’t the only one who liked to spend a considerable amount of time staring at nothing. It was currently the only break from the madness she could get.
Mia poured over the five photos in her folder. “How am I supposed to pick one? They’re all good looking.”
“Yes. No one could say otherwise without lying,” Erin replied. “Yer going to want to flip that page over and look at the description of an average day on their planet. Good-looking won’t change near zero temperatures or a heat that will cook the skin off ya. A decent location might make for a more pleasant life.”
“Only one thing really keeps me happy. I wish these forms rated their bedroom skills,” Mia said, staring at the one photo she kept coming back to.
Erin grinned and snorted. “That would still tell ya nothing, Mia. Every male thinks he’s the best between the sheets. Have ya not been around enough to know that?”
Mia giggled. “Yes, but I’ve also been around enough to know some really are as good as they say.”
Erin shrugged. “Well, I hear ya can try out all the aliens in yer folder, if that’s the biggest criteria ya have for picking. I also hear a couple of them will renege on their offer for ya if ya do. But it’s yer call, not theirs. I’m told the important thing is to make a match yer going to be happy with in the long term. It’s not like ya get a second chance at this.”
Her first thought after the girl joked about really good men in bed was Angus MacNamara. It was going to be a bloody long life for her in Universe 1 if Angus using her for a substitute for his dead wife ended up being the pinnacle of her sexual experience. But where she came from, ya couldn’t be a rounder and still be respected. Women like that ended up working at Paddy’s and sharing strange men’s beds for a fee. She’d had a bit more dignity about herself, no matter how lonely her life had been.
Maybe she ought to take one of the guards for a spin just to clear her fecking mind of Angus. Someone like Toorg would be perfect if she could set the image of him mooning over Prudence to the side. Oh, who was she fooling? She had a wicked tongue on her, but she wasn’t a mean harpy at heart. Being a substitute for Prudence wasn’t going to help her in any genuine way and using Toorg as one for Angus MacNamara would just be cruel to the boy as well.
Her sigh over her weakness was loud and long. Sighing was all she could do these days. She felt more freaking helpless than she’d ever felt in her life and she didn’t like it going on forever as it seemed to be. A body ought to be able to take some proper steps to change their feelings when things got this bad. Her second sigh was louder than the first one.
“I’m sorry, Erin. Am I taking too long?” Mia asked.
Erin shook her head. “No, lass. Ya need to take all the time ya need. I’m sighing for my own reasons. My ma would tell ya that I’m just a sigher. I always have been.”
Mia smiled and nodded. “My mother was a sigher too. She died when I was sixteen. My dad was never all that keen on being a father. He turned me over to adult placement services the day her body was officially incinerated. I modeled there to support myself and the common house where I lived with thirty-three others like me. Lexi found me a year later. He made me his mistress the moment I legally turned eighteen. There were other men in my life, and Lexi knew it, but he had a wi
fe. We learned to give each other space and both liked our arrangement.”
“If life was so good with yer fella, how did ya end up here?” Erin asked.
“Lexi said he had the kind of open marriage that allowed him to have outside lovers, but I found out later he didn’t. He just wanted that kind. His wife was insisting he remove me from his life, but he didn’t want to… and I didn’t want him to either.”
Erin nodded. “A lot of men want that kind of marriage. It doesn’t surprise me that five hundred…” No, couldn’t say that. She wasn’t supposed to mention all she knew. It was fecking hard to remember the details of all her lying. “What I mean is… it doesn’t surprise me that some marriages these days officially include outside relationships. I suppose if I wanted a man who was with another, I’d prefer such a thing to be out on the table rather than hidden in a cupboard. Where I come from, being with another once yer married is called infidelity and considered a sin, but I read in books that it wasn’t like that everywhere.”
“Everyone knows you and Angus MacNamara are a committed couple. Have you two ever officially married, Erin?” Mia asked.
Erin shook her head and laughed. She refused to lie about this. It would never be believable. “No. We’ve not married the way ya understand it. Frankly, it’s put more than one man off making me his wife when he found out I wasn’t interested in cooking his supper for a living.”
Mia put down the picture. “But you’re a matchmaker. You should have the perfect relationship.”
“Perfect doesn’t exist, child.” Erin laughed and shook her head. “Don’t take my teasing wrong. I believe in love and marriage. Both are meant to support the right romantic mindset. I’d be quick to advise ya not to go that far if yer not interested in being physically faithful to the one ya pick. Love is one thing, but most people value loyalty in word and deed just as much. Sharing yer body with another after promising not to is about as disloyal as it gets, especially when the one waiting at home is thinking all turns belong to them.”
“But don’t you think men are just unfaithful by nature?” Mia asked. “It’s always seemed like that to me.”
Again, blasted Angus popped into her mind. Bloody hell. She had no idea if he had been faithful to his wife. She only knew he’d been faithful in death even while dipping his sizable cock into her. But for all she really knew, Angus MacNamara was secretly the world’s biggest womanizer. He was over two decades older than her. She certainly hadn’t known him as a boy.
Regardless of any fecking man’s morals, in her line of work she’d learned to keep her personal cynicism tucked away from the young and idealistic. Mia had the same nature of those types even if the life she’d lived to date hadn’t allowed her the luxury.
“No. Some men remain faithful, even to their dead wives,” Erin said firmly. “I have experience of that kind myself. And some men sincerely want to love and be loved in return. Those are the ones worth really having, but ya have to look damn hard. I understand how distracting muscles, wide shoulders, and a nice arse can be to a woman. My best advice it to look into their eyes instead of at the size of their cock or purse.”
Mia sighed and picked up the least attractive male in the pile. He was still good-looking, just not the most handsome in the group. “This one looks like he has kind eyes.”
Erin leaned over and looked at the picture before nodding. She’d seen that one wandering around looking lost and unsure. He seemed like he’d be a careful sort with a woman. “I agree, Mia. Want me to set up a sweet meet for ya?”
“Yes, please. I don’t think I told you, but I heard you and Angus on a recording once. You sound so different in person,” Mia said. “Your in-person speech is charming though. I could listen to you all day.”
“Thank you.”
The lies just piled on top of each other lately. Worse, they rolled easily off her tongue without any effort these days. Angus MacNamara with his lying ethics was going to have the devil of a time covering his big arse.
“They have ways of fixing yer voice failings when they record ya. The village where Angus and I first lived was very remote. We did all our learning on machines and never traveled much. It kept our language unchanged much longer than usual. Angus and I are two of the only ones left sounding like we do. Perhaps in another few hundred years the accents will finally fade and we’ll sound as common as anyone else around here.”
She was relieved to see the girl nod. Nate had disturbing ways of making people forget their nosier questions about her. Worse, the person didn’t even remember the unpleasantness afterward. He’d already stopped some of the draftees from questioning the changes in her appearance.
But what did she know? Maybe Nate did nothing but talk to them. Maybe Nate’s lies were just better than hers. The net result was that in less than a week, the draftees had accepted her as the woman they believed her to be. With all the talking she did, her accent would be impossible to hide anyway.
“How is your life partner doing these days? We all heard he was sick and had taken medical leave.”
“My what?” Erin asked in surprise, tripping over the term. She didn’t appreciate the girl laughing at her stumble.
“Angus—Mr. MacNamara?” Mia asked.
Erin kept forgetting that the whole world believed Angus was having himself a medical break from his duties. No one knew the original Universe 1 version was really gone. If he was with the Goddess now, she hoped Brighid took pity on the man and looked after him. The Morrigan would take his soul in the afterlife if the original was as bad as the version she dealt with.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Mia. Angus and I got spitting mad at each other just before he took ill. I sometimes forget what the world thinks of us. But don’t lose faith in long-term love. If there wasn’t any fighting in a relationship, there wouldn’t be any making up. Ya certainly wouldn’t want to miss that kind of sex. It’s the best ever. Angus is outstanding when riled up beyond reason.”
And that was the biggest lie she’d told yet. She had no idea what Angus was really like in bed. His one drunken poke had been blissful to her neglected girly parts, but hadn’t done a thing for the rest of her.
While the girl was giggling about her sex comment, Erin let a quiet sigh of relief escape.
She surely hoped she was done lying today. The ones about Angus always broke her heart.
4
Angus walked back to the mirror in what some medical person had explained to him was the interim recovery area. His room was furnished like a military barracks, but what did he know? He was still trying to figure out how he’d gone from looking sixty-seven back to looking thirty-five during the time he’d been sleeping his life away. He didn’t even recognize the bugger staring back at him. The amount of physical change was shock enough to make a man swear off Guinness altogether.
He thought of Erin and wondered where she was. She’d left him sleeping and then disappeared. No one would tell him anything about her. They just patted his arm and assured him she would return when she could.
He also wondered what happened to his kilt. He was now wearing a pair of loose waist pants and a shirt in the same material that hung outside. They looked like night clothes, but he’d noticed the doctors wearing something similar. Maybe it was all they had for someone his size. He’d never been a small man, not even in youth. Most of his time was spent in kilts because pants were fecking uncomfortable on an arse his size.
A knock on his door had him spinning and just as quickly his stomach dipped when he saw it wasn’t who he’d hoped to see. Though exactly why he wanted Erin O’Shea to come torture him was beyond his comprehension. Maybe it was just because they’d been kidnapped together.
“Hello, Mr. MacNamara. I’m Nate, your primary healer. I wanted to come by and update you on your current condition.”
“If I seem confused to see ya, it’s because I am,” Angus declared. “I was feeling just fine before ya stuck me in that fecking box. What condition are ya talking about?
”
Angus watched his doctor wrinkle up his forehead in thought. The man looked like he had gas.
“When you came to us, you had several diseases commonly found in Universe 6. We had to research and heal each one separately, so that took a bit of time and no small amount of staff, but we were under orders to take care of everything. We of course made our typical DNA adjustment while we were working on your organ regeneration. I must say your body responded quite enthusiastically to the cell restructuring. Most people gain back a little time, but you seem to have doubled the usual amount of change we see.”
Angus twisted his mouth into a grimace. “How about ya speak all that a little plainer, lad?”
He watched the doctor smile. “Sorry if I seem rude. It just that I like the way you talk. It’s so very different from what I’m used to hearing. None of the aliens are… well, never mind. You asked for a plainer explanation. Let me think.”
Angus watched his doctor pace and frown. His stomach clenched in preparation to hear bad news.
“While you were in the healing coma, your body reset it’s biological clock and what you see in the mirror is the age it chose. Everyone in Universe 1 gets their DNA reset in one-third-life, which averages between sixty and eighty-five here, but rejuvenation doesn’t usually net such incredible results as it has in your case. In a Universe 1 person’s life, the rejuvenation process can be repeated a few times, but eventually the body stops responding. The first time is usually the best. You look like one of the aliens with all those muscles. How old are you—chronologically, I mean?”
“Never ya mind how fecking old I am,” Angus said, wincing internally. “Where’s my kilt?”
“Your… oh… your plaid suit. Technically, the fabric was once animal so it probably couldn’t come through the portal without causing some problems, especially with the time difference. You’re welcome to look through the other clothing we have that might fit someone of your stature, but it’s all going to look pretty much like what you’re wearing.”
Heidi: Nano Wolves 3 Page 20
