by R. E. Butler
His brothers had been up to visit when they had leave. He hadn’t seen them in so long he felt like they were strangers. It had only taken a few hours to feel like they were a family again. He was sorry to see them leave the next morning, but they were soldiers, and soldiers went where they were sent. He looked forward to having them visit soon.
“So the anniversary,” he said, “is for a year?”
“Right. But for newly married people like us, sometimes it’s fun to celebrate the little milestones, too. You don’t have to do anything big for me, you know. You already do so much. Dinner out and,” she peeked around him toward the door and then lowered her voice, “lots of hot sex is all I need.”
“How about some now?” he growled lustfully, his hands splaying on her lower back and pulling her close.
“Dinner?” She blinked innocently up at him.
Barking out a laugh, he kissed her and snatched her tunic off the floor. “First dinner, then we’ll see how hot we can get later.”
He helped her on with her tunic and put the tank on a hanger until tomorrow when he could finish it. They walked through the door and out into the small yard. The grass was starting to grow again, and the neighbors who had distanced themselves from his mother because of her behavior had welcomed him and Kate.
They walked into the house and he caught the scent of burnt fourn, trying to hide the cough that tickled his throat from the heavy, smoky smell.
Krea looked forlorn. “I can’t even make fourn.”
Kate closed the distance to his sister and hugged her. “It’s okay. You have other talents.”
“Like what?”
Paoli would have been hard-pressed to find something reassuring to say to Krea without thinking for a few minutes. But he didn’t spend as much time with them as Kate did, since he was working on his clothing. Kate wasn’t fazed by the question at all.
“I think you’re great with kids. Remember when you came with me to Ashleigh’s and there were some young kids in the yard waiting for their older siblings to finish the art class? They were following you around like the Pied Piper.”
Hana wiped a tear from her cheek. “Who?”
“Oh, right. It’s a fairy tale about a fellow who charms the kids of a town away with his flute. I’ll add it to my list of stories to write. Eden said he can’t keep up with all my books.”
Paoli was so proud of Kate. She had finished three children’s book in her native language and Ashleigh, who had learned to read and write Norlanian, had translated them for Kate. A parent of one of Eden’s students worked for a company that published digi-books and had offered to take one of the books to his supervisor to see if they’d be interested in making them available to the public. The book was about her dog Boomer, and Paoli loved the story. In it, Boomer had lost his owner and was looking for her. He hopped on a spaceship and went on a fantastic adventure, traveling the universe. Eventually, he and his owner, who looked a lot like Kate, reunited and lived happily ever after, which is something Kate said was very important.
“I do like kids. Since I won’t have any of my own, maybe I can find a way to work with the hybrids?”
Kate’s brows rose at the term for the Norlan-alien children, but she didn’t voice her dislike for it. She said she didn’t want their future children to be labeled, but it was inevitable. Paoli knew that regardless of what color hair their children had, they wouldn’t be true Norlanians or true Earthlings. But they would be loved, and he thought that was the most important thing.
Kate clapped her hands together. “I have an idea. Let’s use the vegetables that Ashleigh sent over yesterday and then we can eat outside and have a picnic.”
While Paoli gathered the dishes for their meal, Kate helped his sisters put together what she called a “stir fry” of steamed vegetables and the unburned portions of the fourn. The six of them ate on a blanket in the backyard as the sun set, talking about their day. Someday, his and Kate’s children would be there, too, sharing the exciting things that happened to them, asking for advice, and making fun of each other in the way siblings enjoyed.
When the dishes were put away and the kitchen cleaned, Paoli and Kate said goodnight to their siblings and he hurried her into their bedroom. When the door slid shut, he locked it and spun on his heels, finding his mate trying to look innocent as she yawned exaggeratedly.
“I’m awfully sleepy.” She yawned again. He might have believed her if she hadn’t giggled halfway through her second yawn.
“Let me wake you up.”
She walked backward as he stalked forward. She darted to the side as if she’d run around the bed, but he grabbed her and tossed her gently onto it instead. He followed her down, caging her with his arms. He gazed down at her for a heartbeat before sealing his lips over hers and kissing her with every ounce of passion he possessed.
As they made love, he knew he’d never been happier. He had his wife, brought to him through a strange twist of fate and a sometimes-faulty soul-walk program. They had a home, a family, he had a job he loved and she enjoyed writing her world’s fairy tales. It didn’t matter what the future brought, because he knew that as long as Kate was by his side, they could handle anything.
When he’d sold himself into slavery all those years ago, he hadn’t foreseen a future with any kind of happiness. Kate said happily-ever-afters were important in fairy tales, but he had one in real life. He was going to live happily ever after with his wife, and he couldn’t wait to see what the next chapter of their lives would bring. For a slave who’d had nothing, he now had more than he ever could have dreamed.
The End
Warrick’s Bride
By R. E. Butler
Warrick Riya, captain in the Norlanian army, is betting everything that medical officer Sloan wants him as much as he wants her. He arranges for her abduction according to the traditions of their people, and takes her into the mountains to convince her that nothing would make him happier than spending the rest of his life as her husband.
Sloan Atarn has known for years that, like most Norlanian females, she’ll never be able to have children. She’s accepted that because of her faulty genetics, she’ll also never get married. When she wakes up in the mountains with the sexy Warrick telling her that he’s risking everything to make her his forever, she knows the right thing to do is to leave and let him live his life without her. If she can only bring herself to walk away from the only man she’s ever truly loved.
Chapter 1
Kyvern City, Military Headquarters
Norlan Home World
Warrick Riya paced in the hall outside his commander’s office. Commander Hirsi was discussing Warrick’s leave-of-absence request with six other members of the military governing board. It wasn’t that asking for time off was such an unusual thing; Warrick had taken his share of leave since he joined the military at sixteen. It was that he’d had to indicate what his vacation was going to entail and that had turned a simple request into an all-day affair.
Before Norlanian females had become sterile many years before, males would choose their bride through the soul-walk. Now, the soul-walk didn’t search for females within their own world, but looked to other planets and galaxies to find fertile matches for their males. When he was a young male, Warrick had watched his father put his mother out of his home in preparation for his new, fertile bride, who was coming from another world. Warrick had always looked up to his father, but seeing the look on his mother’s face when she realized she was being replaced due to something she had no control over had changed how Warrick felt about him. For the last twenty years, he had worked hard, rising through the ranks of the military until he had reached captain.
Lately, he had grown tired of his solitary life. Living in the barracks had appealed to him when he was a young male, but now that he was approaching thirty-six years, he began to yearn for a female to share his bed. Many of his men had taken the government’s strongly worded suggestion that they complete the soul-walk to find
a female for themselves, but Warrick knew that the only female for him was not going to be found on a distant planet in another galaxy. She was right here on Norlan, one of the sterile females – a beautiful, kind medical officer named Sloan.
Their people were so concerned with the females’ sterility, that a male choosing an infertile mate was practically unheard of. Some females were only partially sterile, able to have male children but not female, but Sloan was unable to have children of either sex.
The door to the meeting room opened and Warrick was called inside by his commander. Seven males were seated around the oval table. Four were generals and three were commanders, the ruling body of the military. The head of the committee, General Kizgin, sat at the head of the table, drumming his fingers along the glossy top. Warrick was not asked to sit, so he didn’t, clasping his hands together behind his back and straightening his spine. None of the males looked happy. He wondered, briefly, what he would do if they turned down his request.
General Kizgin cleared his throat noisily. “Captain Riya, we are having difficulty understanding your request. You are one of our finest soldiers. Isn’t it your desire to have children to carry on your legacy?”
Warrick bit back the scathing retort involving his father abandoning his suddenly sterile mother in an attempt to continue fathering children, and instead calmly said, “I have no desire to search the galaxies for a mate when my heart has already chosen the right female for me. It simply does not matter to me that we can never have children. What I want is a life with the female I love.”
The room grew silent as the males looked at each other and him with differing emotions. Curiosity. Wariness. Fear.
Commander Hirsi, the male who had trained him, ran his finger along his square jaw. “And you would take one of our medical officers away from her duties for fifteen dins so that you can...what? Convince her that, unlike every other unmated male on our world, you don’t care about having children?”
Warrick ground his teeth together until the urge to punch his mentor in the face passed. “My choices are my own to make, Sir. I’m not asking for your understanding, only your acceptance of my request for time off.”
General Ofeli frowned in thought. “You will have to sign a waiver that you will never go on a soul-walk, even if Miss Atarn refuses to mate with you.”
“I already have, Sir. I understand the risk I take with abducting Sloan. Even if she rejects me, I have no desire to be with anyone but her.”
He couldn’t tell whether the males in the room would allow him to move forward with his plan to mate with Sloan or not. Worry settled like a hot stone in the pit of his stomach. They ordered him to wait out in the hallway while they debated further, and Warrick stood, his back resting against the wall, his teeth clenched, for what felt like an eternity. When he was called back into the room again, General Kizgin met his eyes and said, “We will grant your request, Captain Riya.”
His relief must have been plain on his face, because the general chuckled, “I recall what love was like, before the dark days came, Warrick. You have been faithful in your service to our military and we will give you your requested leave of fifteen dins in order to claim the heart of the female you care for. We wish you good luck.”
With a curt nod, Warrick was dismissed and he strode out of the meeting room, grinning from ear to ear.
* * *
Warrick’s best friend Sayjan leaned against the counter in the cooking area and watched him pack a cooling bag with supplies. In two hours, he would be heading three hours northeast to a secluded home within the Issizlik Mountains. The home was built inside a cavern in the mountain, a modern take on the wooing chambers used by his forefathers, in a time when men would kidnap their soul mate and hide her away in a cavern for several weeks in an attempt to win her heart. Once the Norlanian females had stopped having children, the need for the wooing chambers had ceased almost entirely, but there were several that had been updated with modern conveniences, one of which belonged to Sayjan’s uncle Halik.
“You sure about this, War?” Sayjan, who was also a captain in the military, asked, looking over the cooling bag as Warrick zipped it.
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. When we were on the abduction trip to Earth, Sloan was so concerned about her brother’s mate. It was a side of her I hadn’t seen before.” More than just her normal caring for those that were injured, she actually went to great lengths to make sure that her brother’s bride was taken care of. She had come to him and asked him to be especially kind to the Earth girl named Ashleigh, and at that moment, when she had touched his arm and looked up at him with her big brown eyes, Warrick had known that he couldn’t deny his feelings for her any longer. It had taken him a few lunar cycles to make his plans, but now he was ready.
“All right. I’ll make sure she’s brought to you safely tonight.” Sayjan clapped him on the shoulder and moved to leave Warrick’s chamber in the military barracks.
Warrick caught his arm and said, “Thank you, Say. I don’t trust anyone but you to help me with this.”
Sayjan’s brows rose in jest. “What can I say? I’m a sucker for true love.”
Alone in his quarters, Warrick finished packing his bags and loaded them into his hover-machen. The mountains rose in the distance. It would take him half a din to reach the cabin, utilizing narrow roads that wove perilously up the mountain. Warrick wanted to do things traditionally, to show Sloan that he still cared about the old ways, and that he didn’t care what their government said about finding suitable, breedable mates. He wanted her, and no one but her would do.
Sloan was as stubborn as she was beautiful, so Warrick didn’t think it would be easy, but they had fifteen dins before they had to return to civilization. He didn’t have much of a plan, exactly, in his seduction of Sloan, but getting her alone in the cavern where she couldn’t escape without him was a start.
On his way out of Kyvern City, he swung through the parking lot of the medical center where Sloan worked. It was near the Bordelayz, the government sanctioned brothel, and he hated that she was so close to such a place. Even if her brother Eden had been forced to work there for such a long time, the thought of her being close to the perverted people who abused those forced into service made his vision go red. He put thoughts of Sloan’s job out of his mind and drove to the home his mother shared with her sister. Both women’s husbands had left them when medical testing revealed they were now sterile. Warrick knew it wasn’t his father’s new wife’s fault, but he had also never felt the inclination to get to know her or give her a chance.
He pressed the buzzer near the front door of his mother’s home, and the door opened a few moments later to reveal his aunt standing just inside.
“Oh, Warrick! Come in, we were just having tea,” Aunt Cins said after he bent and kissed her cheek.
“I can’t stay long, Auntie, I was just on my way out of town for a while and wanted to say goodbye.”
She nodded, her dark eyes twinkling happily, and he followed her through the house and out into the sunny backyard where his mother sat with a real book in her hands. Digi-books were more common now, but his mother insisted she enjoyed the feel of paper books much more.
So far, only his friend and his superiors knew of his plans to abduct and seduce Sloan Atarn. He knew he couldn’t leave without telling his mother everything. One hour later, his mother sat in her lounge chair with her arms folded and an angry glare on her face.
“Mother?” He frowned. He thought she, of all people, would support his decision.
One long, thin finger pointed at him as she scowled. “If you change your mind down the road and try to put that sweet female out the way your father did me, so help me, Warrick, I will skin you alive.”
He grabbed her hand and kissed her fingers before leaning over and kissing her forehead. “Mother, I swear on my own life that there is no female for me in the whole universe but Sloan. If she’ll have me, I’ll spend the rest of my life taking
care of her.”
Her scowl softened into a smile and tears brightened her eyes. She hugged him, taking in a trembling breath. “You are an honorable male, Warrick. I hope Sloan can see that.”
“I’ve got fifteen dins to make my case. Hopefully that’s more than enough time.”
“Of course it will be, you’re quite a catch. Handsome and smart. You take after my side of the family.” She winked and he smiled, kissing her once more on the cheek and saying goodbye. He felt better knowing his mother supported him.
Turning his hover-machen toward the mountains, he began the long drive up to the cavern, Sloan and the next fifteen dins, on his mind.
Chapter 2
Sloan stared at the screen in her office, where the workup of Paoli’s hair was displayed. When her brother, Eden, had contacted her to ask for help in keeping Paoli’s hair color a secret, she’d been happy to help, but even now, a lunar cycle later, she was as confused as she’d been when she first saw that Paoli’s hair had changed color on its own without help from the serum.
All Norlanian males were born with blue hair. When they were old enough, they went on a soul-walk, where a drug and a sophisticated computer allowed them to see a vision of their soul mate. Before the dark times, when Norlanian females were not sterile, the males only saw their own kind. But now, they never saw a Norlanian female, seeing instead only females from other planets in distant galaxies. Eden’s bride was from Earth, and so was his best friend Paoli’s bride. Paoli and his mate Kate had been intimate, and his hair had changed color overnight from blue to brown. It wouldn’t be anything worth thinking about, except they hadn’t met through the soul-walk and he hadn’t taken the serum. As far as she knew, males always took the serum before mating with their females. Eden had been given the serum before the ship left to head to Earth, and once he and Ashleigh had become intimate, his hair had changed as expected.
