When she recalled their last encounter, where she awkwardly offered herself up as his teenage bride, mortification overcame her.
He declined her offer harshly, hurting her tender emotions at the time. With the benefit of hindsight, Nakia now realized how lucky she had been that Rohn had been an honorable man and not a predator. Plenty of adolescents, either separated from family or newly orphaned, found unscrupulous adults who took advantage of their vulnerability, trading sex for shelter and protection.
She understood that her situation as an injured teen girl, separated from her family, could have ended badly, and nothing but luck and Rohn’s decency kept her safe.
Who wouldn’t develop a crush? Or nurse Mahdfel fantasies?
It’s not like Nakia had kept her life on hold, waiting to be swept away by a match with an alien. But she knew that if she was matched, she’d be okay with that.
The van picked up another woman and they were deposited at the testing facility. Nakia opened her mouth for a cheek swab and waited patiently to be dismissed.
Like every year.
Her bringing a packed suitcase was practicality—not wishful thinking. She’d hit a bar afterward, get her free birthday drink, and then look for a new position.
Life was too short to continue working for a tyrant and certainly too short to continue lusting after a silly fantasy of being married to an alien warrior.
“Miss Sykes,” a woman with a clipboard spoke, waving her out of the waiting room and into a small room with a desk.
This was new.
“Congratulations, you’ve been matched,” the woman said.
“Seriously? Are you sure? It never happens for me.” Almost too stunned to speak, Nakia stumbled over her words.
“It only has to happen once. Well, in your case, twice.” The woman checked her tablet. “You have two matches. Standard protocol is to send you off with the highest match, but in this instance, both are 98.6%.”
Barely above the legally enforceable limit.
“What does the protocol say for this situation?” Nakia asked.
“We can retest, today or tomorrow. Hormone levels can affect the test. Certain high alcohol mouthwashes can adversely impact the swab samples. Given how close you are to the threshold, tomorrow you might not have a match at all.”
“No,” Nakia said quickly. She wanted this and refused to let it slip away due to hormones or what kind of mouthwash she used that morning.
“Or you can pick. The treaty doesn’t specify in this situation.”
“When it rains, it pours, huh?” Two matches. Years she had waited, secretly hoping, and finally gave up hope. “Who are they?”
The woman activated the display on the tablet, instantly projecting the image of two Mahdfel males in a translucent amber glow. Both had horns and a purple complexion but the male with iron gray hair grabbed her attention.
No way.
“The first is a male approaching retirement age. Rohn Ogana.”
Nakia’s heart lurched painfully. She rubbed her breastbone, wondering if she had a bit of heartburn. It couldn’t be her Rohn. Still, she said, “Rohn.”
“The other is—”
“Rohn,” Nakia repeated.
The woman raised her eyebrows. “Are you certain?”
The second male’s image flickered before growing larger. He had a darker plum complexion and a golden tattoo slashed across his left eye like a scar. He looked vaguely familiar, like maybe they had met in a business meeting.
Nakia dismissed the image and called back Rohn. She enlarged it, examining him in detail to be certain this was her Rohn.
She rotated the image slowly. Her first instinct was to say that time had not been kind to him but that was so far from the truth. Time had changed him but for the better. Inky black hair had been replaced with iron gray locks, still shorn on the sides and uncontrolled on top. He sported a close-trimmed beard, also the same iron gray. The color change mellowed his complexion to a soothing purple heather.
Static and frozen as an image, his mouth hitched in a half smile, as if about to spout off an amusing quip. Nakia wanted to know what he said next.
The most obvious change was to his horns. Once sleek and dark, a thin network of gold laced through the keratin outer layer. It reminded her of the art of repairing broken pottery with gold, fusing the pieces back together in a stronger, uniquely beautiful work of art.
It worked for him. The gold caught the gleam in his eyes. One eye was noticeably brighter than the other.
Hello, silver fox.
The overall effect was harder and more intense, with his sharp cheekbones and strong jaw, but his eyes still held warmth. Nakia smiled at the memory of his good humor and easy laughter. This was still her Rohn, just older and a little more worn, but still thrumming with vitality and strength.
“I know him. At least I met him before, during the war,” she said.
The woman shrugged. “It’s your call. We’ve got a few forms to sign, install a translator chip, and then you’ll be on your way.”
A few signatures later, Nakia was married.
Chapter 7
Nakia
Nausea rolled through Nakia. Harsh lights temporarily blinded her as she adjusted to the stark room. She placed a hand on her stomach, willing it to cooperate. Instantaneous travel via teleportation sounded good in theory, but it sucked in practice.
She shouldn’t have had breakfast or coffee that morning, but she had the suspicion that she’d feel just as bad post-teleport with an empty stomach.
“You don’t look so good.” A Mahdfel male—huge because they only came in one enormous size—rushed to her side.
“I think I’m going—” Nakia never finished that statement. She folded over, emptying her stomach onto the floor. Taking a step back to avoid splattering her shoes, her leg locked up. She crashed down to the floor, her hands landing in the warm puddle.
So much for a good first impression. So much for her Rohn—if he was her Rohn—ever seeing as something other than a girl who needed to be constantly rescued.
“Fuck this fucking leg,” she hissed.
The male crouched down next to Nakia. “Are you well?”
“Do I look well?” Her stomach heaved again, thankfully this time it was empty.
“Medical assistance is on their way. Remain calm.” The male gave Nakia a tentative pat-pat on the back. Surely, he intended that to be a sweet, comforting gesture, but it came across as nervous and timid. He handed her a water sphere and a mint. She sucked the water down to wash away the taste of bile in her throat and the mint quenched the nausea almost instantly.
The male helped to her to feet, but her leg buckled again. “It’s my prosthetic,” she explained. “It seizes up from time to time. I think the teleporter scrambled something.”
“Unlikely,” the male said.
When the medics arrived, the male carried Nakia in his arms, which was embarrassing. As he carried her to the medical bay, she felt eyes watching her in the corridor, wondering what was wrong with her, wondering how long before she was found unfit and sent back. By the time they finally finished the longest journey ever to medical, she was determined not to let random doctor send her home.
She sat on the edge of a large padded table. An endless procession of Mahdfel in white coats or uniforms entered the room, looked at her, checked the translator chip behind her ear, or looked at their tablets. They punched a few buttons and they left again.
Great. She went from being a helpless woman on display to be being completely ignored. When a purple-skinned male with horns in a white coat came up to her with a needle, she said, “I’m not defective. This is a hardware problem.”
The male took a step back, as if surprised at her defensive tone.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” she added.
“An assessment of every new arrival is standard. Teleportation sickness is common, as you’ve experienced.”
“First off, do you have a
name? And how is that needle part of a standard assessment?”
“I am Medic Levin, and this is for the nausea.”
“So, you were just going to jab that in me and not tell me what it was?”
His lips pressed together and stretched in a phony smile. “I am the medic. I determined that it was the best course of treatment for you, female.”
Yeah. She disliked the guy and hated the false concern in his tone, like he was talking to a child. “I’m no longer nauseated, so I’ll skip that needle. Is that even safe for me? I’m a different species than you.”
“You are not the first Terran I’ve encountered. Now explain to me the hardware problem,” he said briskly.
“My prosthesis. It froze up. When that happens, I need to call the service rep.” She tapped her fingers against the artificial leg. The medic barely glanced down at her leg, instead waving a handheld device over her head and staring at the tablet in his hands.
“Where’s my match? Shouldn’t he be here by now?” Nakia wasn’t normally so needy but she disliked the way this medic ignored her. He needed a refresher in his bedside manners.
“Who is he?” the medic asked in a bored tone.
“Rohn Ogana.”
Levin gave that thin, false smile again. “Your assessment is complete. Let me send him a message and get someone from engineering up here to look at that leg.”
Nakia waited, the back of her operational foot kicking against the table. Bored, she moved her leg to the table and unfastened the leg. The release of pressure and the dead weight of it hanging there made her sigh with relief. The day felt long, despite only being a few hours since her alarm went off.
Her apartment. Her job. Nakia made a mental checklist of everyone she needed to contact, starting with her mother. She always called Yvonne after being released from the testing facility. Would the facility contact her parents? Even if they didn’t, Nakia had no doubt that Darlene called Yvonne, ranting about how Nakia was irresponsible and totally fired for having a day off, and her mother would put the pieces together. And yes, Darlene had actually called her mother once before to verify that Nakia was legitimately sick that one time she dared to have the flu.
She should have quit that job ages ago, honestly. She lived modestly, had a bit of savings, and even if Darlene bad-mouthed her in every reference check, the amount of time she managed to tolerate working for that woman spoke volumes. Darlene had a reputation with their competitors; no one would doubt why she left. Besides, Nakia was damn good at her job.
A male entered the small room, dragging her thoughts away from impossible crushes and resumes. Nakia recognized him instantly thanks to his distinctive white gold tattoos.
“No. You’re the wrong one. I’m matched to Rohn Ogana,” she said, stomach churning. She picked Rohn. They sent her to the wrong place, and she’d have to be teleported again and, frankly, teleportation sucked big time.
“Well, pleasure to make your acquaintance,” the male said, perfectly affable and not offended. He set down a cloth bundle on the table next to her, unrolling to reveal tools. “I understand you require an engineer.”
“Oh, you’re the technician.” Thank the stars. The turmoil in her belly calmed.
“I’m Jaxar, head of engineering, but I couldn’t find another male brave enough to look at your leg. Is that it?” He pointed to the prosthesis resting next to her on the table.
“Yes. Don’t tell me the big Mahdfel warriors fear a woman with one leg.”
“Oh, it’s not you. It’s your mate. He’s very… shouty.” Jaxar turned the leg over in his hands, the white casing gleaming under the lights. Pressing a nearly invisible button near the ankle, the casing opened, revealing the inner circuitry. “What seems to be the problem with this?”
“Stupid thing locks up. Happens once every few months. Usually a tech just replaces the circuit board.”
His brow furrowed. “If it’s blowing a circuit board that regularly, the design is defective.”
“I know. Trust me, this model is a class action lawsuit waiting to happen. I planned to switch back to my older leg but, you know,” Nakia waved a hand to indicate the medical bay and the ship as a whole, “here I am.”
“Would it bother you to put this back on so I can see it in action?”
Nakia clenched a fist, remembering the last time a technician wanted to study the way the neural interface operated. “Don’t touch the neural circuits. It hurts.”
“Understood.”
She adjusted the compression sock on her stump before reattaching the prosthesis, lining up the sensor connections implanted into her stump with the receptors in the device.
“You did that quickly.”
“Practice.” Taking the prosthesis off at the end of the day was as satisfying as taking off her bra. More. The device hadn’t caused physical discomfort in ages but taking it off after a long day, like kicking off her shoes and changing into pajamas, was part of her wind-down process.
Jaxar lifted her foot gently, turning it this way and that. “Can you raise your leg?”
She tried to lift it and then to circle her foot, failing on both accounts. “No. Sorry. It’s completely unresponsive.”
“How fine-tuned are the sensors on this thing?”
“When it’s working? Amazing. I can feel contact on the surface, just like skin.”
“And now?” Jaxar gave a clinical stroke across the bottom of her foot.
“Nothing.”
Another medic walked into the room. He took in the scene of her skirt pushed up and Jaxar holding her foot in his hand and scowled. “What are you still doing here?”
* * *
Rohn
* * *
Merrek strolled into the office, coffee in one hand and tablet in the other. He nearly dropped them both when he saw Rohn.
Rohn knew he was a hard taskmaster for his crew, but he didn’t believe he was drop-your-coffee hard.
“What are you still doing here?” the male asked.
“I work here.” Rohn waved a hand to encompass his desk, the office and the flight deck beyond.
“But you were matched to a mate. You should not be here. Your mate is waiting for you.”
“I have no mate.”
“You do now,” Merrek said slowly, as if Rohn were mentally deficient. “The message came in hours ago.”
Rohn frowned, trying to remember if he ignored a communication. Surely not, but so many people vied for his attention, he may have been distracted. No, he would remember if he had a mate.
“I couldn’t be happier for you,” Merrek said, landing a jovial slap on Rohn’s back.
Rohn had no idea why his crew felt comfortable enough with him to be in high spirits. He certainly spent most of his time shouting and cursing the day they were conceived.
“Maybe your mate will put a smile on your face?”
Ah, that was Merrek’s angle. Rohn definitely needed to spend more energy shouting and cursing. He turned his head and glared at the male’s hand still resting on his shoulder. “Hoping I’ll be too distracted to notice your sloppy work?”
Merrek quickly removed his hand. “Just want you to be happy.”
“Our work is vital to the clan. The pilots depend on us to keep them safe and their mates and families rely on us to bring them home safely. The warlord relies on the pilots to keep the clan safe. The planets in our alliances, the planet of our mothers, rely on the warlord to keep them safe. Where, do you suppose, is there time for happiness?” Pain. Frustration. Fatigue. A Mahdfel’s life offered that in abundance, but not something as trivial as happiness. Briefly his thoughts flickered to Vox and the young babe Rohn held in his arms just yesterday.
Some males were lucky. Rohn had enough years to know he was not.
The screen on his wrist communicator lit up. The head medic wanted to speak to him. “Ogana, why is your mate still in my medical bay?”
Kalen Halse, charming as always.
“There’s been a mista
ke. I received no notification of a match.” He slipped on his glasses and scrolled through the notifications on his communicator. He hated to wear them, hated more for his crew to see them, but reading the fine print on the tiny screen made the lenses necessary. If a notice did arrive, it had been quickly buried under the litany of status updates, communications, and service requests.
“Consider this your notification. Now hurry up or I’m sending her home with Jaxar.”
“No!” The force of his response took him by surprise. Rohn might be friendly with the engineer, but he’d rather twist his horn off than let the male have unsupervised time with his mate.
His mate.
The idea was foreign but not unpleasant. A mate in his quarters, with a smile on her face when he entered the room, in his bed. The image appealed to him, especially the in-bed part. His possessive instincts stirred, not even knowing his mate’s name or what planet she hailed from. Would she be from Sangrin, the planet of his birth? Or Earth, which supplied so many of the new brides?
No. He could not indulge in these fantasies. He was too old and his body too broken for a mate. The female waiting for him would expect a younger warrior, with two functioning eyes and a physique not adorned with alloys to hide its disfigurement.
Besides, he was too busy for a mate. Clearly the fact that his day had been too fraught with activity to notice the arrival of a mate was indication enough.
He would send her back, and he considered the most efficient way to do just that. Sight unseen would be best. If he went to medical, the sight of her, or the scent of her female pheromones, could trigger a primitive instinct. The Mahdfel were made to crave their mates and he might succumb to temptation and keep his mate. Such a strategy felt deceitful, but Rohn did not want to see the disappointment in the female’s face when she saw his disfigured horn.
Ridiculous that he should twist himself so regarding a simple decision. He did not want a mate and he did not have to explain himself.
He called Kalen back. The moment the medic answered, Rohn rushed to say, “Send her back.”
Rohn: Warriors of Sangrin Page 7
