Captured for the Alien Bride Lottery Read online

  A single bored ticket agent manned the counter, tapping at the keys with long, pointed fingernails painted a bright blue that matched the streaks in her hair.

  “Hi. When does your next bus leave?” I tried to sound nonchalant, but I could feel my anxiety threading through my voice.

  The ticket agent frowned at me. “Where are you headed?”

  I shrugged. “Wherever the road takes me, I guess.” I knew it was a stupid answer, but I was trying to channel my inner hippie-child. The one who’d never existed—but who might be the sort to dye her shirt to match her hair and take an impromptu trip on the next bus out of town.

  She gave me a long look but went back to clicking keys on her computer. “We have a bus leaving for Chicago in about twenty minutes.”

  Chicago. That was the kind of place I could get lost in. Barring that, if I started worrying about getting caught, I could get off at any stop along the way and switch to another bus line.

  “I’ll take it.”

  She didn’t blink when I gave her my name. I guessed she hadn’t been watching the Bride Lottery. I almost sighed in relief when she handed me my ticket.

  But as I reached out to take it, she held on to the other end for a second longer than she had to. “Good luck, Ms. Rivers,” she said quietly.

  My gaze flew to hers, and I realized she did know who I was. My heart began beating frantically in my chest. “I’m sorry?” I managed to choke out, as if I didn’t understand what she meant.

  “I hope you get away,” she murmured. “They shouldn’t be able to take us.” Then she let go of the ticket and resumed her bored façade. “Have a nice trip,” she said aloud in her professional ticketing agent voice.

  I didn’t start feeling safe until the bus pulled out of the station. My fellow passengers ignored me, settling down into their seats, most of them attempting to nap.

  Adrenaline still coursed through my veins, my heart pounding harder than it ought to. I didn’t know where I was going, not ultimately, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hide from the Khanavai Bride Lottery indefinitely—but I was determined to try.

  Rumor had it there were other races out in the galaxy, ones who didn’t require the equivalent of a human sexual sacrifice to coexist.

  The only ones we were certain of were the Alveron Horde—the aliens who had attacked our planet, leading the Khanavai to offer to protect us in exchange for human brides—and the Khanavai themselves.

  Until we managed to develop better spaceflight technology, I was essentially trapped on Earth.

  I never thought I would feel as if my entire planet were a cage.

  At least it’s a big cage.

  Surely I can find somewhere to hide.

  Chapter Two

  Zont

  I stood in the dry desert air beside an open tunnel that led into the Las Vegas sewer system, watching as human law enforcement officers milled around in search of any sign of the woman I hunted. While they worked to prove what I had already determined—that she had never been anywhere near this spot—I flipped through a stack of e-papers, learning what I could about my quarry’s background.

  Amelia Rivers.

  This report was a little more in-depth than what I had been given at the Bride Games on Station 21. There, I had found out that she was twenty-eight years old, light-haired, and trained as a medic.

  This report expanded on that information. She had never married, and she had grown up in the northern hemisphere of the Earth in the United States state of Connecticut.

  But when ran, she had been in the human pleasure city of Las Vegas.

  Vos, the Bride Games Administrator, had not mentioned what she’d been doing there.

  As far as he was concerned, Amelia Rivers was just another runaway bride, a potential crack in our two planets’ Bride Alliance, the agreement allowing Khanavai warriors to claim human brides—we took unmarried human females in exchange for protecting Earth from the ravages of the Alveron Horde.

  That I was willing to hunt down Amelia Rivers and bring her back was enough for the Games Administrator. With my assistance, he would keep our treaty safe.

  And to the Khanavai, the Bride Treaty was everything. At this point, almost an entire generation of Khanavai warriors had at least one human somewhere in their genetic history.

  There had even been some rumors of human-Khanavai mixed females being able to reproduce—amazing, given what the Horde had done to our DNA. Humans were exactly what our people needed to keep our culture alive.

  But I had seen more than another bride-shaped savior of our people when her image flashed on the holographic viewscreen in front of my seats in the stadium.

  Amelia Rivers was not simply another bride. Not only another mate for one of our people.

  No. She was my mate. My bride. The human female for me.

  The only one for me.

  I had known it as soon as I saw her, in the same way that all Khanavai knew their mates. Well, almost. I would need to scent her to cement the bond, but as far as I was concerned, that was a mere technicality.

  And she might not realize it yet, but I suspected the same kind of sixth sense—sixth for humans, anyway—was exactly how she had known to run before her name was ever even called in the Bride Lottery.

  Now I knew even more.

  She had grown up with wealthy Earth parents, raised largely by servants—they called them “nannies” on Earth, which oddly enough was also a name for goats, a kind of common herd animal. And also sometimes a nickname for grandmothers.

  Earth language is truly bizarre. I shook my head and continued reading.

  Amelia had attended the best schools available, but unlike many of her wealthy classmates, she was not willing to spend her life in idle entertainment.

  Instead, she strove to become the best at everything she did.

  So when she had gone to Earth medical school, she had chosen to become a surgeon.

  Of course, what she didn’t know was that her field would be obsolete within the next decade.

  Cutting people open in order to repair them. Utterly barbaric.

  Her parents arranged to pay for Amelia to be excused from the Bride Lottery year after year, claiming exemptions and bribing officials to keep their daughter free of Khanavai entanglements.

  Right up until they got caught.

  From everything I had learned so far, Amelia did not know her parents had paved her way to remain free of the Bride Lottery. Like so many other women, she simply assumed it was luck or fate.

  But now, fate had intervened in another way—specifically, in me. I was her fated mate, though she didn’t know it yet.

  And I was going to track her down and make her mine.

  At least, that’s what I thought when I landed on Earth.

  I had spent my entire adult life in the military, training to become a member of the Khanavai Special Ops team.

  We were skilled in tracking and hunting, in eliminating our enemies, and in protecting our allies.

  I knew how to function in virtually every kind of terrain from here to Andromeda Five. I was used to foes who were smart, canny, wily.

  But apparently, I wasn’t ready for an adversary who cut out her own tracker and flushed it down the waste receptacle. Speaking of barbaric. I shuddered. “Why would she slice open her skin to remove her communicator?”

  The tiny human male standing next to me with his hands on his hips looked me up and down with a derisive snort. “She’s not the first runner your kind has dealt with, is she?”

  My frown turned into a scowl. “She doesn’t need to be afraid of us.”

  The law enforcer shrugged. “Doesn’t mean she has to be excited to go with you, either. I understand this lady’s a doctor. A surgeon. Plenty good at cutting, I expect. Seems like maybe she has a life here she wouldn’t want to leave.”

  His wide-legged stance was aggressive, and I realized as I compared him to the other human males standing around that he was, in fact, bigger than most of th
em. More muscular, probably stronger. There was a distinct possibility that he would be considered a fine masculine example of the species, with dark eyes and skin that was one of the darker shades on the boring beige-to-brown spectrum that humans tended toward.

  He’s nothing compared to a Khanavai warrior, of course, but perhaps impressive among his own kind.

  Part of me wanted to slap him down, remind him of Khanavai superiority. But there was a chance I would need human assistance in this particular hunt. Especially since the bride at the end of it was meant to be mine.

  Knowledge of the local customs could be useful—especially since no one on the impromptu team I had hastily assembled specialized in Earth culture.

  Besides, they were all in orbit on the shuttle Vos had given me in exchange for allowing the entire hunt to be filmed by the silver ball currently hovering beside me, noting every moment of this exchange.

  I might as well attempt to garner goodwill—both with this law enforcer and the viewing audience of both worlds.

  After all, I might know Amelia Rivers was mine. But she was still technically a Bride Games contestant—I would need Vos to sign off on our pairing before this was over.

  A ping on my wrist communicator alerted me to a message coming in—one of the perks of having been able to commandeer a military team to work with me on this. I was particularly pleased to have found Wex, the communications officer who had been given leave to work on the Bride Games transmission. He was technically still military, so I had added him to my team.

  Now Wex’s words scrolled across the screen: Vos offering a bounty for bringing Amelia Rivers in safe. At least three other hunters heading planetside to claim the bounty.

  Great. In addition to tracking down my runaway bride, I’ll have to eliminate the competition, as well.

  I wondered briefly if any of the other bounty hunters were after Amelia herself, or if they simply wanted the monetary prize that came with capturing a human woman who fled the Bride Lottery.

  I turned my attention back to the dark-skinned police officer. “Tell me about the various modes of transportation she might have taken out of your pleasure city.”

  He snickered, shaking his head and squeezing the bridge of his nose with two fingers before glancing up at me. “Just the usual. Planes, trains, and automobiles. She couldn’t get very far walking.”

  I held up the plastic bag containing her now ruined and befouled communicator chip and examined it with distaste. Without her implant, I had no way to track her directly.

  Time to engage in some old-fashioned tracking.

  Turning away from the enforcement officer, I keyed my wrist communicator’s vocal recognition program. “Get me an analysis of all potential transportation methods out of the pleasure city of Las Vegas on Earth, along with a detailed analysis of which method the fugitive was most likely to have taken.”

  Wex’s response came almost immediately. “Without sufficient parameters, this could take some time.”

  I snarled, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the human officer take a step backward, away from me.

  Good. The humans needed to learn to respect the Khanavai.

  Just as I would teach Amelia to respect us. To respect me.

  Once I caught up with her.

  Chapter Three

  Amelia

  Abandoning all my electronics in Las Vegas had left me desperate for information, but at the same time, I was afraid to try to find out too much from other passengers. So at the first stop, I’d bought a couple of preloaded generic epaper news and novel collections to entertain myself during the trip.

  The very first news headline was all about me.

  Runaway Lottery Bride, it screamed in bold letters as soon as I opened it.

  I snapped the cover closed on the bold text, fighting not to glance around and see who was watching. When I realized no one was paying any attention to me, I opened it up again and scanned the headlines to see what the news sites were reporting.

  I spent three full days on that bus ride. The itinerary said it was a two-day trip, but we had numerous, excruciating delays. It was a long and miserable trip. And every time I updated my epaper at one of the stops, my picture was plastered all over the front page. At the first stop after I realized exactly how big the story about me had become, I bought sunglasses, huge ones that covered half my face. They were terribly out of style, but dark and anonymous. I kept them on constantly, as if blocking out light so I could sleep.

  For part of the way, from Green River, Utah, to Denver, Colorado, I ended up with a seatmate, an overly chatty woman from a Chicago suburb who, luckily for me, only wanted to talk about her grandchildren. Even she gave up trying to talk to me after several rounds of me responding with only, “Yes,” and “No,” and the occasional grunt.

  I almost bailed in Denver, where we had to transfer to a different bus. But my seatmate chose another victim, and I was left to myself again.

  Denver was also where I bought and loaded a vid upgrade for my epaper reader. For one thing, I figured if I was going to be successful at this hiding business, I would need to keep up with what the news was saying. But even more than keeping abreast of my Most Wanted status, I decided earbuds would serve as a solid deterrent to any other chatty types I met along the way.

  It turned out I was the top of the vidnews stories, too. Well, at least most of the time. The third day, the big story was the Station 21 wedding between Cav and Natalie, topping off the Bride Games season as a resounding success.

  But that brought the talking heads on the news right back around to me. Apparently, when she had done her initial interview with Vos Klavoii, the Games Administrator, Natalie had said on interplanetary television, “I wish I had thought to run, too.”

  When I heard that, it was all I could do not to groan aloud.

  I clicked from there into a vid interview with several young women excoriating me for having run. And from there, I went down the rabbit hole, reading and watching all the articles and vids I could find.

  The current president of the United States had publicly chastised me for being willing to start what he called “an interplanetary incident” and a “diplomatic nightmare for the entire planet.”

  That made my stomach hurt. Setting off an interplanetary disagreement had never been my plan. I didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s life. But I never wanted to get married. I wasn’t one of those little girls who planned her perfect wedding. For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to be a doctor. And most of all, I did not want to be under anyone else’s control again—not now, not ever.

  My breaking point, at least when it came to consuming news about myself as Earth’s most famous Runaway Bride, came when one popular news personality asked what I assumed were rhetorical questions. “Why would Amelia Rivers run away? Why not go to the Bride Games and simply refuse all her suitors? Why not marry someone else for the requisite five years and then get divorced? Why go on the run at all when there are so many other options?”

  Part of me wished I could just reach through the epaper screen and slap him across the face. Not that doing so would have been productive, but it might have made me feel a little better. I turned my face to the window and stared out at the blur of the passing landscape from behind my ridiculous glasses.

  I couldn’t quit thinking about those questions. I imagined myself answering all those questions and more.

  Why not marry someone else and get divorced after five years?

  Because the idea of a loveless marriage horrified me. In fact, the idea of any marriage at all horrified me.

  Besides, everyone knew that about half those fake marriages—the ones designed to keep a woman firmly on Earth—ended up being investigated by the Khanavai-Earth commission. And the penalties of being caught out were harsh.

  I certainly didn’t want to go to prison for my imaginary fake loveless marriage.

  Of course, there’s no telling what would happen to me if I were caught now.
br />   In retrospect, maybe a fake marriage would have been a better idea.

  But I had been too busy going to med school, finishing my residency, getting the rest of my work done to become first a doctor, and then a surgeon.

  And a five-year marriage didn’t protect anyone. There were plenty of stories about divorced women being dragged off to the Bride Games. No woman was safe until she was past easy childbearing age.

  Why not go through the Bride Games and reject all the suitors?

  That answer seemed obvious to me. I’d read the studies. The Khanavai might say they scented their mates—whatever the hell that meant—but statistically, women with skills that might be useful to the Khanavai were chosen as brides almost ten times as often as those who did not have similar skills.

  Hell, even Natalie what’s-her-face was studying biochemistry, according to all the stories I’d read. She was smart and accomplished and would be an asset to the whole damn planet of Khanav Prime.

  There was no way I would go through the Bride Games and not be inundated with Khanavai suitors. Once that happened, it seemed there was no way out. Less than one percent of women who were chosen by Khanavai warriors turned down the offer to become their “mates.”

  God. I even hated the word they used for their partners, their wives. Mates. Yuck. It was animalistic and degrading.

  I didn’t know what kind of coercion the Khanavai were using, but when even someone as obviously staunchly opposed to an alien match like Natalie ended up married to one of them—in a giant, televised show of a ceremony, no less—there was something weird going on.

  Ultimately, I did not trust the aliens. I didn’t believe that they had shown up to protect us from the Alveron Horde with no ulterior motives, I didn’t believe that their magical mate-scenting abilities were real, and I definitely did not believe that every bride who left with them went of her own free will.

  My mother had always said I had a suspicious mind. It made me a good doctor, adept at sorting through all the clues a patient could offer and then figuring out what was wrong with them.