Chapter 1
GEMMA
The noise in the bar covered the noise of the talking heads on television. It was getting crowded, which meant it was time for Gemma to head back home.
Batting her bottle from one hand to another, the glass slid easily on the condensation. She barely paid attention to the captions at the bottom of the screen. Not that she had to. She already knew what they were talking about.
The Mahdfel Bride Registry.
Gemma’s anger about the program—the draft—simmered and bubbled inside her, threatening to boil over.
During the invasion, Earth signed a treaty with the Mahdfel: protection against the invaders in exchange for brides.
Using genetic testing, human women were matched to alien warriors in an arranged marriage.
Every woman. There was no opting out. It was a mandatory program.
Gemma wanted to fling her bottle at the television screen.
As a temporary measure? Sure, the draft was understandable. Earth was desperate. It had been an emergency. The first wave of brides were patriots. Heroes. Taking one for the team so the team survived.
Gemma appreciated the necessity of the bargain made with the Mahdfel, but it’d been decades now. The emergency was over. Earth had rebuilt and moved on. People got on with their lives.
Except people with wombs. They were perpetually held hostage, unable to make plans for their future because they could be snatched away at any moment to go make alien babies. Unless those womb-holders had a baby of their own.
Or got married.
Gemma snorted, clutching her mug of beer.
Men.
Human men barely tried hard before; nowadays, they didn’t bother. Now that they acted as if the sun shone out of their dicks, they were worthless.
If they had tried even a little bit, they’d have treated her identical twin sister better. The car accident that made Gemma and Emry orphans also left Emry with a nasty scar on her face.
Now, no one had a problem telling the twins apart.
A bitter new thought twisted in Gemma’s gut. Emry’s alien husband didn’t treat her any better. He sent her back to Earth.
Men sucked. Every last one of them, no matter what planet they were from.
The channel flipped to a sports game.
“Hey! I was watching that,” Gemma protested.
“No, you weren’t, and I’m cutting you off,” the bartender said.
“I’m not drunk,” Gemma protested. Half a bottle of beer was nothing. Besides, she worked hard. She deserved a drink.
“Yet. You’re one more beer away from one of your political rants.”
“It’s a good rant.”
“It’s old and tired.”
“You say that because you have the privilege of being exempt from the draft.”
“If you’d actually been watching the news, you’d know that’s not strictly true.”
Gemma snorted. A recent bill to make the Mahdfel Bride Registry voluntary was making a splash in the media, but it wouldn’t go anywhere. It never did. “They love talking about changing the draft, but nothing ever actually happens.”
The woman next to her leaned over and grabbed her half-finished bottle. They tussled over the drink before Gemma relinquished her hold. Beer sloshed over the mouth of the bottle, making a mess.
Good.
“She’s real sorry, and we’ll be going,” the woman said, handing the bottle to the bartender.
“You suck, Clarissa,” she said, jabbing a finger at her friend. Employee, technically. “First, I’m your boss. Not the other way around. You don’t get to make decisions for me.”
“That’s literally my job description, especially when you’re fighty drunk.”
“Second—” Gemma slid off the stool and teetered before gaining her balance. Clarissa grabbed her elbow. She shook her off. “I’m not drunk.”
“Sure.”
“The barstools make my legs fall asleep. And you owe me five bucks for my drink.”
“Take it out of my check then, boss,” Clarissa said, steering Gemma out of the bar and onto the sidewalk. She didn’t have to say anything more to drive home that Gemma was being an ass.
“Sorry. I was out of line,” Gemma said. “You’re my friend and my assistant manager.”
“And I’m amazing at my job.”
“You are,” Gemma agreed.
“And you couldn’t do any of this without me.”
“Absolutely. Who said I could? Because they’re liars. We should egg their house.”
That earned Gemma a small chuckle. Not completely forgiven, but good enough for now.
Clarissa walked with her to the corner, where their paths diverged. Lights from the bakery glowed at the end of the street, guiding her home.
LeBeaux Bakery: her dream that alien blood money helped build.
Fine. She was being dramatic, but the money paid out as compensation for being snatched away by aliens was tainted. A better person than Gemma might have struggled with feelings of hypocrisy, railing against the draft but taking the dirty money, but the money wasn’t the problem. Money was a tool.
The problem was that her twin, Emry, had been matched and snatched, leaving Gemma with a bag of cash.
Gemma didn’t know what to do with herself.
Her best friend, her sister, her twin, was gone.
She’d never gone more than a handful of days without Emry.
Now she faced a lifetime of being a galaxy apart.
She didn’t know what to do with herself now that she was just herself, not part of a duo. It was hell.
Days later, Emry came back. Best possible outcome, right? Yes, Emry had been humiliated, possibly even had her heart broken. The alien rejected her and returned her to Earth. Emry didn’t need to explain the massive chip on her shoulder, Gemma knew. Call it a creepy twin thing.
While Gemma’s soul ached for Emry’s pain, she was secretly ecstatic. She had Emry back. They used the money to open the bakery, fulfilling her lifelong dream. Gemma loved it. She felt their father’s presence when she worked the dough or pulled fresh loaves of bread from the oven.
There was even a bit left over to bribe the right sort of people to get Gemma’s name removed from the bride program registry. It really was the best possible outcome, and it wrecked Gemma knowing she got everything she wanted at Emry’s expense.
Well, it turned out all of Gemma’s choices were a slow-moving catastrophe. Emry hated the bakery, even though she wouldn’t admit it. The hours were long, the work was hard, and the profits were minimal. That didn’t worry Gemma so much. They’d work it out. The catastrophe was far more dramatic.
Turns out, when you give shady people money to do something shady, they keep asking for money.
Gemma was blackmailed by the people who removed her from the registry.
She paid it at first, just wanting the problem to go away, but the requests kept increasing.
Then the blackmail shifted from friendly requests to threatening demands.
The night a pair of heavies cornered her outside the bar, the demands turned into physical threats. Gemma didn’t know what to do.
Emry did. She signed a contract as a personal chef for a ridiculously rich alien. The bonus money paid off the blackmailers with the understanding that the extortion was over.
Long story short, Gemma felt guilty. She got exactly what she wanted, and her sister paid the price. It sucked. Gemma sucked. The system that treated the twins like a commodity sucked. Everything was terrible, and self-loathing mixed with rage bubbled inside Gemma. It’d eat her alive one day.
Distracted by all the rehashing of guilt and things beyond her control, Gemma failed to notice the figure waiting behind the bakery. The glowing ember end of a cigarette alerted her to the stranger’s presence.
Gemma paused in the alley between buildings.
Shadows cloaked the narrow walkway, keeping her presence hidden.
Light from the streetlamps pooled at the entrance, urging her to turn around and run.
There was just enough moonlight for Gemma to make out the smoker’s profile: Barney the Brick.
Look, it was ridiculous, but Gemma wasn’t in charge of naming goons.
Regardless, Barney waiting for her outside the bakery’s back door was bad news.
Gemma backed out of the alley, returning to the street.
Her hands shook as she fumbled for her phone.
She had a good idea why Barney was darkening her doorstep and needed to speak to Emry right now.
The call would be expensive, and more often than not, there’d be no answer.
Real-time calls involved relays and priority channels, and priority was marketing talk for expensive.
Budget-minded calls had a significant delay, making an actual conversation impossible.
The cheapest calls were recorded, uploaded, and bundled with other messages.
It got there when it got there. Assuming the message wasn’t dropped or gobbled up by space-time wormholes.
The call connected. A green dot appeared in the top corner of the screen. “Em. Emry. Em,” she said, pausing to see if the connection held. The green dot remained steady. “I messed up. I’m sorry. Call me when…just call me.”
Gemma disconnected the call and eyed the darkened alley. Yup, still filled with bad news. If she hurried, she could catch up with Clarissa.
And then what? Confess that the consequences of her actions were lurking at her doorstep, and could she crash on her couch?
Clarissa would say yes, no questions asked, but it was Sunday night.
The bakery was closed on Mondays. Gemma wouldn’t be able to slip away before dawn for work and instead would have no excuse not to suffer through breakfast with Clarissa, her husband, and their infant.
The husband was perfectly nice, and the baby was Gemma’s favorite person, but they were all too twee and saccharine for Gemma’s delicate stomach first thing in the morning.
Clarissa never had to worry about the draft, and the inevitable conversation would pop up about why Gemma hadn’t settled down yet.