Chapter 15
Planet Ohiri
Aelanna and the other nine girls were put in secure rooms in the military compound.
They were led away from the ship to a vehicle by a scary female lizard in uniform.
She wore a peaked cap which hid her crest and her stubby reptilian snout stuck out from under it.
The look didn’t suit her... and she had scales.
Aelanna started to grimace, then pinched her lips.
It didn’t bode well for her to draw attention to herself by offending the woman who had power over them, even if only for five days.
Her gaze swept across them with narrowed eyes, tapping a short cane against her taloned hand at the same time, then she turned on her heel and strode off, tail swishing behind her.
“Follow me,” the lizard clipped. Silent, they shuffled along in her wake.
Aelanna’s room was starkly bright and efficient.
A muddy brown wall-to-wall carpet that was no more of an excuse for floor covering.
There was a single bed along one wall. Beige coverlet.
A desk and chair tucked under a small window with a plain blind.
A couple of prints of city views hung on the white walls.
There was a plain closet, too. It was guest quarters, but an army logistic guy must have designed it.
It was the opposite of her room on the Dheltan ship.
She went to knock on the door next to hers and it was Nayli’s room. Nayli’s expression of shock and frustration said it all. She moved to the center of the room and raised her arms, letting them fall to her sides in despair as she faced Aelanna.
“There’s no ensuite. What am I going to do?”
Poor Nayli. She had had her own ensuite at home in Manhattan. She came from a high-class family accustomed to a pampered lifestyle.
“It’s only for five days. Let’s go see if we can find a bathroom,” Aelanna said soothingly.
They went into the corridor and found Kora already peering through a doorway. They couldn’t see her head but she seemed to know it was them.
“The reptile bitch said this was it,” she said.
Over Kora’s shoulders, Nayli and Aelanna peeked in.
Aelanna took in a bathtub with a curtain rail round it a foot from the ceiling, a shower attachment fixed above the taps.
The curtain hanging limply from the rail was made of what she guessed was the plastic fabric equivalent on Earth.
There were a toilet and a small sink with a mirror above. And that was it.
“Where’s the hairdryer? The courtesy toiletries?” Nayli gasped.
“The Ohirins aren’t classy enough to have them,” sniffed Kora.
“This is a military building. I guess they don’t have them here,” Aelanna added.
They went to Nayli’s room in low spirits.
“Is your room the same as this?” Aelanna was sitting on the thick, coarse bedcover next to Nayli. Kora was sitting in the single visitor’s chair. It was a far cry to the curved seating in their rooms on the ship, which had molded themselves to their bodies, caressed them like loving fingers.
Kora nodded.
“Where is it?”
“Down the hall. Thataway.” She pointed.
“At least it’s warm,” said Aelanna, unhappily. She didn’t feel upbeat.
If this was how the Ohirin capital city was, what was Drypso like?
“Too hot, more like,” grumbled Kora.
“That’s because they’re cold-blooded,” said Nayli.
They all shuddered. Strong regret and homesickness washed through Aelanna, strong enough to make her stomach rebel.
She repeatedly swallowed the urge to throw up.
She missed Queens, she missed New York, she even missed her job at the diner, and her apartment.
It would be coming into full spring now, and the trees in Corona Park would be in new leaf.
“You alright, honey? You’ve gone green,” Nayli whispered. Aelanna bowed her head. “Homesickness,” she confessed. But at least she had her friends with her. She wouldn’t be able to survive this without them.
“We’re with you,” said Kora.
“We’ll stick together,” Nayli told her soothingly. “Are you sure I can’t help you to the bathroom?”
“You don’t want to be sick on her bed,” added Kora, disapproval in her eyes. “She wouldn’t forgive you.”
“Of course I would,” Nayli huffed.
A quiet knock at the door. Nayli opened it and Darren stood there, an ominous look on his face.
Aelanna sprung off the bed. “Darren! I wasn’t sure if we’d see you.
” She could have hugged him, but she stopped herself.
His attitude had changed. Though he looked at her as if she was the answer to the missing piece in his life, and she returned, it; from then on, he was distant.
He refused to meet her eye after that first scorching look, and his body language said don’t come near.
So, she didn’t. Besides, it’d make things harder to say goodbye.
He stared at a spot over her shoulder and held out a canvas shopping bag.
“I brought you these. I guessed you didn’t have any,” he said.
She took the bag silently and looked inside at the bottles of luxury toiletries and then handed them to Nayli, who brightened. “Thank you, Darren. You’re a star.”
His handsome cherry-tinted face darkened a little. “They’re Dheltan. I’ll have more to give you on Drypso, when we get there.”
Aelanna didn’t want to think about it.
“Will we see the others?” asked Kora. She meant Lero and Blayze.
“They’ll be along later. Our orders are to guard all the females.”
But he was cold, far away, and it broke Aelanna’s heart.
What had she done wrong?
“Is it possible to have our big cases brought?” asked Nayli. “I’ve run out of clothes. The carry-ons don’t hold much.”
Darren frowned. “What big cases?”
Nayli and Aelanna looked shocked, Kora looked annoyed. “You know, our heavy cases.”
Darren stiffened. “We collected all bags from outside the ship and we saw no other than those three suitcases. We thoroughly checked the area that you crossed up to the runway of the local flying device.”
“I’ll bet that idiot in the truck didn’t unload them, if he brought them off the plane at all,” Kora snapped.
Aelanna turned her face away from the warrior, so that he couldn’t see her devastation. Everything she owned was in that suitcase. She trusted that Darren was telling the truth. Dheltans were honorable: if he said there were no more cases, there hadn’t been. She feared Kora was right.
“I’ll check on it,” he said tightly, gave a stiff bow and strode out, quietly closing the door behind him.
Aelanna wanted to cry. She turned her back to the other two, in case they should see the heartbreak on her face. It only took a small, insignificant thing to shatter one’s self-control.
“What’s up with him?” Kora asked, staring at the door.
Aelanna didn’t want to say anything, but eventually she whispered, “He seems different since we landed on Ohiri.” She didn’t want to figure out what had caused his change of attitude; her heart was already broken. Aelanna had returned to her spot on the bed, and Nayli put her arm round her.
“It happened after we arrived here.” She squeezed Aelanna and leaned over and kissed her cheek. “It wasn’t to be, honey. We’ll find our mates — husbands — on Drypso. Maybe they will be just as hot as our Dheltan bodyguards.”
Aelanna glanced at Kora who nodded, and forced herself to give Nayli a grateful smile.
“If it makes you feel better, Lero and Blayze have backed off, too,” Kora said.
Aelanna didn’t feel reassured, and she didn’t want her friends to catch her deep dread but in spite of herself, she blurted out, “I hope they’re not going to be reptile people.”
Nayli’s face fell. “Who?”
“Our husbands. I’ve got a thing about reptiles.”
“Well, Miss Dapkey assured me that we wouldn’t be hooked up with reptiles or anything with tentacles,” Nayli replied, but Aelanna heard the doubt in her voice. Kora had picked up on it too.
“You believed her?”
Nonplussed, Nayli regarded her. “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Because she’s running a dodgy operation. It’s not official, even if it is government sanctioned, not that I believe some arms of government aren’t dodgy... ” Kora stared off.
“That’s only your opinion,” Nayli retorted.
“Ohirins are lizards, and they’ve taken over Drypso,” Aelanna said, “and we’re being sent there as their brides. You don’t have to be a genius to work out the logic.”
Nayli also stared off, looking dismayed.
“You know lizards have two thingies, right?”
Aelanna spun her head to look her in the eye. “What d’you mean?”
Nayli caught her look and pointed to her crotch.
“Do they use them together?” Aelanna gasped. “Where does the second one go?”
“I dread to think,” Kora said tightly.
Aelanna and Nayli shuddered, then Aelanna said, “Dapkey promised me the same.” She felt betrayed and her regret at leaving Planet Earth doubled.
She should have known the Dheltans were too good to be true.
Precisely Darren — and Lero and Blayze for the other two.
Dapkey had promised that they wouldn’t be given to lizards, but Dapkey was safely on Earth, no doubt with payment from her trickery swelling her bank account.
Kora was right: there was not a thing they could do about it.
Aelanna hoped Nayli had got her facts about lizards wrong for once, but knowing Nayli, there was no chance of that. She had allowed herself to be duped, the same as she had with Brad. How stupid was she?
“Well, we can’t go back, so she’s gonna get away with it,” Kora bit out.
“If you knew she was dodgy, why did you recommend the Harmonious Mates Agency in the first place?” Nayli sounded hacked off, and her tone was accusing.
“I didn’t recommend it, I only said I had signed up for it.”
Aelanna sprung off the bed, bouncing to her feet. “Whatever, I refuse to marry a reptile husband.” She crossed her arms. “I won’t go to Drypso. I’ll refuse to get on the ship.”
Kora: “You can’t go back to Earth, and even if you did, you signed a contract. Dapkey would sue you to the moon and back.”
Aelanna: “But she lied. The contract’s not valid.”
Kora smirked. “Good luck proving that.”
“But you’d get our boys into trouble if you refused. Knowing the Ohirins, they’d be court martialed,” Nayli said. “They’d end up in jail, or worse.”
“And they’ve got nowhere to go,” added Kora.
That stopped Aelanna in her tracks. She didn’t want to get her warrior — no, not her warrior, Darren — or his brothers into trouble, even if Darren and she didn’t have a future together.
They could escape in Pilot Joel’s ship, but they didn’t have a planet to escape to.
She’d maybe have to accept whatever husband was allocated to her — lizards or not — to save Darren.
The thought made her want to vomit again, and it rose in her gullet, but she’d work something out. Somehow.