Married to the Alien Cowboy (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #1)

1. Silar

1

SILAR

“ T hey want to send us women.”

The warden’s words fell over the room like a thunderclap.

The astounded silence that followed was broken not by words but by the sound of four adult Zabrian males leaning suddenly forward in their chairs, making the old wood creak beneath us.

My chair creaked perhaps loudest of all.

The sound seemed to embolden Zohro on my right. He pulled off his weathered, wide-brimmed hat and aimed it at Warden Tenn like a weapon, his eyes gone bright white with what could have been keen curiosity but, knowing him, was probably rage.

“What do you mean, women? ”

“Are they convicts?” Garrek piped up, his voice deep and charred-sounding. “They have only ever sent boys before.”

Zohro snorted and Fallon flicked his whip-like tail across the floor. None of us needed to be reminded of that fact. We had all been young boys upon our arrival here, the first generation of underage Zabrian criminals dumped on this Empire- forsaken planet. Too young to send to the Zabrian mines, too irredeemable in the eyes of the empire to remain on Zabria.

And now they want to send us women…

“No,” Warden Tenn said. Stationed here by the empire, he was the only male within a distance of a hundred spans that had come here for his career instead of as a result of his crimes. “The women are not convicted of anything. They are not coming here via the same program you all did.”

“What, then? Why are they being sent here?”

Fallon, Garrek, and Zohro’s heads all swivelled to me. Somewhat startled, I realized it was I who had spoken.

“So Silent Silar speaks when the subject relates to females. Good to know,” Zohro sneered, leaning back in his chair now and replacing his hat upon his head. In the shadow of the beaten brim, his eyes still glowed.

“It’s a good question no matter who asked it,” Fallon said. “Why are they coming here?”

“They’re being sent as brides. For you ,” Warden Tenn clarified when we all responded to that remark with a stretch of dumbfounded silence. “To marry. ”

“Brides.” Zohro and Fallon said the word at the exact same moment. Zohro with incredulous disdain, Fallon breathing it with something close to wonder. Garrek and I exchanged guarded glances as the warden went on.

“Yes. Brides. The empire has decided, now that you are adults and have served so much time here, that it would be unnecessarily cruel to deprive you of female companionship into the remainder of your adult years.”

“Ha!” Zohro dragged his tall body out of his chair. I watched in silence as he began to pace, his pink hide darker than usual in the dim light of the warden’s office, his eyes killing white. My tail twitched close to the blade I kept in my boot.

“The empire cares nothing about cruelty,” Zohro growled. “This is nothing but a placation, a flimsy attempt to distract us from the fact that they should have tried to reintegrate us into Zabrian life by now, but they have not. They are leaving us here among the dust and the dung and trying to bribe our acceptance of such a fate with women.”

“There was never any indication we’d be taken back to Zabria,” Garrek grunted, rubbing calloused fingers along his dark blue jaw. “We’ve all committed crimes. This was always meant to be our recompense. It’s better than what we would have faced in the mines.”

“Is it?” Zohro challenged. “At least in the mines we’d serve our time and then be out eventually. We’ve been here more than half our lives and now they want us to bed down and marry! To breed . They are dangling women in front of us instead of the lives we should have had!” His eyes went so white they looked like stars in his face. “This is the end. This means there will never be anything else for us but this place.”

His words settled heavily among us all, only to be suddenly dispelled by a flippant snort from Fallon.

“You are a dramatic ass,” he said, his eyes, usually warm and dark, flashing briefly white. “I do not know why you hold on to hope of ever being taken back to Zabria. I barely remember our home planet!” He sliced his claws through the air, gesturing to Garrek and me. “We have all managed to build a life here.”

“Is that what you call it?” Zohro asked, halting his pacing and fixing Fallon with his white stare. “A life? Running cattle in the heat and weathering the cold? Blinking infernal dust out of our eyes every morning and wiping it out of every crack and crevice each night? Ancient tech that crumbles the moment that you so much as breathe on it?”

“I could put up with any sort of life if there were a good woman in it,” Fallon retorted. As if deciding he were finished with Zohro, he swivelled in his seat to face Warden Tenn again. “What do you need from us? Ranch inspection? A cattle count? Mine have fared well over the winter. I know I could provide for a wife if given the chance.”

Though we were all four of us adults, Fallon was the youngest and most earnest. But there was more than youthful enthusiasm in his face now. His eyes flashed briefly white again, his face drawn tight with something that looked very much like hunger.

“I need your vote,” the warden replied. “Our province is the first to be offered a chance at the bride program. A majority vote of aye means the program will go ahead. A majority vote of nay means that the chance will instead be given to Warden Hallum’s men in the next province.”

Garrek shifted in his chair and Fallon sat up very straight.

“I vote aye!” Fallon said instantly, his tail quivering so hard he wrapped it around the leg of his chair to hold it still.

“There are four of us,” I pointed out, drawing the tip of my tail up and down the handle of my hidden knife. “Oaken couldn’t get through the spring snow in the mountains for this meeting.”

The warden tipped his hat in agreement, making the Zabrian badge on it glint.

“As your warden and the liaison to the empire, I am included in the vote.” His eyes turned white, a mere flicker, before returning to their usual orange shade. “And as a man with half a brain in his head who thinks some female influence might be just the thing to tame you lot of uncivilized, white-eyed, feral fools , I have already voted aye.”

“I vote aye! Aye for Fallon!” Fallon said again, nearly jumping out of his chair with what was clearly anxiety that he had not been heard before. “And if these any of idiots do not want their women then I will take theirs, too!”

“You’ve never even been with one woman,” Zohro snapped, “what in the great blazing span of my largest bull’s backside would you do with four ?”

Fallon ripped off his hat and scrubbed vigorously at his yellow hair, frowning.

“They would not all be my women,” he said awkwardly. “But one could be mine. And the others could live with us if they so chose. I have space.”

“You have space inside your skull is what you have,” Zohro muttered.

Garrek growled a warning. My tail tightened around my knife.

“Enough,” said the warden, rising from his seat. He towered over even tall Zohro and cut an imposing figure as he rested his claws upon his stunner. “Give me your votes and be done.”

“I vote no,” Zohro said, flinging himself back into his seat under Warden Tenn’s baleful white glare. “I will not further chain myself to this place by marrying. If I am to have sons or daughters, they will be born in the empire of Zabria or not at all.”

Fallon visibly tensed, his hope-hungry gaze going to Garrek.

Garrek rubbed his jaw again and sighed.

“I’ve got a new convict-ward from the empire. I can barely keep him under control and take care of my herd at the same time. We almost didn’t make it through the winter. What am I going to do with a female on top of all that mess?” I thought I could hear the strained tinge of regret in his voice when he heavily but firmly said, “No. I vote no.”

“Unbelievable!” Fallon exploded. “You complain of our lives here and then you shit on the one chance we’ve gotten in dozens of cycles to actually make things better! If we say no, the women will go to Warden Hallum’s men! Warden Hallum! Have you two lost your senses?”

Then Fallon turned to me. I’d never seen the young man’s eyes so white.

“Two ayes, two nays. The vote comes down to you, Silar,” Warden Tenn grunted.

I felt every man’s gaze upon me like a touch.

A woman. A wife . I wouldn’t know what in the bloody blazes to do with such a thing. None of us would. We all came here before puberty. Cut off from society, forever separated from the females of our race before we were even old enough to want them. I barely knew how to speak to these men whom I’d known since childhood. What could I possibly have to say to a woman?

Silent Silar. I liked to be alone.

I forced myself to imagine it – to imagine somebody beside me, in my house, in my space – and my tail went tight with tension. But I could not quite tell if it was a bad sort of tension or not.

It wound tighter.

A woman in my kitchen. In my bedroom.

In my bed.

Something that almost felt like panic choked me at the very same moment that my flesh stirred hotly beneath my pants. Questions pounded inside my head in time with my rapid heartrate.

What would I do with her? How could I keep a female happy here? Here, in the sun and the dust and the ruins of my life? How could I possibly hope to deserve her? A wife!

And how could I turn off this desperate, savage wanting now that it was suddenly here? I’d never dared to allow myself to want something like a woman before. There was no point. When my cock got too hard to ignore, I used my own fist with a grim sort of efficiency and then I got back to work.

There was always work. So much work that it left no more room for wanting.

Until now.

A woman.

No. I could not have her. I would not.

I would probably do something wrong and hurt her or harm her or Empire forbid, break her. We were convicts, reviled by our own people, left out here on this distant planet to rot for so long that there was no hope of ever rehabilitating us. What could I offer a female? I, a white-eyed feral fool, as the warden had so aptly pointed out?

I knew cattle. I knew how to tell when a storm was brewing simply by the slant of the light. I knew which grasses were toxic and which could heal. Which holes housed venomous ardu serpents.

I knew nothing about keeping a wife. Nothing.

“I’ll take one.”

The warden scowled at me. Fallon did not appear to breathe.

“You’ll take one what?” Warden Tenn asked.

“Maybe he means to take a break. To consider!” Fallon said in a rushed exhale. “Give the man a moment and let him think! This is the most important decision he is ever going to make!”

“I will not take a break,” I replied. “I meant-”

Someone slit my throat and stop me. I’m a fool.

“-I’ll take one. A wife.”

Fallon leaped up. His tail, still wrapped around the chair leg, sent the whole thing clattering backwards to the floor. He stood, his frame seeming to buzz with energy. It was as if he wanted to do so many things at once that all he could manage was to stand in place and tremble with the force of his fraying desire.

The warden tipped his hat again. “Three ayes against two nays. The vote is cast and the bride program will commence,” he said.

Zohro hissed a sigh. Garrek said nothing, though – and this was strange – he did not look disappointed that the vote had not gone his way.

“When will they arrive?” Fallon asked, white blooming hot and frantic in his eyes.

“That is not the question you should be asking,” Zohro said with a dark smirk. “The question you should be asking is, what is wrong with them? No decent Zabrian woman would agree to come here. To be cut off forever from Zabria and marry convicted outcasts like us.”

“Oh. Did I not say it before?” the warden asked with a frown. And then, casually, as if he were not dropping something as stunningly obliterating as a boulder atop our heads, he added, “They are not Zabrian females. Your brides will be human.”