Chapter 19
YIRI
Just as I suspected it would, calling Cora my little wife made her wet. I glared at the too attentive transport tech until he scurried away and left us alone.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said. “I had something come up.”
“Oh, I heard,” she said, her plump lips pressed in a furious pout. “They couldn’t get you, so they called your emergency contact. He told me you weren’t hurt or dead or anything, just taking care of some business.”
“It was urgent.”
Her nose wrinkled at that. “I traveled across the universe to be here with you. All the other girls had someone here to greet them, but not me. Not Yiri Ahlon’s girl. No. You had business to handle. Well, I’d like to know what kind of business was more urgent than me.”
Fuck, she was pretty when she was mad. I was dimly aware that I was grinning like a fool at this tiny little wisp of a female, but I didn’t care.
Grabbing her gently by the shoulders, I pulled her close to my chest and leaned down to mutter in her ear.
“The kind of business that bad men do, Aneah. I’m sorry I kept you waiting. I’ll make it up to you.”
She leaned back, looking me over. “You better,” she scowled, while her gaze darted over my shoulders, chest, and middle. “You weren’t hurt, were you?”
“No,” I assured her. The small gash on my back didn’t count, did it? It was only burning, not throbbing. “Are you and Mr. Darcy ready to go?”
“We’ve been ready,” she reminded me, but the edge of her anger seemed to be wearing off.
“Let’s get you somewhere warm, then,” I said, taking her bag as she folded up a pink blanket with a pattern of very strange creatures all over it.
“Where are we going?” she asked, eyeing the guarded gate nervously.
“First, we have an appointment to be married,” I said, bending to activate the shield on her luggage caddy and synching it with the cruiser. Cora yelped when it zipped up and away.
“Mr. Darcy!”
“He’s alright. I’m just sending him to the cruiser.”
“Where?” Eyes wide, she searched the open air. “He just flew away! You sent him where?”
I took her hand, stroking her soft skin with the pad of my thumb, my blood humming through my veins just at her nearness. “To my cruiser,” I said. “It’s in a private docking bay. I locked the caddy to the cruiser. No one will have access to him. He’s safe, Aneah.”
She turned to me, so vulnerable and afraid for her small, furry companion, that her eyes glistened and her lower lip trembled. “You promise he’ll be okay? He won’t be too cold?”
“I promise,” I said. “We won’t be long behind him.”
“He doesn’t like noise,” she said, looking back to where the caddy had disappeared from view.
“Let’s hurry then.” I squeezed her delicate fingers gently.
She nodded and stayed close to my side as I led her to the gate.
She was quiet as we entered the public access portion of the Station.
Her gaze darted all over, her curiosity sparked by the most mundane things.
Vendors, vehicles, and floating frames. We walked very close to an exotic dance parlor that catered to female tastes, a few of the dancers calling out to her as we passed by, but Cora was too fascinated by an Agollan selling live tedras to notice.
“Are those bunnies?” she asked.
“Tedras.”
Her eyes went unfocused for a moment as she likely received a translation, but then she gasped. “You eat them? They look like bunnies!”
“My translation of bunnies says they are eaten by humans,” I said.
“Not all humans,” she said. “Just… humans who…” she shook her head. “Whatever. I could never eat a bunny. They’re soft and cuddly. A lot of people keep them as pets.”
“Would you like to have a tedra for a pet?” I looked back over my shoulder, fully prepared to buy every last one of the little beasts if it would help me recover from the sin of my late arrival.
“No,” she said, clutching my arm with her free hand. “Mr. Darcy doesn’t like competition.”
Mr. Darcy and I have that in common.
“Wait,” Cora said, stopping in the middle of the market with vendors and shoppers moving all around us. “Did you say we’re going to get married? Like right now?”
“Yes.”
“So soon?”
I pulled her into an alcove before we were trampled. “Yes,” I said again. “If I go home without a mate, I’ll have to accept her. That was the condition I was given.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Okay. It’s just….” She gestured at herself. “I’m wearing leggings, and all my clothes are in that thing with Mr. Darcy.”
“You need your clothes?”
“I guess not,” she said. “It’s not like I packed a wedding dress.”
Images of human women in long white dresses flooded my mind. “That’s traditional for you.” Another fuckup. “You want a white dress? We’ll get you one. The designers are on level two. If we—”
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I don’t need a dress. Not everyone does that. I just might have worn a skirt or something if I’d realized. But if you’re okay with this outfit, so am I.”
“Well you still smell like that little shit tech,” I said, “but you look gorgeous.”
Her mouth turned down as she plucked at her thick shirt and sniffed. “You can smell him? Still?”
“Only a little,” I lied. Did I want her to bathe his scent away as soon as possible? Yes. But I didn’t want him on her mind while she signed her name next to mine.
There was a line at the Embassy where other, less prepared males waited with their recently arrived brides, but Yiri Ahlon does not wait in lines, and neither will my mate. I made the appointment the same day I booked Cora’s passage.
“Oh, there’s Cora,” a woman said as we bypassed the couples queued up in the lobby. The yellow-headed human darted away from her male companion. “You found your guy, I see!”
“Eventually,” Cora agreed, returning the other woman’s hug.
“Isn’t this place nuts?” the woman asked. “Did you see the strip club? I wanted to go in, but Thrin said there are better clubs on other worlds.” She cupped a hand around her mouth and whispered loudly, “I think he just wanted to get me locked down before I could fall for one of the strippers.”
Her companion rolled his eyes as he joined her, but then paused when he saw me.
“Yiri Ahlon,” he said, looking from me to Cora and back again. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Thrin.” I nodded my head to him, but skipped the pleasantries. The last time our paths crossed was anything but.
“Um. Yiri, this is Brynna,” Cora said. “We were on the Transport vessel together.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Brynna said, pursing her lips in a poorly restrained smile. “I’d say this one was worth waiting for, Cora. What do you think?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Cora said, softening her words with a smile and a teasing look at me from under her lashes.
“And I think we’re running late for our appointment,” I said. “We’re probably the ones holding up the line.”
“Whose fault is that?” Cora asked.
“An Agollan fruit merchant’s,” I said dryly.
“Don’t be a stranger, Cora,” Brynna said as I drew Cora away. “We’ll have to get together sometime. I’m sure Thrin has a resort wherever you’re going. I’ll come and visit.”
Thrin paled, his jaw clenching.
“Yes, Nacara,” I said, “You and your bride will be welcome guests in Eissoi anytime.”
Cora waved to her friend and kept pace with my stride. “Why did that not sound very friendly?” she asked.
“Didn’t it?”
“Not even a little. How do you know him?”
“Thrin Nacara is a hospitality mogul,” I said. “He wanted to build one of his tasteless brothels in Eissoi last year, but some of the locals objected.”
“You?”
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, either way. The construction ran into one disaster after another, and he finally withdrew and sold the property to my uncle.”
“One disaster after another, huh?” She squinted up at me as we reached the social contract officer’s door.
“Unfortunate for Nacara,” I said. “He lost a lot of money. I did try to warn him.”
“Uh huh.”
“Mr. Ahlon!” the officer greeted us at the door. “And this must be Cora. Come in. I have the documents ready and waiting.”