Romanced By the Alien Dads (Single Alien Dads in Space #1)

Halley

Being abducted by aliens was Mom’s plan. Never mine.

She’s the one who majored in astrophysics.

She’s the one who, a brand-new graduate of MIT, moved to Australia to work at one of the world’s largest observatories.

And she’s the one who, all these years later, still spends her free time sending coded messages into outer space, trying to contact extraterrestrial life, despite the backlash from her peers—and from me.

I owe her an apology.

Turns out she was right all along.

Although I can’t say my abduction has been the adventure Mom was hoping for. Instead of working as an ambassador for Earth’s intergalactic advancement, I’ve been stuck manning “Xile’s best refreshment stall” in the universe’s most isolated street market.

I might be the only human to have ever been abducted by aliens and forced to work in hospitality.

I thought it was bad waiting tables back home. Turns out, that was a breeze in comparison to wresting empty mugs from the sticky grip of a Lyd’os or convincing a Ves’os that, “Yes, you do have to pay the advertised price.”

To make matters worse, I don’t earn a wage. I don’t get any holidays. And I’m not allowed to leave the stall. My bed is literally under the counter, which means I sleep, live, and work all within a ten-foot radius.

Not a slave, Xile insists. Part of the family, he says. Rescued from my abductors—if by “rescued” he actually means “paid for.”

I brush my braids over my shoulder, trying to keep the heavy mass of my extensions away from my sweaty neck.

The afternoons are always the hottest part of the day and therefore peak time at the refreshment stalls.

I’ve got a queue of patrons in front of me, waiting to submit their orders, and there’s another queue waiting for Xile to make their drinks.

“I need that back,” I tell a particularly obnoxious Lyd’os as he tosses his empty mug onto the sandy ground.

As far as I can gather, his species is native to this planet.

They excrete what I’d describe as “mucus” from their pores.

It hardens on their skin, protecting them from sunburn.

Scientifically, it’s a fascinating evolutionary response to a harsh environment.

Hospitably, it’s a nightmare, as they’re forever leaving a sticky residue on everything they touch.

This Lyd’os doesn’t spare me a second glance, and I’ve got to duck around the counter and grab his dirty mug before anyone tramples it.

Xile refuses to spend money on single-use crockery, and he refuses to buy replacement mugs for those that get stolen or broken. Which mightn’t sound like a me problem, except that I’m the one the patrons yell at when we run out.

I steal a second for myself, glancing toward the distant dunes.

They’re difficult to see from here, blocked by the fabric awnings and shade umbrellas of the other stalls.

But…I could almost swear there’s something out there, where yesterday there was only sand. I could almost swear it’s a spaceship—

“Halley!” Xile yells, and I hurriedly return to my place at the till before he can start another Halley-needs-to-work-harder lecture.

The last thing I need from him is more mansplaining.

I come from a family of hard workers. I know what it takes to persist, so I continue working, ignoring Xile as I pass small disc-shaped tokens to paid customers, which they’ll exchange for their cold drink when it’s ready for collection.

The system means I don’t need to read alien writing, so long as I can remember which colored token represents which drink, since the translator that was injected into my neck works for spoken words, not written ones.

It does make understanding currency complicated, considering many different types of currency are in circulation.

When I’m handed a coin I don’t recognize, I’ve got to ask Xile for help working out what change to give.

He…doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s mixing drinks. For all that he pretends I’m family, he never hesitates to verbally berate me in front of the customers.

I guess it’s not the worst job in the market. That unpleasant prize goes to the poor suckers who clean the public toilets.

Still, I don’t plan on sticking around for any longer than necessary. I’m going to find a way to get off this planet, and then I’m going home. Back to Earth. Back to my family.

No point in running away, Xile told me my first night here. Nowhere worth running away to. And maybe he’s right. What little I’ve seen of this planet is all sand and wind and dust. The market mainly caters to other stall holders and their families.

There is another settlement nearby, but it’s even smaller than this one, and I can’t imagine I’d find anywhere there to hide where Xile wouldn’t find me. Assuming, of course, I could get to that other settlement to begin with.

Everyone’s terrified of getting lost in the desert.

Even I’ve heard the horror stories of kids wandering off, never to be found, or of ground vehicles breaking down mid-journey.

A week after I first got here, one of those broken vehicles was found.

They brought the body to the market. I still see it in my nightmares.

Their dry and sunken skin. The hollows where their eyes used to be. Their shriveled arms and legs.

Xile bought one of their fingers. It’s stiffened into a claw, and when he’s feeling particularly festive, he wears it on a cord around his neck. A talking piece, he calls it. Gives the patrons something to chat about while they’re waiting for their drinks.

I’m not sure what happened to the rest of the body. I’m scared one day I’ll greet a customer, and they’ll be wearing toes as earrings.

And if you think the two dozen Lyd’os who’ve singled themselves out as being market security might’ve done something to stop the sale of a dismembered body, you’d be wrong. It was the so-called “security” who were selling it.

Perhaps it was a good thing after all that the aliens abducted me and not Mom. She’d be horrified to realize that these are the people she’s been referring to as “intelligent life” her entire career.

Nevertheless, I know she’ll have a million questions for me when I finally get back, and I’ve been making observations of the things I think will interest her the most. I don’t have any way to write them down, so I’ve been memorizing them, using the list as a sort of mantra for when I’m exhausted and heartsick and need reminding of my determination to escape.

Ves’os: blue, horned and straight-faced. They hate showing any emotions that aren’t anger or disinterest, believing it’s a weakness to let others know what they’re thinking.

Lyd’os: yellow-green, four arms, native to Lyd, smell like the sea—maybe sodium forms part of the chemical make-up of their mucus.

I serve more customers, all the while scanning the end of my queue. Everyone who comes into the market eventually finds themselves at Xile’s. It’s only natural. With the heat of the dual suns beating down on our heads, no amount of protective mucus can keep you as cool as an icy drink.

I can recognize most of the locals by now. I can even recognize some of the traders from the other settlement. Everyone on this planet has a sort of dehydrated quality about them, as if all it’ll take is one good sandstorm for us to turn into mummified corpses ourselves.

So if that really is a spaceship out on the dunes, beyond the market, surely I’ll be able to recognize its crew when they eventually join my queue. Surely I’ll be able to recognize visitors from another planet.

The thought sends a hundred questions racing around my mind, and I fumble my sale, dropping the customer’s coin on the ground.

“Stealing from me?” he demands, snatching up the coin and stuffing it into his pocket. “Don’t you scudding dare.”

But I barely hear him.

There’s a gap in the crowd for a couple of seconds as the wind pulls at the other stalls’ shade cloths, and I catch my first proper glimpse of the ship parked out on the dunes.

My heart lurches in my chest, and it’s all I can do to keep breathing—because that’s not the ship that stole me from Earth.

It’s a different ship, one I haven’t seen before.

One that might just be my ticket off this hellhole.