Their Little Anzerine (Eleadian Mates #15)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Mercy

“Let her in!”

“Yes, let her in!”

I’m stunned as about a dozen women surround me. I’ve been running so hard I’m out of breath. I don’t think I can continue, and maybe I won’t have to.

“John!” someone shouts. “Seriously. You have to let her in!”

I tip my head back to look at the sign above the entrance to the building.

Club Zoom.

Holy shit. I’m in front of Club Zoom?

“Hurry!” another woman squeals. “John! Have a heart.”

The women have completely swarmed around me, concealing me from the view of anyone nearby. They crowd in closer, pushing me. Bless them. There is some good left in humanity after all.

I assume John is the giant man blocking the entrance to the club, and he suddenly steps aside before taking my hand and helping me through the doorway.

As soon as I’m inside, he hurries me into a room, out of sight of anyone passing by on the street.

I take deep breaths. “Thank…you.” I’m panting from exertion.

John stands in front of me, rubbing his chin. His brow is furrowed in concern. “Runaway bride?”

I smirk. “How can you tell?” I pluck at the front of my wedding dress. It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. I feel like a beluga whale in it.

John glances at his watch. “It’s ten at night. Who gets married this late at night?”

I wince. “The wedding was at five,” I mutter.

“You’ve been running since before five?”

Swallowing hard, I shake my head.

John hesitates, then groans, and runs a hand down the front of his face. “Please tell me you aren’t married. I can’t let you into the club if you’re married.” He glances behind him.

When I follow his line of sight, I realize we’re not alone in this room. There are six other women in here. All of them are sitting around tables staring at me. On closer inspection, I notice they’re each holding a pen, filling out forms. Waivers.

I’ve heard about this club. Everyone has. No one can get in without signing a waiver indicating they realize the risk associated with entering. The risk being that they might get selected by one of the aliens and taken from the planet.

If only I could be that lucky. That’s not likely. I glance down at myself and cringe. I’m not a small woman by any stretch of the imagination, and this dress makes me look even more ridiculous.

“You shouldn’t be here,” John continues.

“Please,” I beg him as I lift my gaze. “If I could just stay for a while so I can think about what to do next. I promise I won’t move from this spot. He can’t get in here, right?”

John’s entire face scrunches up. “Your husband, you mean? A man you married just a few hours ago?”

I cringe at the title. Husband… That asshole can fuck himself for all I care. What he’s not going to do is fuck me. Ever. I just need to figure out how to get out of this mess.

A door opens across the room, and another man enters. He’s tall. About six and a half feet, but I don’t think he’s Eleadian. I’ve heard they’re all over seven feet.

His brow is pinched the same way John’s is. “What’s going on?” He looks me up and down.

John steps to the side and looks at the other man. “Got a runaway bride. The women in line out front surrounded her in some sort of female solidarity. They insisted I let her bypass the line so she could get inside.”

The man rolls his eyes and looks directly at me. “Were you being chased?”

I lick my lips. “Yes. I don’t know how close behind me he was, because I had a head start, but hopefully he passed right by the club when he didn’t see me out front.”

The new man nods to one side of the room. “Come into my office.”

Relieved, I follow him. It’s not easy. I have to gather up the layers of tulle to keep from tripping.

The dress was almost too long even with the stupid heels I’d been wearing, but I ditched those ugly shoes before I jumped out of the limo at a stop light.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to run in them, but now the fluffy tulle hangs past my feet, dragging.

I’ll be lucky if I don’t trip and break my neck.

Or maybe that would be the perfect end to my day.

“What’s your name?” the man asks as he pulls out a chair across from what I assume is his desk.

“Mercy.”

“I’m Zack, the manager of Club Zoom.” He pushes a folder across the desk toward me. “First things first. You really must sign the waiver if you’re going to be inside the club.”

“I promise I won’t enter the main club.”

He shakes his head. “Trust me. It doesn’t matter. The fact that you’re inside this building at all is enough to make me nervous.”

I nod and reach for the pen he holds out. “No problem.” I have to push the front of the gaudy dress down just to get my arm to the desk.

Zack leans back, chuckling. “Pardon my rudeness, but that dress is awful. I’m only saying that out loud because I can tell you agree.”

I sigh as I open the folder. “Yes. It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It goes perfectly with my day.”

“Why did you choose it if you hate it?”

I shake my head. “I didn’t choose anything, including the groom.”

“Ah.” He points toward the papers. “Sign.”

After reading through the fine print, I gladly sign and initial everywhere I’m supposed to before pushing it back toward him. “Do you have some scissors I could borrow?”

He frowns as he opens the center drawer of his desk to pull out a pair. Before handing them to me, he says, “You’re not going to stab yourself or cut your wrists, are you?”

I cackle. It sounds strange coming from my lips. It’s been a while since I last smiled, let alone laughed. “No. I promise.”

He turns them around and holds the handles toward me. “Good. The blood would be awful to clean up, plus I don’t want to deal with the paramedics and police tonight,” he teases.

I laugh again as I bend forward and start cutting the bottom of my dress.

Zack gasps as he rises onto his feet, plants his hands on the desk, and leans over. “You’re seriously going to cut that dress? You really must hate it.”

“Hate is such a mild word,” I mutter as I fight with the ugly tulle.

It’s going to take me forever to cut through the layers so I can remove at least the bottom third of this ugly mess.

Eventually I’m going to have to leave this building, and when I do, I want to be able to run without being so encumbered.

I’ve only managed to cut a slit several inches up the front when a door opens.

Yet another man enters my line of sight.

At the same time, the room fills with the sound of loud club music.

When I look around him, I realize the door he opened leads directly into the main club.

The lighting is dim, and women are jammed onto what I assume is a dance floor.

His gaze lands on me, and I swear he doesn’t blink. His jaw drops. After a few seconds, he turns his attention to Zack. “Uhhh… Sorry to interrupt, Zack, but we have a situation at the bar.”

Zack responds, “A situation like you’re out of vodka or there’s a girl fight?”

“The latter.”

Zack groans. “Thanks, Roger. I’ll be right there.” He stands and rounds his desk, stopping in front of me. “Don’t cut anything besides that gaudy tulle, you hear me?”

I giggle again, feeling lighter. “Yes.”

Zack follows Roger out the door, closing it behind him. I’m grateful because I’m on my last nerve, and the volume in that club might drive me to drink.

As if I’ve ever had a drink before. Zack mentioned vodka. I’ve never even tasted the stuff. Maybe I should. Maybe tonight is a good night to overindulge.

I shake my head as I lower my attention back to cutting the front of this dress. Other than the fact that it’s white, it reminds me of the curtains my grandmother had in the kitchen when I was a kid. Every time she opened the window, the thin tulle would blow in the breeze.

I miss her. Life was simple back then. Now life is a shitshow, and I don’t see a way out of the mess I’m in.

It’s great that the women out front felt sorry for me and gave me cover long enough to convince the bouncer to let me in.

It was very kind of them, and Lord knows I haven’t experienced a lot of kindness since my grandmother passed.

I was twelve at the time, and my world flipped upside down. I feel like I’ve been living inside a tornado ever since, spinning around in dizzying circles. Sometimes I get hit by debris, but I never get kicked out of the funnel cloud.

Cutting through the layers of silk and tulle is cathartic.

I’ve had the urge to destroy this ugly dress ever since I first set eyes on it.

It looks like the sort of prom dress girls wore in the mid-eighties.

I know this from pictures. And it’s not surprising, since that was when my mother-in-law married my father-in-law. In this dress.

Well, it was sort of this dress. When the bitch pulled it out of storage for me to wear, she had to have it altered to fit me, which makes it even more hideous.

The seamstress who came to the house two weeks ago was told to simply take out the stitching on both sides of the dress and add several inches of taffeta so it would go around me.

I stood for an hour in my bra and panties while my future mother-in-law, the seventy-year-old seamstress, and two maids worked around me.

The maids were relatively kind or at least silent.

My mother-in-law commented on my fat rolls about a dozen times as if I weren’t even in the room.

It was humiliating and insufferable. I had to hold back tears the entire time.

When they were done, I grabbed my robe, ran to my room, and cried into my pillow for the rest of the evening.

Fuck them. All of them.

Every memory of the past few weeks makes me cut faster.

The progress is slow, though, since there are so many layers, and it’s hard for me to bend over far enough to reach.

I end up lifting the end into the air in front of me.

I don’t care about cutting in a straight line or how jagged my work is.

I only care about being able to move better after removing it at least up to my knees.

It’s not like I have a change of clothes.

I’m going to have to make do with this mess for now.

I don’t even have a plan. Where will I go when I leave here? I assume I got away with ducking into the club and hiding. Surely John would have come into this office and told me if my asshole of a husband was milling around out front.

Fredrick Angelo.

I refer to him in my head as Dick because that’s what he is.

I’m still cutting away at the bottom foot of the dress when the door leading to the dance floor opens again. I glance up, expecting to find Zack returning. Instead, the air catches in my lungs.

Two new men step into the room. John, Zack, and Roger are tall and broad, but these men are much taller and larger. I know in an instant they aren’t human. They’re Eleadian.

My heart races as they shut the door behind them and come toward me. The scissors fall out of my hand and clang loudly against the floor. The funnel cloud I’ve been living in for weeks spins again, faster, harder, making me so dizzy I fear I might faint.

In fact, I’m lightheaded, and I lean to one side.

The tanned man with darker hair and green eyes rushes forward, squats down, and catches me in his arms before I manage to fall off the chair.

This can’t be happening.

The man with dark blond hair and blue eyes kneels at my other side and grabs my bicep.

I close my eyes and say a silent prayer to whatever god might be listening.

Please tell me these men are going to take me off this godforsaken planet. I don’t even care what they expect from me in return. A life of slavery digging in coal mines would be preferable to the one I’ve been living.