Star Mate Matched, Margo Collins [the unexpected everything .TXT] 📗

The alien behind the counter grinned. “Wabla rolls?”

Lucy grinned back. “Yes, those.”

“You seem comfortable enough here.”

“Yeah. Then again, I’ve been here a few days longer than you have. I’ve already decided to stay. Don’t tell Jalek yet, though. He deserves to worry a little after terrifying me like he did. A giant, hot-pink leopard jumping out of nowhere.” She shook her head. “I thought I was going to die.”

“Yeah. Dax killed the mugger who attacked me. I thought I was next.” I shuddered at the memory.

“I’m glad you’re here,” Lucy confided. “There’s an awful lot of testosterone around here. It’ll be nice to have a girlfriend.”

“Yeah. But…the thing is, I’m not sure I’m staying.” I felt bad dashing Lucy’s hopes like that. But there were about to be plenty more human women hanging around soon enough, from the sound of things.

“Really?” She squinted at me, then her eyes widened in surprise. “Oh my God. You haven’t had sex with him yet, have you?”

A hot blush crawled up my cheeks. “Oh. Um. How did you know?”

She clasped her hands together, tapped them against her lips, then steepled the two index fingers together and pointed them at me, grinning. “Don’t make a decision until after you’ve done the deed. I promise you, the mate-bond makes it incredible.”

I blushed harder as I remembered our time in the tub just that afternoon.

The server came to give us our tea and sandwiches. Or something like them, anyway. The dark red drink was served in a low, wide bowl with a miniature ladle, and the rolls came standing on end in some kind of cup. Lucy eagerly scooped up some of the tea and drank it.

My stomach growled and I realized I hadn’t eaten since…well, since before the wedding that hadn’t happened.

Lucy had been right—the tea was wonderful, fruity and slightly sweet, and the sandwich reminded me a little bit of a Philly cheesesteak. I didn’t ask what it was made of—I suspected I didn’t want to know, any more than I liked to think about where meat on Earth came from.

We ate in companionable silence for a little while, then chatted for a bit, trading stories of how we had met our Drovekzian mates. She told me that Jalek had talked about Dax, describing how long they had served together in the Drovekzian Space Fleet.

In some ways, it felt like she knew Dax better than I did—and I realized that made me a little uncomfortable.

That has to be a side-effect of the mate-bond, I finally decided. Or maybe it was plain old-fashioned jealousy. I didn’t want any other woman to have a closer bond with him than I did. Which was ridiculous, of course, since I wasn’t even sure I wanted to stay here.

“Anything else you want to know?” Lucy finally asked.

“Just one thing.” I leaned in conspiratorially. “Why are all the walls in their ships that godawful shade of orange?”

Lucy burst out laughing. “Isn’t it horrible? I finally figured out that they don’t see things exactly like we do. I’m betting their eyesight is more similar to a cat’s on Earth. When I asked Jalek about it, he seemed to think it was a soothing shade of green.”

“Green, really?”

But even as we laughed about it, I found myself wondering what other assumptions I had made about Dax were wrong. We literally didn’t see our universe the same way.

In what other ways were our viewpoints so different that it didn’t even occur to us to ask each other about?

And could those kinds of differences—the ones that were so ingrained that we didn’t even know they existed—be overcome?

Could we really create a life together despite all the dissimilarities between our worlds, our cultures, even our bodies?

Can I truly be happy if I stay here with Dax?

Chapter Twenty-Two

Dax

After two sundrops’ worth of discussion, we were no closer to determining what to do about the recent Karlaxon incursions into Drovekzian space—not to mention their hacking into our computers.

Braxton and General Galatov, however, had come up with a plan to find the general a mate. I didn’t bother to tell them I thought their plan was likely to fail—but from the surreptitious glances Jalek had given me, I suspected he felt the same.

As we all filed out of the conference room, I stopped Jalek with a hand on his arm. “Join me in the officer’s mess hall for a meal?”

“Let me check on Lucy first, and then I’ll meet you there.”

I probably should have checked on Nora, too, but I was starving. “See you there.”

With a wave, Jalek headed out.

I opened a communications channel on my wristcom. “Computer, locate Nora Marlin.”

“Nora Marlin is currently en route from the general population canteen to Commander Dax’s personal quarters.”

Good. That meant she had probably eaten already. She would be safe there while I joined Jalek in the mess hall—I needed to discuss some things with the captain.

“How did you convince Lucy to stay with you?” I took a bite of my flandant bread and waited for Jalek’s answer.

The captain snorted. “What makes you think I have?”

My intuition about why he had described her as his match rather than his mate had been correct. I shrugged. “You two just seemed connected to one another.”

Jalek swallowed a bite of food as he nodded. “We are. But part of that involves recognizing Lucy’s concerns.” His eyes narrowed as he regarded me. “You’re having some of the same issues with your Nora, I take it?”

I glanced around to make sure no one else was listening. “I am. I can feel her trepidation through the mate-bond.”

“Do you know what’s causing her worries?”

“When I met her, she was running away from another mating ceremony.”

Jalek’s eyes widened in shock. “She’s mated to someone else?”

“No. Apparently on Earth, there is no such thing as a mate-bond. It’s all simply left to chance. She walked away from her potential Earth mate.”

“Right. Lucy mentioned the lack of a mate-bond, but I hadn’t considered the