Page 31 of His to Take

16

That night,she heard pebbles being thrown at her door again. Only this time, it was soon followed by a tap. Rex had climbed up the wall to get to her balcony. She smiled as she opened the doors and went out to meet him.

“You came, I didn’t think you would.” She hugged him, but he didn’t seem as happy to see her.

“Yeah, I’ve come to think up an escape plan for you. We can’t let you marry that scum.” He sat down, his chin on his fist, lost in thought already.

“I… Rex, I can’t escape. You’ll all die. Don’t you get that?” She sat down across from him at the white, wrought iron table and looked at him. “Your parents, mine, the people that work here, the ones that live in the district. We’ll all die.”

“Then we’ll kick the bastards out,” he cried, but not too loudly. He didn’t want to get caught up here.

She drew the white cotton robe around her body and tried not to shiver. It wasn’t cold, but Rex’s refusal to see sense had chilled her. “Rex, honey. You can’t. There’s nothing we can do but enjoy whatever time we have left together.”

“You mean…?” He looked hopefully for a moment, but when she shook her head, he frowned and slouched again. “Damn.”

“I can’t sleep with you, and then go off to a new man in a matter of days, Rex. I just can’t.” It was gross to her. She didn’t care what other people did, but it wasn’t for her.

“When will it happen?” he asked, his eyes now on the sky.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”

“Some of the guys have said that his men are pissed. They want him to marry someone else, not you.”

“What? They’re all planning to take pure-blood women as their brides, aren’t they? How is he any different for taking me?” She felt stupid, but it stung a little that his men didn’t think she was an acceptable bride.

“I don’t know, do I, Ann? I just know what they said. So, maybe this won’t happen, maybe we can still be together.”

Ann didn’t hold out much hope of that. The man had seemed determined to have her. The threat he’d made proved that.

“I wish we could go back to the bunker,” he said it softly, and Ann wasn’t sure she heard him right.

“Seriously? After the way you hated it, you want to go back there?”

“It was all simple there, Ann. We weren’t controlled, and life wasn’t so bad. Not really, was it?”

“Well, you won the ignoring championship of the world down there, you barely acknowledged I existed, most of the time, but yeah. Life was simpler. And also boring. And not guaranteed. We had no promise of tomorrow down there.”

“Like we do up here? The weather could change in an instant. The aliens could kill us all, anything could happen. We could get sick, anything.”

“I know, but, still. It’s not so bad up here, Rex. Even if I do have to marry an alien.”

It sounded so odd to say it, and it reminded her of her earlier thoughts. “I thought you’d be mad.”

“Oh, I am. They’re stealing you from me, but unless I can come up with a plan, there’s nothing to do about it.” He kicked back, his arms over his chest, covered with his work clothes. He didn’t have anything else.

That was something else she could work on when she married that alien, she thought. She could chip away at this notion that the wolves should be enslaved, with no free time or benefits to show for the work they did, other than the bare basics of life.

“Are you hungry? Do you want something to drink?” she offered and was disappointed when he grunted out that he didn’t want anything. It came out petulant, like a spoiled child that was being appeased.

Maybe he was, but she didn’t know what else to do. He reminded her of what her mother had said, about how she’d slugged him when he took a medal from her before she could offer it to him, as if it was his due.

“You know I wouldn’t do it, if that threat wasn’t over my head, right, Rex?” It was the only medal she could give him, right now. The truth.

“Sure. You’d totally give up being the queen of the planet to live with me in the shed. Others wouldn’t believe you, but I do.” His wink said the opposite.

“That’s not fair, Rex, and you know it. I’m not, nor have I ever been, some fame-hungry, power-hungry tramp. I’m just doing what is right, that’s all.”

“Of course, you are, Ann. You always do.” He brushed hair back from her face now and looked at her in the moonlight. “You’re probably the only girl that ever did, our entire lives.”