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He takes Kahn’s offered hand.
“Nice to meet you, Kahn Voros.”
The man who was to be my husband is very put out and making little mouth noises of protest, but nobody particularly cares. Everybody has already forgotten he exists. Even his own family doesn’t really seem to care. Kahn has stolen the show in every way possible.
“So you have come to marry my daughter,” my father says.
“Your daughter is already mine.”
“So,” my father repeats, with more significance in his tone.“You’ve decided to marry my daughter.”
This time, Kahn understands what my father is saying. He looks from my father, to me, while my father’s guard, also very much understanding what my father is saying, go about removing the man who was my husband-to-be.
“Yes. I have come to marry your daughter.”
My father steps aside, allowing Kahn to come to me.
Ever the proper gentleman, Kahn plays along with the requirements of the ceremony. He stands opposite me and takes my hands in his. I am beaming so broadly my face hurts. The tears in my eyes prevent me from taking his expression in properly, but I feel his love wrapped around me like a physical embrace.
I know he has sacrificed everything to be here. He has exposed himself to the world. He knows that from this moment forth, everybody will know that his kind exists. For centuries, humans have wondered if they are alone in the universe.
Nobody is wondering anymore. Aliens are among us, and they are marrying us.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate the union of…”
The ceremony begins, a rather flustered priest doing his level best not to show the great fear he has of Kahn. If I was not entirely enamored of Kahn and so obsessed with him that I cannot think of anything else whatsoever, I would take extra pleasure in the fact that Commander Rex, who did everything in his power to destroy Kahn, is forced to stand by and watch the alien he said he killed, marry me with my father’s blessing.
Kahn
I love this woman more than I ever knew I was capable of loving anybody.
It has been a long, hard journey to get here, but there was never any doubt in my mind that I would get here. Every breath I took drew me one breath closer to this moment.
After Rex and his men left Arkan and me for dead on our ship, we had some recuperating to do. At first it seemed we very well might die, and then we did not die, which was very fortunate. Arkan’s pet was instrumental in nursing us back to health.
Naturally, we immediately set a course for Earth.
I had no intention of losing Stella. My plan was to reclaim her at all costs. Killing Rex was also on my agenda, but as a lesser item. He is within arm’s reach right now, but crushing his throat might put a certain pall over the ceremony.
I do not need revenge. All I ever wanted to do was get Stella back. That was all that mattered to me, and it continues to be all that matters to me.
Arkan and Jennifer remain aboard the ship, safely in orbit. I took one of our remaining shuttles down and landed it in a fairly broken and abused part of the city. There, I frightened the hell out of a great many foraging humans, who fled screaming. It seemed as though I was looking for a proverbial needle in a haystack in attempting to find Stella, but of course I had the collar. As it turned out, I did not need that. Directly opposite my landing site, I saw a sign.
There was quite literally a very large billboard illuminated garishly bright — and on that billboard was Stella’s face. Her wedding was to be the wedding of the century, the billboard declared, and all city dwellers were invited to help celebrate.
The crowds outside this cathedral are massive, but I had no trouble making my way through them. There was some screaming and running, and a good amount of getting the hell out of my way. I did not pay much in the way of attention to their reactions, being far more interested in what lay beyond the doors than the throngs of irrelevance outside it.
The doors to the cathedral were locked, naturally. But the doors were also made of wood, and I was made of alien, and so one thing led to another and now I am here, with my mate standing before me, looking up at me with tears in her eyes.
I know she has no idea how this all happened, and now is not the time for a full debrief. Now is a time for feelings, and the expressing of such. I have barely verbally confirmed my affection for my pet. That must change.
“I lay not knowing if I would live or die for days,” I say. “And the only regret I had in all that time… Well. I had two regrets, I suppose. One was not killing Rex the moment I saw him.”
There is a chuckle from her father, a man who not only clearly appreciates strength, but has a good sense of humor in general.
“The other regret, and the deeper one, was not taking you immediately for my own the very moment I first laid eyes on you. I let myself believe more deeply in all the limitations of my heart rather than giving into the…” I’m saying too much. Analyzing too much. This is so much more simple than I am making it.
So I make it simple.
