Star Bright (Big Sky Alien Mail Order Brides #22)

Chapter 6

Darcy tried to imagine it. She had her fair share of eating-healthy pants versus snacking-like-a-trash-panda pants, but to take a completely different shape… “Shift, like that picture of your mate? Why don’t you try it?”

“Because if my conscious control, like my memories, is too fragmented, the beast might rise too high.”

She chewed at her lip for a moment. “You mean your…beast is separate from you and might hurt you?”

“No, we are one, always. It would seek to protect me from the confusion, from any fear or pain. And I might not want to come back to my troubles.”

She nodded slowly, thinking of the glorious power that had been evident in every pixel of that little 3D video. “If I had an inner dragon, I can see how that might be a risk.”

Back at the main building, they unloaded his gathered belongings around the stasis pods.

Darcy peered at the control panel. “Are the lights blinking faster now?”

Kong popped out from behind the pillow fort. “The revival process is accelerating. Youngling physiology is often more resilient and recovers more quickly from the cryo process. How exciting.”

Vash hunched his shoulders. “How soon?”

“According to unit calculations, likely tomorrow.” The little robot spun an excited circle. “Additional bedrooms have not yet finished the cleaning cycle. Perhaps you might set up two more of these cushion cubicles for your younglings.”

Seeing Vash’s uncertain expression, Darcy cleared her throat. “They are called pillow forts. It’s an Earther thing. Kong, you run inventory and make sure we have food for little draklings. Vash, any preferences or allergies we should be aware of for your kids? We want to make them feel…” She couldn’t say at home. They might still technically have a homeworld, but everything they’d known would have changed. “Welcome and comfortable,” she finished.

While Vash consulted with Kong, she scavenged and reapportioned the available pillows and sheets. If she’d known about the giant 3D printer out in the garage, she could’ve made the kickassest fort ever .

Would she have believed Brin about the existence of aliens? Or would she have thought her friend had gone full circle from debunking conspiracy theories to embracing them? Maybe she wouldn’t have come here at all.

“Midday meal,” Kong called, bumping her from her musings.

Having commandeered Vash’s hands, the little robot had brought out a sampling of the supplies that had been prepped for Darcy’s occupancy. “The main kitchen has a much wider array of stellar interstellar cuisine,” Kong said in a doleful tone, “while Darcy’s requests were much more…basic.”

Slightly stung at being judging by a motorized munchkin with no mouth of its own, she arched one brow. “That should be perfect for children who need to be welcomed and comforted.”

Vash pulled out a stool at the bar for her. “Drakling young are rarely particular about food. Their beasts are growing too and will eat almost anything.”

Darcy grinned at the thought. “Earther parents complain about hungry kids eating constantly. Must be even worse with an inner dragon taking half.”

“Fledglings don’t shift,” Vash said. “Which is probably good since they are already strong and bold. Flighted on top of that would be too much. Gaining wings at puberty is hard enough.” Though she almost missed it as he took the stool beside her, a dark look flashed across his face.

She angled toward him. “Everything okay? The weather isn’t looking great, but if this food won’t work for your kids, I will make the trip into town for more options.”

“It’s not that.” He slanted a look at her. “Just as I said, it’s hard.”

“Then let me introduce you first to the joys of Korean street toast.”

They tried a few other things too, and she noticed he liked the sweet as well as the spicy. A man after her own heart.

She jerked herself up straight. He was not a man, even if he looked like one at the moment. And more to the point, he was someone else’s man—er, mate—even if he might not remember why his Shanya wasn’t with him when the ship crashed.

A sly little voice nipped at her: If he was taken, why did he have a contract with the IDA?

It didn’t matter. At least not to her. She had no interest in infidelity or even ethical nonmonogamy. Maybe her relationship with Christopher had gotten a little too complacent, drifting along while the rest of their friends got married and bought houses and started families. Maybe it said something about their relationship that she was only now thinking about how odd it was that they’d never once discussed marriage, homeownership, or kids themselves. As if they’d been stuck in separate stasis chambers, drifting.

Had he always known she wasn’t the one for him? Had some unheard inner part of her known he wasn’t the one for her?

That didn’t matter either. Not anymore. She was only a temporary caretaker, having a quiet little holiday alone.

Alone with a not-dog, a robot, a dragon man, and soon to be two dragon kids.

Alone was getting sort of crowded.

When Vash had approved all the food—supplemented with more chili powder, tabasco, and pickled jalape?o from the bar stocks—it was midafternoon and he looked like he was tilting sideways a bit.

“Rest,” she told him. “This might be your last chance before your kids are back.”

“Is that what I told myself before I put them in stasis?” He pressed one hand to his head. “I still don’t remember that part.”

She walked him back to his pillow fort, now flanked with two more forts. It actually did look welcoming and comfortable. Her day job selling high-end AV electronics—through which she’d met Brin—was usually impersonal and lacking style since there was only so much that could be done with various black plastic boxes, so this was a nice change.

“If you think of anything else you need,” she started. “Or I mean, what the kids might need.”

While they’d taste-tested, he’d given Kong enough information to pass along to the closed world authorities about the accident. But he didn’t seem energized by the first steps toward reunion.

He sat at the outer edge of the pillows, staring toward the big windows. The clouds from earlier had expanded across the whole sky, and with the winter sun already somewhere below the tree tops, the light was fading fast. But what remained caught in the gray of his eyes, turning them a distant silver.

“I remember,” he murmured. “We were on Skyearth’s smaller moon, where our spaceport is, waiting for our ship. Yadira was so angry with me, she was crying. And my little Susu… He was hugging his sister but looking at me as if his heart was breaking. What have I done?”

Slowly, she dropped to her knees next to the cushions. His shuddering breath made her ache to console him. But she was only here to make sure the dog got fed and nothing blew up, and here it turned out she hadn’t been needed for the first and the second… “Whatever it was, it obviously wasn’t done on a whim. Vash, I don’t know you, and you still barely know yourself, but it’s obvious you love your family. You must’ve been seeking some sort of future, even if that future was a hundred years ago. And you don’t mind sleeping in a pillow fort or eating comfort food from a closed world. I can’t be sure that makes you a good person, but I think it’s a good start.”

He let out another breath, longer this time and maybe a little steadier. “You are a good person, Darcy. So why are you here among the pillows?”

“Well, you seemed like you needed a little reassurance—”

“I mean why are you here in this empty outpost?”

She didn’t exactly want to spill her guts, but maybe it was those extra bites of hot sauces giving her a reckless nonchalance, her sensitivity scorched away. “When my boyfriend, Christopher, decided he didn’t want to spend any more time with me, I felt like I’d wasted my best years on him,” she said bluntly. “He made me feel like a fool. No, that’s not quite right. I felt like I’d been fooling myself with him. That’s worse, isn’t it?”

“Did you love him?”

Jerking back in surprise, she blinked hard. “Love him?”

“I’m sure there’s a handbook about it somewhere around here.”

She snorted, reluctantly amused. “Maybe… I guess I loved having a boyfriend. Someone who was there. Someone to be with. Someone who…”

As the light faded, the silver in his eyes tarnished. “Who meant you weren’t alone.”

“It was like a handbook that had all the facts but none of the reality.” She looked down at her hands clenched on top of her fleece leggings.

“You have not lost your best years,” he said. “Maybe you were just sleeping through some of it, and it’s time to wake up.”

To her horror, her sinuses stung with the threat of tears. No, see, this was why she’d agreed to Brin’s dog-sitting offer so that no one would see how pathetic she was. Which, oh god, now that she thought about it, had she said anything incriminating in front of Ug, who obviously had his own universal translator. She needed to get one of those, stat, if she was joining the IDA.

As staff, not patron.

She rocked back to her heels. “I’ll let you rest and make sure Kong has sent that message for your people.”

When she started to stand, he reached for her hand. “It probably doesn’t mean much coming from me, but… I won’t forget your kindness, Darcy.”

She gave his hand a quick squeeze but quickly disentangled. No sense letting her fingers tingle again. “Meet you for round two of taste-testing later?”

“It’s a date.”

She dredged up a smile.

He’d told her the universal translators weren’t perfect. Maybe a date meant something else in drakling.

+ + +

She’d managed to get her feelings—regret and annoyance thinking of Christopher, plus regret and humiliation for having told Vash—under control before dinner. Ug joined them (dining on a bowlful of something that looked and smelled very much like dog food) and explained through Kong that he’d spent the day rushing the cleaning cycle as much as possible so they could open more rooms.

“No void vipers found,” Kong told them. “A message was posted to the planetary authorities but there has been no reply yet.” At Ug’s growl, the robot’s clear dome twinkled. “Yes, the winter weather could indeed be a factor. Any outpost staff returning will likely be forced to wait out the worst of it.”

After they ate—with Vash approving all the remaining meal options with extra spice—he insisted on cleaning up the bar, including Ug’s licked-spotless bowl.

“The droid indicated that exercise would speed my recovery from cryo.”

“At least let me help since I know where it all goes.”

“That makes sense.”

They chatted as they straightened, nothing significant, just two people putting away leftovers and drying dishes. She told him about Brin and the hoax-busting that had led to her friend’s discovery of the Intergalactic Dating Agency. He talked about his job as a climate engineer in one of his planet’s agricultural regions.

“The weather on Skyearth is volatile, and while we have the technology to monitor and mitigate, we don’t have perfect control.” He hesitated. “Or we didn’t. Maybe that has changed now.” He stared down at the glass clenched in his hand, but she thought he didn’t even see the etched IDA logo. “Why are there still holes in my memories like clouds no probes can pierce?”

She eased the glass out of his fist. “Your children will wake soon. Maybe seeing them will clear the last of your fog.”

Sparks guttered in his eyes when he looked at her without answering, but she suspected they were both thinking the same thing.

What if it didn’t?