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

Chapter 8

Oh hell. Darcy squeezed her eyes shut.

While she’d understood that Vash’s memory had been affected, she hadn’t realized he’d forgotten his wife’s death. Of course he had contracted with the IDA for a mate, which meant he didn’t already have one, but to go through that worst explanation for his single father status while his children watched…

She cleared her throat. As much as she’d made a hash of her own relationship, she couldn’t just stand there and watch as he suffered. “Vash, Ug just let me know that he was able to get the med bay unlocked. Maybe it would be best if you all got checked out, make sure there’s no lingering issues with…anything.”

The little drakling boy immediately set up a fuss, which might’ve been bad, but Darcy sensed that the only reason the older sister didn’t join in was to be contrary to her brother. If the two children had unified, she wasn’t sure what their overwhelmed father would’ve done. Whatever tragedy had befallen the family, and whatever trauma had pursued them through a hundred years of sleep, she didn’t think the Intergalactic Dating Agency—as ridiculous as it still sounded to her—would’ve condoned dating or mating or whatever other euphemisms its translators offered, not when they clearly had issues to deal with.

And she was no one who could help with such issues.

Other than leading them to the med bay. Vash had to carry Atsu, and for a moment, Darcy thought he might have to do the same with his older daughter too, or she wouldn’t go. When he seemed ready to do exactly that, Yadira slumped into line with her father and brother as they made their way deeper into the previously locked facilities.

It was difficult not to gawk, even though the hallways were clearly not anything of her world. Or that wasn’t quite true: maybe half her world, half other places. Finding out about aliens and now seeing their artifacts on Earth should’ve been a decent distraction from getting dumped just in time for Christmas.

But watching the stricken man with his confused little one and his sullen, seething teen, she would almost rather be trapped on an island with her ex and his smug friends. Though the draklings were aliens and she didn’t really know them, their obvious pain made her wonder if her relationship with Christopher had faded because she’d never wanted to risk that sort of hurt.

The med bay doors whooshed open as they approached. A gust of antiseptic air wafted over them, and a mechanized voice intoned, “Welcome, honored guest. What is preventing your comfort?”

Darcy caught Vash’s eye. “I’ll give you some privacy. If you need anything…” Well, she hoped there was some other digitized option.

“Darcy.” Vash turned to face her.

But Atsu butted his head under his father’s chin and wailed, “I don’t want any inoculations.”

She had taken the news of extraterrestrial presences on Earth seeking mates with what she thought was as much equanimity and good humor as could be expected under the circumstances. And technically, she had been hired as a part-time caretaker and sitter. But this was too much. She fled.

She hadn’t gotten far when a scuffle behind her brought her around, but it was just Ug. “I hope you aren’t here to threaten a memory wipe.”

When he shook his head in an exaggerated gesture that she supposed was for her closed worlder benefit, she snorted. “So, what else has been unlocked that a disbelieving Earther might like to see?”

He padded down the hall to a smooth section of wall. Rearing up onto his back legs, he pressed his nose to the screen and whuffled. A map of the facility and grounds appeared.

“It’s bigger than I realized.” She sighed. “I suppose I should say that about the whole damn universe.”

When he touched his nose to another section of the map, it expanded. “Oh, the main kitchen is open. I assume they left at least some of the basics—canned goods from space or whatever. Maybe we can find something to help make the kids feel better.” Not that healthy family dynamics could be conveniently jarred.

Even if damage could apparently be flash frozen.

With a grunt that sounded like agreement, Ug accompanied her to the commissary. Having speed-read through some of the IDA handbooks, Darcy had a reasonable idea how the outpost worked—in theory. In practice she worked in A/V sales with a barely monetized side gig of gaming reviews and commentary, so what did she know about Earther cooking much less alien cuisine? But between Ug and a holographic cookbook that popped up from one of the central stations, she was able to grab some pre-packaged meals from various storage units. When she turned around, Ug had one of those hovering carts waiting for her, so she filled it up.

“Thank you,” she told him. “Also, I want one of those universal translators.” The not-dog just stared at her. “Oh, don’t pretend like you suddenly can’t understand me. I just want to understand everything else too. I read the handbook section about the implants. I know it’s not entirely risk-free, and it’s not like it gives me super smarts or anything. I’ll just have some of that early-learning plasticity at accelerated speeds with a built-in database like a secondary memory drive in my head. I can guess all the caveats that Brin would’ve given me too, so you don’t need to growl anything.” She gave him a wry look.

Then her amusement faded. “I also got what the handbooks very carefully did not say: that the IDA chooses its prospective alien mates from people who don’t have anything else.” Her gaze rested, unfocused, on the pyramid of otherworldly snacks. “I was with Christopher because… If I’m being honest with myself, because I didn’t have anything else. No other friends, really, no other plans, no bigger hopes. I was just…floating along. He was right to dump me.”

Ug finally made a noise, dissent this time. She gave him another quick grin. “You don’t have to make me feel better about it. This is going to be my Christmas gift to myself.”

She followed the not-dog back to the med bay, which was empty, and stood quietly while the virtual doctor went through the procedures and disclaimers for the implant.

“You may experience thoughts and behaviors that do not seem like yours. This is an inaccurate perception and merely reflects the expansion of your awareness and comprehension enhanced by the implant.”

Then the gigantic needle came out, and she abruptly understood the little drakling boy’s complaint. Ug nudged his shaggy head under her hand, and she clenched her fingers in the patchy fur as the needle went into her head.

The robotic arm spun away. “Take two analgesics and update this med unit in the morning.”

Bolstered by the idea that her situation wasn’t as pathetic as a holiday exile to the middle of nowhere Montana might seem, Darcy guided the cart back to the lobby. This late, the big room was almost completely dark except for a couple small pools of light near the pillow forts at one end and the rope lights behind the bar.

Vash was slumped there on a stool, his elbows on the bar and his head in his hands.

She almost left, but the kids might need something for breakfast and she could at least leave him that. Quietly she began unloading the cart onto the counter. Everything that had been left behind was shelf stable and just needed to be heated or cooled right at the bar. She wouldn’t even bother Vash unless he—

“How could I have forgotten her?” His voice was muffled by his big hands, but the anguish seeped through anyway.

Darcy paused, a package of something squishy clenched in her hand. “Crash, poisoning, head injury, shock,” she listed, as if they were ingredients in a terrible recipe. “And you didn’t forget her. You called out her name before you even heard your own.”

When he lifted his head to stare at her, his gray eyes were red-rimmed, not with rings of fire, but grief. “I forgot she is…gone.”

With a sigh, Darcy went around the bar to perch on a stool beside him. “Doesn’t that make sense? Under the worst of circumstances, you blanked that out. Because part of you didn’t want to remember.” She touched his elbow. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Vash.”

He let out a shuddering breath. “Five sols ago. No, a hundred and five sols ago. But it still feels…” He looked down at his hands clenched on the bar. “She loved to fly in the night storms of Skyearth.” Darcy swallowed back a distressed noise, but he must’ve heard her unvoiced judgment. “I told you our planet is turbulent. For us, storms are—were—a way of life. We even celebrate the powers of the winds and the fires of volcanos in our holidays. Except one time, such a storm was Shanya’s death.”

He swiveled on his stool toward the windows, black with the night outside. “It was late. Atsu was already in bed, so I stayed to watch over the fledglings while Shanya flew by herself.” The reflection of the low lights around the tented sheets only emphasized the darkness in his gaze. “Our aerie is—was—in a quiet valley, not so different from this place, and I heard the change in the storm. I, of all people, should’ve known how it might turn. But it was too late. Thunder cracked the sky, and the lightning rods were almost screaming. Then I realized it was Yadira screaming. She was in her room, watching the storm, and she saw her mother fall.”

Darcy’s eyes prickled. “Oh, the poor baby.”

“I… I left my fledgling there, still crying, and I flew as fast as my beast could carry us. The lightning was still striking all around, so violent…” Trailing off, he shook his head. “But I was too late. No, that’s not quite true. It didn’t matter how fast I might’ve been. I should not have let her fly at all. I should have—”

Darcy put her hand over his, muting the words. “Vash. I saw that beautiful creature in your hologram. Your mate was a drakling who loved storms. Would you have really stopped her? Could you have stopped her?”

After a moment, he twisted his hand under hers to hold her tight, as if pulling himself back from some precipice. “I loved her. I would have given her all the storms.”

He bowed his head and his body shook as if he’d been struck again. Not knowing what else to do—even her new implant offered no suggestions—Darcy put her other arm around his shoulders as he grieved.

+ + +

It was a different kind of storm, devastating in its own way. Vash let the horrible recollections sleet through him, tearing empty holes in his soul. Shanya as she’d launched from their aerie, leaving him behind. The devastating sight that had knocked him from the sky, of her crumpled among the stones, motionless. Clutching her tight, the feel of her achingly beloved body becoming chill in the midnight rain, ever more distant as his own hands turned to ice.

Keenly aware of his fledglings sleeping nearby, he made no sound, just endured the punishing beat of his loss and turmoil again.

But even as the most ferocious storms on Skyearth eventually exhausted themselves, his emotional upheaval finally passed. Not peace, not with so much debris strewn around him, but a sort of numbed calm.

At least until his fledglings woke again.

He let out one more breath before raising his head.

From Darcy’s shoulder? She had held him through the mayhem of his memories. Even if his IDA contract hadn’t expired, that was more than should be expected of her.

With a wince of chagrin, he straightened away from her, averting his face. “My apologies, Darcy. I should not have—”

“Stop.” The warm weight of her grip squeezed his arm. “Nothing here is your fault.”

“Maybe not on Skyearth,” he countered. “But here, everything is my fault. I decided we needed a change. I took the fledglings from their home. I crashed us here…a hundred years away from everything we had left.”

Darcy was quiet for a long moment. “What did the medical scans say?”

“That everything is ‘within normal physiological parameters’, as if that is enough.” He hunched into himself. “Coward that I am, I explained everything to them while we were in the med bay, in case I might need to sedate them again. But I think Atsu doesn’t quite comprehend; he thinks a different time is no more a stretch than a different world. And Yadira… Susu is right that she is very angry.”

“Losing her mother must’ve been traumatic for her. I know drakling development isn’t the same as Earther, but… My parents divorced, angrily, when I was young, and then my older sister, who was always my rock, died when I was just out of college and barely into my new life, and it was so hard to feel those relationships just…fading one by one, gone.”

He gazed at her. “Yadira is of the age that her beast should rise, and yet she was showing no signs. Instead of sparring with her friends and classmates, training and testing her own strength, she withdrew from everything except her required classes. We’d always been close—she loves engineering too—but I couldn’t reach her anymore. She wanted nothing to do with me.” He met Darcy’s sympathetic gaze, awaiting her judgment. “I think she blames me for her mother’s death.”

Darcy settled back on her stool, her lips pursed to one side. For some reason, it reassured him that she did not immediately seek to reassure him. “I can imagine she’s still very confused and sad, even years afterward. You have therapy on your world?” When he confirmed, she continued, “But sometimes therapy and reality can’t challenge what you feel in your heart. I wonder if she blames you any more than she blames herself.” She sat up a little straighter. “Neither of you can blame Shanya, even though flying into the storm was her choice.”

Vash stiffened. “I would never—”

“Exactly. This universe has risks and I can imagine the beauty of flying on your own wings. I’m sure neither of you expected the storm to get bad enough to be deadly. Yadira can only be mad at you because you are still here.” She leaned a little toward him, tucking her chin. “But considering…everything, maybe it’s just as well your IDA contract expired. Maybe none of you are ready for someone else to join you.” She gave him one of those little Earther smiles. “Since you waited this long, what’s a little longer?”

He slumped back on his stool. “The counselor we saw on Skyearth said he thought it might be helpful, a change of place, and new presence in our aerie that might coax Yadira’s beast out of hiding.” He slanted a glance at Darcy. “When I say it now, it sounds selfish or cruel.”

She shook her head. “You were just trying to do what you thought was right for your children.”

“I mean it wouldn’t have been right to claim an alien bride. Making her a chew toy for Atsu, dragon-bait for Yadira, and for me…”

His pause seemed to stretch like a photon across an event horizon from which there was no return. Darcy watched him, her brown gaze flickering across his face as if she might find something there. He wasn’t sure why the IDA had seemed like a good idea at the time. A hundred sols ago. Selfish, cruel, and lonely. Across the light years now, his decision seemed unfathomable.

The silence had stretched too long and he looked away from her. “I made a mistake,” he said at last. “I should’ve known better than to fly into this storm.”

She sat back. “Apparently the outpost has a psychological evaluation protocol. Obviously it’s geared for establishing compatibility between potential partners, but it might be worth talking to, for you and the kids.” She rubbed her hands down her knees, as if scuffing away some troubling sensation of her own. “Hopefully we’ll hear back soon from the planetary authorities about getting in contact with your world. And then Brin’s rescue crew will be here too, and we will get you squared away.” She slipped off the stool and circled around to the other side of the bar, putting it between them like a barrier.

Her words sounded as impersonal as the mechanized voices left behind on this lonely outpost. And he found himself missing the little side-by-side moments they’d had cleaning dishes and riding to the garage.

“I didn’t mean to be untruthful or unkind to you, Darcy,” he murmured.

“You weren’t,” she assured him, although to his beast, sensitive to the infinitesimal changes of the smallest breeze, her timing seemed off for reasons he couldn’t quite pin down.

As she told him about the extra supplies she and Ug had procured for the fledglings, his beast watched her. It had been stunned too at the awful memories confronting them. Draklings mated for life.

For life.

He forced his gaze away from her to focus on the lights across the room where his fledglings slept, exhausted after their hundred years sleep and the shock of their situation. He’d only wanted to do what was best for them, but he couldn’t make any more mistakes. Not with his fledglings, not with his decisions, not with the unexpected, uncontracted awareness arising between him and this alien female.