“Notallhumans,” she said. “Just… humans who…” she shook her head. “Whatever. I could never eat a bunny. They’re soft and cuddly. A lot of people keep them as pets.”
“Would you like to have a tedra for a pet?” I looked back over my shoulder, fully prepared to buy every last one of the little beasts if it would help me recover from the sin of my late arrival.
“No,” she said, clutching my arm with her free hand. “Mr. Darcy doesn’t like competition.”
Mr. Darcy and I have that in common.
“Wait,” Cora said, stopping in the middle of the market with vendors and shoppers moving all around us. “Did you say we’re going to get married? Likeright now?”
“Yes.”
“So soon?”
I pulled her into an alcove before we were trampled. “Yes,” I said again. “If I go home without a mate, I’ll have to accepther. That was the condition I was given.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “Okay. It’s just….” She gestured at herself. “I’m wearing leggings, and all my clothes are in that thing with Mr. Darcy.”
“You need your clothes?”
“I guess not,” she said. “It’s not like I packed a wedding dress.”
Images of human women in long white dresses flooded my mind. “That’s traditional for you.”Another fuckup. “You want a white dress? We’ll get you one. The designers are on level two. If we?—”
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “I don’t need a dress. Not everyone does that. I just might have worn a skirt or something if I’d realized. But if you’re okay with this outfit, so am I.”
“Well you still smell like that little shit tech,” I said, “but you look gorgeous.”
Her mouth turned down as she plucked at her thick shirt and sniffed. “You can smell him? Still?”
“Only a little,” I lied. Did I want her to bathe his scent away as soon as possible?Yes.But I didn’t want him on her mind while she signed her name next to mine.
There was a line at the Embassy where other, less prepared males waited with their recently arrived brides, but Yiri Ahlon does not wait in lines, and neither will my mate. I made the appointment the same day I booked Cora’s passage.
“Oh, there’s Cora,” a woman said as we bypassed the couples queued up in the lobby. The yellow-headed human darted away from her male companion. “You found your guy, I see!”
“Eventually,” Cora agreed, returning the other woman’s hug.
“Isn’t this place nuts?” the woman asked. “Did you see the strip club? I wanted to go in, but Thrin said there are better clubs on other worlds.” She cupped a hand around her mouth and whispered loudly, “I think he just wanted to get me locked down before I could fall for one of the strippers.”
Her companion rolled his eyes as he joined her, but then paused when he saw me.
“Yiri Ahlon,” he said, looking from me to Cora and back again. “I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Thrin.” I nodded my head to him, but skipped the pleasantries. The last time our paths crossed was anything but.
“Um. Yiri, this is Brynna,” Cora said. “We were on the Transport vessel together.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Brynna said, pursing her lips in a poorly restrained smile. “I’d say this one was worth waiting for, Cora. What do you think?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Cora said, softening her words with a smile and a teasing look at me from under her lashes.
“And I think we’re running late for our appointment,” I said. “We’re probably the ones holding up the line.”
“Whose fault is that?” Cora asked.
“An Agollan fruit merchant’s,” I said dryly.
