For a second, I feel bad. If Emma’s painting, I don’t want to disturb her. Then again, this may be my only chance to talk to her.
Calla raps on the door, then glides inside once it opens. She walks the same way the Beta women in Aurum do, like she’s wearing skates under her gown. “Majesta,” she says loudly. “You have a visitor.”
I barely have a moment to take in the gorgeous, moving paintings lined around the walls before an astonishingly pretty blonde appears from behind a vast canvas and comes toward us. Her pale skin and human features are almost startling after being around only aliens for so long. “Thank you, Calla,” she says, pushing a stray strand of hair off her forehead. “You may leave us.”
“Would you like any refreshments?” Calla asks, as if unwilling to let us be alone.
Emma waves at a nearby table holding a tray and goblets. “Already taken care of.” She gives Calla a sweet smile. “You may go.”
“Very well.” The pale green woman turns and glides back through the door we just came through.
“She’s nice, but very nosy,” Emma says with an impish grin. “You must be Kim.” She has a slight British accent, but it’s still so good to hear English again, just pure, unadulterated English without the in-brain translation, that I almost feel dizzy with joy.
“I am,” I tell her. “It’s so good to meet you. I can’t even express how good.”
Without warning, Emma grabs me and pulls me into a huge hug. “I know we just met,” she says when she finally lets me go, “but you have no idea how glad I am to see a fellow human. It’s been so long.”
“How long have you been here?” I ask, following her over to a pair of loveseats in the corner.
Pausing, she turns to one side and pulls her blue gown taut over her belly to outline the beginnings of a prominent baby bump. “At least this long,” she says. Is there a note of resignation in her voice? “It’s a bit hard to keep track of time here; I don’t know whether they have the same number of hours in a day, or minutes in an hour… but I’d say a few months, at least.” She moves to one of the sofas and indicates the other one. “Please, sit.”
I sink down gratefully, then just stare at her. After what feels like forever being surrounded by nothing but Ulfarri, it’s weird but somehow reassuring to be with another human woman. She seems tiny by comparison, and I realize that’s how they must see me. “I have so many questions,” I begin. “But I don’t know how long we have.”
“Most importantly, are you okay?” Her blue eyes are full of concern. “What exactly happened? How did you get here?”
I briefly outline waking up in the harem, and the weirdness that my life has been since. “A lot of my memories haven’t come back yet.” I shrug. “Maybe I had some kind of amnesia before I even got here.”
“I’m so sorry,” she says softly. “I tried to get Khan to convince them not to bring any human women over. I begged, I cried, I pleaded, I threatened. But surely you’ve been here long enough now to know how little influence we have if we want to make our mates do something they don’t want.”
My heart begins to pound, and there’s a roaring of blood in my ears as I try to absorb this shocking bit of news. “You knew this was going to happen?” I manage.
Emma nods, sadly. “I overheard them talking about it. When the Ogsul put the Omega serum in me and it worked, the kings held a council and unilaterally decided to try it on their female Betas here. When that didn’t take, they decided to get the magicians to find a way to bring more women from Earth. I swear, Kim, there was nothing I could do. Nothing.”
I can see the genuine sorrow in her face, and a wave of pity floods me. “Of course there was nothing you could do. Did you try to escape?”
“Honestly? I didn’t get a chance. I was in a cage, then on a spaceship, then on another spaceship, and then Khan stuck to me like white on rice, as you Americans say. He went through a phase where he didn’t even put me down; just carried me everywhere like I was some kind of baby. And then, I fell in love with him.”
“What?” I don’t think I heard right.
“We went through a lot,” Emma says, “and when I got the chance to leave, I realized I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay here. With him.”
“You got a chance to leave?” I seize on that little tidbit. “How?”
“He saw how unhappy I was. How much I missed Earth. He got the magicians to set up a portal so I could go home.”
I lean back in the loveseat, my mind spinning with so many thoughts, I can barely get a grip on them. If they can set up a portal for her, they can set one up for me. If they’ve found a way to bring women here from Earth, they can send them back. Why didn’t that occur to me before now? But Emma persuaded Khan to do that for her. There’s no way I could get Aurus to do the same for me. “He would never.”
“Huh?” Emma’s blinking at me. “Who would never what?”
I realize I spoke aloud. “How did you get Khan to do that for you? Aurus would never… I’d never be able to convince him to let me go back. Especially now that he’s gotten rid of his harem.”
“His harem?”
I briefly outline more details about what happened over the past couple of days, watching Emma’s eyes get bigger and bigger. When I’m done, she bursts out laughing.
“Oh god,” she giggles again, “I would have paid to have seen Aurus’s face when he heard you’d taught them all to masturbate! And how could they not have ever worked that out themselves? Still, serves him right. Pompous—”
“—ass,” I finish her sentence for her, but even as I say it, there’s a flicker of something in my chest. “He is. Such a pompous ass. If only he wasn’t so amazing in bed.”
