I cannot smile and reveal mine because it feels wrong. I hope Tiril has been explaining our customs to the humans, so they do not see our closed smiles as dissatisfaction.
Or fear.
I refuse to acknowledge those jagged edges. I am a warrior.
The others don’t seem to think the humans brought us here to kill us. But they might have. What better way to be rid of some troublesome men, who have taken your women, than to invite them in and then kill them? It saves the trouble of hunting them.
Now the medics will draw some blood and check you over and you will be assigned housing and shown how to use their bathrooms and get food from the dining room.Tiril says silently, not only to me but to all my brothers.
Perhaps they also asked him a similar question.
Will we be separated?I hope I do not sound afraid. A warrior shouldn’t be afraid, he should embrace the unknown and the adventure. Which is what I have done since I was banished.
However, it is much easier to do when there is little hope for a better life. My eyes skip over the crowd. Three women to every man. One of them will choose me.
But do I want to be chosen before I understand their social standing?
Then there is the issue that my brothers faced—human women do not like to do the choosing. They like to be chosen.
The knowledge fucks with my head.
This is where our tribes differ. In the Honey there are too many men, so the women do the choosing, but the humans have the opposite with too many women so it is the men who choose.
I do not know how to choose a mate. Or how to have those conversations. While I had the same lessons as my older brothers when it came to fighting and pleasing a mate, I never got to be part of the conversations of how mates were selected.
What I have learned about humans so far is that they are happy to share a blanket with many people before selecting a partner. If it doesn’t work out, they can leave that partner with no consequence.
If a woman leaves a Honey warrior, it will cause him great pain and death and everyone in the tribe will know that hesomehow mistreated her. Edilk and Sunif made it very clear that any sexual contact with a human woman will be enough to start the mating bond. Have the human women been warned about the rut?
For the first time in my life, I am surrounded by more women than I can ever have imagined, so many potential mates, that I do not know what to do. my cheeks tighten as the smile becomes forced. I am done with being stared at.
You will each have a room, and we are in the same accommodation block, so we will not be too far apart.Tiril indicates for us to follow him.
Since I cannot flee the colony, nor will I survive long on my own—which is why I joined up with these other banished warriors—I follow.
2
HARPER
Like many of the people in the colony, I stopped work to watch the arrival of the aliens. Some people claimed they weren’t interested and wondered why we were bothering to bring dangerous and untrustworthy beings into our settlement. They don’t care that we can learn from them.
Strangely, it’s the men who seem to complain the most. As if a handful of alien men is somehow going to upset things. There are only two unmated aliens. Two extra men in the colony. Big fucking deal.
I think the men who complain are only annoyed because the aliens mate for life. Apparently, they also treasure their mates, so it makes the men who only want to fuck around look bad.
The problem is some idiot in the past, on Earth, when planning this mission decided it would be beneficial for colony growth if they were more women than men. And while that may be true, they never stopped to think about the consequences for the people who had to live with the imbalance.
Or perhaps they thought that the women who are expected to breed for the colony would be happy sharing a man.
They should’ve asked some women.
Everyone who joined the expedition knew the expectations, and they knew what they were signing their kids up for. And while I can’t change it, it irks me I have so little choice in my life.
I draw a breath and push aside the bitterness. It’s still more of a life than I would’ve had on Earth. Plus, I’m one of a few people who can say they’ve lived on another planet…and met aliens. Not that I’ve met one yet, but I’ve seen the one called Tiril around the colony, and now that his friends are here, with their human mates, there will be more aliens to run into.
I’m sure they’ll be thrilled to learn how the laundry system works.
I shove my hands into my pockets. Yeah, not everyone can be a scientist or an engineer, a doctor or a teacher, and everyone needs to be fed and clothed.
