Axel nodded. “Yeah, that was me. Sorry. The Defender was set for forty-five minutes. I didn’t mean to erase your memories for that long.”
“I lost forty-five minutes?” Wyatt looked at Valene, who looked even more miserable.
“No time for that now,” Axel said, handing Wyatt one of two alien tranquilizer rifles he held, along with two extra magazines of alien ammo. “We need to catch the alien prisoners. I already know you’re the best shot we have on this team.”
Wyatt’s head spun with data and questions, but he concentrated on the rifle. He pulled the weapon to his shoulder, flicked off the safety, looked through the scope to target a nearby oak tree and fired. The pellet that hit the tree trunk splatted some sort of slimy purple substance in a four-inch circular pattern.
“Why did you do that?” Cam sounded miffed that he’d wasted a shackle bullet on a tree.
“I needed to know how this weapon fires and what to expect when I shoot it. I figured you didn’t want me to test it the first time I fired it at a prisoner on the loose.”
Cam relaxed and nodded. “Right. Good. Sorry. That was a great idea.”
Wyatt felt completely comfortable in this scenario even with an alien weapon at his side. He slung the rifle over one shoulder by the handy strap and followed the brothers Grey—and his alien love, Valene, heaven help him—out into the forest behind the Big Bang Truck Stop to help stop a purported alien prisoner invasion.
Before they deleted his memories, he wanted to talk about the conditions that would be required to marry Valene and find out what Alpha-Prime was like. He just wished he’d be able to remember it after.
Maybe if he repeated the information over and over in his head as they zapped him a fragment of his love for Valene would remain. He couldn’t imagine ever forgetting her. Then again, alien technology had already caused him to lose time and other memories. A memory he had been worried about until he realized what must have happened at the lovers’ lane out at the bauxite pit.
Valene had tried to assure him they’d been kissing for quite a long time and then had fallen asleep, but he’d never shaken the idea something else had been at play. That he might have been unconscious, not asleep, but he couldn’t figure out how or why.
Now he knew what had really happened. At least until they wiped the knowledge away.
If only the answer wasn’t friendly aliens from another planet having repeatedly used a memory weapon on him to keep their secret.
Wyatt glanced back at Valene. She smiled, but was clearly distressed by this whole situation. And he realized he didn’t even know the full truth. Was she not allowed to marry a human at all, even if he agreed to move two galaxies away? Would something more dreadful than memory loss happen if they ran away together on Earth?
One way or another, he planned to find out and weigh his options.
If there was some alien ritual he had to perform in order to marry the love of his life, he’d do it.
Wyatt smiled at her with renewed determination.
Chapter Six
Valene followed Diesel, Cam and Axel into the forest behind the Big Bang Truck Stop along with her only love, Wyatt. Wyatt held his rifle at the ready, but pointed at the ground as he trailed Diesel.
Her other brothers, Wheeler, Gage and Jack, were already searching another area. Of the thirty prisoners aboard, five didn’t make it out of the cryo-pods at all. Four of the twenty-five convicts that did emerge from their cryo-pods were stopped before they got out of the ship. Jack apprehended two escapees who stopped only a hundred feet from the gulag ship to gawk at the tall trees, something that didn’t exist on Alpha-Prime. Four others had been quickly found in the woods nearby and returned. That left fifteen escapees still to capture.
Wyatt seemed surprisingly unfazed after finding out the Greys were aliens from another planet. He went quickly into escaped prisoner search mode, which as a sheriff he was good at anyway.
When the others weren’t watching, Wyatt sent Valene positively searing gazes. She had no doubt her looks bordered on despondent. She didn’t have the luxury of being able to return his loving looks. Once her brothers had what they wanted from him, Wyatt would be treated like every other human on Earth who discovered by accident or on purpose their extra-terrestrial origins.
Valene didn’t plan to watch when they erased his memories. The best she could hope for was a stolen kiss before they zapped him.
He likely thought they would only erase his memories of the search, but Valene knew they planned to go back a year. To before the day she and Wyatt had run into each other.
An event that had been a happy, but unintentional meeting. Something she should never have allowed to happen.
Valene had been casually following Wyatt off and on for almost two years before accidently plowing into him as he came out of his favorite restaurant. She considered it wishful thinking, as opposed to creepy and stalkerish. Or so she told herself.
She’d thought she’d lost him when he went into the restaurant. She’d moved to find a better lookout spot just as he unexpectedly came back out to retrieve something from his vehicle. Valene slammed right into him, her face mashed into his chest, arms wrapping around his sturdy middle. Wyatt was tall for a human, and he felt great in her arms. She was half in love with him when that auspicious and unintended meeting took place.
He kept her from falling on her butt and invited her to join him for lunch if she didn’t mind eating with a member of local law enforcement.
She should have turned him down. She should have pretended to be affronted by their accidental slam into each other, but he felt so amazing in her arms and he smelled so incredibly good that whatever he’d said, she would have agreed to. She smiled and nodded before realizing what she’d done.
