“If I had stopped it, I would have been taken captive too. Then where would you be?”
“Wait, so we’re not actually mated?” Polly asked, tears bursting from her eyes. After all of this, all this time, and all this stuff, they weren’t even mated now? “Why am I even here?” Polly mumbled to herself. “I should have been left back on the space station. Hell, back on my home planet, rather than be here, where nothing matters.”
“Polly, listen.”
“As backwater as we are, at least we have documents, like physical things, that bind us when we get married. Files don’t just get lost!” She hit him on the chest.
And again. Every part of her ached and screamed and wanted to strangle him. It was like another lie. Another…
Another guy!
Erzo grabbed her hands. “Wait, Polly.”
“No, you said this was going to be easy. We would show up, we would be married, and it would be over. That’s it, because they can’t do anything if we’re married already. That’s what you said. Instead, they kidnapped us, and now our marriage has been nullified?”
“I know. I didn’t expect them to hold us to an old law.”
“An old law? Seriously? And what’s that mean?” Polly was at the end of her thoughts. Everything was just so ridiculous.
“It means settling this issue via combat,” Breal said.
Polly blinked. “Of course. Combat. What else should I have expected?”
“A fight between you and I. For him.”
She stared at Breal. She wouldn’t have been more surprised if another alien popped out of Breal’s head at the moment. That’s how stunned she was at the idea of having to fight the obviously was a strong female—hell, Breal had practically carried her out of the apartment at one point—for Erzo.
Her stomach roiled, and her head spun.
Surely this was a nightmare or something. It couldn’t possibly be real. Truly, she couldn’t be expected to fight anyone.
Regardless that she loved Erzo.
“Wait,” she whispered to herself.
“Don’t worry,” Breal said. “I won’t hurt you too much.”
“Breal never misses,” Carvassa said, her smile wide as she beamed with pride for Breal’s ability.
Yet, their words were only peripheral to her thoughts. Polly heard them, but they didn’t matter.
She turned to Erzo and stared into his dark eyes.
She loved him.
Loved.
Erzo.
Polly was in love with an alien.
A big, green alien with a long, thick tail.
“Polly?” Erzo whispered.
Did she tell him?
Did she say it first?
