“Your mouth will get you into trouble.”
Dhomhes grinned again. “Not the first time.”
4
ADRYEL
A week later
The curly-haired female from before at the alliance center or something like that, Graecey, stood at the front of the classroom filled with females who had nothing left to lose.
Adryel included.
Graecey studied her tablet and brushed one of her erratic blonde curls out of her face. The organizer--she swore she wasn't in charge, but Graecey sure seemed to be the one who was making all the decisions--had gathered them for a new class lesson about their coming mission.
Adryel joined the Galactic Alliance's program by sheer luck. After she’d fled her apartment, she ran into Dane, literally, on the streets. He questioned her upset state—and finding one's roommate dead in her apartment would do that--so he took her back to the shop.
The scientific program let her stay in a barracks, along with other women who had joined the program. The facility was secure, and no unauthorized entry allowed, letting her rest and figure out her next steps.
As Adryel got to know the other women involved, she was pretty damn certain every one of them was running away from something as well.
Maybe she'd found her people after all.
Some were obvious about it, like bad matches or poor lives they needed to escape. Others were stuck in some fantasy world where they had convinced themselves that meeting alien men would be an incredible experience, like this was a fun idea, and then it was over.
Adryel wondered if they got the same lecture she did about how this was a commitment, and, if chosen, it was forever. According to the gossip, there would not be more than a handful of aliens they were meeting, so many of them wouldn't even get picked.
Not that she was an expert on inter-humanoid species, but she had seen a lot. The odds were against her being chosen, and she was seriously only here for the transport out of the Trinity Alpha Prime system.
As part of the prep for this, she had classes about several species and their known behaviors, because the Galactic Alliance would be traveling to multiple worlds to meet different species.
It was almost a half a standard-year commitment. A few females had fled, realizing it would be so long in a ship, with a low chance of being selected, but others were determined to make it work.
Adryel was one of them.
It would get her off this world, out of this sector, and put enough black space between her and the Rhysgarrds that maybe she could be forgotten about.
Maybe she could even stay on one of those worlds. Take a laborer's job or something and build a new life for herself. Starting over wouldn't be hard, she'd done it a few times already. This time, maybe, she'd try to not fall in with the underworld.
Wouldn't that be a change? Honest people with integrity and no theft?
Every time she said that, though, she wound up in the den of liars, thieves, and dangerous humanoids. Maybe she just attracted that type.
This made her distrust any alien that wanted to mate with her--how trustworthy would they be if they were immediately drawn to her?
The girl sitting next to her, Janae, elbowed her.
Adryel glanced at her.
She'd only come in a few days ago from the streets. She barely resembled the same person now that she was clean and had fresh clothing. She really was quite attractive, though she kept to herself.
Adryel liked her immediately. Whoever she was, she didn't really say much, other than she'd been on the streets for a while with no place to go and that she didn’t want to talk about it.
Adryel didn't want to talk about her past either.
“What?” Adryel whispered.
“Pay attention.”
