Chapter 1Vera

Chapter 1

Vera

I knew as soon as I inhaled my first lungful of fresh ocean air that I’d made the right choice in joining the Starlight Lottery program.

I’d thought the videos I’d seen of the place must have been doctored, but no. Miles upon miles of pure white sand stretched out as far as the eye could see, exactly like in the vids, glimmering in the sunlight that peeked through the few clouds in the sky.

Waves crashed against the shore, bringing in the sea breeze, so different from the smoggy city air I had grown accustomed to back on Earth before the planet was officially deemed unlivable. They’d relocated as many as they could onto hastily thrown together emergency colonies and space stations, some paid for and built by Earth’s largest corporations. Those who merited a spot had been the lucky ones.

I walked down the beach toward the quaint little huts set up in rows on the glistening white sand. The beaches of Aquaria were truly breathtaking.

According to the instructions the nice blue alien lady on the ship had given me when they dropped me off, I was supposed to wait here on the beach for my contact to pick me up. Then he…or she…would get me settled on the planet.

The beach, however, was currently completely empty except for me, my single piece of wheeled luggage, and the rows of huts.

Oh well. They did say our ship was early arriving at Aquaria. My contact must not be here yet.

When I first saw them, I’d thought the huts were proper buildings, but as I got closer, I realized they didn’t have any doors or windows, just two openings, one on either end. Clearly, they were here to provide shade from the sun and weren’t permanent dwellings.

The empty beach wasn’t quite the welcome I’d been expecting. But hey, beggars can’t be choosers.

At least I had the surf and sun, which I thought I’d never see again after so long on a space station.

As a botanist by trade and in my heart, I was immediately drawn to the alien plants that surrounded the huts. They rose high above the sand, their fronds hanging down to form little pockets of shade from the sun, and I couldn’t wait to start studying them and the other flora here. It was the kind of paradise I’d always dreamed of, one far away from the polluted skies and noisy streets of the dying planet I’d come from.

Funny how things work out. My previous job at Agricore Inc. had almost drained my zeal and ardor for uncovering nature’s beautiful mysteries. Looking back, getting fired was for the best.

At the time, of course, I’d been livid. But how was I supposed to know my creepy, super-handsy new manager was the owner’s nephew? Looking back, I don’t think it was just the complaint to HR that had me packing my desk but also the fact that I’d “accidentally” spilled a long-lasting transdermal phytoestrogen onto his questing hands, which had him now dealing with erectile dysfunction, weight gain, and man-boobs for the foreseeable future. Oops. Sorry-not-sorry.

It hadn’t been just losing my job that had me applying for the Starlight Lottery, though. No. It was going home early that same day and finding my fiancé bumping our very hot, very young neighbor. I’d dumped the bastard right away, throwing all his stuff out into the space station corridors. But without a job with one of the three big corporations that owned the space station, I soon found myself homeless, since I was still trying to pay off that hefty student loan that had followed me for the better part of a decade.

If there was one thing that was forever, it was a student loan. No matter what planet you were on or which space station you moved to, that shit stuck to you worse than glitter.

Jobless, homeless, and heartbroken, I’d turned to Starlight Lottery. Starting over on an alien planet where no one knew me, doing a job I actually cared about, had sounded mighty good. Imagine my surprise when I got a call the very next day saying I’d been selected and they’d found the perfect position for me!

I’d downsized everything I owned into a single piece of luggage, and now…here I was. Standing on the beaches of Aquaria and awaiting my future, a sense of anticipation building inside me at my once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

It was only after I stepped into the shade of the palm-like trees that I noticed the rocky pool nearby and the creature sitting in it. It, no, he—most definitely male—was a Thalassonian, one of the underwater native inhabitants of this planet. I’d read all about them on my way here. I just never thought it would be the first intelligent life form I’d meet on the surface.

He was tall and muscular, with sleek, scaly skin that gleamed a silver-purple-blue. His eyes were a deep, dark indigo, with silver where the whites would be on a human, and ringed by long, frilly lashes. I was surprised to see that his lips were full, almost like human ones. But instead of pink, they were shimmery silver—and right now they were set in a smile that showed off sharp teeth.

Holy crap, really sharp! If I was in any danger of forgetting that the Thalassonians were predators of the deep, I just got reminded.

Instead of ears, he had fins at the sides of his head. One of them was raised questioningly. I suddenly wondered if they communicated with them like humans did with eyebrows.

“You are Vera.” His words sounded so strange.

Thank you, updated translator .

“Umm…yes.”

“I am Cetius, your husband-to-be. You are early.”

Husband-to-be? What was he—

He hoisted himself out of the pool, cutting off my mental protest.

I stood frozen at the sight of the magnificent creature before me. The top part of him was humanoid enough, with a sculpted chest and abs that could grate cheese. There was no doubt of his masculinity, even if his man parts were missing—which they were. He was all smooth scales and tail from the hips down. He was an extremely sexy, and kind of scary, merman Ken doll.

And he’d just claimed he was my husband-to-be! What?

That meant I was either very lucky or very unlucky. Imagine having all that virile masculinity in bed with you every night but not having anything to ride on—

Whoa. Why did I even think that? Super inappropriate!

My thoughts were interrupted when he stood to his full height, his long, sinuous, strong tail lifting his upper body high above the ground so that he towered over me.

I found my voice again and replied. “I…I think there must have been a mistake. I’m not here to get married.”

“Were you not sent by Starlight Brides?”

Starlight what-now? “No. I was sent by Starlight Lottery . I’m not a bride.”

For a moment, I thought he was going to develop legs and charge at me. But he didn’t need legs to move quickly on the ground, just as he didn’t need an extra pair of lungs to breathe in air instead of water. His powerful tail did all the work as he slithered toward me like a giant snake. He moved fast, too, much faster than I thought ocean dwellers would be able to on land.

In other words—fuck!

I backed away, suddenly imagining myself wrapped in the coils of his tail like he was a long-extinct fabled anaconda of Earth.

I found myself surrounded by scales; not reptilian ones, but fishy ones that shimmered with lethal iridescence. He didn’t squeeze, though. Nor did he swallow me whole.

“I requested a bride. You are Vera, so you must be that bride. You are human, so you are compatible. I did not make this trip for nothing.”

I don’t know where I found the bravery, but I shoved back from him, my hand landing on a chest that was strangely smooth. At first, I thought that he didn’t have scales there, but I was wrong. He did, but the scales there were smaller and so fine and perfectly fitted with each other that they looked smooth, giving the illusion of skin.

“Look!” I shoved my phone, which was on the last of its battery, in his face. “See? It says right here. I’m a botanist. I specialize in marine plants, specifically those of brackish variety. I’m not here to get married. I’m here for a job.”

As he glared down at my device, the words on the screen began to change.

The Starlight logo stayed the same, but the word Lottery was replaced by the word Bride . Botanist and Job now read Wife and Breeder. The name of the company I was supposed to work for disappeared and was replaced by glyphs I could not read.

“What the fuck!” I stared at the screen in disbelief. There was something fishy going on.

He frowned and leaned in to look at the contract too. He blinked, and I saw that he had an extra set of eyelids that opened and closed sideways. They were clear and most likely protected his eyes from the water.

Humans didn’t have that. No wonder Starlight Lottery—or Brides, or whatever—had insisted on fitting the special high-tech lenses to protect my eyes from being underwater for prolonged periods. I’d insisted that my job probably wouldn’t require me to spend hours at a time underwater, but they’d known. Sneaky bastards.

“I cannot read your language, but I am seeing words change. I think you’ll find it difficult to file a complaint now that you are here and they are gone.” His face softened as he brought out a large conch-like shell, which he kept on the only thing he wore: a harness.

“This is my copy of the contract.” He turned his shell around and showed me the screen. Oh! It was a phone. On it was a picture of me and a bunch of words I couldn’t understand. “According to this, we were married the second we both signed it.”

Then, as if to laugh at me, the sun, which had been shining just a moment earlier, hid behind a cloud, the wind picked up, and a single fat raindrop landed smack dab in the middle of my forehead.