Chapter Six

Verity halted in front of the green building. “This is it.”

“Do I have to? Why can’t I stay with you?” Brody said.

“Because I have to go to work, and you need to go to school. I know you’re nervous. I’m nervous about my first day, too—” The first day of any new job was stressful, and she’d be dealing with alien medicine and technology. Would anything be familiar? Would she be of any value to Dr. Twygg? What if everything she’d learned in nursing school was irrelevant?

“Then, why don’t we both not go?”

She chuckled. “Because we must face our responsibilities. Putting it off will only delay the inevitable, it won’t stop it. Once you get in there and meet the other kids, you’ll make friends.”

“They won’t be like me.”

“No, they’re aliens. But how cool is it to have alien friends? Imagine how envious the kids on Earth would be that you got to meet real live aliens. ”

“But they won’t know.”

No, they wouldn’t. For everyone’s safety, refugees were prohibited from contacting their home worlds. Violating the rule would result in instant expulsion—not that she would risk contacting anyone. Her parents were dead, and she had no siblings to worry about, but the Dorns would be hounding everyone they had had contact with. Her friends couldn’t reveal what they didn’t know. She regretted they would worry after she’d vanished into thin air, but there was nothing she could do about it.

“You’ll still have new friends,” she replied and opened the door.

Seated at desks with computer screens, ten small aliens turned to look at them.

“I’m sorry, are we late?” she asked the teacher at the front of the room. Her humanoid face peeked out of an incongruous kangaroo costume. How would an alien teacher know about marsupials? Still, Verity applauded her for a clever way to engage the kids. Brody is going to like his new teacher.

“Not at all. You’re ten minutes early. We’re expecting one more student.” She hopped toward them.

Oh my god— that’s not a costume !

“We’ve been expecting you.” Kangaroo Woman smiled. “You must be Brody.”

He stared. Verity nudged him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he responded.

“I’m Ms. Jularee.” She had regular-length arms instead of forepaws, but other than her face and upper limbs, she was all kangaroo, right down to huge, clawed feet, a long tail, and a pouch . She turned to the class. “Students, say hello to Brody.”

“Hi, Brody!” Shouts rang out along with a few clicks and grunts.

“Everyone has an embedded translator—I assume you got yours or you couldn’t understand me—but not everyone has the vocal structures allowing them to utter all the translatable sounds,” the teacher explained. “Since I don’t see a box lunch, I assume you wish him to go to the mess hall at noon?”

Verity shook her head. “I forgot about lunch. Is that what the kids do, bring a box lunch?”

“Generally, yes. You can pack your own or order one from the mess. Tell them it’s for the school, and they’ll deliver it.”

“I’ll pick him up today at noon. I’ll order him a box from now on.” Break times in the medical profession were catch as catch can. Often, she’d worked through lunch. She would have to leave the infirmary to take her son to the mess and then leave early to get married. Not a good start for the first day on the job. Phibious had messaged that the officiant would be arriving in the afternoon. Hopefully, Dr. Twygg would be understanding.

She tapped Brody’s shoulder. “You wait for me, okay?” She turned to Ms. Jularee. “I’ll be right next door at the infirmary. That’s where I’m working.”

“Oh, you’re the new nurse! Dr. Twygg is thrilled to finally be getting help.”

“That’s good to hear.”

The door opened, and a kid resembling a giant squid crawled in.

“Good morning, Bob!” Ms. Jularee said.

“ Gud murrring ,” Bob said.

“One student is out due to molting season, so this is everybody.”

“I won’t hold up class, then.” Her heart squeezed at her son’s forlorn expression. “You’ll do great!” She ached to hug and kiss him goodbye, but the only thing that would make this moment worse for him would be to embarrass him in front of a roomful of kids. She’d been scolded for PDAs before .

“Of course, he will!” Ms. Jularee said. “Why don’t you sit next to Firbol?” She gestured to a vacant desk next to the furry kid they’d seen at dinner the previous night.

Brody shuffled to the desk like a condemned man going to meet his fate.

I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m so sorry. Mother-guilt kicked in. She felt nervous about starting her new job, and she was an adult. Brody was a little boy. He had loved his old school and had adored his teacher. He had a good group of friends. Overnight, his young life had changed. She’d tried to make the relocation sound like a grand adventure, but he’d still lost all the things that mattered to him.

But if not for Cosmic Mates, she could have lost him . She’d shielded him from the legal battle with the Dorns. She couldn’t tell her son the grandparents he’d never met, who’d previously disowned him, now attempted to steal him. Each time she’d escorted him into school and left, she lived with the fear he wouldn’t be there when she returned.

If he was less than excited about attending a new school full of aliens, her relief that he would be safe was immense .

She’d almost burst into tears when Fury said she could stay. For the first time in a year, she’d slept through the night. Clearly, he wasn’t a kid person, but he’d been more than fair. If he never warmed up to Brody, that wouldn’t necessarily be bad. She’d hate for her son to get attached to him when they would go their separate ways soon.

And while they wouldn’t find romance, maybe they could become friends.

She left the classroom with a lightened step. A new planet, school, job, and marriage of convenience seemed like a lot, but compared to what could have happened, she could handle it. Piece of cake.

It’s so nice to have ordinary stresses again. She entered the infirmary.

* * * *

“You look like the cheese fell off yer cracker.” Dusty pushed the brim of his ten-gallon hat back with a red pincher. In love with the American West of yore, the lead ranch hand did his best to imitate a cowboy—as depicted in the old spaghetti Westerns he binge-watched. An alien who’d never set claw on Earth, he resembled a lobster in chaps and spurs.

“What happened? Was there another delay in her arrival?” Jason Steel eyed him sympathetically. Both on the run from Solutions, they had arrived at Refuge together, Fury assisting the other cyborg with getting a wife through Cosmic Mates. Steel’s bride had arrived three weeks ago.

Fury sank onto a bale of dried grass and rested his arms on his knees. “No, she got here all right,” he said glumly.

“She’s not what you expected?” Steel guessed.

“She brought a kid with her.”

“Why in tarnation did she bring a baby goat?” Dusty asked.

“He means a child,” Steel explained.

“A son.”

“Well, shoot. Whadda ya upset for? That’s a two-fer. You got yerself a wife and a family.”

“I didn’t want a family; I only wanted the wife.”

“Don’t you be lookin’ a gift horniger in the mouth. There’s plenty of men who’d be glad to walk in yer boots.”

“What do we have going today?” He changed the subject to avoid any more cowboy homilies.

“There’s a strip of fencin’ out yonder that needs repairin’. Hornigers plum busted through it. Round up them varmints and then fix the fence. ”

Steel wiped a hand across his mouth to hide his grin, and, despite his misery, Fury’s lips twitched. Sometimes Dusty was a bit too much. “Fine. Are we taking one of the conveyances?”

“Unless you and Jason got Demon broke yet.” Dusty glanced at the shaggy, six-legged animal munching grass in the stall. An adolescent, it already stood fifteen hands high from hoof to withers. When full grown, Demon would be huge.

Hornigers resembled a cross between a horse and a cow, except they had a rhinoceros horn at the end of their long noses and a full rack of antlers atop their heads. Nor did they have the sanguine equine/bovine personality. They were aggressive and dangerous. However, Haven Ranch had a pilot program to try to domesticate them so they could be used for work and transportation. But they had to start with young animals, the younger the better.

“Conveyance it is,” Fury said. They had achieved some progress with the beast. Demon now allowed people to approach and touch him—but he became a different animal if they attempted to mount him. “Steel and I will head out…in a spell.”

“Fair ’nuff.” Spurs jangling, Dusty ambled out of the barn .

Steel joined him on the hay bale. For a long moment, they stared at their boots in silence. Then: “Dusty kind of has a point.”

“About what?”

“The family situation.”

“Remember how much you didn’t want a wife? That’s how much I don’t want a baby goat,” he said, injecting some levity into the dismal situation.

“But I love Honoria now. I can’t imagine my life without her. How old is the kid?”

He shrugged. “Five? Six? Hard to tell. He’s kind of scrawny, but she was taking him to school this morning.” They’d breakfasted together, and then he’d reported to the barn while Verity walked the boy to class.

“You had no idea she had a child?”

“None. She didn’t disclose it.”

“Misrepresentation is grounds for breaking the contract.”

“And I claimed to be human. I might be a killer, but I’m not a hypocrite. Besides, I promised her I wouldn’t. After hearing her story, I couldn’t do that.”

“What’s her story?”

“The kid’s bio-dad is Kyle Dorn.”

“I thought he never married. ”

“He didn’t.”

Steel whistled. “Ah…Hakeem and Nancy need an heir.”

“Verity was going to lose custody.”

Steel clapped him on the shoulder. “You’re a compassionate man.”

“I’m a fucking sucker.”

“You did save my ass.” Deactivated and crated, the two of them had been on a ship bound for a fiery death on Hell’s Gate. Fury had gotten them both sanctuary.

“Don’t make me regret it,” he said facetiously. He didn’t regret saving Steel, even though it was not his nature to be kind. Solutions had engineered and created him to kill without remorse. He could appear to be caring, charming, personable—but it was all an act.

He almost had abandoned Steel. After an electronic glitch reactivated him, he’d broken out of his containment pod. Spotting a twin of his capsule, he figured it contained another cyborg, but he walked away.

He found his way to the ship’s emergency shuttle launch bay, where he discovered the Solutions reps about to abandon ship. He interrogated and killed them. Intending to leave, he’d gone so far as to board the shuttle pod, when he went back for the other cyborg. Totally out of character. And now, he’d put aside his own desires to keep Verity and her son safe.

“Am I getting soft?” Fury asked.

Steel snorted. “As soft as a horniger’s tit.”

“Do hornigers have tits?”

“We best round up them varmints and find out,” Steel drawled.