Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

Lomax

I set my tray of food on one of the long tables in the dining hall and slid into my seat. The giant room was full of Draax and sprinkled liberally with human women. I kept my eyes on my plate and pushed at the food.

I couldn’t stop thinking about earlier and the look on Regan’s face when I stupidly said I could kiss him. He couldn’t step back fast enough from me. And then that awful Lori had shown up, and why the hell did it bother me so much that she had to mention I fucked the Draax for juice in front of Regan?

I’d never been ashamed of it before, so why did Regan knowing that I’d fucked a different Draax almost nightly make me feel so bad?

I stared at my food, my interest in eating at precisely zero as my stomach churned. I stiffened when I heard the now-familiar voice behind me. I took a quick peek over my shoulder and groaned inwardly when I saw the back of Lori’s stupid head as she sat down at the table behind me. She had a group of four other women with her, and they crowded around her like she was a queen bee.

I was waffling between just getting up and abandoning my dinner or staying completely still and hoping she didn’t notice me. Before I could make a decision, the woman to Lori’s left said, “So, did you actually fuck him, Lori? Because he’s the biggest Draax I’ve ever seen and scary looking.”

“King Quillan is bigger than him,” a second voice said.

“Only by a little,” the woman said. “Seriously, though, did you, Lori? Because Stephanie said that he turned down your offer to bang him.”

“No, I didn’t, Gianna!” Stephanie’s voice rang out indignantly. I could hear the anxiety in her voice when she said, “I didn’t say that, Lori.”

“Regan might have turned me down for dinner tonight, but he showed up at my apartment this afternoon,” Lori said.

“Holy shit,” Stephanie said. “He did?”

“Of course he did,” Lori said.

“Did you sleep with him?” Gianna asked.

“He left my apartment thoroughly satisfied,” Lori said.

I stared at my plate, my fingers wrapped around my fork so tightly that I would have an imprint of the handle in my palm. Lori was beautiful and hadn’t nearly gotten Regan killed or made him climb a tree to rescue her. Why wouldn’t he sleep with her? And why did it bug me so much that he had?

“You should be careful, Lori,” the third woman said. “He’s the head of the eastern king’s guard, and there’s a rumour he’s here as a spy.”

“I know exactly who he is, Nyeta,” Lori said. “Why do you think I’m so interested in him?”

“What do you mean?” Nyeta asked.

“I’m not going back to Earth to work some menial job and scrimp and scrape just to get by. But if I’m going to mate with a Draax and spend the rest of my life on this planet, it needs to be with someone more than just a palace worker or in the king’s guard. I’ve been a lower my entire life, and I’ll be damned if I’m a lower here too,” Lori said.

“They don’t have lowers on Draax,” Nyeta said.

“You know what I mean,” Lori said impatiently. “Anyone who is someone in this castle is already mated, so why shouldn’t I choose Regan to be my mate? He’ll be well respected in the eastern province.”

“Sure, but it’s the eastern province,” Gianna said. “From what I’ve heard, their king is crazy and power hungry, and the eastern Draax aren’t as… nice as the Draax here. Do you really want to live there?”

“I don’t care where I live. I just want people to know my name and the power it carries. Being married to the head of the king’s guard will do that for me,” Lori said. “Look at that little bitch Ellis. Everyone knows who she is because she’s mated to Galan. She doesn’t deserve respect but gets it because of Galan. I deserve respect, and if I have to be with Regan to get it, I will.”

“I want to marry for love,” Nyeta said.

“Good for you,” Lori said. “But I’m not some naive little girl who thinks love will make her happy. I’m not interested in falling in love. I care about making sure I’m never poor or hungry or… or fucking invisible again.”

“If Regan falls in love with you, though, that’s kind of… well, mean, to just use him like that,” Stephanie said timidly.

“Oh please, he’ll get pussy every night, and that’s all the Draax care about,” Lori said. “He’ll get plenty of sex, and I’ll get the power and respect I deserve.”

“If you care that much about power, why don’t you go for the eastern king himself?” Nyeta asked. “He’s not mated.”

“Maybe I will,” Lori said. “I’ll keep my options open until I’m in the eastern province with Regan. I won't say no if the king is interested in me.”

“Maybe they’ll want a threesome like most of the Draax,” Gianna said with a laugh.

I tuned out Lori’s reply and made myself drop my fork before I turned and stabbed her in the thigh with it. I hated that she was using Regan, hated that she didn’t care if she hurt him. Which was ridiculous because I didn’t even know the guy, and for all I knew, he could be a total dickhead who deserved whatever Lori dished out.

He isn’t. You know he isn’t. He wouldn’t have saved you in the alley or helped you from the tree if he was a bad guy.

No, probably not. His coldness towards me when I thanked him for saving my life had made me determined to avoid him from that moment on. But then he’d climbed the tree to save my ass and been super nice to me when I was afraid.

I looked up at the sound of a chair scraping and stared at the Draax, who sat across from me. He gave me a friendly smile as he set down his food tray. “Hello, human. Do you mind if I join you?”

Startled, I shook my head, and his grin widened. “My name is Bitta. What is yours?”

* * *

“You should not be in here, human.”

I looked up from the map on my phone and straight into the face of a Draax who would give Regan a run for his money in the “grumpy look” department.

“I’m lost,” I said. “I’m looking for the kitchen.”

“This is not the kitchen,” he said.

That was more than evident. I stared at the ship in front of me. It was raised a few feet off the ground by a mechanical platform. A panel was open on its underside, and two Draax wearing coveralls stood below it, peering into the ship’s depths.

“This is the docking bay, and you are not allowed in it, little human.”

“I didn’t mean to be in it,” I said. “I was looking for the kitchen.”

“So you said.” He gave me a look like he thought I might be lying.

I took a nervous step back, twitching in surprise when a tiny blonde woman in coveralls joined us and grinned at the grumpy Draax. “You’re being grumpy again, Melu.”

“I am not.” He scowled at the woman. “This human is breaking the rules, and it is for her safety that I tell her to leave.”

“Sure, but you also look like you’ll punch someone in the face. That’s not exactly comforting.”

“Why would I punch the little female in the face?” Melu stared at the woman. “Have you been drinking gallberry wine, Ellis? You are supposed to be fixing the vroha with the faulty locksen.”

“I’m not drunk,” Ellis said.

“Why would you be drunk?” A second woman joined us. She was tall and curvy with long red hair and smelled strongly of cleaning solution.

I watched in amazement as Melu’s scowl disappeared, replaced by a soft smile that completely transformed his face. His tail snapped out and wrapped around the redhead’s waist, tugging her toward him.

She smiled and cupped his face, pressing a kiss against his mouth as he gently rubbed her belly before saying, “Hello, my mate.”

“Hi, honey.” She smiled at him as he kept his tail curved around her waist and one hand resting protectively on her stomach. “How was your morning?”

“Good. How are you feeling?” He gave her an anxious look.

She squeezed his hand that rested against her stomach. “Perfectly fine. The gallberry juice helped.”

She turned toward me. “Hi, I’m Inara.”

“I’m Lomax,” I said.

“I’m Ellis.” The small woman waved at me before glancing at Inara. “You ready for lunch, Inara?”

“Yes,” Inara smiled at me again. “Why don’t you join us, Lomax?”

“Oh, um, I wasn’t eating in the dining hall today,” I said.

Or ever again after what I heard Lori saying last night.

“We’re not either,” Ellis said. “We’re grabbing one of the bagged lunches and eating in the garden. Assuming Inara doesn’t feel like barfing like she did yesterday.”

“I won’t barf,” Inara said to me quickly. “Join us.”

“Uh…” I hesitated as the two women stared expectantly at me. I didn’t have an excuse not to join them, but making friends had never been that easy for me, and after being abandoned by the ones I did have, I had a healthy dose of PTSD about friendship in general. Plus, if they were anything like Lori and her friends, I absolutely did not want to be friends with them.

“You don’t have to join us if you don’t want to,” Inara said, “but I promise that we’re nice and not judgmental.”

“Speak for yourself,” Ellis said. “I judged you hard for your shoes the other day.”

“Hush, Ellis,” Inara said with a laugh. “What do you say, Lomax? Have lunch with us.”

“Yeah, okay,” I said. I didn’t want to admit this, but I felt a little lonely despite my introverted nature. The only person I’d really spoken to in the last few days was Regan, and I was pretty sure he’d never talk to me again after I said I could kiss him. The way he’d stepped back and the look on his face… God, that was humiliating. I’d been joking - my sex drive was at zero and had been for a very long time - but it had obviously bothered him to even think of me kissing him.

Ten minutes later, I had a bagged lunch in my hand and followed Inara and Ellis through the garden. They found a bench near the waterfall, and Inara smiled at me when I sat beside her.

“So, do you love the garden as much as we do?”

“Yes,” I said. “It’s gorgeous.”

“It’s my favourite place in the whole castle,” Inara said. She ate a bite of food and then grimaced and grabbed her stomach.

“Uh oh,” Ellis said and slid further down the bench. “If you’re going to barf, go into the trees and do it, Inara.”

“I’m not going to throw up.” Inara opened the bottle of gallberry juice she’d snagged and took a long drink. “Man, the juice cravings are brutal right now.”

“Are you sick?” I asked and then said, “Sorry, that was rude. I haven’t had friends for a while now, and I’ve forgotten how to act in polite society.”

I paused. “Shit, that was a weird thing to say, wasn’t it?”

“Oh my God, I love her,” Ellis said to Inara. “She’s as awkward as me. Watch out, Inara, you have competition in the best friend category.”

Inara laughed and poked Ellis in the thigh. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”

She drank another swallow of juice before turning to me. “It wasn’t rude. I just found out I’m pregnant, so that’s why I’ve been throwing up and having juice cravings.”

“Oh, wow, congratulations,” I said. “So, did you meet Melu through the breeding program, or were you in the work program?”

“Work program,” Inara said, “although now that I’m pregnant, I’m pretty sure Melu will start asking me daily to stop working.”

“Oh, he definitely will.” Ellis munched on a grundleswat sandwich. “I don’t know why you’re still in it anyway. Galan told me that Krey told him that Melu told him he’d paid for everything that Wendy’s scholarship didn’t cover with her schooling.”

Ellis glanced at me. “Wendy is Inara’s younger sister. She’s a super talented singer who got into a real prestigious music school on Earth. She starts next year.”

“Melu did pay for the extras,” Inara said with a soft smile. “It was his wedding gift to me.”

“So, there you go. You don’t need the money for Wendy’s schooling, so relax and put your feet up. Besides, the cleaning solutions can’t be good for the baby,” Ellis said.

“Plenty of women clean houses when pregnant,” Inara said. “But I’ve already spoken to Sabrina about leaving the program so that she can hire another woman to take my place. I don’t need to work now that I’m with Melu, and I want to give another lower the same opportunity I did.”

She turned to me and said, “If you’re interested, I could talk to the queen about you taking my place in the work program.”

“Oh, uh, I’m hoping to get a job like I used to have when I return to Earth, but thank you,” I said.

“I thought you were a lower,” Ellis said. “You worked retail or something, right? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I guarantee the Draax will pay you more if you sign a work contract with them. Plus, it’s free food, room, and all the gallberry juice you can drink.”

“I was a middle,” I said.

“Then why were you fucking the…” Ellis trailed off, giving me an embarrassed look. “Sorry, now I’m being rude.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I already know what my reputation is here.”

“What do you mean?” Inara gave me a puzzled look.

“I met a woman named Lori yesterday, and she made it clear I was the castle gossip,” I said, trying to sound indifferent and failing miserably.

I stared at my sandwich as Inara sighed, and Ellis said, “Fucking Lori. She’s the worst.”

Inara touched my hand. “Lori is not a nice person, okay? She’s one of those women who thinks she needs to compete with other women, and she says unkind things to just about every woman in here.”

“Not nice,” Ellis scoffed. “She’s an asshole, and we all know it. Queen Sabrina needs to kick her ass out of here. She causes so many issues with the women. She lies and manipulates and deliberately tries to pit the Draax against each other.”

“I feel sorry for her,” Inara said. “She’s had to fight her whole life to survive, and now life is easier for her, but she can’t seem to accept that.”

“I don’t feel sorry for her,” Ellis said.

I didn’t say anything, but secretly, I was team Ellis on this one.

“Anyway,” Inara patted my leg, “don’t listen to a word Lori says. Everyone knows she’s a mean gossip who lies a lot.”

I shrugged. “She isn’t lying about this, though, is she? I did fuck Draax for juice.”

“You do what you have to do to survive,” Inara said.

“I had severe aortic valve disease,” I said abruptly. “It was killing me, and I lost my job when they found out how sick I was, and I dropped from a middle to a lower just like that, and my friends abandoned me because of it. I couldn’t afford the medication, so I fucked the Draax for juice. And I know it was wrong and illegal, but I didn’t want to die.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Inara said, “and while you might be the latest castle gossip, we’re not judging you for what you did.”

I wanted to believe her, I truly did, but I kept seeing Lori’s face in my mind, kept hearing the contempt in her voice. Even worse, seeing the look on Regan’s face when Lori said what she did.

“We don’t,” Ellis said firmly. “Before I came here, I was a thief and a liar, and I sold the juice on the black market. And the only reason I didn’t fuck the Draax for juice is because I thought they found me ugly and wouldn’t sleep with me, so I didn’t bother trying. Otherwise, I would have banged them nightly for that sweet, sweet juice.”

“You are not ugly, Ellis,” Inara scolded.

“True, I’m a total babe. But the point is,” she leaned around Inara to stare at me, “we’ve all done things in our past that maybe we’re not super proud of, you know? It doesn’t define who we are. Well, except to people like Lori, but as I mentioned, she’s one hundred percent an asshole, and her opinion doesn’t count. So don’t judge the rest of us on what she’s said to you, all right?”

“All right,” I said with genuine relief. “Thanks, that makes me feel better.”

“Anytime.” Ellis took a big bite of her sandwich.

“So,” Inara smiled at me, “what was your job before you got sick?”