5. Nia

“Do you want to go first, or should I?” Deja asks as she pulls her legs underneath her.

“My story is pretty boring.” I shake my head as the words tumble out.

In all actuality, I was only away from Deja for a little over a month, but it’s easily been the worst month of my life. I’m unsure how much I want to get into it with her. How much I want her to know I struggled and cried to myself at night because I had no friends to talk to, no one to comfort me. It’s heavy, and I like handling the heavy stuff on my own. I always have, much to my friends’ and therapist’s disappointment.

“Oh, boring.” Deja rolls her eyes, but I can tell she’s holding back on how snarky she wants to be.

If Simone were here, she’d be laying into me about not telling them everything and downplaying it all. She’d demand answers, but Deja isn’t that blatant. She’s what helps to dull some of Simone’s edge, but she’s also not going to pry like Simone would.

“Sure, I’m sure being hand delivered here by one of the Hands means everything’s been going according to plan on Earth.”

“No, it’s not.” I chew on my lip, trying to decide where to start. “Vex, the doctor, kind of lost his shit when Simone was sent here. I know we always speculated on who it was, and well, I’m sure you picked it up when he came through the portal asking for her.”

“He didn’t seem that upset about her being called someone else’s mate.”

“He’s probably trashing his labs right now,” I tell her.

I still remember the day after I had my biopsy done when I walked into his office to ask him what I needed to do to still come to this planet. He was a glowing mass of white in the shape of a human body or close to it. His desk was turned over, papers and glass strewn about, and his computers ripped from their chords with broken screens.

I don’t know if he saw me that day since I tried to retreat without notice. He never brought it up if he did see me, and I wasn’t about to ask about it. Later in the day, when he called me down, his office was a little more bare, but it had been cleaned up like nothing had happened at all. His human disguise was back firmly placed over what I knew he really looked like.

“I think he actually likes her,” I say, getting myself out of my thoughts and back to what Deja and I are talking about. “He might not have thrown a fit earlier, but I can almost guarantee he was fuming. I mean, you saw the glow, right? It’s his mask or disguise or whatever slipping.”

“I thought it was just a trick of the light.”

“No, they’re like weird glowing creatures. Built like us, or maybe they just look humanoid in shape. I don’t know, but it looked like he was made of light rather than anything real.”

“Weird.” She rubs at her temples and lets the word hang in the air between us.

Deja fiddles with her fingers, probably trying to figure out how to segue this into talking about what happened to me. I’m sure she’s curious why I was auctioned off in a couple of minutes with a disclaimer that I probably can’t give these aliens any kids.

“I had a funky mole,” I say quickly to get the words out there. “It was melanoma.”

“Nia,” I can hear the pity in Deja’s voice, and it turns my stomach.

“No, sorry, no, it wasn’t that serious,” I try to stop her from spiraling even more into feeling bad for me. “I mean, it was, but the Hands have way better medical stuff than we do, so I was scared for like a day about it.”

No, the mole scare was the least of my worries. What really messed me up was the malfunctioning healing pod, but that’s not something I want to talk to her about. I try not to talk about it at all since it already haunts my nightmares. I don’t need it seeping into my everyday life.

“I spent the last six weeks counting down the days until I could be back here with you and with Simone. I just want things to go back to the way they were. The only thing that’s different is my mole. It’s a little scar now. It had to be removed. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

My fingers twitch at the reminder of how many times I had to repeat the words over and over to myself. The feel of the needle under my skin. The malfunction of the healing pod. I try to push the memories down before they surface. I try to forget the feeling of my blood boiling and my insides being ripped apart.

My jaw aches from clenching it, and my palms sting from the bite of my nails as I fist my hands too tightly. This isn’t a flashback. If it were, I wouldn’t be able to feel any of this. I wouldn’t see the way Deja’s shoulders fall and then straighten like she’s forcing herself not to ask me any more questions.

I count my breaths. Four seconds in, hold for four seconds, out for four seconds. I’m okay. Everything is fine. I’m not there anymore.

“Well, if you don’t want to talk about you,” Deja gives me a curious smile that reminds me of when we’d gossip about what the women in the other units were doing. It eases some of the panic in my chest. “What’s happening in Unit A? Why was the doctor asking about sending more women?”

“He’s up for a promotion.” I let out a huff of breath through my nose and shake my head. Of course, it doesn’t answer Deja’s question even a little bit, but it’s what Vex first told me when he told me he had a plan that had a ten percent chance of working. “They’re even more powerful than they seem on Earth. I don’t know exactly what they are or all of their powers. I do know Vex makes it sound like they play an important role in the universe as a whole. He’s asking to be given the position on this planet.”

The whole time I’m talking, I can see Deja’s confusion growing. Vex had to tell me the plan about three times before I grasped the basics of it, and that was the part about coming here and auctioning me off. His whole side of it? I’m still not sure if I understand it well enough to do it justice.

“The Hands are all some kind of cosmic being. They’re all connected but separate. So, Vex has a shared conscience that he shares with all of the other Hands, but he also has his own mind. One of his kind is on every single planet that they know about. They’re basically trying to have a hand, no pun intended, in the entire universe.”

“So, they’re basically gods in the sense that they can determine what happens on planets? Is that why everything went to shit on Earth?”

“Yes and no.” I shrug, trusting that everything Vex told me was true. “Vex said there was no Hand on Earth. One had been assigned to us, but his shared consciousness went dark a few hundred years ago. He said they came as soon as they could but that other species took precedence. When they got to us, we were already on a path to destruction, so they let it play out while they figured out what to do with us.”

“So they let people die?” Deja asks.

The rolling in my stomach returns with a vengeance because I know how this next part is going to make the Hands seem, and I know how Deja is going to react to it. I walked out of the room when Vex told me, but he had offered me full transparency knowing I would offer it to everyone here.

“They had nothing to do with the natural disasters.” I try to choose my words carefully, not wanting Deja to hate the doctor like I did for a while. “The collective mind’s majority decided to eradicate the part of our population that they had no use for.” I pause and then make it as clear as I can. “The Hands chose to kill all the men because there was no use for them on any other planet or in their own studies.”

“What the fuck?” Deja launches from the bed, her hands going to the back of her head. She paces to the front door of the workshop before turning back to me, eyes wide and a look of mild anger, surprise, and sorrow marring her features. “What the fuck, Nia?”

“There are apparently other planets that have had difficulties in their population skewing male,” I answer, knowing it’s not the answer that’s going to make everything okay for Deja. It doesn’t make any of it right for me either, but it’s an answer. A really shitty, really awful answer. “Human wombs are compatible with a plethora of alien species.”

“Nia,” Deja says my name with a shake of her head.

“I’m not fucking condoning it!” I shoot to my feet, feeling a need to defend myself. “I am telling you what I know. I thought you’d want to know. Would you have preferred I just say nothing and for you to find out later? If Vex has his way, he’ll be on this planet with us as soon as he can convince the collective mind of his plan.”

“He killed billions of people!” Deja throws her hands up as though it’s not the same thing I thought.

“He was against the idea. They had the resources to find humans new homes on other planets where they harbor all kinds of species, but it was more expensive and time-intensive. Humans are seen as a primitive species. We’re being sent to other primitive planets because they don’t trust us in the futuristic places.”

“They sent us here where I have to pee in a wooden outhouse because we’re primitive creatures?” Deja’s outrage has shifted to something much less important, but I’ll take her being outraged at the Hands over being outraged at me. “There’s no television, or wine, or a fucking shower!” She’s pacing again, but the smile that tugs at my lips can’t be helped. This is how I remember Deja. Slightly outraged at the silliest of things and always searching for the best even if the situation had no good sides. “I don’t even have pants, Nia! I’m having to learn how to make them myself now that we have more supplies, and you don’t even want to see the first attempt!”

“Oh, I definitely want to see them now,” I tell her, hoping the sadness and the anger are done with, at least for now. I need some normal and some happiness before I’m reminded of just how little there is of it left in the world.

Deja runs over to a wardrobe set in the corner of the small space. Her shoulders are shaking with a laugh that she’s trying and mostly failing at hiding. “I’m still pissed, but these pants are so bad that I have to show you before we keep talking about how much I hate the Hands.”

“Or we could just talk about your awful sewing skills for the rest of the day,” I offer, knowing that we’re going to spend more than a few minutes on the pants.

I’m proved right when she throws them at me, hitting me in the face with a few scraps of fabric. I hold them up, a gasp of horror leaving my mouth when I see just how badly Deja butchered the fabric. I put my hand in the pants, or really, shorts, and let out a long belly laugh when I can’t get my arm all the way through. She’s sewn the leg hole closed.

“Shut up!” Deja squeals as she walks over and takes the pants from me. She holds them up to her waist, and I laugh again at the mismatched lengths of the sides, the way one of the legs narrows while the other widens. It’s bad.

“It could be worse,” I offer in support of my friend. If she asks me how they could be worse I wouldn’t be able to think of anything. “Beats being naked from the waist down, I’m sure.”

“Yeah.” Deja lifts her tunic and shows off another pair of terribly sewn shorts that are so short they’re basically just underwear. “I’ve been making them short so I don’t sweat to death, but also, the stitching is shit, and I’ll have to redo them later. I’ve busted at least a few seams every time I wear a pair. Considering I have two, and one of them is these.” She holds up the monstrosity before throwing it back into the wardrobe. “I’ll make more, and one day, I might even be good at it. I think some of the other women have had an easier time with it.”

“I guess I’ll have to try my hand at it too.” I pull at the hem of my tunic that hugs over my hips and down around my thighs. Unlike Deja, I don’t have anything underneath, and now I am very self-conscious about that fact, especially since there’s no one on this planet who wants me dressed sexily in their tunic.

“What’s wrong?” Deja asks, somehow knowing my thoughts have turned darker.

“Nothing,” I say, brushing away her concern.

She has so much more to worry about here without me adding on my own personal stuff. One day, after I get it all figured out in my head, I’ll talk to her about it. Maybe when we can get Simone back here with us, so I don’t have to go into my feelings twice.

“I’ll let you get away with that for now because you’ve obviously been through some shit, but you have to talk to someone eventually.”

“Yeah, yeah, you sound like my therapist,” I push at her shoulder.

“Speaking of your therapist,” Deja’s outrage comes back in full force because my therapist was a man, and all men are dead. Because, of course, that’s how Deja’s mind is working right now. “I hate the Hands. I thought they were growing on me because they sent me here, and I met Dath, and I’m happy, but now I hate them. How do they kill billions of people and not care?”

“A lot of them did care. That’s what I’m saying.” I rub at my temples, trying to figure out how to make it make sense. Otherwise, she’ll start badmouthing Vex to everyone, and that won’t help his cause of trying to be the Hand responsible for this planet.

“So, the doctor wanted to stop them from murdering billions of people, but he still works for them and still does what they tell him.” Deja shakes her head, her hands on her hips. “He and so many of the others told us all that they knew nothing about these creatures, knew nothing about how they would react to humans.”

“It’s true,” I say, interrupting her before she can say more. “The Hand in charge of this planet has gone dark for years now, kind of like the one on Earth. She’s still here, though. The doctor has contacted her outside of the collective mind. He thinks she’s found a way to sever the tie that connects them to the shared consciousness, and he’s willing to as well when he gets promoted to taking her position.”

“So the doctor is in contact with a female Hand who has apparently gone AWOL on the hivemind, and the doctor thinks he can just, what? Convince the others to let him have this planet, sever his tie like she did, and then no one will look for him?”

“You’re thinking about this so much more in-depth than I did,” I say with a groan. “He told me he didn’t want to kill everyone. I believed him because he gives me okay vibes, and then I let him convince me to come here and try to convince someone in a tribe full of men who want babies to be with me who probably can’t have babies.”

“What a great change of subject,” Deja says cheerily as she jumps onto the bed next to me like this was all some way of getting me to open up even a small bit about how I’m feeling being on this planet. “How do you feel about your mate?”

What’s the word for that sound you make when you’re full of surprise and a bit of indignation? Whatever it is, that’s the sound that I make when she asks. Followed shortly by a laugh of desperation as I attempt to keep the tears I have held in check for so many weeks from falling.

“How do I feel about the poor alien that offered to mate me even though he has no interest in me and only did it because this tribe is full of giant alien sweethearts?”

Deja’s face falls when I ask the very rhetorical question. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” I groan. “Look, I’m grateful they offered because it’s clear no one else in that dining room was going to.” The reminder of the silence that followed Vex telling them that someone needed to mate me will haunt me for the rest of my life.

“They probably just wanted to see you,” Deja offers with a smile. A small smile that doesn’t reach her eyes because she heard the silence, too.

“It’s okay,” I try to believe the words myself, but it’s hard when I thought I’d still get love and a partner who wants me. I still have my friends, though, and that will be enough. It has to be. “I’m here with you. You’re going to have so many babies that I can play with, and we can both talk about my lack of a sex life for the rest of time.”

“Yeah, I guess life could be worse,” Deja says. Her hands twist as she tries to bring some levity into our conversation.

I give her a way out to be kind and also because I am exhausted from the trip through the portal. Vex told me I’d be a little more tired, but I wasn’t expecting to want to go to sleep after just arriving.

“Where can I sleep?” I ask, not wanting to intrude on her home that she obviously shares with someone else. She told me her mate’s gone for a few days, but that doesn’t mean he wants me all up in his bed when he’s not here.

“Let’s go back to the great hall,” Deja says as she wraps her hand in mine.

“You have to stay in my bed, though, because you know I sleep like shit on my own. If Simone were here, I’d have her acting as my cuddle buddy when Dath is gone, but you’re here, so you’re stuck with the duty.”

“Oh, goodie for me,” I laugh and shake my head.

Deja isn’t wrong about not liking to sleep on her own, and I’m honestly glad she’s offered it. Sure, when we were on Earth, I hated sharing a bed with her and Simone when they wanted to have a sleepover. Now, my nightmares plague me almost every night, and I’ll try anything to make them stop. Hopefully, I won’t wake her up, and maybe I’ll get a good night’s sleep for the first time in a long time.

“I’ve figured it out!” Deja comes running into her room in the great hall. I’m sitting on the bed we’ve been sharing, working on the hem of a pair of shorts.

I eye her suspiciously because she’s still dripping wet as she pads over to me. She left with a few other women to bathe before it got too dark outside. I’ve bathed twice out there in the three days I’ve been here, but I do it when I first wake up since I sweat so much at night with how hot it is here. Some of the women bathe twice a day because of the sweat, but there’s always a bigger crowd in the evenings. I don’t want to deal with that many people all naked in the same place at once.

“What have you figured out?” I ask, returning my attention to my shorts.

“You could probably get a hookup demon,” Deja says it so easily I think I must be hearing her wrong.

“Excuse me?”

“Like a demon that you fuck,” She clarifies as though that’s the part I didn’t understand. “There’s still like twenty of them that aren’t mated just from this tribe. Not to mention the other demons that could come by if we really are opening this tribe up to others. I’m sure at least one of them would be willing to keep you company.”

“But I’m mated?” I sound like I’m clutching my pearls. I need a necklace so I can actually do it.

“To a demon that doesn’t want what’s between your legs. I doubt he’s going to care if you go around and find another one.” Deja sits down on the end of the bed, and I cringe internally, knowing she’s going to make that section of the bed moist. I’ve been sticking mostly to myself for the last few days unless I’m hanging out with Deja and the other humans. “There’s Brirk, Kal, Garath, and Duan, who don’t seem to mind messing around with mated females. I think there’s a few more, but I don’t want to list someone who’s not interested.”

“And I just what?” I ask, flailing my arms about like it’ll help to articulate the question. “Go up to them and ask them if they want to fuck me even though I’m mated to their friend and can’t give them any babies?”

Deja rolls onto her side and narrows her gaze on me. “The alternative is to live a life of celibacy. Is that what you want?”

I let out a long, long exhale. “Good point.”

“I know.” Deja smiles at me like she’s the fucking Cheshire cat about to get me into so much trouble. “Now, I’m not saying you need to do it right now, but I am curious what they’ll do if we even offer it as an option. The wooing they’ll give you will probably be crazy.”

“The wooing?”

“The wooing.” Deja wiggles her eyebrows and then stands back up, not caring that she’s left a large damp spot on the comforter. She offers her hand to me, and I reluctantly set my sewing to the side and take her hand. “Feel up to taking all the attention away from Kendra for a day?”

“Is she going to be upset?” I ask, not wanting to step on any toes if Kendra happens to have a harem of demons that she doesn’t want me interfering with.

“Oh, no,” Deja gives me a wild look like she can’t wait to be doing what we’re doing. “She’s going to love this.”

“Okay, fine.” I relent and let Deja pull me through the great hall. “I make no promises on sleeping with any of them, though. I don’t even know if I want to.”

What I really want is for my hot demon mate to have any interest in me at all because I think he and his other mate are pretty cute. Too bad I haven’t seen either of them since they left me in Deja’s care the first day. They said they were working on getting the house up and running, but I thought they’d at least be here for meals or that I’d see them in passing.

“No, we aren’t doing anything like that tonight,” Deja says as she guides me into the dining hall. “We need to clear it with Olivia and her mate, the tribe leader. Not that they need to know your sex life, but they’ll want to know if we’re playing around with the unmated males so they know what’s happening. No need for the big guy to punish his brothers if nothing bad is happening.”

“Oh, joy.” I roll my eyes, still allowing her to drag me right over to the demon the doctor was talking with the first day about bringing more women to the tribe.

The doctor told me his plan involved bringing more women here but told me when the time came, he’d explain all of that to the demons. I’m really crossing my fingers he does that soon because I have a feeling everyone is going to want to know what that’s about.

“Dath’s mate and Beren’s mate,” the demon at the head of one of the tables says in greeting. Olivia, his mate, is fast asleep in his lap, her head nuzzled into his chest, legs kicked up on the arm of the chair. I knew it was getting late, but I didn’t realize it was so late that there would be women passed out in their mates’ laps.

Deja doesn’t even seem phased by it. She just pulls up a chair in front of him and sits down, pulling me right alongside her. “We’re hoping to ask you if Nia can play around with the brothers like Kendra does.”

“My mate will have competition?” Erkoz pokes his head around my chair, his wide eyes seeming even wider as a smile splits his lips. I don’t even know when he came so close to us or that he was even in the dining hall. Somehow, he always seems to know the perfect time to be in places where he isn’t needed.

“Go away.” Deja shoos him away with her hand, but he only leaves for a second before grabbing a chair, pulling it over to Olivia’s side of the table, and sitting down. His eyes track between Deja and me and the other demon, waiting for us to talk.

“Pretend Erkoz is not here,” he says with a wicked gleam in his eyes. “I am only listening so I can help in all your mischief.”

“Fine, but only because you’ll probably be useful in this endeavor,” Deja says.

“Yes, yes, very useful, the most useful male.” Erkoz nods in agreement. Then he sits back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, and waits for Deja to get the okay from Ralleth to allow me to find a demon mistress or mister? Whatever the male form of side piece is.

When she finishes explaining my predicament, Ralleth tells me I am free to entertain whichever brothers I want so long as they aren’t mated and my advances aren’t rejected. The idea of that has my cheeks burning in embarrassment, but Deja doesn’t let me feel it for very long before pulling me to another table and pointing out the eligible demons that I’m going to try to flirt with tomorrow.

Erkoz watches us for a while before his amusement seems to fade. I almost go ask him why he seems upset, but then he’s slipping out of the great hall, leaving Deja and me to our planning.