3. Chapter 3

His presence understandably unnerved me, but not in the way it should have. I should have been terrified of being alone with this alien man, but instead, I was only curious—as curious as he seemed to be. And attracted , my mind supplied—so much so that my hands shook slightly when I began to point out metallic parts to him.

He took them in stoically. His features relaxed somewhat, but never lost their intensity, a slight scowl remaining on his brow. He had seemed very angry when he first stepped through the wormhole portal, making me curious as to why he came in the first place if he didn't want to be here.

I took a few seconds to debate with myself about whether I wanted to ask him questions. While he was hot, his axe was hanging there, practically screaming, I know how to wield this tool . How was I to know what would make an alien like him angry ?

I knew my manner was sometimes off-putting to others, which was one of the reasons why I didn't have any friends. I just couldn't help my mouth sometimes.

" You don't like people ," my mother had observed when she was still alive. " I like people just fine ," I had contradicted, " as long as I don't have to be around them ."

It wasn't people I disliked; I just couldn't stand stupidity, and lately, everybody around me seemed stupid. My mom had to love me, or at least had to put up with me. Strangers… not so much. I had yet to meet someone who wasn't repelled by the way I thought about things and spoke my mind.

Earlier, when I thought they were going to shut this program down, I was ready to walk through the portal. I'd always wanted to learn more about Hope One. Now, I had a real alien from Vandruk in front of me, and I wasn't going to miss my chance to learn more.

"Why did you come?" I asked directly.

"To talk to your leaders," Khadahr—which was the only part of his long name that had stuck with me—filled me in, looking around the large laboratory.

"About what?" I probed, another one of my many flaws . " Always asking questions, always ," one of my babysitters had scolded me more than once. " Let her be. It's good to want to know things ," my mother had interfered, plying me with books I was too young to read. " Just wait; Gwynneth is going to do great things ."

Unfortunately, my mom hadn't grown old enough to see the great things I was supposed to accomplish, and lately, I wondered if I ever would. Taking one or two classes a semester wasn't quite cutting it. At this rate, it would take four years just to earn an associate degree—if I ever decided on a field. None of the classes I was taking were in any order to accumulate for any kind of degree.

"I will tell your leader," Khadahr informed me haughtily. Great, another guy who thought the sun rose and shone around males only.

"How come you speak English?" I asked next.

"One of your people taught me." His head swiveled between the monitors, not looking at me.

"Who?"

His attention turned back to me. "Do you always ask so many questions?"

"I'm afraid so," I conceded.

He closed his eyes and shook his head as if praying for patience, and I let a little sneer escape my lips.

"So, who?" I repeated my question.

"A male named Matt," he answered with a sigh, fingering the glassy surface of one of the workstations.

Matt?

My eyes moved to a far wall, where pictures of the men who had never returned hung. Another one of those chauvinistic things, I thought. They had never allowed one single woman to enter the wormhole. My gaze locked on the last picture, Dr. Matt Howard, PhD. He had been the last person to ever enter the wormhole. He was assumed dead, just like the others.

"He's alive?" The sound of my voice reflected how stunned I was .

"Last time I saw him, he was," Khadahr replied unhelpfully, moving to the wall with the pictures.

"Why hasn't he come back?"

"Because he's my prisoner," Khadahr grunted, studying the images of the believed-dead explorers. My skin crawled, and I took a step back, away from him. Prisoner ? As in kept in a dungeon? Tortured?

"What are those?" Khadahr asked, indicating the pictures.

"Pictures," I informed him while my mind was racing. Should I try to get out of this lab? How easy would it be for him to drag me through the portal with him? Even though that's what I had always wanted, to get to Vandruk, just not like this. Not as a prisoner.

"That looks like Matt," he stated, still oblivious to my growing anxiety. If I wanted to make a break for it, I should do so now.

Instead, I stood rooted to the ground, agreeing, "That is Matt."

I collected my courage, needing to know. "What about the others?"

"They're all dead," he replied in a tone as if we were discussing the weather.

"Dead? Did you kill them?" Finally, the alarm in my voice registered with him, and he turned to me.

"Some. Some were killed by my warriors," he retorted, staring at me as if daring me to judge him.

For the first time in my life, I didn't know what to say, or even think. My mouth opened and closed a few times, until my mind finally suggested, Now would be the time to be afraid of him, Gwyn .

"Why?" The question exploded from my mouth.

Suddenly, the doors opened, and a throng of people began to file in.

"May I bring your attention to the wormhole here, where—" None other than Doctor Carl Weidenhof entered, interrupting himself when his eyes fell on Khadahr and me. "What is going on here?"

"That's one of them," a man in uniform cried, his hand searching uselessly for a gun, which I supposed he normally carried on his hip.

"Security," a woman screeched.

At the door, a small scuffle broke out as some of the people tried to get in for a better look and others tried to get out.

Khadahr rose from the chair. "I am Khadahr Tzar-Than of the clan of the Farruk, descendent of Vorag. I came to talk to your leaders."

"You are… what? Who?" Carl Weidenhof stuttered, trepidatiously moving forward. "Good God, are you from Hope One?"

"Vandruk," Khadahr corrected.

Carl stared at him as if… Khadahr was an alien. His mouth opened and closed repeatedly without a word coming out. Finally, he seemed to get himself under control. "I'm Carl Weidenhof, the leader of this facility."

"Good, you want to explore my planet, sa?" Khadahr asked contemptuously.

An older man with an impressive waistline pushed others to the side and moved in next to Carl. "I'm Senator Mullen. I'm in charge of financing this project. "

"General Connolly, I'm in charge of security for this project, which seems to have just been breached." Another man pushed himself forward, his eyes moving from Khadahr to me, assessing me, probably wondering if I was the reason for the security breach. I remembered pushing the deactivate button, and sweat trickled down my neck. Would he arrest me?

Khadahr took in one man after the other; the angry look he had worn when he first entered returned. "Which one of you is in charge then?"

His glowing eyes, set jaw, and hard face were enough to make two of the three men back up a few steps. The general held his ground. "I am!"

Khadahr's cold eyes assessed him. "Good, I have a proposition for you."

"I'm all ears," the general replied, trying to look cool and collected, but his body posture betrayed his tenseness. He didn't know what to make out of Khadahr.

"I will allow a group of explorers to come to Vandruk, but I want something in return." Khadahr's head turned to me, his expression calculating.

"What?" Carl looked ready to give Khadahr whatever he asked for. I could have sworn I saw dollar signs in his eyes instead of pupils.

"We require gallies, women. I want you to send women of childbearing age in perfect health condition to Vandruk."

"What?" I snapped, shocked, turning everyone's attention to me .

"Who the fuck are you?" The senator stared at me.

"She's with the cleaning crew. Get out, Miss…" Carl's eyes searched for my name tag.

"Perez," I supplied.

"She stays." Khadahr overrode him in a tone that made it clear who was in charge here.

"That is not your decision. We—" the senator began.

"Fine. I'll leave." Khadahr moved as if to step back through the wormhole.

"No, wait. Fine, she stays." Carl lifted his hands in surrender.

"Alright, can we get back to the matter at hand?" General Connolly argued reasonably. "You will allow us to explore your planet in exchange for women?"

"Sa," Khadahr nodded.

"What are you going to do to the women?" Carl demanded.

"One will be mated to me, the rest to my warriors," Khadahr stated as if that was the obvious conclusion, and I felt as if I had been doused with cold water. Why, I didn't know. Part of me wanted to be one of the women, be his woman—as irrational as it sounded. Another part was repulsed by the idea. Khadahr had confessed to keeping humans as prisoners and even killing some, which I should probably have mentioned, but a flicker in his eyes when they moved over me held me back. I didn't owe this alien any loyalty, but strangely, I felt as if I did.

The senator laughed callously. "No woman in her right mind would do that."

The rest of Carl's group made approving sounds and nodded .

"Hmm, I wouldn't be too sure," a female voice sounded, and everybody turned into her direction. She looked to be in her early thirties. A sticker on her blouse called her out as Cally Hunter, reporter.

"Would you volunteer, Miss Hunter?" the general challenged.

Cally's gaze moved over Khadahr, and irritation ran through my body. How dare she assess him like a bull up for auction? She didn't have the—

"I might," Cally replied in a honeyed voice that made my teeth hurt and stopped my thoughts.

"How about you, Miss Perez?" Carl asked me.

I nodded. "I always wanted to be one of the first settlers on—"

"So you see?" Carl interrupted me, glaring at the senator.

"We are not seriously discussing this right now; are we?" General Connolly thundered.

"These are my conditions. You have one month. My warriors and I will be waiting for the females and a team of explorers. We will welcome both sets of people and show my planet to them. At the end of the trip, the women who want to stay will be able to. The rest and the researchers will be returned to you." Khadahr turned to the wormhole.

"Wait, how many women are we talking about? Ten, fifty? A hundred?" Carl demanded.

"Don't be absurd. This will never fly," the senator tsked.

"Let's say twenty for now. We will renegotiate in a year, after we see how this goes," Khadahr said, proving he had thought this through .

"Hold on just one moment. You can't seriously expect us to hand you twenty women for… for mating?" the general asked, stepping forward as if he was about to physically hold Khadahr back.

Khadahr stopped by the portal, ignoring the general, his attention directed at me. "Are you nursing?"

It took me a second to realize he was asking me if I had a baby. I nearly snarled, N o , my tits are just huge , but instead I numbly shook my head, lowering it so nobody would see my blush.

"Do you have a mate?"

His second question was a bit easier but just as unnerving. "No."

"Bring her," he said before he stepped through to the other side of the portal, where we lost sight of him when he walked to the right and out of our field of vision.

It seemed that not only had I lost my ever-loving marbles, but also so had thousands of women all around the globe once the news broke of Khadahr's trade agreement . The sneaky reporter had shot a picture of Khadahr, and it was making its rounds all over the media. The original post had over 2 billion likes and hate emojis, a new record according to some social network guru .

Khadahr was hot. And exotic. And enough women had read alien romance novels and were falling all over themselves to be chosen.

Thankfully, I had nobody who argued with me, nobody who told me I was making a mistake, nobody who insisted I change my mind. Well, at least, not in reality. On social media, it was a different issue.

I opened one social media profile years ago at a weak moment, which I had nearly never checked. One! It was now flooded with thousands of messages. Marry me instead. Don't go. Stupid bitch. God will punish you . Those were only a few of a wide variety of messages I received. I would have deleted the app, but suddenly, I was addicted to more information on Vandruk and Khadahr. Nothing new popped up, of course, but what we already knew was regurgitated again and again, and I couldn't stop reading.

Carl Weidenhof's company not only gave me paid time off, but they even sprang for a fifty thousand dollar bonus to buy whatever I thought I would need for my trip—as if I were going to Disneyland and not to another planet.

Suddenly, I was the spokesperson for ICs. I was paraded around like some kind of heroine, the first to talk to the alien, the one who activated the wormhole for the alien to come through.

Who would have thought that the lab was filled with security cameras? Recording my entire visit with Khadahr as well as me pushing the little deactivate button.

I received death threats .

Even if I had wanted to stay on Earth, my sudden notoriety would have never allowed me to do so. There were honest-to-God people out there trying to kill me, who hated me, who called me the destroyer of mankind. I would never be safe, and IC only provided security because I was their spokeswoman now.

I was certain, should I have changed my mind, I would have found myself not only out on the streets but alone with a frozen bank account. Not that I was about to change my mind. I was too excited for it.

Even without Khadahr, this was what I had always dreamed about. That Khadahr intrigued me was just one more cherry on top of the big fat ice cream sundae I was being served.

The other women were selected based on age, physical fitness, and an extensive psychological assessment. After all that, over a thousand women, coming from all over the world, remained. A lottery was the only fair way to select the women from the remaining pool.

Most governments protested against this, but since IC was a private company there wasn't much the governments could do to stop them from selecting volunteer women and preparing them.

Lawsuits were filed, but they would take months, maybe years. In the meantime, we were ready to leave in a few days.

Those days moved by quickly as the twenty of us were paraded around, taken to talk shows, and interviewed on and off camera. My questionable celebrity status was exactly what I always thought it would be—annoying, cumbersome, and a pain in the ass .

Most of the other women seemed to enjoy it, though, making me wonder how they had managed to pass the psychological exam. Then again, it probably wasn't their IQ they had been selected for because each one of the women was drop-dead gorgeous. As in, each one could have been Miss Universe.

Naturally, I didn't make many friends with them.

It started on the day we were formally introduced to one another. One requirement for the women was that they speak flawless English since that appeared to be the language the aliens understood.

Sandra, a pretty girl from Italy, approached me. "You are the one who spoke to the alien, right?"

I was in the middle of selecting between a large variety of cream cheeses for my bagel and only gave her half of my attention. "Yes."

"Is he really that gorgeous in real life?" she gushed.

That made me turn and look her up and down. She was undoubtedly beautiful, with large soulful eyes that might have even been kind. From the little of what I understood about social hierarchy and queen bees, I later told myself I could have been the queen bee. I was, after all, the girl who talked to the alien , but I didn't like the question Sandra asked or the glimmer in her eyes as if she was already married to Khadahr. Of all the questions she should have been interested in, it was his looks, not if he had been nice, if he seemed smart, if I thought he was dangerous. No, she wanted to know if he was gorgeous .

Airhead .

"Why do you want to know that?" I retorted, mincing neither my words nor my tone.

She looked a bit taken aback. "Well, because… it's important."

"Shouldn't it be important to know if he looked like a dangerous barbarian? If he had clawed feet, or if he seemed intelligent?"

Laughter behind me made me turn. The other girl, I thought her name was Erika, grinned. "Who cares about that? More importantly, do you think the other guys are gonna look as hot as him?"

"As hot as him?" I repeated, dumbfounded.

"You girls seriously came here because the Vandruk looks hot?" I raised my arms in frustration.

"What's a Vandruk?" came from a blonde whose name I had already forgotten—Alexa, Alexis, Alex, something.

"What's a Vandruk?" It seemed it was my day for repeating myself. "Seriously?"

"Oh, come on. Like you're not here because he's hot," Sandra scoffed.

"She's here cause she's a putzfrau ," Erika, a German woman, snickered.

"A what?" Sandra repeated.

"A cleaning woman," Erika supplied, and they all broke out into the mean-girl laughter I was used to.

"Whatever." I gave up, grabbed my bagel and one of the many glass bowls offering cream cheese, and retreated from the group of airheads to find myself a chair.

"Don't mind them. They never left high school." Kenley plopped down beside me .

Of all the other girls, she seemed more down to Earth. She was as beautiful as the others with her blonde hair and brown eyes. She was also from the States, North Carolina if I wasn't mistaken.

"Going to live on an alien planet should be taken a bit more seriously," I muttered.

"You're absolutely right." She nodded. She had brought her own bagel and was now helping herself to the cream cheese I had placed on the table. "Have you studied any… survival training skills?"

"A bit," I admitted. "I've wanted to go to Vandruk since I was a teenager," I confided, unsure why.

"Oh, how cool. The whole project has always fascinated me, too."

"Really?" I checked her long, manicured nails and her carefully braided hair. I reminded myself that looks could be deceiving and told my little alarm bells going off to pipe down.

"I know; I know." She clicked her coffin-shaped nails against the table. "Appearances are important."

Her point rang true with me. Although, I would have been caught dead before I would do anything like that. But this was supposed to be a fresh start. A new life. I couldn't keep doing, thinking, and saying the same things that had alienated me from others since I was able to talk.

"Point taken." I grinned at her.

"Good." She bit into her bagel. "Ugh, is that garlic cream cheese?"

"I don't know. I just grabbed one." I took a bite and made a face. "I guess so."

We were housed inside Interplanetary Communications' headquarters. Four women to a room and rotated each night to get to know each other better . Every night, I was peppered with the same questions posed by different lips.

Do all the barbarians look like him?

What did he say to you?

Why do they want women? This one came from Kenley, and compared to the other questions, was actually valid.

How long were you alone with him?

Did you do it with him?

Are his muscles real?

What do you think Vandruk will be like?

This last question caught my attention, enough to give the woman a closer look. Reddish-blonde hair had been woven into an understated side braid. Her pajamas were sensible cotton, very unlike the baby-doll night attire most of the others favored.

"From the pictures, I think it'll be a mild to warm climate. The plants look exotic—" I started.

"Duh, it's an alien planet." One of the other women rolled her eyes, but the redhead gave me an encouraging nod.

"I don't think there will be any electricity."

Another head shot up, Noelle from France. "What? Why?"

"For one, because everything metallic dissolves on the surface," the redhead said, impressing me further.

Her words caused a heavy discussion about life without coffee and what to do without curling irons. With a huff, I turned to my bed. The redhead stood by the door, shouting her name over the uproar, "Carol."

For a moment, I thought she wanted me to get out of here with her, but I was such a klutz when it came to social clues that I stayed and instead pulled a pillow over my head. The next night wasn't any better, and this time, there wasn't a Carol around to save me or commiserate with. The questions kept coming until I pretended to have fallen asleep after running out of polite replies. Yes, polite. I tried to be, honestly. But when Sandra wanted to know if I thought the barbarians would mount a woman like Khal Drogo first did in Game of Thrones , I ran out of polite replies and hissed, H ow the fuck would I know ? That ended that particular conversation, and my answer only served to alienate Sandra even further.

The night before we left was the longest night of my life. Again and again, I packed and unpacked my bag, counted the contents, and checked that everything I thought I would need was there. I racked my brain to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything. Even when I lay in bed later, my mind didn't stop analyzing the things I was planning on taking and other things I might need.

I had years to dream of this moment, years to prepare and plan what I would take and need. And now that the time had finally come, I second-guessed every one of my choices.

The next morning, I looked curiously around the room where fifty-four people were assembled. Twenty women, thirty guards in the employ of Interplanetary Communications, and four scientists—three men and one woman—would make up the expedition group. The scientists stood a bit aside as if unwilling to mingle with us, and I caught more than one derisive stare from their group directed at us women.

Careful buster, if it weren't for us, you wouldn't be here , my mind snarled at the one man who glared the most. The new Gwyn didn't say it out loud, though, like the old one would have. It wasn't only because I wanted to make friends. I may judge others harshly, but I judged myself harder. I wasn't sure if my little comment stemmed from being fed up with his hostile glares or if part of me was envious because he was freer to do what he wanted than I .

I wasn't entirely sure what my role would be, but I wasn't an idiot either. A long time ago, I had sworn I would do anything to be able to explore Vandruk or Hope One as I had known it back then. That hadn't changed. I was still willing to do anything. That didn't mean that I wouldn't have liked the idea of being an explorer more than possibly a broodmare or whatever Khadahr had in mind for us.