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“There is no way she’d agree to marry someone here,” Warden Tenn said with a dismissive snap of his tail. “She said herself her only intention is to leave. Besides, I could not ask any of the unmarried men to do such a thing. It would be colossally unfair to have one of them marry a bride who does not intend to stay.”

“You don’t need to ask anyone else to do it,” I answered instantly. “In fact, please do not.”

The idea of Zohro or one of the men in another province marrying this beautiful, stranded pilot did not sit right with me. Even Magnolia choosing Garrek over me had not inspired this sort of frantic jealousy.

I could not deny it.

If the lovely pilot was going to marry any man, even if only for a short time…

I wanted it to be me.

“Oaken…”

“I volunteer!”

“You don’t count,” the warden grumbled. “You’re probably concussed.”

“I am not concussed! And I do count.” I met Warden Tenn’s gaze steadily, though I knew mine had gone bright white. Desire tightened in my belly like hunger. “It could work, Warden. The new marriage trial period is two human weeks – fourteen days. That is precisely how long she requires to fix her ship! She could remain with me during that time. And if she chooses to leave after the trial period, I do not see how that is any different than any other human bride being allowed to do the same thing.”

“It’s very different, and you know it,” Warden Tenn shot back. “Yes, every human bride is free to leave, no questions asked, after the trial period of fourteen days. But that’s only assuming she has entered into the arrangement with the intention of actually being married. You’re proposing a sham marriage – that we already know will end after the trial period – simply so that she can be allowed to stay here with her ship.”

“Does it matter?” I asked. “If we both consent to the arrangement?”

Warden Tenn hesitated. In that moment of quiet, the pilot warily called over, “What are you two talking about?”

“Trust me,” the warden grunted, “you don’t want to know.”

“Please, Warden.” Empire help me, I was pleading. “Perhaps this could be good for me, too. It could give me some practice living with a human wife, so that I may be more prepared when my real wife shows up.”

If she shows up…

“Have you stopped to consider, Oaken,” the warden said, seriously but not unkindly, “that this may actually hurt your chances at getting a future bride?”

My shoulders stiffened.

“What do you mean?”

Warden Tenn rubbed his jaw, then breathed out.

“It will already be more difficult than before to convince human women to give you lot a shot now that they will be aware of your status as convicts,” he explained. “Have you considered that, while you are perhaps the only male here who is not actually a murderer, you are also the only male who now will have been rejected not just by one, but bytwohuman brides?”

I had not considered this. But the warden had a point. I was already convicted of murder even if I’d never actually killed a man. And now, I would have been abandoned by two human women, even if Magnolia never actually met me before she left me. None of the other males thus far had been rejected by their females, let alone by two in a row.

Any woman with half a brain in her head would wonder what was wrong with me.

It was risky. Probablytoorisky.

But there stood the pilot in the shadow of her broken ship. Looking so pretty and so vulnerable and so blastedangrythat she was helpless. Like it was an entirely foreign concept to her, something she’d never allowed herself before and hated experiencing now.

It made me want to do anything,everythingto help her. To show her that, even in this far-flung, foreign world of convicts, she had at least one person she could turn to. At least one man to rely on.

I could be that man.

“If my future bride would reject me for Magnolia choosing Garrek over me, and then for my next wife leaving after the trial marriage period, then she simply must not be the one for me,” I said. “I decided long ago I do not want someone who does not want me. I will simply wait for the one who does.”

Even as I spoke of some faceless future wife, my focus was solely on the pilot. Her hair, her skin, those guarded human eyes.

Warden Tenn followed my gaze, glancing at her. He rubbed his jaw again, harder this time.