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Tasha cleared her throat and blinked rapidly.

“Well,” she said. “I must say I’m satisfied with what I’m seeing here. Silar, you’re obviously doing a very good job providing for Cherry. And caring…” Her voice cracked. “Taking care of her.”

I breathed out.

It appeared that one of my men had passed Tasha’s test.

Only four to go.

“If we leave for Fallon’s property now,” I told Tasha, “we could be there before dark.”

“I’ll come with you! I love visiting them,” Cherry said excitedly.

“I will ready the shuldu,” Silar replied.

“Oh, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Cherry replied quickly. “I know you’ve lost a lot of time today already, and have chores to catch up on.”

Silar touched her face one final time and merely muttered, “Where you go, I go.”

And so it was that as afternoon bled out into evening, with Silar and I on shulduback and Cherry and Tasha in the wagon, we came upon Fallon and Darcy’s ranch.

6

TASHA

Seeing the sun set on Zabria Prinar One was strange for two reasons.

For one thing, it meant that the shuttle that had brought me here had officially departed, leaving me behind. I was trapped with an arrogant alien warden and his band of convicted but maybe (hopefully?) harmless murderers.

The second reason it was strange?

I’d never actually seen a sunset. Not like this, anyway. Not in person. Terratribe I was too dreary, and Elora Station didn’t orbit a sun that would create colour like what I was witnessing now. Fallon’s ranch was a rust-gold silhouette beneath a sky of orange and pink and purple the exact same shade as Warden Tenn’s hide.

As the warden and Silar pulled on their reins and eased their shuldu to a stop in front of Fallon and Darcy’s home, I jumped to my feet and rushed to the side of the wagon. I planned to jump out before Warden Tenn could come peacocking over here making stupid pronouncements about me breaking my butt.

I glanced at him, making sure he wasn’t approaching yet, and froze.

He was dismounting. And it was astoundingly, infuriatingly hot.

His broad back tensed. One thick, muscled thigh swung backwards to meet the other, and then his whole big body heaved itself down with a powerful masculine grace, landing heavily but not-at-all awkwardly in the dust.

And now I was fully staring at him. Great.

I gritted my teeth and focused on the dusty ground before me. I jumped, and other than the way I felt my boobs nearly bounce out of my bra, I didn’t manage to embarrass myself. I didn’t fall, at least. Even if, compared to Warden Tenn’s practised movement, I felt a bit like something clumsy and legless in comparison.

Like… a potato. A lumpy, knobby little root vegetable that somehow managed to get itself jostled out of its wagon. Potatoes were something people used to cart around on wagons, weren’t they?

Before I could pursue that comparison to its inevitably depressing conclusion, the warden sidled into my field of vision. He did not look impressed.

“Warden Tenn,” I asked him, squinting up at him as the sky shifted its colours, like a bird adjusting its wings, behind him, “do you know what a potato is?”

He cocked his head.

“It translates,” he said at length. “We have varietals of starchy root vegetables that grow here. Why?”

“No reason,” I said, waving his question away. I didn’t even know why I’d asked it. I certainly hadn’t asked in order to gear up for yet another question, which would have been,Do you like them?

I strode purposefully towards the door that led into Fallon and Darcy’s home. This building was larger than Silar’s, a long,ranch-style cabin made of solid wood. Despite my head start, Warden Tenn caught up in no time.