Page 12 of Married to the Alien Mountain Man (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #5)

12

JAYA

M agnolia was an excellent and most enthusiastic tour guide. She lent me a hat like hers and showed me around both her property and Oaken’s. As we walked through grass and gates, she pointed out the massive herd animals with antlers called bracku; the four-legged, short-tailed riding mounts called shuldu; and one very cute pink thing that looked like an Old-Earth baby goat.

“That’s Nali,” Magnolia said, rising up on her toes to peer over the fence of the pink creature’s enclosure. “She’s a gortu.”

“She’s the only one?” I asked, surprised to see that she was all alone in her little area. Oaken and Garrek had multiples of their other animals.

“She’s an orphan,” Magnolia said, resting her chin on the fence. “Oaken found her alone in the mountains. Her mom didn’t make it.”

“Does Oaken take home every stray he finds out there in the mountains?” I asked no one in particular, shaking my head. “First Nali. Now me.”

Magnolia laughed.

“Well, hopefully you won’t require as much work as this one did,” she said. “Oaken had to bottle-feed her around the clock for weeks. He’s the one who dragged all these boulders into her enclosure, too. To encourage her to climb and jump like a mountain gortu is supposed to.”

“He dragged these back here?” I asked, my eyes practically bugging out of my head. Some of the rocks in here were absolutely gigantic!

“Dragged is the wrong word,” Magnolia said. “He actually carried them on his back.”

“Didn’t he, like, just break his foot?” I asked, unhappy about the thought of Oaken limping around under five-hundred-pounds of Zabrian Prinar One rock with an injured ankle. Over lunch, Magnolia had filled me in on her time here, which included the story about how Oaken’s injury had prevented him from coming to marry her when she’d first arrived.

“It’s been a few months since then,” she said. “But I think it’s still causing him some pain. He was out in the mountains when it first broke, and I think he probably did more damage to it trying to get back here before he could properly heal.”

I frowned. Unfortunately, I only had a WoundKnit 8300, not the larger and more expensive BoneKnit 8500. And since it had been a while since the initial injury, I wasn’t sure that a BoneKnit 8500 would do Oaken any good now anyway.

“Well, he needs to stop carrying boulders around, then,” I muttered.

“I know,” Magnolia said. She reached down over the fence, and Nali excitedly bumped her head against her fingers. “I’ve given him some exercises that might be helpful, and they certainly didn’t include any boulder redecorating. But I just don’t think he can help it. It’s simply in his nature to put others before himself. He’s got more heart than sense, that one.”

Magnolia pulled her hand from Nali’s enclosure.

“And don’t think I’m insulting his intelligence, either,” she added quickly. “He’s a bright guy. He loves to read.”

“He loves to read?” I wasn’t exactly sure why I was surprised by that, but I was. I just couldn’t picture some big, brawny alien mountain man being the literary sort. But then again, I wouldn’t have pictured him carefully bottle-feeding a pink alien goat, either.

My new husband was full of surprises.

After the outdoor portion of our tour, Magnolia took me into Oaken’s house. At first, I didn’t want to go in when he wasn’t there, but Magnolia shrugged off my concerns.

“You’re married,” she said. “Which means this is your house now, too.”

I nodded, even though I didn’t really agree with her. My home was currently out of commission in the mountains. But either way, I went in with her. This would be a good time to have a look around without Oaken. Make sure there weren’t any alien skeletons in his closet.

Of course, there weren’t. The closets were cozily piled with blankets and quilts, as was the bed in the only bedroom in the small cabin-style home. The kitchen was clean and homey, with a large wood-burning oven, as well as pots, pans, plates, and a door that led down to a large cold cellar below ground.

Magnolia pointed out the outhouse, which I made grateful use of, and since it was getting close to evening, she helped me get familiar with the ingredients in Oaken’s cellar. I hadn’t exactly signed on to cook Oaken’s meals, but I figured after the guy had literally married me to help me out today, it was the least I could do.

Magnolia had just put me to work peeling some kind of Zabrian Prinar One root vegetable when a voice I wasn’t familiar with called in from outside.

“Magnolia? Garrek sent me to find you. Are you here?”

The door opened, and in came…

A kid.

Like, an actual little Zabrian kiddo. He was about as tall as Magnolia, but compared to Oaken and Warden Tenn, it was obvious he was a child.

A child. In a penal colony for convicted murderers.

But then I remembered what the warden had said. That Oaken had been convicted and brought here when he was a kid.

Which meant…

This little dude had probably killed somebody.

He was scrawny and shirtless, with a mop of bright white hair to match eyes the same white colour as Oaken’s. They glowed when they landed on me. Then narrowed with in a dramatically suspicious expression that would have been hilarious if not for the whole he’s-a-killer thing.

“Who are you?” he asked. Instantly, he hurled himself between Magnolia and me. It only took me a moment to realize why. I glanced down at the knife I was using to peel the veggies.

He would have used his skinny, teal-skinned body as a shield for Magnolia. Without hesitation, without knowing who I was or what I wanted, he’d seen me with a weapon and had thrown himself into what could have been harm’s way.

It brought back a memory from earlier today. When the warden had drawn his weapon…

And Oaken had immediately stepped in front of it to block me from a blast.

“Killian,” Magnolia admonished, “we don’t greet guests that way! Would you move, please?”

Killian didn’t move. I felt myself softening towards the kiddo, even as he bared some alarmingly sharp fangs at me. Maybe he killed someone while trying to protect someone else…

Slowly, making sure he could see every one of my movements, I put down the knife.

“I’m Jaya,” I said, wiping my hands on a small towel. “I… Well, I’m Oaken’s wife, I guess.”

A fluttering feeling tickled the inside of my chest when I said it. Oaken’s wife.

Killian’s affronted gasp was so loud I almost wondered if Magnolia had gotten a hold of his tail and yanked it or something.

“Oaken got married?!” he cried, his gaze swinging wildly between Magnolia and me. “And I was not invited?! ”

“Sorry, Killian,” Magnolia said soothingly. “It all happened very quickly. And it’s just a temporary situation, anyway. Jaya needs permission to be here while she fixes her ship, and Oaken volunteered to help her out.” She patted Killian’s shoulder kindly and added, “Don’t worry. You’ll be there for Oaken’s real wedding.”

His real wedding. The light, fluttery feeling in my chest turned to lead.

There was nothing incorrect about what Magnolia had just said. Nothing at all.

I wasn’t his real wife. That hadn’t been a real wedding.

His real wedding, with the wife he would love for the rest of his life, would come after I was long gone.

But for some reason, this wasn’t as comforting a notion as it should have been.

It didn’t seem to comfort Killian, either.

“I cannot believe I was not at the wedding!” he moaned, throwing himself into a nearby chair, apparently no longer worried that I was going to shank his beloved Magnolia with a kitchen paring knife. “I should have been the tablet holder!”

“That was his job at our wedding,” Magnolia explained to me before speaking to Killian once more. “Well, the warden was here for the wedding in person, sweet pea. He and Tasha left after the ceremony. So we didn’t actually need a tablet holder this time…”

Killian groaned and sprawled dramatically against the back of his chair, clearly far too depressed to continue engaging his core enough to sit up.

I felt bad this weird little guy was sad about missing our wedding, as fake as it might have been. I knew next to nothing about entertaining or comforting children, but there had to be something I could do to make him feel better…

Lala, like she so often was, was already one step ahead of me. She wriggled her way out of my pocket, crawled down my leg, then settled on the floor near Killian’s feet.

“I have images of the wedding,” she said. At the unexpected sound of her voice, Killian leaped right out of the chair. He landed in a clumsy crouch on the ground, leaning down to stare at Lala.

“What is that?” he asked, his eyes huge in his face. Using the tip of his tail, he went to give Lala an experimental poke, but she batted his tail away with one of her spindles.

“That’s my first mate,” I told him. “She’s kind of a part of the ship, but also kind of not.”

“That makes no sense,” he said imperiously.

“I was not designed to make sense to Zabrian children,” Lala retorted, her somewhat sharp words cushioned by the smooth, friendly tone her voice had been programmed with. “I was, however, designed with the capability to capture images. If you would like to see them, I suggest you quiet down and pay attention.”

“Damn,” Magnolia whispered when Killian actually hunkered down and shut up.

“I know,” I whispered back. “She even tells me what to do. That bossy bot was basically the only thing that got me through the death of my aunty.”

Lala had extensive information about human psychology programmed into her files. She knew about grief, and in her own way, she kind of understood it. She had been Aunt Anjali’s before she’d been mine.

But she’d never let me succumb to my grief. She’d needled me endlessly until I showered, ate, and generally became a functioning person again.

Magnolia watched me with questioning eyes, as if she wanted to hear more about Lala and my aunty. But the curved surface of Lala’s back was glowing now, pulling my attention to the screen lit up with the image of Oaken and me kissing.

My skin felt feverish as I took in the kiss scene from this new angle. We looked like…

We looked like a real couple, locked in a real embrace. Oaken’s big body was sealed to mine, his hands possessively capturing my jaw and my hip. And my head was tipped back for him, as if I was desperate to submit to his touch, his kiss.

Gulp.

“I’m not sure this is appropriate for children,” I stammered, my heart beating far too hard. “Lala, go to the next picture!”

Instantly, the picture changed. I had shifted. My torso was now twisted towards Lala, my face pulled into an unflattering grimace as I scowled into the camera.

But Oaken…

He was still staring at me. While I’d been distracted by Lala’s camera, berating her to cut it out, he’d just been looking at me the entire time.

“I thought you said this was not a real wedding,” Killian said, glaring up at Magnolia and me.

“What are you talking about, sweet pea?” Magnolia asked.

Killian jumped to his feet and pointed an accusing little finger down at Lala’s back.

“He is looking at her the way that Garrek looks at you!” he growled. “His eyes are white! And his eyes are never white!”

“What do you mean, they’re never white?” I asked in confusion. “That’s… That’s literally the colour they are. Just like yours.”

“My eyes are not white,” Killian cried, sounding very offended for a boy whose eyes were… well… white. “They are brown, like Magnolia’s! With some lighter gold in the middle!”

“Oh. Alright. Well, that’s… nice,” I said awkwardly. I wasn’t really sure what to say in the face of the kid’s delusion. I decided it was probably better not to correct him, because being wrong about his own eye colour seemed very important to him for some reason.

But Magnolia only confused me further when she said, “He’s right. No Zabrian actually has white eyes.”

“Exactly!” Killian said, his white eyes indignant.

“I…” I quieted my voice, only speaking to Magnolia. “I feel like I’m being gaslit right now.”

Magnolia chuckled. “I know. It’s a lot. Has Tasha sent you her notes yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Here. Take out your comms tablet,” she said. “I’ll add you to the group chat.”