Page 16 of Rescued by the Alien Bull Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #6)

ZOHRO

W hen I returned to the house, night had fallen. I found the bedding I’d begun to launder earlier flapping on the clothesline, along with Jolene’s wet clothes. I did not know if that was a good thing or not.

I entered the house.

There was evidence Jolene had found the cellar and eaten – a few crumbs scattered on the table and a plate abandoned in the sink – but the room was dark and empty.

Panic filled me so quickly it was nearly surreal. Could she have left me already?

Where could she have gone? She was alone. Slow, pregnant, vulnerable. Surely she would not have gone beyond the fencing. Would she?

Why the blazes had I left her here!

A sound startled me from my spiralling thoughts. A little snort, then an exhale, coming from the bedroom. I ran to it, then stopped in the open doorway.

There she lay. On her left side for once, thank the empire. Her small body was curled beneath the thick jacket she’d worn last night.

The shirt I’d given her – the shirt I would have worn to our wedding – was neatly folded atop the bedside table. She wasn’t wearing it anymore.

It felt like a message.

It felt like a goodbye.

And that made me so terribly angry. A pathetic, poisonous part of me wanted to roughly wake her, shake her by the shoulders, ask her things like, “Am I not at least as worthy as Fallon? As Garrek? As Silar? As idiotic Oaken, who broke his own blasted foot in pursuit of a woman?”

Maybe I was not as nauseatingly cheerful as Fallon, and maybe I had not broken a foot like Oaken, but I had bled for her. And I knew I would bleed more, the very moment that she needed me to.

Selfishly, I wanted to demand things of her. Demand her attention, her time. Demand that she give me a chance. A fair shot. As if I would not waste such a chance the same way I’d wasted the rest of my life.

I had no idea how to prove myself to her. And if she had already made up her mind, taken off my shirt and folded it away so that it would be all the faster to leave me when she woke, then so be it.

She might as well take the shirt with her.

Because I knew, as I watched her sleeping in the dark, that if I did not have a wedding with her, then I would not have one at all.

Petulant, maybe. Stubborn? Absolutely.

But that was how I felt. One day with her smiles – and the agony of her human tears – and I was ruined for all others.

It was infuriating.

And surprising, really. How easily I’d just lain back and let her do it.

I watched her for some time, telling myself it was to make sure she didn’t roll onto her back, but really, it was simply because I wanted to. Because if this was the last night she spent in my house, I didn’t want to miss a moment of it.

But the end came all too soon. My ears pricked at the sound of a slicer’s engines. Distant, but getting closer. When the rumble of the vehicle was very near my property, Jolene stirred. With her waking now, I lit a candle by the bed, sending warmth rushing over her skin and hair.

“Zohro?” she croaked. She rubbed her eyes with sleepy fists. When she let her hands fall, her eyes looked red and swollen.

I lurched forward. Red could be a sign of inflammation. Had she encountered another irritant in the environment? Maybe the dust was bothering her?

“Do your eyes hurt?” I asked her, crouching down beside the bed as she got herself laboriously up into a seated position. She swung her bare feet down over the side of the bed, her knees between my thighs.

“No. Ugh. Don’t look at them. They’re probably all ugly and red from crying.”

Ugly? An absurd adjective to choose. I would not assign it to any part of her.

But she felt she was. Because she’d been crying. Because of me .

I’d watched a man die by my own hand and I’d never before felt a regret quite like this one.

But what was I to say to her? “Sorry that I am a convicted murderer?” It was not something I had done to her. It was simply what I was. I had tried not to deceive her, did not hide it from her overly long. I’d handed her the truth. And had watched that truth crumple something in her.

“Where is the knife?” I asked her.

“Oh. I don’t know. Um…” She rubbed her eyes again then squinted uncertainly out the window. “I think I left it by the laundry tub.”

Well, that was something, at least. She did not feel the need to sleep with it beside her, fearing that I might come back and murder her in the bed.

The slicer engines suddenly cut, flooding the night with silence.

“What the heck was that sound?”

I stood.

“Come,” I said grimly. “The warden is here.”

Jolene padded behind me. We found Warden Tenn and his human wife, Tasha, already standing uninvited in my kitchen, lamp and candles lit.

“I see you’ve let yourself in,” I muttered.

“And I see you’ve got a guest,” Warden Tenn said, his orange eyes going beyond me, tracking Jolene’s movements as she came out from behind me and hurried to Tasha’s side.

I supposed it made sense she would gravitate to a fellow female of her own kind, especially one that had not been convicted for killing someone. But it still made me grind my fangs together.

“Found this on the ground outside,” Warden Tenn said lightly, but his eyes were keen and probing as he lifted up my knife.

“Oh. Sorry. That was my fault,” Jolene said. “Pregnancy brain.”

Tasha’s attention whipped to Jolene.

“It sounds like we have a lot to talk about,” the warden’s wife said. “Here. Why don’t you have a seat?” Tasha pulled out a chair for Jolene and gestured for her to sit. Jolene did so, and at the same moment the warden stepped between us, blocking my view of her while he handed me my knife.

“We’ll talk, too,” he said, staring me down. “Outside.”

Once I’d sheathed my knife, he walked to the door and opened it. I followed. The last thing I saw before I closed the door behind us was Jolene’s face. And her eyes, watching me leave.

“So,” Warden Tenn said once we were outside. “What happened to you?”

“Handed my knife to a human woman and got gutted,” I spat.

“Your guts look fine to me,” he mused, cocking his head slightly. The moon and starlight made his white hair shine. “I was talking about your chest and your hand.”

“Oh.” I’d nearly forgotten my own injuries. “I got between a bracku bull and Jolene.”

His white brows rose. “Willingly?”

“Of course, willingly! Why the blazes else would I be injured if I hadn’t jumped right into the fray? It was about to charge her!”

“Surprised you’re still standing.”

“Well, technically I did not get between them,” I amended. “I jumped from Wyn onto its back. Its antlers caught me as I roped it. And my palm got all torn up.”

“You jumped on a charging bull’s back?” he asked incredulously. I found his disbelief both highly offensive and understandable. A raging bracku bull was not something to be trifled with, let alone attempted to be ridden like an obedient shuldu.

“Yes, I did,” I asserted, eyes narrowing. “I had no other choice. It was a tenth of a span from her. I had to act.”

“Because she’s your fiancée?”

“No. She wasn’t my fiancée then.”

And she isn’t now, either…

“She was a stranger to you.”

“Yes.”

Warden Tenn studied me, then smiled.

“That’s twice now, Zohro, that you’ve gone and saved someone out of the goodness of your heart.”

“I didn’t save you out of the goodness of my heart,” I snapped.

“It is merely that I find you mostly tolerable. And if you’d died after that blasted beam fell on your head, then they would have replaced you with someone else.

And I have no interest in getting used to some idiotic new warden when I am already used to you. ”

Warden Tenn snorted.

“Charming, Zohro. Truly. Is this how you won Jolene’s affections and got her to agree to be your bride?

” He added an unflattering hiss to his voice in an apparent imitation of me.

“I couldn’t let you get gored by a bracku, Jolene, because then I’d have to find some other idiotic human woman to marry. ”

“No,” I said sharply. “I won’t find some other human woman to marry. When Jolene leaves, I will withdraw from the bridal program.”

Warden Tenn’s eyebrows stitched together, then shot up.

“I see,” he said. “And who told you she is leaving?”

I opened my mouth to say, She did.

But she hadn’t. Not yet, anyway.

“Well, she will,” I said. “I told her about my conviction, and…”

“And?”

“And she cried.”

Warden Tenn made a sympathetically pained face. As if he, too, was intimately familiar with the helpless torment of watching a human woman cry and not knowing what the blazes to do about it.

“Well, I suppose things can only improve from here.”

“Improve?” I asked him flatly. I did not see how my life would be improved when she was gone.

“Sometimes they just need a good cry,” Warden Tenn said with a nonchalant flick of his tail. “And some sleep. Did you offer her a snack? That helps, too. Or, you can offer to let them hit you. You just have to make sure they don’t hurt their knuckles in the process.”

“I gave her my own blasted knife and told her to use it on me!” I exclaimed. “She did not seem to want to.”

Warden Tenn looked ridiculously pleased by this.

“That must be a good sign!” he said jovially. “Zohro, I owe you my life. You are one of the most competent men I’ve ever met, both when it comes to medicine and how you run your ranch. But I must also tell you that you are infinitely irritating. Very stab-able.”

“Excuse me?”

“The fact that Jolene didn’t stab you when given the chance must mean that she already likes you more than most!” He grinned widely and slapped me on the back. “And if she was willing to marry you once, she may yet be convinced again.”

“She’s pregnant and due to give birth soon,” I hissed, slapping his hand away.

“This isn’t a question of simply making her like me more.

She’s prioritizing her child’s safety.” I thought of her bag.

So lovingly packed for her baby and empty of things for herself.

“She would do anything for her daughter.”

“Hmm.” He drummed his claws upon his big, purple chin. “I suppose you must show her how caring you can be. Have you tried making her some jambrewskies?”

“Making her some what ?”

“Jamgiggities.”

“I have absolutely no idea what you’re saying.”

“Clothes they sleep in! You must know the sort. Jamburritos.” He shook his head, as if disappointed in me. “I really thought you’d know what human jamchiladas were by now.”

“Warden Tenn, I must advise you that, in my professional opinion, you’re probably having a stroke.”

He did not appear alarmed.

“It’s a human word. Don’t blame me. It’s not as if I came up with a word as ridiculous as jamdildos.”

“Jam…dildos…”

“Look,” he said, a conspiratorial gleam coming into his eyes. “I have come prepared.” He led the way to his slicer. From inside the storage compartment, he pulled out wads of shiny, slippery-looking fabric. “This is perfect for jamdildos.”

I eyed the fabric doubtfully. “I don’t know what jamdildos look like.”

“It’s just clothing, but softer. Breathable. Something soothing on their delicate human skin…”

Warden Tenn’s eyes burned briefly white as he gazed longingly at the house.

“Give me that!” I snatched the fabric from his hands. “Stop getting all white-eyed thinking of your wife’s jamdildos!”

“I wasn’t,” he insisted.

“You were!”

“I was thinking of my wife without her jamdildos.”

Empire help me.

“I’m sure Tasha is helping to calm her now,” Warden Tenn said. “Communication is very important between human females. Some days, Tasha spends nigh-on half the day in the group chat.”

“What the blazes is a group chat?”

“It’s on her data tab. It’s just a simple messaging program, but all the human women on Zabria Prinar One are included in it. They send messages back and forth to each other.”

“Sounds insufferable.”

“Tasha seems to like it. She’s always laughing about whatever goes on in there. It’s all very mysterious.” He waved his tail towards the house. “So we’ll give them some privacy. And some time to talk.”

“How much time?” I grumbled, clutching the absurdly thin fabric.

“As much as it takes.” His gaze fell to my hands, and his grin returned. “In the meantime, you can get to work on Jolene’s jamdildos.”