Page 17 of Rescued by the Alien Bull Rider (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #6)

JOLENE

“ S o,” Tasha said, sitting across from me at the table. “How far along are you?”

Before I could answer, the corners of her mouth pulled down.

“Sorry,” she said, brushing a silky strand of blonde hair behind her ear.

“I hope that isn’t coming across as too intrusive or rude.

I’ll have lots of questions about you and your story outside of the pregnancy part.

But right now I really just want to nail down some of the most pressing issues here. ”

I nodded. I got that. She hadn’t been expecting to find a ready-to-pop pregnant lady sleeping in Zohro’s bed. She was probably just trying to make plans and navigate liabilities.

“My official due date is only a couple of weeks away.”

She took out a comms tablet and made a note on it. In that little gap of conversation, I checked in with Baby Girl, feeling her prod against my hands.

“When did you arrive here? And how?”

“Just last night,” I explained. “I hired a civilian shuttle to bring me here and he dropped me in a random field because of the no-landing rules.” I gave a mirthless laugh. “Guess I know why those rules are there now.”

“Yes. It is a planet of incarcerated men, it’s true,” Tasha said. “Not just anyone can come and go as they please, unfortunately.”

“Does that mean… I won’t be allowed to stay here?”

Not that I was even sure I still wanted to, but…

Where else was I going to go?

“If you’re not married to one of the men here, then no,” Tasha said gently, her brown eyes kind but firm, “you will not be allowed to stay.”

“I just… I can’t believe he’s a murderer.” The word was bitter at the back of my throat. “He’s been good to me.”

Tasha smiled, and I thought I saw the sheen of tears in her eyes.

“He’s been good to me, too,” she said thickly. “He saved my husband’s life.”

“Really?”

“Yup.” She placed her chin atop her hand and looked out the window, as if looking into her own memories.

“There was a structural collapse in a shed on another man’s property.

A beam fell on Tenn. He was bleeding out, unconscious.

” She brushed a tear away. “I’d never been that scared in my entire life.

” Suddenly, she grinned. “But then there came Zohro, like a grumpy pink superhero, swaggering onto the scene and shouting orders at everyone.”

I laughed, but this time it was real.

“Yeah,” I said, smirking, “that certainly sounds like him. I’ve had my fair share of experience with Zohro’s bossiness already.”

“I think,” Tasha murmured, “that he gets bossy when it comes to those he cares about. Not that he’d probably want to admit it.”

“Maybe,” I replied noncommittally. But when I thought of all the times he’d been the most crabby and ordering me around…

They were all times when I was in danger, or he was worried about me getting hurt.

“Look, I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Tasha said. “If you want to go, we’ll get you on the first shuttle out of here. And if you don’t have somewhere to go, I can try to get you connected with some social services on Elora Station.”

“Like… Like a shelter?”

“Potentially, yes.”

I tried to imagine having Baby Girl in a shelter, on a space station I’d never been to before, with no family, no money, no friends. And it just felt so fucking bleak . It was a completely different sensation to my excitement about coming to this planet.

“But before you make any decisions,” Tasha went on, “I’d love if you’d let me tell you a little about how things work around here. And maybe we can go from there?” She held out her hand, and her smile was so warm. “OK?”

After a second, I took her hand. “OK.”

I sat and listened as Tasha told me about Zohro and the other men here.

How they’d all been convicted for their crimes in childhood and cut off from everything they’d known immediately afterward.

How they raised cattle for the empire and were compensated for the beef they sold.

How they were allowed quite a bit of freedom on the planet, including the new bride program, but that they could never leave.

And she told me about the other couples. How successful the marriages had been so far, despite a few hiccups in the beginning.

“But you know what?” she said. “It’s easier for me to let them tell you that.

Oh, I could go on and on about how amazing my marriage is to Tenn.

But he isn’t one of the convicts. And I have a feeling that’s what you’d really like to know.

” She poked at her comms tablet’s screen. “Time to call the group chat.”

“Group chat?”

“We’re all in it. All the human women who are here. Darcy renamed it Cock Tail Hour.”

“I hope I can still participate,” I said as Tasha propped up her tablet on the table so that we could both see the screen, “even if I’m not having any cocktails these days.”

“Oh, no!” she said, her cheeks turning pink. “Not that sort of cocktail!”

What other sort was there?

I didn’t get long to ponder that question, because a little square on the screen suddenly jumped into brightness. A stunningly beautiful human woman with green eyes and glossy pink hair gazed out at us.

The colour of her hair reminded me of Zohro’s skin. And, stupidly, it made me miss him.

“Hello, Darcy!” Tasha said.

“Hey. Oh. Hold on. Fallon wants to say something.” Suddenly, a broad, Zabrian face shoved in beside Darcy’s, baring sharp fangs in an enormously disarming grin.

“Hello, Tasha! My favourite writer of books!”

“You’re a writer?” I asked her.

She gave a small shake of her head. “Not really. I’ll explain later.”

“But of course, she is a writer!” Fallon scoffed. “She has written the most important text in all the world! That most fabulous manual on human females!”

“I don’t like the term manual, Fallon,” Tasha said primly.

“Yeah,” Darcy said, poking him. “I’m not a shuttle to be serviced.”

“But I am at your service,” Fallon said, looking at Darcy with a mixture of adoration and dejection.

“So, that’s her husband?” I said, leaning in to whisper to Tasha. “And he’s a murderer?”

“Yes and yes.”

Another square suddenly came into colour. A blue-eyed, brown-haired woman wearing a red scarf waved.

“Hey! Cherry’s in the house!” Darcy said with a whoop. “Now we’re just waiting on the mountain crew.”

“Mountain crew?” I asked Tasha.

“That’s Magnolia and Jaya,” Tasha explained.

It didn’t take long for them to answer the video call.

They must have been together, because they both popped up in the same square, obviously using the same device.

I recognized Magnolia at once from the photo at Sal’s.

The woman beside her, Jaya, had a slightly lighter brown skin tone and straight, thick hair with bluntly-cut bangs above her dark brows.

All of them were smiling. All of them looked… happy.

“Thanks for joining the call, everyone,” Tasha said. “I’d like to introduce you all to Jolene Macdonald.”

All eyes went to me. It kind of made me want to crawl under the table.

Perhaps sensing my sudden discomfort with all the attention, Tasha quietly said, “Do you want to explain what you’re doing here? Or should I?”

“No, no. I will,” I said. “Hi, everybody. Like Tasha said, I’m Jolene. Um. I’m twenty-three years old, I’m from Terratribe II, and I’m currently very, very pregnant.”

“Oh, snap,” Darcy muttered.

“Is that when you say that?” Fallon asked her. “Because last time I tried to use that human phrase, you told me that it was not appropriate!”

“That’s because you said, ‘Oh, snap,’ right after you gave me an orgasm, Fallon,” she answered flatly. “So, no, that was not appropriate.”

“Guys! Jolene’s trying to talk here!” Magnolia said.

“Sorry!” Darcy said. “Fallon, if you’re going to stay here on the call, you’re going to have to sit there and just be quiet for now.”

Wow. She really wasn’t scared of him at all. She seemed perfectly at ease telling him to sit down and shut up when he was being a nuisance.

“Apologies,” Fallon said sadly. “I seem to have shown my whole ass.”

“Oh my God!” Darcy cried, shooting him a harried look. “Stop trying to use human phrases! At least not in front of other people! We need to practise more!”

“I mean, he kind of did show his ass there,” Jaya murmured. Magnolia snorted, then nodded in agreement. Suddenly, a loud, young voice came screaming from their square. “I WANT TO SHOW MY BACKSIDE TOO!”

“Killian!” Magnolia said, twisting to address what looked to be a teal blur behind her. “Put some clothes on!”

A deep masculine voice suddenly said, “I’ve got him. Killian! Take those trousers off of your head immediately!”

“I CAN’T,” wailed the child. “FALLON SHOWED HIS AND NOW I MUST SHOW MINE TOO! STAND, FALLON, AND LET YOUR BACKSIDE BE JUDGED! BECAUSE MINE IS MUCH BETTER THAN HIS AND YOU ALL KNOW IT!”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Fallon murmured, frowning. “I think mine is quite good as well. Darcy seems to like it, and-”

“Jolene?”

In the chaos, it took me a second to figure out which square my name had come from. It was Cherry, looking at me with a patiently expectant expression, who had spoken. A Zabrian male with a golden complexion and shockingly bright teal hair had come to join her, sitting quietly at her side.

“Would you like to talk a little bit more about what’s going on?” Cherry asked.

“Where even are you guys right now?” Darcy asked, plopping herself down onto Fallon’s lap, as if that was how she was going to get him to listen quietly.

“We’re at Zohro’s,” I said.

“Wow,” Darcy said. “That dude actually got a bride, huh?”

“Oh, snap!” said Fallon excitedly. He looked to his wife, perhaps sensing some oncoming admonishment, but she merely smiled and said, “You know what? That was actually pretty good.”

“What is it?” I asked nervously. I pressed my thighs together. Did I have to pee? “Why is it so weird that Zohro got a bride?”

Was something wrong with him? Beyond the fact that he was a murderer, that is?

“Because he did not want one.” That was the male in Cherry’s square speaking now. Her husband, I could only assume. “He made a great show of telling Fallon and I what fools we were for agreeing so quickly to the bride program.”

“He didn’t want a wife?” I frowned. “But he said he’d marry me, like, immediately.”

Darcy gave me a knowing, feline sort of grin.

“Sounds like you must be something pretty darn special then, Jolene. Because Zohro is one prickly motherfucker, and I can’t see him wanting to marry just anyone.”

“Oh, no,” I said, spreading my fingers in the air as if to ward off her words. “I’m not special. Trust me. The only stuff I’m good at is, like, ranch stuff and horse stuff and getting pregnant without planning to, apparently.”

“Well, sounds like you’re special to Zohro,” Jaya said. “Trust me. These guys? They don’t do things by halves. And when they choose you? They really fucking choose you.”

Had Zohro actually chosen me? I hadn’t really stopped to consider why he’d said yes to my proposal when he could have simply waited for another not-so-pregnant lady to come along and be his wife instead.

Why me?

“The reason I called all of you this evening,” Tasha said, “is because Jolene arrived here via less than official channels. And, unfortunately, like some of the earlier brides in our program, she didn’t know about Zohro’s conviction until today.”

“He hid it from you,” Cherry said, as if it were a statement, not a question.

“No, actually,” I replied. “He told me almost right away. At least, the next morning after I arrived. Which was today. And now I just feel…”

“Scared shitless?” Darcy offered helpfully.

“I mean…”

“Well, if you don’t like the guy, and you’re truly scared of him, then maybe that’s that,” Magnolia said quietly.

“I don’t dislike him. And I’m not scared of him.”

I knew as soon as the words came out that they were true.

I didn’t feel scared of Zohro, especially after learning how young he’d been when he got convicted, and after all the times he’d helped me so far.

I just felt… Confused. I was so sure I’d been making the right choice by coming here. But now I had no fucking idea.

“He’s already helped me so much,” I said.

“He saved me the first night here – twice. He got really badly hurt getting a charging bull away from me. He made sure a genka didn’t eat me.

He basically lost his shit when I had a skin reaction to the grass, and he made me a really nice salve.

And he… He accepted me.” I looked down at the curve of my stomach. “All of me. When nobody else did.”

“Then maybe you could focus on what Zohro does in the present,” Magnolia said with an encouraging bob of her head, “instead of what he’s done in the past.”

“If there’s anything I’ve learned,” Cherry added, “it’s that everybody’s got a story. Maybe, when he’s ready, Zohro will share his with you.”

Silar didn’t look convinced, but I hoped she was right. If I were going to truly feel at ease here, I’d need to know who Zohro killed, and why.

“Besides,” Tasha said, “you can always back out after the trial period.”

“Trial period?” I hadn’t heard about that before.

“It used to be thirty days,” Tasha explained, “but we’ve shortened it to two weeks.

After two weeks of marriage, if a bride in the program wants to leave, the marriage is dissolved and her transportation off-world is fully paid-for.

If it would make you more comfortable, Warden Tenn and I could stay here for a few days.

He’s got the tent and some travel supplies in the storage compartment.

” She lowered her voice so the others couldn’t hear.

“And, even if you do choose to go after the trial period, I’d of course still be willing to get you connected to some social services on Elora Station after the two weeks are up. ”

So I could leave for a shelter on Elora Station tonight. Or I could leave in two weeks. Neither option was particularly appealing.

But there was a third option…

Complete the trial. And choose to stay.

Forever.

Whatever I ended up doing two weeks from now, I at least felt certain of one thing tonight.

I wasn’t ready to leave Zabria Prinar One – or Zohro – just yet.