Page 2 of Saved By My Alien Husband

1

DELPHINE

Seven Days Left On Earth

G etting an education was pointless when you knew you were likely to die before you turned thirty-five. Pulling on my backpack, I walked out of the classroom that shared useless information simply for the sake of keeping the youth busy until they received their work placements. AKA, babysitting.

I turned twenty-three last week, which meant I was aging out of our boarding school—or holding cell, depending on how you looked at it—and going into the work system. Whoever decided that age was an asshole. How am I supposed to start my life now? I couldn't even feed myself properly.

Yet, my aptitude test was complete, my personality scan was that afternoon, and then it was just a waiting game. Within the next day or so, the Organization would decide if I fit in the savior class or serving class. My mandatory therapist, Selvill, would call me in to share the results.

Those who lived through Earth's volatile decades took on the responsibility of either saving the world or assisting those who did. The selection committee chose the saviors based on the supposed tests, but it was clear favoritism played a role. As did the revenge plots. If you weren't a savior, you were a server. They raised us with the belief that we were the last generation to survive Earth. Everyone had a part in that.

Especially perfect fucking Alexandra. She was right, of course, about being a savior. The memory of her dismissive statement, that she'd never bother being friends with a server, has stayed with me. Bitch.

Trying to fix the damage we'd done over a millennium was futile, but we had to occupy our time somehow. The probes sent to find a new home to inhabit, the supposed plan B, hundreds of years ago, never came back. Now we don’t have the tech to create new probes. Now we preoccupied ourselves with trying to make the world more habitable for longer.

Hence the boarding schools, training classes, and small housing units that surrounded the science labs. All were enclosed in a series of domes. One dome was specifically used for farming, while the other two served as housing units, space for those training classes, and science labs. Humans, some sheep, fish, and a few bird species were saved, but not much else survived. Those, and the cats. Few animals could handle the world we had to adapt to, but cats seemed to adapt to everything. They even had to create a system to make sure the cat population didn't grow too large for the existing habitat. There were some creepy mutated bears that ate everything and anything it could find, outside the dome, but we tried not to think about them.

It was said that the generation that lost the dogs was the saddest.

My upcoming personality scan worried me the most. Everyone knew that if you weren't a team player, a genius, or popular, you were likely to be assigned as a server. Other factors could come into play, like the comparison to the personality scan I took at ten years old with the one I’ll take now. If they see certain patterns between the two scans, that informs some sort of sophisticated algorithm on what kind of worker I would be. But who knows, how much could you really judge about someone when they are ten?

I’d make the best of it. If I had to serve entitled saviors for the last few years of my life, I’d make them miserable in retaliation—the mean ones anyway. The nice ones I might fuck for fun.

We all had to have our hobbies. Mine were meaningless sex and sleeping. Sex to distract during the waking hours, then pining over Haven while I was asleep. Sex was a hobby for most of the people in the dome, if I was being fair. When your pseudo-government gives you a designated fuck buddy every year, most people take advantage.

Haven understood that about me. At least he said he did. Sometimes I wasn’t too sure, but everyone disagreed with their imaginary friends every once in a while, right? I am well aware that I'm really messed up in the head.

Walking across the bridge to my designated dorm, I fed my cat and plopped my bag on the floor. Daryl, my roommate for the year, wasn't back yet.

Laying on my bed, I petted the gray-striped cat beside me. Our dorm mom named her Parvati after the goddess of fertility. As if that would somehow give us luck and increase birth rates.

There were a few cats on every floor, but Parvati only liked me. I'm glad I got to win at something.

As laughable as it is that the cat will bring me luck in pregnancy, it's not as funny as my parents naming me Delphine, after the goddess of the earth. There were a lot of goddesses around here for a god-forsaken world.

If the deities ever existed, they abandoned us years ago.

Focusing back on my nap, little Parvati purring loudly beside me, I closed my eyes. Usually, I changed my clothes or fixed up my hair since my dream-self always matched how I looked in the real world, but my end-of-day grime would have to do today. I had two hours until my scan, just enough time to see Haven. I didn’t want to waste a moment.

Almost instantly, I was in Haven’s room on the spaceship. It had a deep black interior, with white swirls outlining the edges of doors and rooms like a strange crown molding. His bed was a heap of shaped moss, always cool to the touch. He added extra blankets at my request, one placed under us like a sheet and the other on top. He used to sleep on the bare moss, but he got used to how we laid down together, so our blankets were always on his bed when I arrived. I rarely saw the navigation systems of his ship—Haven wasn’t often in that room. Maybe my lack of understanding of space travel kept me from scrutinizing the details.

However, any of the dark expanses of his room could show the stars. All he had to do was press his hand to the wall and a multitude of dying suns would appear on the surface.

“Hello princess,” he said before I spotted him. I turned, finding his smiling green face as he stood up from his desk. It looked similar to ones I would see in history books, made of wood, but his had vines and foliage surrounding it. It was like everything was alive except for the ship itself. Wood was scarce on Earth, but not in my imagination.

I wished my imagination would listen to my wants more often.

“Haven,” I said with a sigh, my shoulders releasing their tension as his name left my mouth.

“You always do that,” he commented as he turned around with a tilted head, trying to understand.

“Do what?” I asked, looking into the face I wanted to get lost in.

“That sigh, like you weren’t sure you’d find me, but you always do,” he explained, pulling me into his arms like I belonged there. His long tail, as textured as his hands, ran up and down the backs of my legs as he held me.

If only this was real.

“I’m just happy to see you,” I replied.

He still hadn’t kissed my lips, but he held me at any opportunity he could and gave me little forehead and cheek kisses. And when he licked me? Dear god, that was all I wanted. He only licked around my neck and wrists, but it was enough to send my whole body into overdrive. Especially with his perforated tongue.

Maybe my therapist was right when they said I had an unhealthy relationship with my cat.

Haven had these gorgeous eyes with enlarged pupils, loved licking, had a tail, and the rough tongue of a cat, but his body was certainly not feline. There wasn't a single soft or smooth part of him, other than his lips. He also had no hair other than his brows and eyelashes.

Haven had a distant dad and deceased mother because then he was like me, alone. At least, that’s my amateur psychological guess.

I stopped talking about Haven in therapy a few years ago, when Selvill suggested I get on medication to make him go away. I refused to let that happen, even if he wasn’t real. Instead, I would often use metaphors or blame my thoughts on Parvati and Daryl. I was lying through my teeth every session. But it was nice to have someone to talk to about how lonely I felt while I was awake. Thankfully, my therapy notes don’t go into my placement file.

“Whatcha doing?” I snuggled closer into his arms. He was warm and smelled like the breeze right after rain.

“I’m coming to get you,” he said, brushing my hair behind my ears.

“You always say that,” I mumbled.

“Crossing galaxies takes a while. Don’t worry, I’m almost there, princess,” he said, his penetrating eyes pouring into mine.

A building in my core pulled me from his eyes and I flushed, looking at his chest. I knew what it meant: Daryl was back in our dorm, bringing me back to reality. I didn’t want to go, but watching Haven while it happened was a unique experience.

“Something wrong, princess?” he asked, but he had seen me in this situation enough times to know. Haven hated Daryl. What fake fictional alien boyfriend wouldn’t be jealous and possessive?

But he never asked me to stop fooling around with other guys. I wasn’t serious about any of them, and it’s not like I could be exclusive with my imaginary friend, but I appreciated that he didn’t judge me for it. He once said he didn’t understand how intimacy was shared so freely in my culture, but I dropped the subject at his request.

“Hm, princess?” he asked again, hands moving up and down my arms. I shivered against him.

I ate it up every time he called me that. When someone treats you like you matter, like you are special, it leaves an impression that stains you for life.

Sure, it was me saying I was special to myself, but I didn’t like to focus on that. Like I ignored a lot of things.

“I’m fine,” I squeaked, positioning myself so my pelvis leaned into his. His bulge was monstrous.

“You smell more than fine to me,” he said and growled, leaning in to sniff and lick my neck. My long brown hair fell to the side as I leaned forward. He nuzzled my neck and my legs gave way.

“Oh god,” I whimpered when he picked me up and dropped me in a heap on his moss bed.

“There is none, princess, I checked the heavens for you. Praise me instead,” Haven said, leaning over me.

When he hovered over me, I could pretend it was him bringing these delicious feelings to my body.

I moaned and shivered again, angling my hips up and gasping as my skin met the cold air. My body reflected on what was happening in the real world, and Haven knew it too. Looking down, my pants and underwear were gone. Haven noted it, his black eyes growing impossibly darker, like black holes threatening to consume me.

“This is the last time he touches you, princess. Make it a good goodbye,” he told me, his voice thick with promise, fingers gripping my chin. His hands had a ribbed, rough texture, like the rest of him. “You’re mine, princess. Don’t forget that.”

I crashed into an orgasm, jolting awake.