Page 4 of Wanted by the Alien Warden (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides #4)

4

TASHA

“ S o, Cherry. Now that they’re out of earshot. Tell me… Are you alright? Like, actually? You’re not being held hostage? Or afraid for your life?”

Cherry snorted at me from her place on the bench beside me. We were currently seated in an ancient, wooden wagon, being pulled along by two massive, four-legged alien beasts called shuldu.

“OK, first of all? We aren’t out of earshot,” Cherry replied. “Those guys have insane hearing. They can probably hear every word we’re saying right now.”

I pursed my lips and glanced at Silar and the warden, both of them in their saddles atop the shuldu ahead of the wagon. Silar’s mount was a brown-reddish colour the exact same shade as the dusty ground. Warden Tenn’s mount was a pretty pale grey, dappled in white. Both creatures had gigantic horns arcing out from their heads.

“I don’t even see their ears,” I said, on a whisper this time. Just in case.

“They’re under the hats. And they are extremely cute, by the way.” She made two rounded fists and perched them jauntily atop her head before letting them fall. “Oh!” she then said, as if remembering something important. “If you’re taking complaints about the program, I actually do have one.”

I leaned in, wondering what horror she was going to reveal about her quiet killer of a husband.

But instead, she said, “I would have liked a book. A book like the ones the men received about human culture and, er… anatomy…”

Her cheeks flamed, dark red in the shade of the wagon’s covering.

“Oh, God. What happened?” I asked, dread sliming through my belly. What did she need to be warned about when it came to Zabrian anatomy?

“Nothing bad,” she said quickly, her cheeks even redder now. “But it would have been nice to know about the whole, um, Zabrian genitals situation in advance.”

“‘Zabrian genitals situation?’” I repeated uneasily, feeling my brows crawl all the way up to my hairline. She made it sound like some horrific historical event akin to a plague or a war.

I glared at Silar’s bare back, with its gold hide and his bright aqua mane of hair tumbling down, wondering just what the hell the guy had going on in his pants.

“It just would have been more fair,” Cherry said, sounding somewhat flustered now, “if we’d gotten similar information about the Zabrian males that they received about us.”

“I know,” I replied with a sigh, leaning my spine against the wagon’s back wall. “The Zabrian Empire gave me so little to go on. Including, apparently,” I added, my tone growing barbed, “anything about these guys’ convictions.”

Cherry sobered at once.

“I need you to know,” she said gravely, “that I don’t consider Silar, or any of the men here, to be murderers. Silar killed a man in self-defence when he was a child. That very same man murdered Silar’s mother. My husband watched his mother die and was unfairly convicted as a murderer before he even hit puberty. He was sent here with no support, no contact with any other family… Nothing.”

Jesus . I sucked in a breath. Cherry blinked, her eyes growing shiny and red.

“Silar is the greatest man I’ve ever known. There’s a very good chance I would be dead without him,” she went on. With the obvious tears in her eyes, I would have thought her voice would waver, but it didn’t. It was strong, steady, like these were the truest words she’d ever spoken. “He’s the best husband I ever could have asked for.”

She gave a teary laugh and wiped at her eyes. When she spoke again, her eyes were fastened to her husband’s back. I watched her in profile as she spoke.

“All I’m asking is that you give him – all of them – a chance.”

“I’ll endeavour to be fair to everyone,” I said quietly and at length. “Including any future brides, should the program proceed. They deserve to know what they’re in for.”

“I agree,” Cherry said, nodding enthusiastically, her blue eyes coming back to me. “It’s why I told Darcy and Magnolia the situation before their weddings.”

I mulled over what she’d told me. Her explanation of Silar’s conviction would certainly make sense stacked against the mostly positive first impression I’d gotten of the man. He didn’t seem bloodthirsty or cruel, and Cherry seemed to be thriving in her marriage to him. I was going to inspect his ranch right now, to make sure that he was providing adequately for Cherry. He’d agreed to that instantly; he didn’t appear to have anything to hide.

“We’re obviously of the same mind, then,” I said. “And, in the spirit of making sure everyone knows what’s what, maybe I can write another book. This one about Zabrian males. The empire wouldn’t give me much information to use, but maybe I can collect enough notes while I’m here to put something together. I am staying for a month, after all.”

A whole month… With him…

If the warden could indeed hear me, he did not look back.

“Yes!” Cherry said excitedly. “And we’ll help you, too. I know Darcy, Magnolia, and I have lots of thoughts and, er, experience to contribute.”

“Experience? Like experience with the ‘Zabrian genitals situation?’”

She gave me a genuine, if conspiratorial, smile. And that smile warmed me right down to the toes in my now-dusty boots. I’d worked so hard on the professional aspects of my life on Elora Station that I hadn’t really had the time or energy to make any friends.

Although, even back on Terratribe I, I hadn’t had many friends outside of Gerald…

When Cherry smiled at me, it felt like a friend kind of smile.

“Precisely,” she said, still grinning.

“Great,” I replied with a small laugh. “Maybe that can be the title of the first chapter.”

After a long, hot, bumpy ride, we finally pulled off the main dusty road into a smaller laneway.

“We’re here!” Cherry said. “Welcome to our home!”

I could see why she was so excited to show me the property she now shared with Silar. Leaning out of the wagon, I glimpsed a small but well-built house painted the warm yellow colour of Terratribe II butter. It was nestled among tall golden-green grass, the property enclosed along its sides, and presumably the rear, with tall wooden fencing. The grass rippled in the gentle breeze.

It looked like something from a painting.

“You’re from Terratribe I, right, Cherry?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. I could see Cherry in my mind’s eye, pale from the grey skies of that world and grimy from the factory.

“Yes.” Her forehead wrinkled. “Why?”

I shook my head and smiled, but it felt a little pinched. Pained. Like my heart was hurting for something but I wasn’t sure what.

“All that blue sky.”

I’d been so focused on meeting the warden, making sure Cherry was well, and giving Silar the once-over, that I hadn’t had a chance to really… look up.

Cherry gave a little gasp, then a knowing look.

“You’re from Terratribe I, too!” She nodded to herself, confirming her own suspicion without me having to say a word. “Magnolia and Darcy are used to the beautiful landscapes and having a big blue sky from Terratribe II. But for us…”

Silar appeared at the side of the wagon, having dismounted from his shuldu. He held out his hand to his wife. She put hers into his as if it were the most natural thing. As if they’d already done this a hundred times before. As she let Silar help her out of the wagon, the rest of her sentence came floating back to me on the summer wind.

“For us, It’s a whole new world.”

She certainly had that right. For someone coming from the industrial, barren, slate-skied colony planet of Terratribe I, or even the polished technical perfection of Elora Station, this expansive horizon, untouched to my eye besides Silar’s property, was breathtaking. Maybe even a little disorienting.

I stared up, squinting into that brightly yawning blue as I prepared to get down from the wagon. The vast blue blankness slapped me with sudden vertigo.

I blinked, then wrenched my gaze back down.

Only to be confronted with the scorching heat of two orange Zabrian eyes, directly before my own.

Zabrians really did have extraordinary eyes. There was no distinct, hard-edged iris or pupil like a human might have. Instead, the warden’s eyes were a deep, solid orange, brightening to a collection of electric gold-orange veins in the centre. Like dozens of bolts of lightning reaching for the edges of his eyes all at the same time, each one originating from the same writhing, central point.

“Need help?”

“No, thank you,” I said primly, holding tightly to the side of the wagon. “I am perfectly capable of getting down on my own.”

At least, I was pretty sure I was. And if I wasn’t, well…

Guess I’ll fake it ’til I make it.

The warden watched me with stern intensity as I stepped out onto the wagon’s wooden running board. He crossed his arms over his big chest and waited, that same tense challenge etched around his eyes and along the line of his jaw that I first saw in our last video call.

Frankly, it was rather fucking rude.

“Move back, please,” I huffed, making a shooing motion with my free hand. The running board was a tall Zabrian’s leg-length off of the ground. Which meant I’d have to jump.

And the warden was in the way.

“I don’t think so,” Warden Tenn shot back immediately.

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t have a husband or a fiancé here. As the warden, I am responsible for your wellbeing in this world. Therefore, I will stand right here and supervise your descent from Silar’s wagon to ensure that you don’t do something… unfortunate.”

“ Unfortunate? ”

Why did I get the impression he’d been about two seconds away from saying “stupid” instead?

“Yes,” he said. “Unfortunate. Like landing poorly on your ankle. Or on your…”

His eyes zipped down to the region of my hips and then bounced right back up. He cleared his throat.

“My what? ”

“Your… Your backside.”

“My backside?”

“Did that not translate? Your…” He hesitated. “Your hindquarters.”

“My hindquarters?!”

“The part of you that would have a tail if you were to have one,” he huffed in a rush, visibly frustrated.

My ass. The warden thought I was going to fall on my poor little tailless, human ass.

“How about you just worry about your own hindquarters?” I hissed, face on fire. “And I’ll worry about mine!”

“My hindquarters,” he replied with maddening confidence, “do not require any supervision.”

“Well, neither do mine!”

“Incorrect.”

My mouth gaped.

The man really just said I was incorrect. About my own butt.

Forget the genitals thing. The first chapter of my book on Zabrian males will be a scathing review of Warden Tenn’s absolutely nonsensical arrogance.

“Look,” I snapped, “this whole macho man, ‘I’m a big, rough and tumble warden’ schtick might work for keeping your men in line. But it doesn’t work on me. I’m not a convict or a citizen of the Zabrian Empire. You are not my superior. So if I fall and break my own human butt, well, that’s on me.”

Before Warden Tenn could respond, I took a tiny breath for courage and jumped.

I didn’t land poorly on my ankle, like the warden had suggested I might.

I did, however, land with my right foot on top of his left boot. And it turned out that an alien warden’s gigantic foot did not a stable landing pad make.

I was going down.

I wasn’t sure what would be bruised most in the fall.

My human pride…

Or my hindquarters.

At least the hindquarters had some cushioning…

My pride?

Not so much.

But that cushioning never got its chance to heroically take the impact. Huge hands seized upon my waist, dragging me into an upright position against Warden Tenn’s body. The hard contours of his chest and abdomen pressed against my breasts through the fabric of his uniform. My heart bucked beneath my ribs.

“I told you I was responsible for you,” he muttered, his orange eyes sparking white before returning to their original colour. “I will not let you break your butt.”

“It’s my butt!”

Yeah. That was really what I came up with. Something on par with what a stubborn toddler might dish out.

I think having his hands on my body is frying my fucking brain.

Warden Tenn didn’t even bother dignifying my words with a response. He merely gave a quiet grunt, paused as if to make sure I wasn’t going to fall over anyway just to spite him, then let me go.

“Are we ready for the tour?” Cherry asked from nearby. I jerked at the sound of her voice.

I’d nearly forgotten she and Silar were there. I truly needed to get my head on straight. My priority was keeping a clear mind so that I could adequately judge the conditions of the brides’ lives out here.

I was not going to let Mr. Hot and Haughty Warden over here get in the way of that.

“Yes, please!” I said, moving briskly away from the warden’s side to join Cherry and Silar. I stiffened slightly as I felt more than saw Warden Tenn bringing up the rear, walking in close step behind me.

Cherry led the way to the front door of the house while Silar took the shuldu and the wagon through a gate in the fence. I paused in the doorway, waiting to see if the warden would follow Silar.

He didn’t.

“Aren’t you going to go feed your shuldu or something?” I asked, turning back to glare at him.

“Silar will handle it,” he said.

Apparently, he meant it. Because instead of looking chastened and heading outside to deal with his own mount, he began walking again, forcing me forward into the house. He dragged a wooden chair out from a small table and plopped his big, purple butt into it.

Fine.

I turned away from him, determined to pretend he wasn’t there.

“So, this is the kitchen!” Cherry said, beaming. Something inside me went a little soft and gooey at her obvious pride in her new home here. She chattered away, pointing out the wood-fired oven, the furniture that Silar had apparently made for her from scratch, and her big black cast iron pan that she’d brought all the way from Terratribe I.

“And this way is the bedroom,” she said, leading me from the small but tidy little kitchen down a short hallway. We entered a room with a bed, closet, and set of wooden drawers. There were little signs of a cozy, quiet life scattered all over the place. Like a red scarf folded neatly atop the drawers beside what looked like a Zabrian leather belt, and what appeared to be Cherry’s pyjamas laying in a haphazard pile atop the bed. In the closet hung a couple of sets of trousers that would fit a Zabrian male, and a multitude of pieces that would fit a Cherry-sized human. I couldn’t help but notice with a small grin that Cherry had about 90% of the closet space devoted to her things.

“I see that Silar has made room for you,” I said, pointing out the closet disparity.

“I mean, he basically has about three pairs of pants, one hat, a couple of belts, and boots,” she said with a chuckle. “So he didn’t have to exactly make room. Although he did make most of this clothing for me.”

I could tell. A few pieces I recognized as the ones I’d purchased for her using the program’s funds on Elora Station, and a couple others were what I’d packed to send off in a bag with Darcy and Magnolia to deliver to her. But the rest – and the things that looked like they were worn the most often – had clearly been made by Silar’s big, careful hands.

“It’s hard to picture somebody like Silar making his wife clothing,” I remarked, gently fingering the flawless seam on a small leather jacket hanging in the closet.

“Because he’s Silar?” Cherry questioned from behind me. “Or because he’s a convicted murderer?”

“Both, I suppose.” I let go of the leather jacket’s sleeve, letting it drop against the main portion of the garment with a soft swish.

“He takes care of me,” Cherry said with forceful emotion. Her gaze grew wistful. “The only other person who took care of me with the kind of tenderness he does was my Mama. But she died.”

“Oh. I’m so sorry,” I said. I never got a chance to learn much about Cherry’s story before she went AWOL from the station and took an early supply shuttle flight out here. I gave her hand a quick little squeeze in support of her loss, even as I felt a pang of shameful envy. I never knew my mother. I certainly couldn’t remember anyone ever taking care of me with anything I could remotely call tenderness.

The fact that Cherry had apparently found such a special sort of love out here, with a criminal alien cowboy, no less, was nothing short of beautiful. Miraculous, even.

If it were true.

I gave her fingers one more little squeeze before releasing them and furtively shutting the bedroom door.

“We’ve got to be out of earshot now,” I whispered. Cherry looked unconvinced, one of her eyebrows popping up.

“Alright, fine. Here.” I hustled to the bedroom’s window, yanking it shut. Then, I swiped the quilt from the bed, sending her pyjamas flying to the floor. Holding the quilt tightly under one arm, I forcefully pulled Cherry into the closet with the other.

“What are you doing?” she asked with a laugh. But it wasn’t her usual friendly, happy laugh. It was the sort of laugh you would let out when deeply unnerved by something.

I knew it. Something wasn’t right. There was something she wanted to tell me.

“Quick,” I whispered, tossing the quilt over her head. I got under there with her, then sat down on the floor, yanking her along with me.

“OK, no, seriously. What are you doing?” Cherry asked from the quilted gloom of the closet floor.

“I’m creating a sound barrier,” I breathed. “Or, trying to. But we should still keep our voices down.”

“They’re Zabrians,” Cherry responded at a maddeningly normal volume level, “not intergalactic spies.”

“They still might be listening. You’re the one who told me how good their hearing is,” I hissed. I liked and respected Cherry, but goddamn, she would not be a good partner to have in a heist situation. Or a hostage situation. Or any situation that required even the smallest amount of discretion.

Alright, maybe hunkering down in the middle of a tiny closet with a quilt thrown over our heads wasn’t exactly the height of discretion, but still…

Maybe we could create some kind of code language.

No. No time for that. Who knew when Silar or the warden would come in and interrupt us?

“Cherry,” I said on a quiet exhale, “are you in danger? Blink twice if you want me to get you out of here.”

“Girl, it’s so freaking dusty here!” she wailed, once again far too loud. She covered her eyes with her hands. “I blink about a million times an hour!”

“OK. Fine. Blinking is out.” It was difficult to see her face beneath the quilt anyway. “Grab my hand and squeeze it if you don’t feel safe here.”

“Safe here , as in this closet? With you? Because I kind of feel like suffocation might be on the table.”

A valid concern. There was no cooling system in this house, and the summer heat made things extra stuffy in here, something only amplified by the blanket.

“You’re avoiding my questions. I just need to know how you really feel now that Silar and the warden aren’t hanging around. So squeeze my hand if-”

I suddenly yelped, breaking my own rules about volume level. Cherry had grabbed a part of me and pinched it.

But it wasn’t my hand.

It was my ear lobe.

“What the hell was that for? I didn’t mention ears in the special code,” I whisper-shouted, rubbing at the stinging flesh as she pulled her hand away.

“Sorry,” she replied, patting my knee in a comforting but not-at-all remorseful way. “It’s something I do when Silar is spiralling. It may not look like it, because he’s so quiet and all, but there’s a lot going on in that big head of his. He can be a really anxious alien bean. I often find a nice, friendly little ear-grab gets him out of his own head and back into the present moment.”

“Glad to hear that it was meant to be nice and friendly,” I muttered.

“Of course!” Cherry replied, giving my knee another reassuring pat. “I’ve helped Darcy through more than enough mental breakdowns out here. I’m practically an expert by now.”

“I’m not having a mental breakdown!”

“We are currently hiding under a blanket in a closet,” Cherry pointed out dryly.

“Alright, it doesn’t look great,” I admitted. “Wait. Hold on. Why was Darcy having a mental breakdown out here? Was it about something Fallon did?”

“It was about something she did,” Cherry replied.

“Which was?”

“Falling in love with him.”

Oh.

“And, also,” Cherry added off-handedly, “that time she thought his dicktacle was a venomous snake and she very heroically tried to rip it off. The poor man was practically maimed. She felt so bad.”

Before I could even begin to try to understand Cherry’s anecdote about the heroic near-mutilation of Fallon’s “dicktacle,” the sound of a door opening penetrated the muffled wall of the quilt.

Not such a great sound barrier after all…

Heavy, measured footsteps approached, then stopped.

I didn’t need to lift the blanket to figure out who it was. I recognized the warden’s deep, spine-tingling voice well enough by now that I could practically picture his unimpressed expression when he asked, “What in the great blue blazes are you two doing?”