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“Yes! Only once! I promise.”
I stared up into Fallon’s face, utterly speechless at his ridiculously earnest declarations. His expression was so open, but also pinched in places, muscles shaped maybe by panic, maybe by pain. His white gaze searched mine, his big, long-fingered hands twitching at his sides like he was barely holding himself back from grabbing me.
There is a very good chance I’m about to marry the biggest alien dope in this entire colony.
But apparently, I was still intent on marrying him. God fucking help me.
“Did he at least deserve it?” I asked with a sigh, rubbing my temples like Magnolia had been doing a moment before.
Appearing chastened, Fallon looked down at his dusty boots. “Well, the courts certainly did not think so.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
He straightened a little, the bashfulness fading from his face, replaced with a grim sort of expression that looked completely at odds with his features.
“Perhaps. I cannot say for sure. But I do know that, if I were faced with the same situation once more, I would not do anything differently.”
I nodded, absorbing the honesty of that reply. At the very least, he didn’t seem like a liar.
“Would you ever do anything to hurt me?”
Fallon’s head jerked back, like I’d sent a sucker-punch his way instead of a question. Just as quickly, he recovered, his head snapping forwards once more, his hands curling into fists at his sides.
“Never,” he growled. The tone of it was a violent crash of gravel that I wasn’t used to hearing from him. I inhaled sharply, warmth touching my spine at the sound. “Never, Darcy. Let me prove it to you. Let me prove what a good husband I can be.”
I believed him. Maybe I was stupid or self-sabotaging or maybe I thought I just didn’t deserve any better.
But I actually fucking believed him.
I put on my best composed face, one my mother would have been proud of, and gave Fallon a close-lipped smile.
“Well, that’s that, then. Let’s go get married.”
Fallon’s mouth fell open before it suddenly stretched into a sunshiney smile.
“You will not regret this,” he said, still beaming at me as my own smile turned strained.
I cringed a little, because the only reply I could come up with was, Wanna bet?
6
FALLON
Ifound it difficult to listen to Warden Tenn as he read out the marriage rites. I was too busy staring at Darcy’s beautiful profile and internally thanking this glorious creature for giving me a chance. Of course, I would have told her about my past eventually. But I’d hoped, like Silar, to have had the chance to win her over a little first.
But it did not seem to matter. Darcy had looked at me and the blight of my past and she had smiled and agreed to marry me anyway. I felt luckier than I had in a long, long time. Maybe ever.
Darcy looked directly ahead at the warden behind his desk, her big, shiny waves of pink hair falling behind her elegant shoulders. Empire help me, but she had beautiful shoulders. Smooth-skinned, curved by muscle and slender bone, and dusted by the same charming little brown spots that were also sprinkled across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. I was struck by the slightly disorienting desire to bite one of them. I wouldn’t, of course. Her skin was soft and my fangs were not.
But for some unfathomable reason, I wanted to.
“Fallon?”
I dragged myself from the dreamy idea of sucking on one of her shoulders instead of biting it.
“Yes?” I asked, blinking at the warden.
“You have to verbally answer this part. Do you take Darcy as your wife, to be legally bound in the eyes of the Terratribe Alliance and under all applicable covenants of the Zabrian Empire?”
