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But she didn’t have access to them now. She had no way to contact anyone. She knew the language thanks to the imprint, but she didn’t know the culture or directions. She couldn’t exactly get back on a ship and fly home either. That required money – credz – which she did have, since her human money transferred, but she had no way of using it yet.
She was basically without a phone, an ID, or currency in a foreign country, relying on the promises of a guy who she had never met.
Yeah. She’d definitely just fallen for the oldest trick in the catfish playbook. She was probably going to get trafficked or eaten or something equally horrible. This was why she shouldn’t be going out on adventures! She’d never needed to worry about being trolled and abandoned and kidnapped while knitting and watching daytime gameshows!
There was a way back, of course. They hadn’t just sent her out with a wave and a ‘have a nice life’ that easily. Humans were a protected species, even when they left Earth. Her kind was just too small and weak to defend itself against the much larger, more powerful alien species out there. Which might have been offensive, if she didn’t feel the absolute truth of it just standing there, watching the other races pass her by – all of them towering over her.
Humans had two protector species – the domini and the ratchi. If she was in danger or she needed to get back home emergently, it had been explained to her that she could go to either of their embassies on any planet and request their aid. The embassy would be required to help her, by treaty, and she’d get to return home to her needle addiction again – crochet, knitting, sewing – with only the unpleasant memories of being abandoned to scar her.
But to do that, she had to be able to find the embassy. And then somehow get there, or at least be able to contact the embassy. None of which she could do with no money, no phone, and no valid ID.
This was such a bad idea.
Not for the first time, she checked the watch she had strapped to the inside of her wrist. Only three panicked minutes had passed since the last time she last looked. Which seemed ridiculous. How were the seconds passing so slowly?
And where was her mate?
‘I can’t wait to meet you,’ he had written.
‘I know we’ll be happy together.’
‘You seem like such a great person.’
‘I’ll always be there for you.’
And now what?
At what point did she give up? When was the wait too long and she should just roll the dice on asking someone and hoping she didn’t commit some kind of egregious faux pa in the process? They really should include a cultural dump along with the language, because she had no idea what to do in this situation now and these huge, vastly different aliens were too intimidating to ask. The little pamphlet she’d been given during transport only detailed the broad strokes of the species she’d mated into – the telfay – but even the pamphlet said she could rely on her mate for the majority of her needs.
Ha!
This really seemed like a mess up in the service process. She wasn’t saying that she should be handheld the whole way, but maybe something more than just putting her on a starship and wishing her good luck.
She checked her watch again. Only two minutes this time.
She was hungry. She had to pee. She was scared. She was about two seconds away from throwing in the towel on this whole misadventure.
“Alexandra el Tollman?”
“Yes?!” She jumped, startled at being so suddenly spoken to. She hadn’t meant to shout, but her apology died on her tongue when she caught sight of who was here to get her.
Two absolutely enormous males with thick, scaley hides and intimidatingly long quills sticking up from their heads, going down their back, in an eerily poisonous yellow. One was a dark, emerald green; the other was a deep, ocean blue. Both of them towered over her, looking down at her over an elongated muzzle – sharp teeth poking out the side of the blue one’s lip.
“Er…” She hesitated, looking between them nervously. “Are you… my mate?”
“No,” the blue one growled, and she barely stopped herself from slumping over in relief.
She was trying hard to keep an open mind, but the thought of either of these intimidating males laying on top of her…
She shivered in fear. She didn’t even think it was so much a problem of the scales and size. It was the cold, emotionless look in their eyes. Neither of these males were the one who had sent her such happy, excited messages.
“We work for your mate,” the blue one continued.
“You do?” She blinked, surprised.
“Yes,” the green one answered. “We’re his bodyguards. We were sent to fetch you.”
Alarm bells were going off in her head. Sandy might not have ever explored far beyond the end of the yard, but that didn’t mean she was naïve. She knew better than to just follow a pair of huge, unfamiliar males to a second location that easily.
