Page 122 of Stripped By the Alien

“My kind sometimes enjoys getting married. It's not a common occurrence, but it happens.” He straightens and looks down at me. “Then what do you say, Nora? Will you be my mate and wife?”

I stare at him. "Are you…" My voice comes out smaller than I mean it to, all the fight gone out of it at once. "Krix'vorr, are you actually asking me to marry you? In the middle of a getaway? With Lucius still smoking in my arms and Sophia standing right there?"

"I find that timing has never been my strength," he admits. "I considered waiting for a better time. But then I thought that we have already survived a minefield, the Gzet, and a space station full of monsters, and we have no idea what's next. I didn't see why a little urgency should stop me now."

Behind me, I hear Sophia mutter something that sounds a great deal like oh my God under her breath.

"You do know what you're giving up?" I ask, to make sure. "All of it. The legend, the power, the respect…"

"I know exactly what I'm giving up." He takes both my hands in his, careful the way he always is, like I might break. "And I have never wanted anything less in my life, compared to what I'd be keeping instead."

I look up at him, at the blood still drying on his hands, the fury only just now starting to fade out of his eyes, the impossible, patient warmth underneath all of it that I fell for in a training room a lifetime ago. And I understand that there was never really a question here at all.

"Yes," I say. "Obviously, yes. You giant, ridiculous, wonderfully crazy locust."

He makes a primal sound low in his chest that I feel more than hear, and picks me up entirely off my feet and kisses me right on the mouth.

“'Dirty',” he says. “You forgot 'dirty' with alien blood. And my own, I suppose. And I know I've seen you cleaner, too. Let's find a washing chamber.”

Sophia stares at us both for a long moment. Then she turns to the Inquisitor. "Is this normal for Space Locusts?"

"Nothing about this is normal," Brax'tok says.

Sophia looks back at me and shakes her head slowly, but she's smiling. "I was a prisoner for weeks. I get rescued by aliens. And the first thing I see is my best friend getting a marriage proposal from one of them." She reaches out and squeezes my arm. "I'm happy for you, Nora. I think. Ask me again when I've slept."

Lucius pipes up, faint and dry: "For the record, Captain, I fully support this. Though I would appreciate being set down before the celebration proceeds any further. I doubt I'm watertight anymore."

39

- Krix'vorr -

The Nest rises ahead of us exactly as it did the day I first left it with Nora at my side, dark and enormous and indifferent to everything that's happened since.

This time there is no triumphant crew chatter, no argument over which details the Queen will want first. Word has clearly traveled ahead of us — that I turned around right outside the Nest, that I returned to a Gzet system without orders, and that I brought back two rescued aliens and an unauthorized marriage proposal. The Beast's corridors are quiet in a way I don't like.

Nora enters the observation blister with the window, where I've been standing longer than I should, watching the Nest grow larger.

"You're doing the thing again," she says. "The brooding-alone-staring-at-stars thing."

I turn back to the stars. "There's no better way to brood. You should try it."

She puts a hand at my waist. "Does it help?"

"It doesn't change anything, if that's what you mean." I turn to look at her. "Whatever happens in that chamber, I need you to understand something first."

"Okay, being ominous."

"I don't care what rank I hold when we leave it," I tell her, and I mean every word of it more than I've meant anything in longcycles. "Junior Harrower, disgraced Harrower, no Harrower at all. I would fly a harvest scow for the rest of my life if it meant flying it with you beside me. I need you to know that before we go in. Afterwards it will have a different flavor."

She takes my hand. “Will she kill you?”

I squeeze it. “Nothing is absolutely certain with a Queen. In this case, I doubt it. I am still bringing her the greatest Harvest ever for her to go out on. But I delayed telling her about it, setting you above her and above the Brood.”

She arches her eyebrows. “So…”

“So, probably not. But a demotion is certain. A Chief Harrower must be more than a Harrower. He must be above reproach. And I have not been.”

“I disagree,” Nora chirps.