The woman nodded decisively. “Very well.” She pushed a button and my chair angled back as if I were at the dental technician. “For the record, Miss Day, you have chosen to serve out your sentence under the direction of the Interstellar Bride Program. You have been assigned to a mate per testing protocols and will be transported off-planet, never to return to Earth. Is this correct?”
Holy mother of God, what had I done? I would come back to testify, but I was really going. “Yes.”
“Excellent.” She glanced down at her tablet. “The computer has assigned you to Trion.”
Trion? I scrambled through my memories looking for something, anything about that world. Nothing. I had nothing. Oh, God.
But maybe that world had been the one in my dream. The rugs. The almond oil. The huge cock…
“That world requires detailed physical preparation for their females. Therefore, your body must be properly prepared before we initiate transport.”
My body will be… what?
Warden Egara pushed the side of my chair and to my shock, the chair slid toward the wall where a large opening appeared. The examination chair slid, as if on a track, right into the newly revealed space on the other side of the wall. The tiny room was small, and glowing with a series of bright blue lights. The chair lurched to a stop and a robotic arm with a large needle slid silently up to my neck. I winced as it pierced my skin, then all I felt was a slight tingling at the injection site. A sense of lethargy and contentment made my body go limp as I was lowered into a bath of warm blue liquid. I was so warm, so numb…
“Just try to relax, Miss Day.” Her finger touched the display in her hand and her voice drifted to me as if from far, far away. “Your processing will begin in three… two… one…”
Chapter Two
“The transfer must be wearing on the body, therefore she sleeps.”
I heard the voice, but didn’t stir. I was quite comfortable and I didn’t want to wake up.
“Yes, however, she has been like that for four hours.” This voice was deeper, more commanding, clearly frustrated by my state. “Goran, perhaps my mate was damaged in transport.”
Damaged?
“There does not appear to be any damage.” A different voice. “She is small and perhaps needs additional time to recover.”
Small? I’d never been considered small. Short, maybe, but small? That was almost funny. I couldn’t will my body to move, to see who considered me to be anything but my usual curvy, very solid self. It was as if I’d woken up from a long nap and I was content to stay that way. I felt warm and safe and secure, not on the brink of… oh!
My eyes fluttered open and I did not see the stark gray walls of the interior of the processing facility where I’d spent the past few days. Instead, I seemed to be in some sort of rustic structure, the ceiling and walls made out of sturdy canvas. I couldn’t see much of the space, for there were three men looming over me. My eyes widened at their size. They were formidably large and… large. I’d never seen a man so big, let alone three of them. Was their size normal?
Everything about them was dark. Black hair and eyes, black clothing over tanned skin. They reminded me of men from the Mediterranean region of Europe. But I had not been sent by the processing center to Europe, or even the mid-East, but off-planet. Trion? Where was that? How far was I from home? Warden Egara hadn’t said how far away this planet was before she’d swiped her finger across her display and had me transported. It had happened so fast, like falling asleep for a surgery and waking up afterward completely unaware of everything that had happened in between.
I was lying on my side, no longer in that uncomfortable chair in the processing room, but on a narrow bed. My wrists and ankles were no longer restrained and I reached up and threaded the fingertips of my right hand through the hair just behind my ear.
Yes. There it was. I released a pent-up breath. The small lump caused by the justice department’s implant, the device that they’d promised would bring me home someday. Until then, I had to survive as Evelyn Day, convicted murderer.
I blinked, confused, as I tried to get my bearings. I’d known about alternate planets my entire life, but images of them on the media were never provided. Transport off-planet was only allowed for military personnel or for women in the bride program. Because of this, I’d always imagined that aliens would be very different than humans, but I was most definitely wrong. These men, if they were examples of their planet’s race, were very handsome specimens and very human-like. Handsome perhaps wasn’t the correct word. Intense, virile, manly. Gorgeous.