Read Online Starport: Zeta Prime (Alt) by S.A. Jackson - Free Book Online Page B

Terracotta artwork
adorned the rock walls, lit by small balls of fire set inside tiny
pits along the edges of the room. In the middle, Jillian was
thrilled to see a bed, of sorts. On a raised platform, large sheets
of fur were laid, soft and inviting. The whole set up was
almost…romantic, and once again she felt ashamed at the assumption
that these people were more primitive than her own.
    “ You will be very happy now, ” Shana said, clutching her shoulders and then touching her
forehead with her own before leaving, as the male had done
before.
    Jillian walked up to
the bed, running her fingers across the silky fur and mused over
the events. She had no fear left, after all that had happened. She
knew now there would be no ceremonious killing–which she had once
considered. It seemed she had made it out of the prison and
into…what? She wasn’t yet sure.
    A
shadow crossed the floor, and Jillian looked toward the doorway to see the male she had
been tied to. He was holding a jug and two glazed goblets. Stunned,
she saw that he was smiling as he crossed the room to her. Placing
the goblets down, he poured a creamy liquid from the jug and handed
one to her.
    “ Now we
are together for always. Drink. We’ll celebrate our union,” he
said, gesturing for her to sit next to him on the bed.
    Jillian choked on the
air she had been inhaling. Had she just been
married?
     

Chapter Nine
    Careful not to blow her cover, she covered up
the cough of surprise by sipping the drink he had given her. It was
a delicate, spiced honey flavor and she took a few long draws of it
to buy herself time.
    It
all seemed to add up .
T hat ceremony—it had been a
wedding. Her wedding. Was this what she had been taken for? She
almost laughed. This was the single most surreal experience of her
life. She’d thought that she was a hostage, that she would be made
an example of–maybe tied up like an animal for the rest of her
days. And now, here she was, married to an alien of a planet she
knew very little about.
    Comforted as she was by this male’s return, and weirdly
secure as she felt in his presence, she wished he would leave her
alone to sort through this
revelation quietly–to try and make some sense of it all. Her
immediate fears had gone and were, apparently irrelevant now, so
Jillian brought herself back out of her head with a reminder that she
was still a stranger here, and therefore needed to remain aware of
the fact that she still needed to be in survival
mode.
    With this consideration in mind, she gingerly perched next
to him on the bed. Pretending not to know the language was one
thing, but she couldn’t ignore his gesture for her to sit with him.
She sank into the rich down of the material and held her goblet
with both hands , apprehensive of what would be expected of her now,
being fully aware of what this time would involve after a human
wedding.
    In
no way did she feel obligated to uphold a ritual that essentially
meant nothing to her–these
were not her people and their ways and rituals therefore
meaningless. But she weighed her options carefully. She took a
sideways glance at the male on the bed and had to own up to finding
him unusually attractive. His big eyes met hers and he placed his
drink down.
    “ Faron,” he said slowly and clearly, one hand on
his chest.
    “ Jillian,” she responded with the same
movement.
    “ Jil . Lee. Ah.
Jillian.” He tested the phonetics of her name with relish. The
sound of it being spoken in his musical accent caused a smile to
break across her face. He read into her look of happiness, and took
her cup, placing it down next to his own, and then maneuvered her
so that she was laying across the bed on her
back.
    She stayed still, rigid. Unnerved by her positioning and
what it may mean . He lay
beside her, leaning up onto one elbow. He looked at her face for a
long while, and she looked back at his, both of them exploring
their differences, their similarities. There was no mistaking it
this