Captured for the Alien Bride Lottery

could get lost in. Barring that, if I started worrying about getting caught, I could get off at any stop along the way and switch to another bus line.
“I’ll take it.”
She didn’t blink when I gave her my name. I guessed she hadn’t been watching the Bride Lottery. I almost sighed in relief when she handed me my ticket.
But as I reached out to take it, she held on to the other end for a second longer than she had to. “Good luck, Ms. Rivers,” she said quietly.
My gaze flew to hers, and I realized she did know who I was. My heart began beating frantically in my chest. “I’m sorry?” I managed to choke out, as if I didn’t understand what she meant.
“I hope you get away,” she murmured. “They shouldn’t be able to take us.” Then she let go of the ticket and resumed her bored façade. “Have a nice trip,” she said aloud in her professional ticketing agent voice.
I didn’t start feeling safe until the bus pulled out of the station. My fellow passengers ignored me, settling down into their seats, most of them attempting to nap.
Adrenaline still coursed through my veins, my heart pounding harder than it ought to. I didn’t know where I was going, not ultimately, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to hide from the Khanavai Bride Lottery indefinitely—but I was determined to try.
Rumor had it there were other races out in the galaxy, ones who didn’t require the equivalent of a human sexual sacrifice to coexist.
The only ones we were certain of were the Alveron Horde—the aliens who had attacked our planet, leading the Khanavai to offer to protect us in exchange for human brides—and the Khanavai themselves.
Until we managed to develop better spaceflight technology, I was essentially trapped on Earth.
I never thought I would feel as if my entire planet were a cage.
At least it’s a big cage.
Surely I can find somewhere to hide.

Chapter Two


Zont
I stood in the dry desert air beside an open tunnel that led into the Las Vegas sewer system, watching as human law enforcement officers milled around in search of any sign of the woman I hunted. While they worked to prove what I had already determined—that she had never been anywhere near this spot—I flipped through a stack of e-papers, learning what I could about my quarry’s background.
Amelia Rivers.
This report was a little more in-depth than what I had been given at the Bride Games on Station 21. There, I had found out that she was twenty-eight years old, light-haired, and trained as a medic.
This report expanded on that information. She had never married, and she had grown up in the northern hemisphere of the Earth in the United States state of Connecticut.
But when ran, she had been in the human pleasure city of Las Vegas.
Vos, the Bride Games Administrator, had not mentioned what she’d been doing there.
As far as he was concerned, Amelia Rivers was just another runaway bride, a potential crack in our two planets’ Bride Alliance, the agreement allowing Khanavai warriors to claim human brides—we took unmarried human females in exchange for protecting Earth from the ravages of the Alveron Horde.
That I was willing to hunt down Amelia Rivers and bring her back was enough for the Games Administrator. With my assistance, he would keep our treaty safe.
And to the Khanavai, the Bride Treaty was everything. At this point, almost an entire generation of Khanavai warriors had at least one human somewhere in their genetic history.
There had even been some rumors of human-Khanavai mixed females being able to reproduce—amazing, given what the Horde had done to our DNA. Humans were exactly what our people needed to keep our culture alive.
But I had seen more than another bride-shaped savior of our people when her image flashed on the holographic viewscreen in front of my seats in the stadium.
Amelia Rivers was not simply another bride. Not only another mate for one of our people.
No. She was my mate. My bride. The human female for me.
The only one for me.
I had known it as soon as I saw her, in the same way that all Khanavai knew their mates. Well, almost. I would need to scent her to cement the bond, but as far as I was concerned, that was a mere technicality.
And she might not realize it yet, but I suspected the same kind of sixth sense—sixth for humans, anyway—was exactly how she had known to run before her name was ever even called in the Bride Lottery.
Now I knew even more.
She had grown up with wealthy Earth parents, raised largely by servants—they called them “nannies” on Earth, which oddly enough was also a name for goats, a kind of common herd animal. And also sometimes a nickname for grandmothers.
Earth language is truly bizarre. I shook my head and continued reading.
Amelia had attended the best schools available, but unlike many of her wealthy classmates, she was not willing to spend her life in idle entertainment.
Instead, she strove to become the best at everything she did.
So when she had gone to Earth medical school, she had chosen to become a surgeon.
Of course, what she didn’t know was that her field would be obsolete within the next decade.
Cutting people open in order to repair them. Utterly barbaric.
Her parents arranged to pay for Amelia to be excused from the Bride Lottery year after year, claiming exemptions and bribing officials to keep their daughter free of Khanavai entanglements.
Right up until they got caught.
From everything I had learned so far, Amelia did not know her parents had paved her way to remain free of the Bride Lottery. Like so many other women, she simply assumed it was luck or fate.
But now, fate had intervened in another way—specifically, in me. I was her fated mate, though she didn’t know it yet.
And I was going to track her down and make her mine.
At least, that’s what I thought when I landed on Earth.
I had spent my entire adult life in