How to Date an Alien (24 page)

A blue beam of light poured from the ceiling
above, forming a long cylinder of luster down to the table. Slowly,
a white silhouette formed until the full body of the queen of Calta
stood staring down at me. Her eyes narrowed in my direction as the
blue light faded out.

"Your majesty." Nerses stood up alongside my
dad.

Ace and I followed suit. I leaned toward him.
"Why couldn't we have just used that beaming technology instead of
getting shot down in a broken ship?" I whispered.

Ace covered his mouth to stifle his laughter
at my comment, but stopped once the queen got down from the table
and found her seat at the opposite end from the rest of us. Ace and
I took our seats as well.

"Machiavelli, always good to see you looking
so—" She flicked her wrist, curving her lips into a weak attempt at
a smile. "—happy, I guess, is the word."

"Who is Machiavelli?" I whispered to Ace.
"Besides the Italian philosopher?"

The queen laughed that eerie laugh. "Oh, my
son, you tell me that you are in love with this girl and she
doesn't even know your real name?"

Her dark eyes focused on me."You ever wonder
how that other Machiavelli got the idea to title his book
The
Prince
? You don't think his pathetic human parents came up with
that last name on their own, do you?" She raised her eyebrows.

I made an O-shape with my mouth and thought
that would be something I would need to talk about with Ace later.
If there was a later.

"Where is Marsilo,
Mom
?"

The queen cringed as Ace overemphasized the
word.

"Yes, Marsilo." She folded her hands onto the
table. "He had enough earthly excitement to last him centuries, or
so he says. Nerses thought it would be best if it was just the five
of us discussing this matter."

My eyes trailed over to Nerses. This was her
idea to put us in the same room as the woman who tried to kill me?
I narrowed my eyes, wondering what her motive was.

"Yes, your highness." Nerses eyes went from
the queen back to Ace and me. "I invited you here to figure out how
we can come to a peaceful agreement between Circe and Calta. I've
already had the paperwork drawn up and I can have my public affairs
department make any changes that you deem necessary." She smiled,
placing a large stack of papers infront of her.

"A peace agreement?" The queen tilted her
head back, letting out a single laugh. "How long have you been on
this planet, Nerses? You're trying to adapt their same crazy
logic."

"Now, your highness, I know it might not make
sense to you," dad interjected. "But I don't want to see our
children continue to be stuck in the middle of all of this." His
eyes trailed over me. "We have seen what happens when we've tried
to separate them, and they found a way to see each other. Who knows
what could have happened to them if they didn't succeed."

Dad sighed, looking over at the queen. "As a
parent, I don't want to have to go through that again with my
daughter, and I doubt that you would want anything to happen to
your son."

I held back a snort. Like the queen actually
cared about Ace. She would have let him die alongside me in that
ship.

The queen's eyes softened when she turned to
Ace. "Is this what you really want? To be stuck on this
technology-deprived planet with this human girl forever?"

Ace looked over at me and placed his hand
onto mine, laying them on the table. "There is nothing that I want
more than to stay here with Alex."

He looked back at her. "I ignored all of the
rules and followed my heart. It may have gotten me into a lot of
trouble, but to me she will always be worth it." He squeezed my
hand, not taking his eyes off the queen.

"And do you plan on making this girl your
mate?" That evil smirk curved into the corners of the queen's
face.

His mate? I was only seventeen! I was sure in
my heart that I loved Ace, but I didn't think I was ready to be
someone's mate.

"I think we'll have to wait until she at
least has her bachelor's degree for that one." Ace smiled, keeping
a cool demeanor.

"Or a master's, whichever she decides to
get," dad added.

"And we can put that all in the peace
agreement. Even if for some reason Ace decides that he wants to
leave Alex, we can still have peace between Calta and Earth,"
Nerses added, shuffling the papers.

"Well, then Alex." The queen turned her murky
eyes on me. "After you get all of these nonsense degrees, do you
plan on letting my son take you as his mate? For all of the
universe to see?"

I looked at the queen, watching her eyes as
they searched my face for the answer. I could tell that she was
hoping that I would pick the wrong one and choose not to spend the
rest of my life with her son. Her superior smirk said it all. My
dad sat silently with small beads of sweat forming at his widow's
peak, the way it always did when he was nervous. What was the
answer he was looking for? Was he ready to see the daughter that he
had just started to get to know give up everything she had to spend
her life with an alien?

I looked over at Ace, his gaze fixed on me. I
had spent most of the summer wondering what was behind that gaze
and slowly falling for the soul of the alien. I didn't want to
spend the rest of my life without him, but I wasn't sure if I
wanted to spend the rest of my life knowing that I would be mated
to an ageless alien. Whatever that meant. I swallowed hard, not
taking my eyes off Ace.

"Well Alex, do you have an answer for me?"
she questioned.

"It's kind of a big deal for her; she may
need some time to think about it," Nerses replied in a calm manner.
"But if we can just get these papers signed."

"Some time to think about it?"

I looked over as the queen rose from the
table, slowly making her way toward Ace and me. "I stopped forty
thousand Caltian ships from coming down to destroy your planet
because my son insisted on saving this human girl, and she needs
some time to think?"

A slow fire brewed in her voice as she loomed
over us. It was just like a scene from one of my nightmares, but
this time it was real.

"Are you going to let this pathetic human
control your every move for all of eternity? How is a prince
supposed to live without the respect of his mate?"

"Your majesty," Nerses started as she and my
dad were at the queen's side. It was too late. The queen had risen
to her full height and her body began to slowly levitate off the
ground. Darkness fell around her. The room slowly faded to black
and clouds of silver smoke billowed around her extended arms.

"How dare you defy me! My own son!" Her words
boomed from her throat while she hovered over Ace. She lifted her
long, white fingers, pointing them at Ace's head. A flurry of
sparks formed a ball at the end of her fingertips, gathering into a
blinding blue light. The dark room was illuminated by its glow.

"No!" I screamed and sprang from my chair,
knocking Ace out of his and onto the floor below. The blue light
started to fade away and the queen slowly made her way back down to
the ground. The storm clouds disappeared and the lights flickered
back to life, but all I could focus on was Ace's shivering body
below mine.

"I'd do anything not to see you hurt." I
looked into Ace's eyes and saw the shadows that I knew would
forever be mine. Dad and Nerses rushed to our side, quickly helping
us to our feet so that we could face the queen.

"So do I take that as a yes?" The queen
arched her eyebrows. I looked around at all the faces in the room.
I didn't know the answer they all wanted me to say, but in my heart
I knew the one I wanted.

"Do I take that as you'd hate it if I called
you mother-in-law?"

Ace and I walked back to my dorm room in
silence. No one seemed pleased that I agreed to someday marry Ace,
not even him, and especially not my dad. The agreement was that
nothing would happen until after I finished school. My dad made
sure that was in the peace agreement just like the queen made
Nerses promise to keep all air space above Circe available for
Caltians at all times. But it still left an uneasy feeling in my
stomach. I was only seventeen and I felt like I had just made one
of the biggest decisions of my life on a whim.

Ace ran his fingers through his hair, his
eyes doing everything they could not to meet mine. "I'm going to go
back to my room for awhile. It has kind of been a crazy day."

I nodded. "Yeah, I should spend some time
with Jen anyway. She probably wants to know everything that's going
on."

"Hey, Alex, I was wondering when you'd be
getting back." I looked up to see Gavin, leaning his body against
the doorframe. "Ace." He nodded in his direction.

"Gavin." Ace mumbled.

"Yeah, we just got back not too long ago, but
we had a meeting that we had to attend." I looked up at Gavin,
wondering if he knew that I had just given my life away to an
alien. If he had a bad reaction to the fact that Ace and I were
dating, I was afraid of what he would do if he knew about my
impending marriage.

"Well, I guess I'll let you have some human
time." Ace embraced me in such a passionate kiss that I was
actually embarrassed to be displaying that kind of affection in
plain view of everyone.

Ace let go of me, squeezing my hand before he
started down the hallway. "Come by my room when you're done," he
yelled and headed down the hall.

"Jealous much?" Jen popped her blond head out
of the room, staring down the hallway before she looked back to
Gavin and me.

I shrugged. I never thought of Ace as the
jealous type, but I guess he always did seem to get nervous
whenever Gavin was around, and the fact that I just made myself his
future princess bride probably escalated his jealousy. "You know
Ace."

"Actually, I really don’t." Gavin pushed his
bangs out of his eyes. "That's kind of what I came here for."

"Well, I'm going to go meet Malcolm in the
library, so I'll let you two have your alone time." Jen stepped out
of the room. "But don't do anything you wouldn't want a jealous
Caltian to see," she called before she disappeared.

Gavin and I stood in the doorway, staring at
each other, before I cleared my throat to hide the tension. "Um, do
you want to come in?"

"Uh, yeah, that'd be cool," he muttered and
followed me into the room, closing the door behind us. I looked
around for somewhere to sit. I didn't want to sit on the bed and
give him any ideas, so I just stood near my desk and luckily he
didn't feel the need to sit either. He stood at the other side of
my bed.

"Look, Alex, I know I've been kind of a jerk
throughout this internship about the whole Ace thing."

I let out a stifled laugh. "Kind of a
jerk?"

He pushed his hair out of his eyes. "Okay, a
big jerk about it."

I nodded. "Go on."

"I just wanted to say that I'm sorry for not
even trying to understand what was going on between the two of you
and instead just judging you for it."

I arched an eyebrow.

Gavin let out a big sigh. "I've just been
working around these aliens for so long that I know what they're
capable of. Good, bad, and just plain evil. When I met you I
thought it would actually be cool to spend my summer with someone
normal that wasn't an alien or hung up on themselves like the other
human interns can be."

He took a step around my bed, approaching the
desk. "Then I found out that you started to see that—" He swallowed
holding back whatever words he really wanted to say. "—to see Ace,"
he finished. "I was just pissed off that the first girl I could
actually see myself wanting to get to know during this program
would prefer to be with an alien than me."

I took a step back, not sure what his motives
were and not wanting to be too close. "Well Gavin, it's great that
you're telling me this now, but you know very well that I'm with
Ace."

He nodded, stepping back. "Yeah, we heard all
about you stealing a plane and getting held captive inside the
mothership."

He looked down, his eyes fixed on me like I
was being interrogated in a dimly lit room. "But my real question
is, is it true that to save both your lives you agreed to marry
him?"

I did everything to avoid his stare. "I, uh,
well…it's kind of complicated."

"I knew it!"

I stepped back, gasping at his sudden
outburst. He stood there, shaking his head, and slammed his fist
into his other hand. He stepped so close to me that I could feel
the heat from his words on my forehead when he grabbed me by the
shoulders and shook me.

"How could you do that to yourself? A high
school girl engaged to an alien? That sounds like something you
would see in the supermarket tabloids."

I didn't know how to respond, because
secretly that was exactly how I felt on the inside. I knew in my
heart that I never felt for anyone else the way that I felt for
Ace, but the moment I had agreed to marry him all I could think
about was saving both of our lives. I didn't have time to consider
what that actually meant.

"I mean, how do you even have sex with a
creature like that? Are you even going to be able to have
children?" The anger rose in his face as the veins on his forehead
began to bulge when he stopped shaking me and just stared.

Sex wasn't something I wanted to talk about,
especially since my virginity was very much intact. I had spent
many nights in Ace's bed, but those were spent sleeping and trying
to keep the nightmares away, not trying to populate the future
alien and human hybrid race.

Gavin let out a deep breath and shook his
head. Letting go of my shoulders, he took a step back. "I’m sorry
that got out of hand, Alex. I just wanted you to know how I felt. I
guess I just took it a little too far."