I burst out laughing. “Do we have to do it onstage?” My mouth was suddenly dry, and I took a big swig of my tea. I wished it were stronger and heavily laced with alcohol. Goo-goo eyes and mating cuffs? This was becoming quite the show.
“Yes, we. The show is now about you and me. How my beast chose you. How we are… suited and ultimately mates with matching Atlan cuffs. The finalists will be there. It’s something called a tell-all, although I have no idea what that is.”
“Oh God.” I closed my eyes, thinking of all the reality shows I’d seen where all kinds of dirt was dragged up. Sometimes it wasn’t pretty. That meant… God, they were probably digging stuff up on me right now. Like my family. Greg. And…
“That’s not a good idea,” I told him.
“Why not?”
I explained what a tell-all was, how Chet Bosworth would share every intimate detail of our lives for the entire world to pick apart. “Do you have secrets you don’t want shared?” I asked him.
He sat quietly, thinking. “I was matched to a volunteer bride from Earth several years ago, before Earth was granted membership in the Coalition. She was part of an exploratory team, sent to investigate the program before your government revealed the truth to the people of Earth.”
“What?” All excitement about possibly being his fell away like petals on a dying flower. He’d been matched. Had he pressed her up against a door and taken her as he had me? “Where is she now?” I asked softly. “Did she die?”
His eyes flared wide. “Die? No. I believe she is alive and well. Married, as they say here on Earth. She took nineteen of her thirty days, then refused me and my beast. She said she’d made a mistake, left a man she loved on Earth and could not be mated to me.”
What? There was a woman who didn’t want Wulf? And they’d been matched through the testing program? The chances of that happening, where the match was bad, was less than one-hundredth of one percent. Wulf had almost better odds at winning the Powerball jackpot than having a tested mate reject him.
Yet he had.
“Well, I’m still sorry. That must have been painful for you.” That woman, whoever she was, was an idiot.
“She is my only secret, although not much of one.”
“You did not give her your cuffs?” I asked, wondering if the Atlan bracelets I’d seen onstage were hand-me-downs.
“She rejected me. She was not my mate. No cuffs. As for Ruth—that is her name—she is the only information of use they will find. The rest is about my service, my capture… nothing worth mentioning.”
My mouth fell open. “Your service to the Coalition is definitely worth mentioning. You are a brave warlord. You survived the Hive in so many different ways. That is to be honored. Respected.”
He offered me a small smile but said nothing. He was humble, too.
“Woof, watch! I’m a moose!” Tanner jumped through the sprinkler, but I had no idea how he looked anything like a moose.
“And you, Olivia? What secrets do you keep?”
My eyes widened. “I… um…”
“Where did you go last night? Lucy believes you need my help.”
I pursed my lips at my friend’s annoying blabbermouth.
“I can’t speak of it,” I said, telling the truth. Jimmy had threatened to harm the kids if I ever told anyone. While I might be done with my work for him, he still dealt in bad things—ha, a total understatement!—and I had no doubt he’d still go after Tanner and Emma if he felt so inclined.
“Can’t or won’t?” he asked.
I hated that he was perceptive.
“Can’t,” I replied. I shifted in my chair, crossed my arms over my chest.
He reached out with one hand and grabbed my chair, sliding it across the concrete to be directly in front of him so our knees bumped. His gaze met mine. Held.
“‘Can’t’ means you are unable to do so for a reason. What is your reason?”
I licked my lips and he watched. It had been a year, and I hadn’t told anyone about Jimmy Steel. About Greg’s debt. Not even Lucy, and I’d wanted to do so on many occasions. One intense stare by an alien and I had my own little tell-all, right in the backyard.
“Because someone will hurt the children if I say anything.”
Wulf’s jaw clenched, and I thought of an alligator. All that power waiting to be unleashed.
“Who dares threaten my children?” The one word was like a whip, sharp and ruthless.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to wait it out. Maybe be interrupted by the kids with another moose demonstration.
“Olivia Mercier. I must know who will hurt Tanner and Emma so I can rip their heads from their bodies.”
With that, I laughed. Hard. For the first time in a year I found Jimmy Steel funny. Funny enough that the humor in Wulf’s words had tears streaming down my face, and then it turned into sobs. Yet he wasn’t joking, and that was why I had waterworks of my own.
I covered my face with my hands and was scooped up to sit on Wulf’s lap, his arms around me. I cried and cried.
“What’s wrong, Auntie?” Tanner asked. “Got a boo-boo?”
“She has a boo-boo on the inside, Tanner.”
“Kiss and make it better,” he said.
“I will,” Wulf promised. “I’ll watch out for your auntie while you both play in the water. Show me this moose you spoke of once again. I am not familiar with it.”
I heard the children squeal and splash as I rubbed my face into Wulf’s hard chest and tried to stop the tears. They ended eventually, when there were none left. He’d done nothing except stroke his big hand up and down my back patiently.
“A poison must be bled from the body. Human females I’ve met on The Colony like to do as you did. Cry for a long time.”
I didn’t know these women on his planet, but I figured we would probably get along.
I sniffled and looked up at him. He was so big, so handsome. Rugged. Fierce. Yet he was holding me as if I were the most precious thing in the world.
“Are you ready now to tell me who is threatening the children?”
I wiped my cheeks with my fingers. “Jimmy Steel.”
“Why is he a menace?”
“He… deals drugs. Prostitutes. Gambling. All kinds of bad things. My brother, Greg, owed him money.”
I felt him stiffen beneath me, but he didn’t move.
“If your brother is paying him, why does this Jimmy Steel threaten you?”
“My brother died last year, with his wife. The kids are his, and I became their guardian. I took on the kids, but Jimmy Steel said I had to take on Greg’s debt to him.”
“How?”
I looked to the kids, innocently playing.
“I was a drug mule. Someone who carried illegal drugs from one place to another.”
“I am familiar with this. Quell is rampant in space ports all across the universe.”
I’d never heard of Quell, but it didn’t surprise me that outer space had some of the same issues we did down here on little planet Earth.
“Last night was my final delivery. We agreed to a certain amount of cash to pay off the debt, but the rest would be paid off delivering drugs. I’m finished with our agreement, with Greg’s debt.”