Captured for the Alien Bride Lottery by Margo Collins (electric book reader TXT) 📕

I turned my eyes toward the top of the vehicle we crouched behind.

Hearing the drone move away, I gently moved Amelia onto the ground and made a motion asking her to stay where she was. She nodded and didn’t move, so I hoped she understood. Then I raised up just enough to peer through the two translucent insets on the car in time to watch the drone head up to another level. As I watched, my mind supplied the word windows; apparently being on Earth was helping me remember more of what I had learned from my studies than I had expected.

The drone disappeared up the ramp and I started to duck down again, but something inside the vehicle caught my attention.

The control panel.

For all that Earthers still relied on individual transportation pods like this one, they had adopted some of the Khanavai technology. What my people had allowed them to use, anyway.

For one, they no longer filled their cars with tanks full of explosive propellants to make them run. Now, their transportation control systems were configured like miniaturized versions of every spacecraft I had ever flown.

And I had been at the top of my class in avionics in my Special Ops training.

It wouldn’t take much for me to commandeer one of these vehicles and use it for my own purposes.

I had just begun thinking about what I might use for tools to complete my goal when the drone came soaring back down the ramp.

Inspiration struck.

Carefully, I drew my sword quietly from the scabbard I had tucked it into.

Holding a hand out in another “don’t move” gesture to Amelia, I risked one more peek through the windows to chart the drone’s movements as it slowed, shining a light into the darker spaces between the cars it passed.

I had to time this perfectly.

Chapter Seven

Amelia

Zont crept to the end of the SUVs we crouched between, peering around the bumper to check the position of the drone. I didn’t know what good it would do to attack it with a sword, but I hoped he’d disable it enough for us to be able to sneak out past any others that might be around.

But then Zont started spinning that giant, weirdly curved sword of his around in a circle, one-handed, until it was cutting through the air with a whistling sound that almost rivaled the sound of the drone’s engines. He leaped out from behind the gray SUV, and extended straight upward, slamming his sword into the drone so hard that it would have knocked it across the garage like hitting a baseball out of the park, had it not been for the fact that the sword cut partway into the drone and stuck there.

Zont laughed aloud and said something that sounded triumphant, if garbled.

As soon as the drone was out of the picture, the aerial globe vid recorder dropped down from where it had been hiding, presumably in the concrete supports that ran along the ceiling of this floor to hover in front of my face.

I assumed it hadn’t followed us at all.

Oh, God. That kiss was recorded. My face flushed hotly.

Then all that blush drained away and I went cold when I realized the judges for the Bride Games, those shadowy figures who made all the final decisions about final mate matches, would almost certainly use that against me.

How could I say I didn’t want Zont when I was on vid passionately kissing him?

With one hand, I reached up and rubbed my forehead, trying to get rid of the tension I felt forming there.

Maybe with the Alveron Horde invading for the first time in half a century, the whole Bride Games thing would be suspended for a while.

Yeah, right. A girl could dream.

Zont brought the disabled drone down to the ground and put his foot on it to hold it while he ripped his sword out of it. The tiny camera drone that had been following him all along chose that ill-fated moment to buzz up in front of him, and with what sounded like a muttered curse, he smashed it with his sword, too. It tumbled to the ground, making a sad beeping noise for several seconds before it died, all its lights fading out slowly.

I almost felt sorry for it.

When Zont turned to glance at me, his eyes were full of some kind of battle fury, and I shrank away.

His expression instantly turned contrite, and all that rage dropped away. He held out his hand for me to take and said, “Amelia safe.”

I believed him.

It was absolutely insane, but I believed him.

As soon as the camera and drone were both down, I scrambled to my feet as Zont turned to examine first the gray SUV and then the red one we stood between.

“Wait,” I suggested. “The camera probably got images of both of these.” My gesture took in both the red and the gray SUVs. “If you’re planning to steal one of these—that’s what you’re doing, right?—we need to get one the vid drone didn’t see.”

His eyes narrowed as he considered my words, and then he nodded sharply once.

“Another level?” I pointed upward, and he nodded. He sheathed his sword, gathered up the disabled drone and the camera globe, and then held out his free hand.

It made me nervous to take it. What did holding hands mean to Khanavai men? But when I reached out and set my hand in his, he wrapped his large warm fingers around it, and I felt comforted.

We moved up to the next level. I worried that the Alveron Horde drone might have gotten images of these, too, and sent them back to the attack ship. But that could apply to every car in here, and I wasn’t willing to step foot outside without at least the minor protection a car might offer.

On the second level, Zont made a beeline toward the brightest car available—a cheerful red sportscar that probably cost as much as I made in a year,