Claimed for the Alien Bride Lottery by Margo Collins (book recommendations for teens TXT) 📕

sling. There’s a man out there with a broken arm and I want to stabilize it until someone can help him.”

The tech frowned, then punched in a number on his wristcom. A series of supply cabinets popped open. “I’m not sure which cabinet it will be in. But it should be somewhere there.” He gestured at the cabinets, and then he bent down, gathered supplies of his own, and left the room.

My mouth hung open as I stared after him.

I don’t fucking believe it. I think the gods are on my side tonight.

Quickly, I began shuffling through the open cabinets.

For one long, miserable moment, I was convinced the tech had given me access to only first-aid supplies.

But then I found them. An entire cabinet full of neonatal and surgical supplies. And a box of brand-new chips.

Quickly, I grabbed several and slipped them inside my bra. I didn’t know if they were programmed yet, and really I didn’t care. I could find someone on Earth who could do that.

Before I left, I snagged a sling, too. Closing all the cabinets behind me, I slipped back out into the main triage room.

No one was watching, and the stream of injured coming in had slowed to a trickle.

The man I had helped in still waited, clutching his arm miserably.

“Here,” I said, pulling the sling from its package and sliding the brace under his arm. “This should help until someone can take better care of you.”

He blew out a relieved breath. “That does feel better. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” I glanced around to make sure one of the actual medtechs was nearby. “See that green guy over there? He’ll be with you in just a minute.”

No one needed me right now. I had done what I had come to do, both by helping and by getting the implants I would need once I returned to Earth.

Just keep watching. You’ll see your chance, I promised myself.

I hoped I could believe my inner cheerleader.

Chapter Sixteen

Eldron

The Alveron Hordeship would give me nightmares later. I was sure of it.

The octagon halls were a uniformly dark gray, with none of the bright colors that decorated Khanavai ships. Our scientists had speculated that perhaps the Horde didn’t see the same color spectrum that humans and Khanavai did.

Worse, though, everywhere I went, those odd, paper-thin husks remained, as if they had been performing actions and had simply slipped out of their skins and disappeared, leaving behind only crumbling shells of what they had been.

On what I presumed was the bridge, several of them stood with forelimbs stuck to the instrument panels, held there by some biological glue, like the bodies of bugs on a wall.

I had hoped that by getting here immediately after a battle, I might gain a better sense of what we were dealing with. For all that the Khanavai had been fighting the Horde for decades, this was all we had ever found on their ships—empty bodies and dead instruments we could not make work.

“Zagrodnian hells,” I cursed, slamming my fist through one of the Horde bodies. It crumbled away into dust.

We had at least three dead Hordeships just like this one, and not one of them had ever given up its secrets to us.

I punched a few instruments randomly, hoping to learn something, anything, from one of them.

Suddenly, something behind me spun up with a loud whirr. With another curse, I jumped and spun around, barely refraining from shooting my drawn weapon.

“Watch your six, you bumbling idiot,” I muttered to myself. Apparently, my angry, random instrument pounding had started something. I made my way across the bridge to examine a series of blinking lights on the screen.

I stared at it blankly for a moment, and then it seemed to resolve itself into a familiar schematic.

That was Station 21.

And those lighted dots moving around the screen? Those were people.

Specific people, not just life-signs—there were many more station inhabitants than were showing up on this screen.

I began counting and trying to match the numbers of dots to any particular Station 21 group.

“Humans,” I said aloud.

More than that, human females. The number of dots on the screen matched up with the number of human females on Station 21.

What, by all the Blordl death goddesses, were the Alveron Horde doing tracking human females?

Maybe it really did have something to do with destroying all Khanavai means of reproduction.

Was one of those dots Mia? Could she be the one moving down the Bridal Suites hallway even now?

No. I told her to remain in her rooms. She has no reason to be out.

Then again, human women had garnered a reputation of not always being the most compliant of females. Not that anything in Mia’s actions had ever suggested that she wasn’t perfectly well behaved—except, of course, for that wicked gleam I occasionally caught in her eye.

My stomach clenched at the thought of the Hordeship targeting my mate.

All our mates.

I will protect her, no matter what.

I watched the dots move around on the station for a while longer, then pulled myself away and moved through the rest of the ship, checking to make sure there really wasn’t anything else alive.

At least we have one more piece of information than we had before, I consoled myself when I couldn’t turn on any other instruments, no matter where I went.

The longer I spent in this ghost ship, the creepier it seemed.

After hours alone, I finally decided there was nothing left to be learned and was about to head back to the hangar bay, when inspiration struck.

I hadn’t been banging indiscriminately on panels on the bridge when the human-tracker had come to life.

I slammed my fist through one of those creepy alien bodies, and it crumbled to dust. Then I hit the panel—presumably with that dust still on my glove.

Could it really be that simple? Our scientists had attempted various chemical interactions with the Alveron Horde instrumentation, always to no avail.

I need to test this theory before I make a fool of myself by sharing it with anyone