Page 1 of Mated to the Grumpy Alien

chapter

one

Cressida

Go to Europe! they said.

Spoil yourself! they said.

Go see all the art you’ve been teaching kids about! they said.

You’ve worked so hard taking care of your mom for all these years, they said. Now that she’s gone, it’s time to take care of yourself!

It’s perfectly safe for a woman to travel alone in Europe, they said.

Yeah. Right.

You know what no one mentioned when they were selling me on the idea of a grand European adventure? Getting burned at the stake. And yet here I am, trussed up like a hog, being dragged toward an actual stake which is surrounded by kindling.

Maybe it’s perfectly safe for some other women to travel alone. But … nooooooo. Not me. Not Cressida Jones, walking disaster and possessor of the worst luck in the history of bad luck.

Don’t believe me?

Let me lay it out for you, because this shit–literally-could not have happened to anyone else.

Less than one week into my trip to tour the art museums of Europe, there was some kind of … I don’t even know how to describe it … cosmic event? Cataclysm? Earthquake doesn’t sound fancy enough, though the ground beneath my feet definitely shook. There was flashing light and movement and the sound I can’t even begin to describe. I must have been knocked unconscious.

One minute I was waiting in line at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. The next I was on the ground in the middle of nowhere. And when I say nowhere, I mean, there was literally nothing but sand and rocks and fields of unfamiliar flowers around me. In the distance I could see some jagged mountains and a glimmer that looked like a lake, so I’d headed in that direction. It took me two days of wandering around to find any sign of civilization.

Trust me when I tell you that I was not made for wandering in the wilderness. I'm a curvy girl from Texas. I teach art history to high school students. I like my creature comforts, my iPad, my Netflix and my Ben & Jerry’s. I was not made for hiking or the cold or sleeping on the ground. I tried not to think too much about the total lack of cell service or airplanes flying overhead.

And when I did finally find people, they were not friendly.

They did not speak English. They did not take baths. And apparently, they did not take kindly to being pepper sprayed.

In retrospect, now that I’ve been knocked unconscious for the second time in three days, I wish I hadn’t pepper sprayed the brute who grabbed my boob, because now he’s got me locked in his arms and he’s dragging me toward a fire pit with a big ol’ stake in the middle of it.

So, to sum up: Art teacher, orphan, Amsterdam, cataclysm, head injury, pepper spray, impending death. Now you know everything I know.

I’ve always been the kind of person who makes other people shake their heads and say, “How does this kind of thing keep happening to you?”

I wish I knew.

Because I hate the idea that I’m about to die and I have no idea how I got here. Or where here is. All I know is that I’m pretty sure I’m about to die.

chapter

two

Irick

It’s lonely being a god among men, but I’ve gotten used to it.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe I am a god. I was raised in the old ways, taught to believe in the wisdom of the Sullec prophets who traversed the heavens and in Be’lah, the gods of the great sea.

But I’ve spent the past decade a long way from home and it’s hard to have faith in the Tides of Be’lah after the shit I’ve been through.

Back on my home planet of Perse, I was branded a traitor, tried for treason, and banished to the lunar prison of Graepus. All of which sucked. And that was before I was captured by slave traders who were too fucking stupid not to crash their ship on this backwater, Tides-forsaken planet. I wasn’t the only survivor, but I’m not exactly a sociable kind of guy, so I scavenged the tech I could from the crashed ship and set off on my own.