Wed to the Alien Prince by C.V. Walter

Chapter 2

Prince Serogero realized his mistake at the confused and upset look on Kaelin's face. Her thick glasses made it hard to read her eyes but the frown on her lips was unmistakable.

"It was recent," he told her. "Within the last few weeks, I believe."

"She hadn't even mentioned she was seeing somebody!" Kaelin said, her lip starting to tremble. "Unless-"

"Unless what?" Serogero asked.

"Unless we're not as close as I thought and she hasn't been returning my calls because she doesn't want to talk to me," she said. Her eyes closed and she bowed her head, one hand coming up to remove her glasses. "I thought-"

"Please, do not be upset," he said, reaching out for her hand. When he touched her fingers, an electric jolt of desire raced up his arm and across his chest. She jerked her arm away and held her hand to her chest, her lips parted while she tried to get her breath under control.

"What the hell is that?" she asked him. "Do you have some kind of joy buzzer in a glove or something?"

"Of course not," he said. "I'm not even wearing gloves. How would I hide some kind of device like that? Where would I find one? You don't have one, do you?"

She snorted. "Of course not," she said. "I just figured, well, the blue looks really authentic. I know they can do a lot with body paint these days but it's so real, I figured it had to be a synthetic skin. Like they do for special effects in the movies. I've seen some of the tutorials online and what the professionals can do is amazing."

"Ah, well, I'll tell you a secret, if you'd like," Serogero said, leaning forward.

"I'm not sure I want to know your secrets," Kaelin said back.

"Why not?" he demanded.

"Because they're either boring or you'll expect me to tell you one of mine."

"Ah, I see, very smart, very wise, I can see I'll have to watch myself around you."

"Watch yourself around me?" she asked, surprise widening her eyes. "Why would you think that?"

"Because you'll have all my state secrets out of me and I'll know nothing about you but that you're a beautiful woman with the most charming facial accessories I've seen since landing on this planet."

"Facial accessories?" she asked, her voice going cold.

"These things," he said, tapping the stem of her glasses. "I've seen many people wearing them but yours actually seem to sparkle. It makes your face radiant."

"Oh," she said, momentarily lost for words. "They're, um, I have special crystal lenses, cut specifically to help compensate for my eyes. I'm actually blind without them and very nearly blind with them. I mean, I can see people but their edges are blurry unless I'm focusing on something specific, like their face."

"Is that how you came to decide that I wasn't wearing body paint? You were focused on my face?"

She gave him a small smile and looked down at the device in her hands. The screen flashed on and he could see the text was larger than it appeared on most things that size.

"Sorry," she said, looking up at him. "It's my mom. I have to answer her. I don't usually ignore people in favor of my phone."

"Do not apologize for communicating with your mother. I assume it's important, if only out of filial concern."

"I told her I got to the hotel and I'm safe. She worries about me traveling on my own but I told her I was going to meet some friends here so I wouldn't be alone for very long."

"Ah, and she messages you to confirm that you did, in fact, meet with your friends?"

"That's exactly what she's doing," Kaelin said with a smile.

"And have you?"

"Have I what?"

"Have you met a friend?"

He didn't know why but her answer mattered to him. An ache formed in his chest as he waited for her to say that she would consider him a friend.

"I've met a friend and a possible friend," she said, her words careful. "One I think I could be very friendly with after I got to know him a bit better."

"I'm glad to hear it," he said, and he was. The ache in his chest eased slightly but it still pulled him towards her. "How can I get to know you better? What dark secret would you have out of me that I could trade for a small insight into your mind?"

"Do you always talk like this?" Kaelin asked. "Or am I just special? Cause this sounds rehearsed."

"Rehearsed? Me?" he sat back, his eyes wide in mock offense. "I assure you, I would never spend hours in front of a mirror practicing how to woo a woman. You have struck me to the core and my soul bleeds from the injustice."

Kaelin giggled. "So, not only are you an actor, you're a ham, as well."

"I will be any kind of meat you desire, my beauty, as long as I am yours." He sighed longingly and she laughed.

"Too much?" he asked with a grin.

"Just a little over the top," she said, resting her chin on her hand. "Not that I'm stopping you. I'm happy to hear you tell me how beautiful I am. It's a lie but you can keep that one up as long as you can keep a straight face."

He frowned. "A lie? What kind of slander is this? Who would have told you that you were anything but the most exquisite beauty to grace the shell of this overgrown rock?"

"Literally everybody but my mother and Molly," she responded quickly. "Every time Molly sends me a message, she starts it with 'Hey Beautiful'. My mom, well, she's my mom. She's required to tell me I'm beautiful, even if she really just means on the inside."

"I refuse to believe it," he said. "Surely? some of the men on this planet have witnessed your beauty and had the fortitude to attempt to woo you."

"I've met a few guys online who started out saying things like that. Most of them say the birthmark doesn't bother them. And that was before I lost almost two hundred pounds. Now, they compliment my body and avoid talking about my face."

"Two hundred pounds? Were you ill?" He asked, aghast.

"No, not more than usual. I worked really hard, got some help to stop eating my emotions, and learned how to eat better. It was a long, hard process and Molly was my biggest cheerleader," she said. "I also stopped talking to the guys who started conversations about my looks with 'Hey, the birthmark doesn't bother me, you seem like a sweet girl' because those always ended up with a pint of ice cream."

"I hesitate to ask how they ended up speaking to you," Serogero said, his blood boiling at the implication that she'd been mistreated by the males of the planet.

"Usually with a request to send them money, or the 'offer' to 'cure my virginity' cause nobody else would want to actually have sex with me. If they could do it from behind, they'd even make sure I enjoyed myself," she said with a snort. "The ones that were just scam artists trying to get enough information off me to try and break into my financial accounts usually just disappeared when I didn't fall for it."

"How dare they even suggest-" Serogero had felt incandescent rage a few times in his life, had lived with it constantly before the Forward Hope had made its first trip through the gates into the slide-bridges, but that was nothing compared to the anger he felt over the way she'd been spoken to. What was burning inside him now would have had him rip apart someone with his bare hands were they beside him, and he would feel nothing but a desire to keep the woman across from him away from the blood, lest she get dirty from the carnage.

She shrugged. "Look, everybody knows that fat, ugly girls don't have feelings, right? Not like actual girls."

"That's monstrous and even if it were a possibility of being anywhere near true, that's no reason to be-"

"Rude?" she said with a rueful smile.

"Well, yes, among other things." He was struggling to control his temper and, given that she wasn't running from him in fear, Serogero seemed to have managed, at least outwardly.

"That's nice of you to say," she told him. "And I happen to agree but it was such a frequent occurrence, I, well, I don't want to say I got used to it but it stopped surprising me. Even if it never really stopped hurting."

"I'm not being nice, I'm being-" he struggled for the right words.

"Human?" she supplied. "I appreciate it."

"It shouldn't even be something you can appreciate, it should be something you are so accustomed to, the lack of it is shocking."

She sighed.

"Most people look at this," she said, with a gesture to the birthmark that covered the entire top half of her face. "And flinch. A lot of them look away. Small children have a tendency to scream or point and ask questions that their parents find awkward."

"It's not right."

"It's normal," she said, gently. "It's what they do next that matters. Most people are polite, if a little uncomfortable at first, but some see an opportunity for abuse."

"Those people should never see another opportunity," Serogero growled.

"In my darker moments, I agree with you," she said. "But mostly I just try and stay out of their way. It's not always something I can control but I do what I can."

The Prince took a deep breath and nodded. "You've done better than I would have if I were confronted with something similar."

"Oh, then it is body paint then," she said, her eyebrow raised. "It must be a really good one because, unless it's some kind of tattoo, it looks really natural."

"Ah," he said, and looked down at his hands. Aidan had told him the word for what they were supposed to be doing at the convention. The emotions that had raged through him a few moments earlier were being burned out of his system by the bio-nanos but they'd taken with them his memory of their briefing before coming to the planet.

"Well, that's because," he said slowly then sighed.

"Because it is natural?" Kaelin asked.

"Yes, I was born this color," he admitted.

"And you've never had anybody react strangely to the fact that you're blue?"

"Never," he said. "Even here, everybody assumes it's a costume and most don't look much closer."

"Were you home schooled?"

"I was taught at home, yes," he said.

"Did you have friends?"

"Also yes, though fewer than you'd think. Your friend Molly's new spouse was one of them, though slightly older than me." Serogero was also distantly related to Mintonar but, among the upper houses of the Empire, it was more unusual to find someone who wasn't related to anybody else to some degree.

"Are they also blue?" she asked, her lips quirked up at the corners.

He grinned at her. "And why would you think that?"

"Because you come from somewhere that everybody is blue if you were born this color and nobody else thought it was strange."

"Maybe I was born this color and everybody got used to it by the time I was able to see their reactions," he suggested, nervous that she'd gotten this far and hadn't panicked. Some part of him was excited, though, that she was accepting the situation as calmly as she appeared to be.

"Maybe," she allowed. "But I still think you were born somewhere that you looked like everybody else. Are the horns real?"

"Yes," he said with a smile. "Would you like to touch them?"

"What happens if I touch them?"

"To you? Nothing but feeling something you probably haven't felt before."

"What do you feel?" she asked.

"It feels very pleasant to have my horns touched," he said.

"Like somebody running their fingers through your hair or somebody accidentally rubbing against your junk on the subway kind of pleasant?"

He made a face. "I can't imagine that second feels all that nice."

"And yet the number of men who make a point of 'accidentally' rubbing that part against strange women on the subway is staggering."

"Human men are disgusting," Serogero said.

"Not all of them," Kaelin countered. "In fact, not even most of them. The bad ones do stand out, though, and we're designed to remember more bad things than good so we can avoid them in the future. I'm certain your people have their own deviants."

"Deviants? Like men who ask strange women to touch their horns?"

"Something like that," she said. "But, in your defense, I did ask if I could."

"You asked what would happen," he said. "I was the one who suggested that you might like to. It was uncouth and I apologize."

She smiled at him.