CHAPTER 10
I shouldn’t have fucked her.
Not here, with so much on the line. I should have kept my dick in my pants and my mouth shut, but I couldn’t resist the physical reminder that she belonged to me too, and that I belonged to her.
And now we were stuck in a shitty situation, all because I was feeling selfish.
“Okay,” Fiona’s father says, pinching the bridge of his nose and looking between the four of us. “Care to explain what the hell is going on here? I’ve tried to be understanding of this whole strange situation, and I just…” He pauses, glaring at Nereus, his eyes bloodshot. “Atlantica is not a real country. You are not a real prince. And I was willing to let that slide, but now you’re involved in some kind of swinger situation?”
“It’s not like that,” Fiona says, her fist clenching at her side. “Don’t...belittle it like that.”
David gapes at her. “What am I supposed to call it?” he demands, then turns to Nereus. “And you--you know about this? And you still want to marry her when she’s sleeping around?”
Fiona blanches and I put my hand on her shoulder, glaring at her father and her stepmother. “Don’t talk about her that way,” I say. “We’ve been through more than you could ever know.”
Vanessa snorts derisively and David’s ire redirects toward her, his eyes narrow. “Please, Fiona, I want to understand, but...Nereus told me you didn’t even want to come home? Where the hell have you been?”
“I told you I was in Europe.”
“You weren’t.”
We all go silent, watching the man as he rifles his fingers through his greying hair. I wonder if we’re about to break him--if this will be just enough to give him a heart attack or drive him insane. “I spent a few minutes on the phone with my security personnel and a private investigator I put on your case,” he says quietly. “They told me that there isn’t any record of a private plane from Europe coming into Atlanta tonight. That the only record of a Kye Castillo is an Air Force pilot that went missing ten years ago.” He sighs, his eyes squeezing shut. “I’m just...I’m worried, Fiona. What is going on?”
“I think you should leave.”
I look at Vanessa, who’s crossed her arms over her chest and glares at the three of us. “You’ve done enough damage tonight and ruined our party,” she continues. “I think it’s best if you go back to wherever you came from and leave us in peace. We were better off without--”
“Vanessa, get out,” David says.
Her eyes go wide. “Excuse me?”
“Go sleep in the pool house,” he says. “You aren’t helping, and clearly I need to have a conversation alone with my daughter and her friends. Now get out.”
Her jaw drops. “But, David--”
“Get out!” he roars, and she staggers backward on her impossibly high heels. She doesn’t say another word before fleeing the room, leaving the four of us in silence.
“Now,” David says. “Sit down and explain.”
I exchange a glance with Fiona and she inhales sharply before slipping her hand into mine and leading me forward. There’s a loveseat between Nereus and David’s chairs, and that’s where we sit, warmed by the fire. I wish I had a glass of whiskey in my hand right now, Fiona’s hand on my knee only doing so much to set me at ease.
I feel out of place here. Wrong. Like I’m intruding somewhere I don’t belong.
“Dad, you’re going to want to finish that glass of whiskey before I start,” Fiona says. He doesn’t make a move, crossing his arms over his chest and scowling.
“I think I can handle it,” he says.
Fiona shrugs. “Okay,” she says. “So...you remember the night I disappeared? The weird flash of light?”
“Right,” he says. “The stray firework.”
“What if I told you it wasn’t a firework?”
He looks puzzled for a minute. “What else could it have possibly been?”
Fiona gulps. “Remember when I joked about Nereus taking me away on a spaceship?”
David lets out a harsh laugh, and Fiona flinches. I put my hand over hers and squeeze her fingers gently, glancing at Nereus to see that his eyes are wide and his face pale.
This feels like a bad idea.
We’re about to tell the governor of Georgia that aliens are real.
We don’t laugh with him, and David finally calms down to look between us in disbelief. “You’re serious?” he says. “You...if you came here to humiliate me, you can leave.”
“Dad, stop,” Fiona says. “We can prove it.”
I look from her to Nereus, and then down at my own hands. I shudder at the notion that she’s about to prove it by showing her father my mechanical hands, putting me on display like I’m some kind of freak. But instead she looks at Nereus encouragingly, nodding.
“Ner,” she says. “Would you mind showing him your neck?”
David snorts. “Fiona, stop--”
“Just look,” Fiona says slowly, gesturing at Nereus.
The silence is taut with tension as Nereus reaches for his collar, pulling his hair aside. With slow, cautious movements, he shrugs out of the blazer to just his button-up, tilting his head to put his gills on full display.
David’s jaw drops.
The older man stands up in awe, stepping on shaky legs toward Nereus. The Merati prince doesn’t move, illustrating commendable patience as he puts himself on display. I suppose he’s used to this; he’s beautiful, his gills in gorgeous pastels that sparkle in the firelight with just a hint of amphoria from our tryst earlier in the bathroom. David doesn’t blink, leaning in to look at Nereus as if he’s a curiosity.
“This...this can’t be real,” he says. He looks at Fiona, his eyes wide. “You weren’t joking?”
Fiona shakes her head. “Dad...I didn’t leave on purpose. I was abducted by aliens.”
He staggers back from Nereus, raising a trembling finger toward me. “And you,” he says. “Did you...you’re an alien too? Stole a pilot’s identity?”
I shake my head, bitterness on my tongue. “No,” I say. “I am Kye Castillo. I was kidnapped by people far less kind than the ones who took your daughter. But I’m not quite human.”
“What does that mean?”
With a sigh, I reach for the glove on my mechanical hand and I pull it off to show the twisted metal and gears. He leans forward as I raise it in the light, letting my joints click and whir. He cocks his head, his jaw somehow dropping even lower. “You’re...you’re the terminator.”
Fiona laughs at that, breaking the silence, and the chime of her easy laughter seems to settle us all a little. David’s shoulders slump, and he snorts then, a little laugh slipping out of his throat.
“No, dad, he’s not the terminator,” she says. “But he is mine. They both are.”
All things considered, he’s taking it rather well. He sits back in his chair, reaching for his drink and slamming it back. After the amber liquid is gone, he refills it with a sigh, shaking his head.
“I thought aliens would be the hardest thing to understand tonight,” he says. “But you’re going to need to explain this swinger situation.”