Chapter Ten

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Draeken had been bouncing from one extreme emotion to another since Stella had put the device on him. It amazed him that such a small clear sticker could have such a profound impact. But it did. Overall, it had a dulling effect on his entire brain. His motor skills were fine, but his mind felt fuzzy. At least until she told him to kiss her.

That had been a sharp command that reverberated from the center of his body outward. He was compelled by a force not entirely his own to do as she commanded, but it certainly hadn’t been a chore. He’d wanted to kiss Stella every time he looked in her eyes, looked at her face, or spent two seconds in her company.

The kissing had certainly not been a problem, but at first merely being under someone else’s control left him feeling a bit…freaked out was the Earther term, he believed. But not as much as seeing danger approach and not being fully able to act as he might have. Like grabbing Stella and running far, far away.

The woman he’d warned Stella about was approaching at a fast clip. Stella slapped a hand on her belt, likely trying to locate and procure her Defender.

“Hey,” the girl said. The closer she came, the younger she looked. “Is Deputy Rosemont inside? Do you know?”

“I beg your pardon?” Stella said. Her arm stopped moving frantically at her waist.

The girl nodded at the vehicle. “I’m pretty sure that’s the sheriff’s car, but I was hoping to bring a surprise lunch to Deputy Rosemont, if he’s alone, I mean.” A blush grew in her round cheeks, adding meaning to the word “surprise” in her previous statement.

Draeken remembered Deputy Rosemont all right. Did Stella? She’d been the one to deliver that last nudge to him.

The girl glanced at Stella, then at the back door of the sheriff’s office and then back at them. “Do you happen to know if Deputy Rosemont is in there alone or if the sheriff is also there?”

Draeken tried to give Stella a poke with his elbow, but his body wouldn’t cooperate.

Stella finally looked up as if all the girl’s words finally processed through her brain. “Honestly,” she said. “I don’t have any idea.” A meaningful look came his way from Stella’s beautiful eyes.

She put a hand on Draeken’s forearm and added, “We just slipped back here for a quiet moment together. You know what I mean?”

The girl’s cheeks turned an even deeper shade of crimson and she nodded. “I sort of figured. You two are a very cute couple.”

“Thanks,” Stella said, grabbing his arm again. “We’d better get going, sweetie.”

Draeken smiled at the girl, striving to project the air of the strong, silent type, since he couldn’t speak. He liked the endearment, sweetie. If he could have spoken, he would have responded with, “Of course, sugar pie, honeybunch. Let’s go kiss ourselves silly somewhere.” But he remained silent in the moment, because he was forced to behave.

“Good luck with your surprise picnic lunch,” Stella said to the girl and promptly hustled him back out the way they’d come.

She led them down the busy main thoroughfare and into the park he’d spent quality time in last night. They were seated on the very bench where he’d catnapped. Many trees surrounded them. While they remained in view of the main street and there were some grassy spots, this area of the park was fairly secluded.

Stella faced him, one knee connecting with his, and whispered something about trusting him to behave while she sent messages to her team and back home.

Back home to Alpha-Prime? No. She has a new home on Earth now, with a new family. Not him.

Draeken succumbed for a moment to the relaxing effect of the shackle. Despite it, he was electrically aware every time Stella barely touched him. It made him a little crazed. Even fully clothed with only their bent, boney knees connecting was enough to put his mind into sexy past moments with her. It also generated the recent memories of what he’d done to change his life for the better, so that he could find her again with more than his love and a ne’er-do-well past always haunting him like a souvenir shadow of a youthful, foolish past.

He wanted to break free of this haze-inducing shackle, take her into his arms and tell her how much he loved her, how much he’d always loved her, what he’d done to change things for his future and finish with the huge secret he’d been harboring since leaving Alpha-Prime.

No one knew this secret, not the original guard, not his parents, not even his own brother, who’d obviously inserted himself into the journey to help Draeken. The magistrate, the prosecutor and his own personal barrister were the only other three who knew why he had a ten-year sentence and why only he could go to the gulag and get them what they wanted.

Stella put her soft palm on his cheek, stared into his half-closed eyes and said, “Tell me the truth, Draeken. What happened to bring you here to Earth?”

Space potatoes. That information was a big fat secret. He wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. Not a soul. Not even the love of his life.

He hadn’t said a single word to Riker on the trip before crash-landing on Earth, and hoped his brother wouldn’t figure out he was lying by omission. Riker had given him every opportunity to explain.

His brother had railed against a system that would give Draeken the maximum ten years even if he had been guilty, which Riker was not convinced was true. He’d been quick to point out he didn’t believe for a second Draeken was guilty of the crime he was accused of and certainly didn’t deserve the maximum sentence even if he might have known the true criminals at one time. Draeken loved his brother and his willingness to help.

Once Riker had seen him safely into the gulag with a few well-placed words on his behalf to the guard staff there, he planned to do his utmost to see this travesty of a conviction turned around. His brother would never stop.

Draeken had thanked him and said nothing else, fearful he’d give away the gig.

No way could he tell Stella the huge secret he harbored, just because she asked. He’d agreed to retrieve some highly difficult to obtain information from a former classmate, John Stillwell, who was serving a life sentence at Galactic Gulag XkR-9. Draeken hadn’t known until that moment that Stillwell’s first name was John.

Stillwell was from a rich, upstanding family, a bored ne’er-do-well with a list of offenses three times the size and brevity of Draeken’s. His family had been much more prestigious than the Phoenixes, but even their name couldn’t save him in the end. He’d caused the deaths of eight people in five instances due to being too intoxicated to function in public. And those were only the instances that had been exposed.

To Draeken’s mind, Stillwell more than deserved to rot in the gulag for years to come. However, Stillwell was a fountain of knowledge regarding other bad actors and ne’er-do-wells from his elevated class. Sometimes he liked to rat others out; sometimes not.

Draeken couldn’t tell Stella, no matter how sweetly she asked, that the magistrate and Draeken’s barrister agreed Stillwell might be more willing to part with candid information if he thought Draeken would be incarcerated in the gulag for a ten-year stretch of his own.

There was a specific piece of information the magistrate and prosecutor required Draeken to get from Stillwell. Doing so would not only release him from what was a bogus charge and resulting sentence, but cleanse his entire record. He could start fresh with a clean slate.

More importantly for his ultimate purposes, he could pursue his love, Stella, with more to offer than his hat in hand, a foolish criminal record and no discernable skills to make a living. He wished he could tell her that in addition to studying Earth history, he’d watched videos and learned how Bauxite was mined. He didn’t have any practical experience, as there was almost no Bauxite left to mine on Alpha-Prime, but he was eager to work hard. Stella was worth any and all effort he’d have to do.

Stella’s voice came into his muzzy-feeling head as she asked a question about his brother. He fought through the fog in his brain to focus on what she was saying. He opened his eyes to her beautiful face, her understanding expression, the woman he loved with all his heart and soul. She asked him something again about his brother, but he was so relaxed he didn’t speak. He could only nod in contentment.

She smiled, grabbed his arm and shockingly peeled the shackle sticker from his wrist. The moment the device was off his skin, he blacked out.