The Breeding Experiment - Laurann Dohner Page 0,3
dropped open, but she recovered from his surprising answer quickly. “Oh.”
“My grouping was asked to do so for humans. We eradicated a bunch of harmful alien creatures on another planet for our last mission. Your people didn’t check for lifeforms before building a settlement. Large creatures were killing the ones who lived there.”
“Holy shat,” her sister gasped.
Darla elbowed her. “What she meant to say is, that sounds dangerous.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders, attached to thickly muscled arms, which bumped her. “Veslors are good at defending weaker species.” He frowned. “No offense to your kind. We are built to fight. Humans…not so much.”
She glanced up and down his body. “You look it. I mean, tougher than us.”
He gave a nod, and then glanced around the shuttle. “We are about to lose gravity.”
She wanted to know how he knew that, but regardless, he proved to be right. The slight shaking stopped—and a sick feeling hit Darla. The lightheadedness had her clutching his thigh tighter, and holding onto Becky, too. Her body felt indescribably weird—and then gravity was gone.
“Shat!” her sister hissed.
“Stop cursing,” Darla ordered, fighting her own panic. It wasn’t at all pleasant to lose gravity. Her body felt so odd, as if it wasn’t really a part of her anymore. Her hair began to float, and for one, she was glad she and her sister both kept their long hair in single braids down their backs.
“Shat is a curse word?”
Darla turned toward Gnaw, grateful for the distraction. “Yes. It’s a cleaner version of,” she lowered her voice, “shit. We’re not allowed to say that on Radison.”
“It’s a stupid law by the original founders that’s been kept in place,” her sister added. “Frack instead of the other F word. We get fined if caught saying the real words.”
“Why?” Gnaw looked confused.
“The original founders were highly religious. Bad words weren’t allowed.” Darla’s temper sparked. “They kept the law in place for women, but not the men. They don’t consider us morally superior. It’s a sham. They do a lot of bad things to women.”
“Darla!” Her sister sounded horrified.
She shrugged. “No one can arrest me anymore for telling the truth. Women aren’t seen as equals on Radison. Men can curse. Women can’t. We also have to abide certain dress codes that the men don’t, or we get punished.”
Gnaw stared at her in surprise. “Like what?”
“Our long hair, as an example. Short hair isn’t permitted on a woman. Unless there was an accident, like it caught fire. Even then, an official will inspect us for burn marks. We can trim it when it gets long enough to sit on, but that’s about it. Having hair less than waist-length as an adult will get a woman in trouble. We’re also allowed to wear pants at work or while traveling, but otherwise, we must be in a dress. All of our clothing has to be a certain length and cover most of our skin.”
“Why?” Now he looked confused.
“To remind us of who is in charge,” Darla admitted. “Of course, they deny that. They say it’s to help tell the difference between men and women from afar, which is ludicrous. Women who show too much skin are immediately arrested. It’s utter shat. If seeing a knee or elbow makes men attack us, they should be the ones in trouble with our law keepers.”
“That’s confusing.” He shook his head.
“The founders and first wave of colonists were from the same church. Really, they were a cult.” At his questioning expression, she explained, “That means they made up their own religion. Not that they’d admit that, either. It’s why they’d left Earth a long time ago. They lived by their own strict beliefs until making a profit got in the way.”
He opened his mouth, probably to ask another question. That didn’t happen.
Instead, there was a sudden boom in the shuttle and the lights went out.
The engines died.
Gnaw hadn’t warned anything like that could happen! Terrified, Darla blindly reached out and clutched at the big alien male yet again. She was pretty sure her fingers were on his thigh once more, but he didn’t jerk away. Thank god. Touching his huge, sturdy body made her feel safe.
“What the fuck?” a man hissed.
A woman yelled, “What is going on?”
“Someone tell me we’re in orbit and we aren’t about to burn up if we start to fall back toward the planet’s gravity?”
A couple of screams sounded. A few men cursed loudly.
“Remain calm,” a man shouted. “The pilots will have everything under control soon.”
“How do