Chosen Alien Bride (Sci Fi Alien Romance) by Meg Ripley Page B

boards?” Ada whispered.
    “Yes,” Jax answered immediately. He seemed to hear her heart hammering in fear, because the next moment he’d grabbed her hand and was pulsing a gentle energy into the skin of her palm. It cooled her terror, and she could breathe again. Ada asked the next question that sprang to her lips.
    “Why don’t they tell us? Why don’t they let us all be Pathos?”
    “Well, they claim it’s for your own good,” Jax answered, and his voice made it clear that he didn’t agree. His third eye blinked, irritated. “But our people think it’s because it made you something more human than they could be…or something simply more.”
    Ada tried to wrap her mind around the pronouncement, finding it exceedingly difficult. “So what did it for me? The furry thing?” She tried to remember what he’d called it, and was surprised to find it zoom to the front of her mind: “A Bezoar?”
    “Yes,” Jax said again. “Electrical activity stimulates the empathy board. A large enough shock will awaken it, and for Pathos, it’s usually done at birth. But for you, and cypeople like you…even the simple act of thinking, living, and learning generates enough electricity in the soft part of your brain that it can jostle the empathy board.”
    Ada laughed darkly as bitterness washed over her for the first time, acidic and invigorating. “So, we don’t have undersized empathy centers?”
    Jax laughed sadly. “No, just deactivated ones. It seems that cypeople like you are happening more and more, though---both naturally awakening very slowly, and through accidents like…” Jax stretched one of his golden arms toward the dead Bezoar.
    “And the ones they kill?” she asked as anxiety gripped her heart again. “Are they just…waking up? Why won’t the ships recognize them?”
    Jax hesitated. “The ships recognize them, but they really are corrupted. Because of the capacity for natural activation, there’s also the capacity for the board to be activated…inefficiently.”
    An icy sheet of dread settled over Ada, and she whimpered involuntarily. Jax squeezed her hand again, and calm rolled through her muscles and slowly melted her fear. “So they are suffering,” she said through gritted teeth, “but it’s the humans’ fault?” Jax didn’t answer, but because she’d already tasted all of his knowledge, she could see the yes clearly in her mind.
    Ada locked eyes with Jax as they both sat up on the soft floor of the cave. “What will they do now that I’m…like this? Will they kill me?” Her heartbeat sped up. “Will you report me?”
    “They likely already know,” Jax said, and Ada saw in her mind that it was true. It was unsettling having access to someone else’s information---it was like having a giant library in her head. It would take some getting used to.
    “But they’ll want to use you as a poster child, most likely, and claim they didn’t know it was possible to the public. They’ll try hard to do anything that would upset the population, and once the population finds out you’re more identical than they thought---” Jax shrugged, and Ada answered for him.
    “They’ll want the engineers to answer for it. Maybe not now, but eventually.” She didn’t know if wars were started over things like this on Earth, but she didn’t want to find out. “Come on, we have to get back to the hub.” She sprinted to the mouth of the cave, and Jax followed.
    Jax stopped her with a hand on her shoulder, surprise clear in all three of his eyes. “Why me? I mean, I would like to tag along,” he said bashfully. “But why do I have to accompany you?”
    “You can back me up,” Ada said urgently as she dropped to her hands and knees and pushed through the hole. “Also…I kind of don’t want to be without you. Is that weird?”
    “Not at all,” Jax said behind the sheet of aluminum.

There were no weighted boots to hold her down, so she hesitated as she stood outside the cave. Her alloy