Tempest’s heart felt as if it were about to explode. She pressed a hand to her chest as she leaned against the door she just closed behind her.

"Tempest?" Gerax questioned. "Are you well? Did something happening."

Tempest shook her head, and the world started to spin. She had to get her breathing under control. The last thing she wanted to do was pass out again. She needed to stay vigilant of her world around her.

"Tempest?" Gerax called for her again, this time getting a little closer. "Did he harm you? What happened? I knew this was a bad idea. I promise you Dron will be dealt with in a swift manner."

Fear for the man who had just lit her world on fire caused Tempest to focus.

That was the last thing that he wanted to do. She put a hand up to stop Gerax. "No, don’t do that." She spat out just as Gerax lifted his wrist to activate his floating tablet.

"What happened?"

"I don’t know." Tempest shook her head again. She was telling the truth; she truly didn’t know what had just happened in that room. She walked in simply because she knew that she had to.

Her plan had been simple. She’d stay in the room long enough just to say that she had tested the man. According to Gerax, there were no cameras or video feeds coming from inside the rooms to ensure privacy.

He’d also told her that the testing could include anything that she wanted; it wasn’t limited to intercourse.

Tempest had hoped the man in the room was privy to that rule and that he didn’t force himself on her.

Everything changed when he just stood there staring at her like she was the villain in the story.

She was the one who had been ripped from her planet and brought here. She was the one who was basically being forced to marry someone against her will. She was the one being looked at as nothing more than a broodmare. She was the victim in all of what had been going on.

She glared back at him. Or at least she tried to. Unfortunately, the longer she looked at the man, at Dron, the more Tempest realized that it wasn’t just hostility in his gaze. It was sadness. He was being forced to do this just as much as she was.

She could tell that he was uncomfortable and was only standing there because he had no other choice.

All of her plans flew out of the window when he started taking off his clothing. She wasn’t in there to humiliate him. In fact, the longer she looked at him, the more she started to feel bad. She was nervous.

When she got nervous, she spewed nonsense from her mouth. She babbled, walking in a tight line back and forth in front of Dron. Tempest explained that she didn’t want to do this to him. She told him that if she had the choice, she’d never put anyone in this position. She even went so far as to apologize that he was being pulled into this.

It took her a few moments to realize that she was talking to someone who didn’t understand a word that she was saying.

Tempest sighed when she realized that she was practically talking to the wall. A wall with feelings nonetheless.

She stared at him for a long while. She wished she knew of someway to put him at ease. He seemed so tense. The room that they were in wasn’t nearly as opulent as the rest of the large area that she was brought through before. Tempest remembered what Gerax had said before, that he was cursed. That the people wouldn’t accept the pairing.

It was the wrong choice.

Still, while Tempest had been in the room with Dron, there was something inside of her that felt right. Nearly perfect.

The perfect level of push and pull between them.

Both of them fighting for the right to be in charge, neither wanting to give up ground. All of that without ever saying a word to eachother.

It was only when they got closer to eachother that she realized she was a fool to ever think that she would ever be able to dominate that man. In fact what made it even stranger was the fact that the longer he stared at her and the closer he got to her the more she wanted to submit to him. She wanted to be held down and told what to do. She wanted to trust him. She wanted to give her all to him.

Then finally he leaned in and she almost threw all caution to the wind and let him do exactly just that. Thankfully he turned away from her at the last moment and broke the strange spell that she seemed to be under.

She shook her head once again and made sure to keep Gerax from running off. She didn’t want Dron to get into any trouble especially when he hadn’t actively done anything wrong.

"It’s fine. I promise I just got a little overwhelmed. He didn’t do anything to me." Tempest spat.

Gerax huffed but Tempest saw him relax a little. "Are you sure. He’s on a very short leash. All you have to do is say the word, and he’ll be thrown in the cells."

Tempest cringed at the man’s words. She wondered how many times someone had used their hatred of Dron as an excuse to get the guards to reprimand him. Sometimes the worst crime one could commit was to be hated.

"No!" Tempest glared at Gerax, she was pissed he brought that option up again, then she pushed away from the door. Or rather, she tried to.

For some reason, just the short time Tempest had spent with the intense alien in the room was enough to change her.

She had never been the type to become infatuated with anyone. Minus her time in grade school when she had a crush on the older brother of one of her school rivals.

That didn’t end well. Ever since then she’d given up on the idea of fast and quick love.

She shivered as the memory filtered through her mind.

This wasn’t love. Whatever had happened in that room was much more than just butterflies in her gut.

It felt like a chain was tethered around her waist, and it tightened the further away from Dron she got. She didn’t want to take another step away from him. She wanted to get closer.

It pissed her off to no end.

"What did you do to me?" Tempest gritted through clenched teeth at Gerax.

He tilted his head, the telltale sign that he was waiting for her words to translate. "Pardon me?"

"I asked what you did to me? Did you drug me or something like that? Make it so my hormones go all crazy when I’m in a room with one of your kind?"

He blinked a few times. If Tempest wasn’t already so pissed off, she might have thought the expression funny. But at that moment, as the invisible vise around her tightened, she didn’t find anything humorous about the situation.

"We’ve only administered the nectar and healed any ailments you may have had. We didn’t change anything else of your chemistry." Gerax looked at her waiting for her to continue what she was saying, but there was nothing more for Tempest to say.

If Gerax was telling the truth, then maybe this was just a side effect of the transformation.

Like how some medications that were designed for one purpose could cause have other effects.

It was just temporary, it had to be.

Tempest took a deep breath and forced herself away from the door.

"Okay, I’ve tested him. Now what?" She crossed her arms around her stomach as she took another step away. It probably looked to Gerax like she was angry or uncomfortable. In all actuality, she was holding onto her stomach because she felt ill. As in physically ill with every step she took away from the door.

It was a gnawing, deep sensation. A pull.

Gerax raised an eyebrow in her direction. "Usually the testing can take anywhere up to several moon cycles. You were in there for a very short period of time."

"Do I have to go back?" Tempest pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and bit down on it. She thought the time she’d spent with him had been sufficent.

"No, if you’ve truly completed your testing of the alpha we can move on to the second phase."

She heaved a sigh of relief and followed Gerax as they slowly walked back down the extravagant hall. The discomfort that she felt was still there, but she was learning to deal with it.

"So what do I have to do now?"

"Are you hoping to conduct another testing. Maybe on one of the other candidates?"

Tempest’s eyes grew wide. "Is that normal? I didn’t think that I had to do this more than once." She would go out of her mind if she had to be locked into another room with yet another alien. So far, besides the procession, she had been locked in a room with one or several other aliens.

Honestly, all Tempest really wanted to do was go somewhere on her own and decompress from the craziness that had suddenly become her world.

"It’s not abnormal to say. Most of the other omegas who have been part of this process before tend to test out a few of the alphas just for comparison. Is that something you would be interested in?"

Tempest screwed up her face at that thought. She didn’t want to compare Dron to anyone. She didn’t need to. In her experience, all men always turned out to be the same. She really didn’t believe that just because this Dron was an alien that he would be any different.

"No, I’ve seen enough." Tempest grumbled.

Gerax’s eyes opened a little wider, "Are you saying that you are choosing Dron."

Tempest breathed deeply. This was it. The figurative nail in her coffin. "Yes, I’m choosing Dron."

Gerax looked absolutely ill. As ill as an alien could look, that is. His mouth opened and closed a few times before he was able to speak again. "Are you certain."

"Yes, I am. Is there a problem?" Tempest tightened her arms around her midsection.

"Not for you, it’s just this is quite unheard of. Dron is believed to be cursed. He’s never been chosen to have a wife; I’m not sure he’ll be prepared." Gerax shifted from foot to foot in a manner very unlike him.

Tempest didn’t really want to be part of this process, but just knowing that she was about to throw a wrench in everyone’s plans was more than enough to put a little smile on her face.

Tempest pulled herself up straight. It was time to give the cursed alien a run for his money. She’d bet that it would take him all of three days to be through with this little experiment.

For the first time since it all had began, Tempest was excited.