Wrangled by the Alien Rancher (Cowboy Colony Mail-Order Brides Book 2), page 1
WRANGLED BY THE ALIEN RANCHER
COWBOY COLONY MAIL-ORDER BRIDES
BOOK TWO
URSA DAX
NOTICES
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, used, transmitted, or shared via any means without express authorization from the author, except for small passages and quotations used for review and marketing purposes.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events, and incidents in this novel are fictitious and not to be construed as reality or fact.
Wrangled by the Alien Rancher © 2024 Peace Weaver Press Inc. President Veronica Doran
Created with Vellum
CONTENTS
Content Notes
1. Fallon
2. Darcy
3. Darcy
4. Fallon
5. Darcy
6. Fallon
7. Darcy
8. Fallon
9. Darcy
10. Fallon
11. Darcy
12. Darcy
13. Darcy
14. Fallon
15. Darcy
16. Fallon
17. Darcy
18. Fallon
19. Garrek
20. Darcy
21. Darcy
22. Fallon
23. Darcy
24. Darcy
25. Darcy
26. Fallon
27. Darcy
28. Darcy
29. Fallon
30. Darcy
31. Fallon
32. Darcy
33. Darcy
CONTENT NOTES
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1
FALLON
“Don’t show up to your wedding without a shirt,” was what the warden had sternly told me. And so, I would not. As I wanted to make the best first impression possible upon my human bride Darcy, I recruited Cherry for assistance, much to her husband Silar’s displeasure.
“You impose too much upon my wife,” my fellow Zabrian male growled at me from his brooding place in the corner of the kitchen as Cherry and I sat at the table he’d recently constructed.
“It’s not an imposition,” Cherry said, tossing me a pretty smile.
Empire, if my bride Darcy is only half so sweet as Silar’s woman…
I could not wait to meet her. And I’d be wearing a traditional human male wedding outfit when I did it. Or as close to it as I could get.
“See? She says it is no imposition,” I said lightly to Silar. Slowly, a white glow came into the other male’s eyes. I could only imagine what he was fantasizing about doing to me, taking up this small slice of his beautiful wife’s attention as I currently was. He’d already almost strangled me over her once.
The quiet male was absolutely besotted with his human wife. Entirely owned by her. If I were not about to so enthusiastically fling myself into the exact same situation, I would have teased him for it.
“It is an imposition to me,” Silar grunted, crossing his arms over his thick, bare chest and glowering.
“You don’t have to stay,” Cherry said quickly, turning in her chair to look back at him. “If you have stuff you need to be doing right now. We don’t need supervision.”
Silar’s hot white gaze slid to her and grew brighter, an impassioned crackle of light.
“You don’t,” he agreed in a low voice. He jerked the tip of his tail at me. “He does.”
“You know, in all the time I have known him, I have not heard Silar say so many words together as I have since your arrival,” I told Cherry, ignoring the malice in the white gaze that was once more directed at me. “I believe you are having a good influence on him, even if most of the words I am hearing out of his mouth are some sort of criticism of me.”
Cherry shook her head side to side and then moved her eyes up towards the ceiling in an odd gesture I did not understand. I made a note to look it up in the human manual I’d been given in preparation for my marriage when I returned home.
“Simmer down over there, Silar,” Cherry said.
“Simmer… What?”
“It just means, like, chill out.”
Silar’s brow puckered beneath the brim of his hat. He looked even more mystified than before.
“Chilling something is very nearly the opposite of simmering,” he said slowly. It was obvious to me that he did not want to make his wife feel silly or ignorant by questioning her, but his blunt nature could not help but point out the confusing contradiction in what she’d just said.
“They’re human phrases. I just mean, calm down and be nice,” Cherry said on a slight sigh.
Silar gave an unintelligible rumble in reply. It probably would have been easier for him to attempt to make his blood simmer like hot water than to be nice to anyone besides his tiny wife. But I decided, self-preservation at the forefront of my mind, to keep that astute observation to myself. I could not afford to get murdered by Silar before my own wedding.
Cherry gave Silar a stern look, but the expression soon melted into a smile as she gazed upon him. The affection she felt for my great grunting, brooding neighbour was clear to see. Something tightened in my gut, strong and twisting like a tail, as I imagined my own wife feeling something similar for me. Looking upon me with that same softness.
Eventually, Cherry turned her white, blue, and black eyes back to me.
“Show me what you’ve got so far.”
I quickly pulled material from my satchel, some of it black, some of it white. Or, as white as I could keep any fabric in the dust of this world, anyway. I placed it all down upon the table.
“Alright. Good,” Cherry said, moving her head again, but up and down this time. “You can definitely make a wedding suit in an Old-Earth style with this.” Her thoughtful gaze moved to mine, and she grimaced. “I’m warning you, though. I can help you with the design, but not the sewing.”
“That is no problem,” I said with a dismissive flick of my tail across the wood planks of the floor. “I can sew.”
“You can?” Cherry looked surprised by this. And, if I was not mistaken, perhaps even a little impressed.
From somewhere in Silar’s gloomy, forgotten corner came the sound of knuckles cracking.
“I can sew, too.”
“Oh, I know you can,” Cherry said, turning without fear towards the foreboding shape of the imposing figure behind her. “I’ve seen you patch things up, and you made me that new hat. But I didn’t know you could cut and sew entire outfits!”
Silar’s voice went taut with tenderness as he replied.
“I can. I’d make you anything you want, Cherry. You need only tell me.”
“This is good information,” she said, remaining practical and business-like while Silar appeared to be on the heartsick brink of collapsing under the weight of his love for her. “There are a few things I could use before I get my supplies when the other girls come.”
Cherry swivelled back to me, impervious to the hungry white throb of her husband’s gaze on the back of her brown-haired head.
“You can definitely make a certain style of human formalwear with this,” she told me, gesturing slender, clawless fingers at the table. “It’s what I’m most familiar with, anyway. It’s called a suit. Pants, shirt, and a jacket. With what you’ve got here, you’d likely be looking at a black suit with a white dress shirt underneath.”
“Will these pants be appropriate?” I asked, standing to display the dark, creased leather of my trousers. I did not think I had enough black fabric to make both a jacket and new bottoms, and there would not be time to order more.
“Um. Sure! Those will be fine,” Cherry replied after a slight hesitation. “Very, er, cowboy chic.”
I didn’t know what that meant but it certainly sounded good! With an eager grin, I sat back down.
We spent the next little while conversing about design. Human dress shirts required a rather dizzying number of buttons and corresponding holes, and the jacket was just as mystifying with its alien appendages called lapels. And then there was something called a tie, which apparently came in multiple styles and shapes. But despite the confusing fripperies of the outfit, by the time the sun was beginning to sink towards the horizon, I had the general shape of the garments marked upon the fabric.
“Take it home to cut and sew it all,” Silar said, apparently noticing that I’d happily settled into my place and would have stayed there well into the night finishing the project if I’d been allowed. It was easy to fall into cheery conversation with Cherry. She was Silar’s opposite in so many ways. Smiley and open. Though her husband likely would have had my head for even thinking it, I’d begun to think of Cherry as a friend. I was immensely grateful for her and her company.
This happiness was a tiny, tantalizing taste of what I hoped to experience with Darcy. Conversation and companionship wrapped up in a pretty human package.
And maybe even…
I jolted to my feet, vigorously snapping my tail ’round its hook as I remembered the images of human mating included near the end of the manual I’d received. Those pages had already become creased and worn with how often I’d found myself turning to them, gripping their edges with tense and trembling hands, white-eyed and hard-cocked. It was rather impressive, I thought to myself, that I had not yet ripped any of t
“Thank you for your assistance,” I said to Cherry, gathering all my fabric up. I was getting ahead of myself. I hadn’t even met Darcy yet, let alone married her.
But it wouldn’t be long now.
There was less than one human week until Darcy and Oaken’s bride, Magnolia, arrived. Only three days.
Three days of working. Sewing. Dreaming.
“You’re welcome,” Cherry called as Silar ushered me out the front door and then closed it behind me.
The setting sun had turned the sky a luscious sort of pink.
Cherry had said that Darcy’s hair was pink.
I stared dazedly – and perhaps even rather stupidly – at the sky, contemplating the fact that pink really did seem to be the best sort of colour. I was brought out of my reverie when my hound Sora bounded up to me. Her happy barks and the near-frantic snapping of her tail accompanied me as I strode over to where I’d left my mount, a great black shuldu named Kolt.
“Time to head home, Sora,” I said, settling into my saddle and taking up the reins.
I had work to do. A suit to sew.
And a whole new life to prepare for.
2
DARCY
Breaking one engagement and throwing myself headlong into another in the span of six measly weeks wasn’t exactly what I’d envisioned doing the year before I turned thirty. And yet, that was exactly what was happening.
“Ready?” Magnolia asked, giving me an anxious-but-hopeful look from beside me. We were both seated together on a shuttle.
A shuttle that was about to land.
“Yes,” I said. I was proud of the way my voice remained cool and firm. And the thing was, it wasn’t even a lie. I was ready. My mother had spent half her life and all of mine training me to be somebody’s wife.
Only thing was, I was supposed to be a wife to a rich asshole on Terratribe II. Not marry some alien rancher that I’d never met on a distant outpost planet.
He’s got to be better than Massimo…
I hoped. At least if things went sour, I had a thirty-day out. After one month of marriage to Fallon, my intended Zabrian rancher, I could leave. No harm, no foul, and no questions asked.
But then I’d be stuck in the same position as before, only with two grooms I’d run away from now instead of just one. That, plus a family who’d decided to pretend I no longer exist, no money, and no job experience to get me back on my feet.
This has to work out.
My stomach knotted with anxiety. I couldn’t remember a time when there hadn’t been some level of uncomfortable churn in my guts. A never-ending nervous vigilance that felt like someone was constantly dripping acid down the back of my throat.
My heart felt like it was trying to speak but stammering instead. I wiped my sweaty palms on the simple white silk dress I wore. It wasn’t actually a wedding dress, more of a white cocktail dress, but it was a lot more comfortable than whatever gigantic, fluffy concoction of taffeta and satin my mother would have dreamed up for my wedding to Massimo.
Magnolia was wearing a white dress, too. One I’d seen her wear on Elora Station as we’d gone through orientation for this alien bridal program. It was summery and flowy and pretty, with little edges of snowy lace at the decolletage and straps that highlighted the warmth of her medium brown skin tone. Her long, curly black hair had been put into two French braids, then coiled into a bun at the back of her head. She looked beautiful. She looked happy.
She caught my gaze and grinned, lifting her eyebrows and doing an excited little shimmy that was super fucking cute and also made me feel like a massive fraud.
As far as I knew, Magnolia was the only one participating in this program because of romantic ideals, because she actually wanted to find a husband to settle down and build a life with. But then again, Cherry, the third human participant in the program, had vanished from Elora Station and had come out here more than three weeks early because she was apparently so excited to meet her alien husband. So who the hell knew.
Maybe I really was the only cynical, practical one among the group, coming out to Zabria Prinar One not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I certainly wasn’t excited about getting married. I’d never had a romantic bone in my whole tall-ass body. There had never been a point in being sentimental, knowing my destiny would be to marry some wealthy idiot chosen by my mother, the same way my sisters had done.
A frigid fucking bitch. That’s what Massimo had called me.
Hopefully my alien husband wasn’t too romantic or excited about the prospect of marriage, either. I didn’t really have any idea of what to expect from him, but I figured that maybe he just needed someone to cook, clean, and help with chores while he dealt with all his duties on the ranch. And if he wanted sex, well, I could provide that too, I guessed, as long as he went about asking for it in a more respectful fashion than my last fiancé. I could still feel the grabby pinch of Massimo’s hand on my ass.
And I could still hear the ringing of the slap I’d given him in my ears.
“Ah! This is it!” Magnolia practically squealed, wiggling in her seat. “I cannot believe we’re about to get married!” Her eyes shone. She looked ready to launch right out of her seat.
“Me neither,” I said with a mirthless smirk as our human-piloted shuttle descended and then, with a thud that felt like finality, landed.
As predicted, Magnolia was out of her seat the instant she’d gotten her harnesses undone. In her excitement, she didn’t even wait for the pilot to get our luggage out of the shuttle’s storage. As soon as the shuttle’s door slid to one side she was hopping down to the dusty ground.
For my part, I went a little slower, my body feeling oddly heavy and light at the same time. I made it to the open shuttle door, raised my hand to shield my eyes against the bright, alien sun, and looked out at my new homeworld.
3
DARCY
Well, I tried to look out at the world. But it was pretty much impossible, because by the time the shuttle door had opened, a small crowd of people had gathered, taking up my view. At the front of the group was someone I recognized and whom Magnolia was now hugging fiercely.
“Cherry,” I said in greeting, nodding at the human woman as she pulled back from Magnolia’s embrace. Cherry beamed at me, then charged forward, arms outstretched just as I stepped out of the shuttle.
Oh. I guess we’re hugging, now.
I returned Cherry’s enthusiastic squeeze with an awkward pat on the back. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d hugged another woman. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d hugged anyone. My life being surrounded by petty politics and fake, lipsticked smiles had never exactly been conducive to fostering female friendship. Even among the women in my own family, my mother and my two sisters and me, it hadn’t exactly been hug-city. Maybe especially among my own family.
But I did my best not to come off like a complete fucking bitch, patting Cherry once more as she pulled away. As she did so, I ran a critical eye over her, looking for signs of weight loss since I’d seen her last, or bruising. Any indication that she wasn’t being treated well here.
But, honestly, she looked way better than she had on Elora Station. On the station, she’d been dressed in an old, grubby factory uniform from Terratribe I, and she’d been quite pale.
But now? She was glowing, her smile natural and easy. When she slung one arm around the waist of a massive alien male and cuddled into his side, I realized with a confused smack of awe that this big, golden-skinned lug must be the reason she looked so damn happy.
The idea was completely foreign to me. My mother had always very clearly hated my father, and my sisters hadn’t fared much better in their matches. A husband? Actually making you happy?
What the fuck kind of crazy-ass planet had I landed on?
But there was no denying it. Cherry was grinning up at the shirtless, turquoise-haired behemoth like he was the best thing since interplanetary travel.
“This is Silar. My husband,” she gushed, giving the big alien male an obvious squeeze. “This is Warden Tenn,” she tipped her chin towards the man Tasha had told us about back on Elora Station. He fit the description we’d been given – hide like lavender, long white hair, and a jaw that looked like it could be used as an anvil to sharpen blades.
