Chapter 54

POV Kaleo

"I just wanted to know what that was in your suitcase," I explain quickly, hoping she understands that I didn't mean any harm, but suddenly, as I realize what I'm messing with and the video playing on the hologram, her light brown eyes fill with tears and her cheeks flush.

Shit, Kaleo!

Did you really have to search what those damn dildos mean?!

Now your female will think you’re interested in looking at others!

"I can explain, Kaleo," she whispers. "Just, please, listen to what I have to say first, okay?"

Melissa's tone leaves me confused because she should be angry with me for watching a woman who looks a lot like her dance while wearing very little clothing, and I'm still sitting with her suitcase open on the floor, staring at her collection of 'dildos.'

"It was before I met you, it was the only job I could find," she says slowly, looking at me fearfully as her body visibly tenses. "Humans don't have o-opportunities in space, Kaleo, you know how it is to be… treated like a subspecies," she stammers, thick tears sliding down her now-pink cheeks.

"What are you talking about?" I frown, worried about my little wife.

"I needed the money, Kaleo," she continues stammering nervously, the scent of her fear flooding my senses, and only then do things start to make sense.

That woman in the hologram doesn’t just look like Melissa; that woman is Melissa, naked and dancing on the internet!

"Are you telling me..." I can't even finish the sentence, especially since the woman in the hologram starts taking off the top of her already tiny outfit as she laughs and says, "Do you want to see everything I have to offer today?" "That’s you?"

Good thing I'm already sitting on the floor because if I were standing, I think I would lose my balance.

I feel instantly nauseated, not knowing whether to look at the video or at my female, who cautiously approaches me, as if dealing with a dangerous animal, and sits slowly right in front of me, next to her pink suitcase where she's been hiding her 'dildos' this whole time.

"I wasn’t born on Earth. I was born in space, a-and that’s why my last name is Ph456798y5, which is just the identification number of the ship where my mother gave birth to me," she says, her words slow and spaced out, as if she’s thinking carefully about each one, making me anxious.

"I don't understand, Melissa. You weren't born on Earth?" I ask, while the Melissa in the hologram continues laughing and getting naked, acting provocatively, but with a wig on her head and her face covered by a white mask.

So that's why I couldn't take my eyes off the video. Not because I was attracted to some random human female, but because that’s literally my wife!

"Hologram, turn off the video, please," she asks, and instantly, the video disappears from the air as Melissa takes a long breath, trying to calm down. "I’m an orphan. I was born on a ship of ex-abductees, humans who were taken from Earth and never able to return, and I only survived because a woman took care of me," she says, wiping the thick tears from her face, her nervousness growing stronger with every word.

I even hear her human heart beating wildly fast.

"But how is the woman in the video you?" I ask, because nothing makes sense to me.

I’ve already talked to Melissa about her life before she was abducted from Earth, she said she was a student who woke up on Unob’s ship and was later tricked into thinking she was going to marry a faleu. But now she's telling me she was born straight in space and is an orphan, which doesn't make any sense.

Why didn’t she just tell me she wasn’t born on Earth? I never would’ve had a problem with that.

"I was a camgirl before I met you, Kaleo," she reveals with a choked voice, but I don’t have the slightest clue what that means.

"What’s a camgirl?"

"Before… before I explain, I just want you to know that I’ve been very poor my whole life, I… ate the same thing every day, if I had anything to eat. I only had patched-up clothes, I worked from a very young age on ships, and I never even got close to the planet Earth." Melissa wipes more tears from her face, and I notice her hands are shaking as she continues struggling for the right words. "I was never abducted because no one ever wanted me, and I... I made do working in factories until Unob offered me a job."

She stammers here and there and seems to be struggling hard to maintain eye contact with me, making me even more anxious. I don’t know where this conversation is going, but I can feel it’s not going to a good place, and maybe I should’ve already known what that place is, but I’m so scared that I can barely think.

"What does all this mean, Melissa? Was Unob your mate?" My voice barely leaves my throat as I consider that, it almost vanishes. "And what’s a camgirl?" I ask again because she still hasn’t answered me.

"No, Unob wasn’t my mate." She shakes her head quickly. "I worked for him... on his site. I… showed myself to humans." She says this with her eyes closed, as if she can’t bear to see my reaction.

"You showed yourself to humans?" The only thing I can do is echo her words, and she opens her eyelids again but can’t look me in the eye.

"Being a camgirl is that. I took off my clothes for them and used these toys while they watched." She points to the dildos, and only then do I finally understand what Melissa has been trying to tell me all along.

This female is nothing like she told me.

"How many men watched you like that? How many... how many mates did you have?"

My vision starts to blur, and soon I realize that it’s my eyes filling with tears as well, while my hearts beat desperately in my chest, and the fire in my throat and chest begins.

"I-I wasn’t theirs, Kaleo! Not any of them!" She panics, but I’m not sure I can believe that. "I helped those men orgasm, I... fulfilled their sexual fantasies over video, and Unob kept most of the money, until he signed me up without me knowing to be the wife of a supposed faleu."

"I see..." I murmur, pressing my fingers tightly against each other, feeling the fire inside me intensifying at an immense speed.

"Unob said I was too old to be a camgirl and do video calls, and that I’d make a lot more money if I accepted going to a new planet. B-but when I arrived here, everything was completely different from what I was expecting, so I didn’t know how to deal with it, I didn’t know if I should tell the whole truth or if it was better to stay quiet."

Melissa’s words start tumbling over each other because her nervousness is increasing, and I struggle to hear her over the pounding of my heart.