Universal Auction

Chapter 17-Market

Hey everybody, sorry for the wait! I'm taking an advanced writing course so a lot of my time is used for that, but I had to take some time to write something special for 100,000 reads! That's incredible!!! I can't thank you guys enough for all the support for my crappy little romance stories 😂  I use Wattpad to test story ideas to see how they do to possible publish them one day, so they are all pretty much rough drafts, but you guys still read them, so thank you! Hope you enjoy!-A.B.

Theo's POV

I've been living on Castilla for nearly a month now, and I must admit, I don't think I'm really missing earth.

I spend my days with at least one of the brothers at a time, it's seems like one of them is always glued to my hip, not that I minded too much. At this point, I can't picture being in this big castle all by myself anyways. Also, I just found out that they are some sort of kings? I'm not really sure how it works, they tried to explain it to me, but I never really could seem to get all the workings figured out. It's basically like royalty, but there's never one ruler, and both the people of the planet and something they call the "IRO" have to have some say in it. But apparently their family has had three generations of succession, so over time the people of the planet are pretty trusting of their bloodline. At least the whole castle thing makes sense now.

It also explains how they got me from that terrible auction place. The IRO helps conduct order over a large group of planets within their treaty. They got word about me being abducted and taken to the auction ship, and sent Mal to go get me. From there some things get a little foggy, but I'll take, "Super nice alien princes" any day over, "Creepy brothers who decided they wanted a pet human" any day of the week.

Besides being taught about how I got to where I am now, they've also been teaching me a little about their planet. I pick up everything I can, but it's hard considering the translators they gave me can't translate certain science and history terms, but I fill in the gaps where I can.

My favorite thing to do so far is to hang out in the kitchen and see what new foods I can try. Several of the cooks always get really nervous when I come in there, but there's one lady, Namari, who always sets up a chair and lets me try her new dishes. I quickly learned that they don't eat meat on Castilla, something about how a lot of the animals live underground most of the time because of the weather, and the terraforming on the planet is so advanced that eating meat isn't required.

It was one of the very rare days that all of the brothers were busy, so they suggested I go to see Namari for a bit.

I didn't think I'd get the hang of all the hallways so quickly, but I was pleasantly surprised to find myself where I needed to go, well, most of the time anyways.

Opening the wide doors, I walk into the shiny, silver room to see Namari already bending over the stove top.

I tried to be shy when entering the kitchen the first few times I came, but she shut it down quickly and told me she liked that someone appreciated her cooking, effectively making Zek murmur in annoyance that she called him out like that.

Before I could even sit down, she placed a bowl in front of me, filled to the rim with a steaming broth with a variety of floating vegetables, one whiff and I almost moaned.

"Oh my gosh, I haven't even tasted it and I want more." I say grabbing the spoon laid by the side of the bowl and getting my first bite. I must have made a noise when the heavenly flavor hit my tongue, because Namari let out a laugh.

"Now don't fill up on just that, I'm trying out a few new breads, and I figured the soup would go with it. Would you mind being my test taster?"

I already had another mouthful, so I could only nod rapidly to let her know I would gladly try anything the alien Rachael Ray made.