Page 20 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

"Can this get me pregnant?"

The words came out flat. Practical. I'd been lying in his arms for the last hour, letting him hold me against his chest while the last of the heat-fog cleared, and the question had been building the whole time.

The heat. The knotting. The fact that he'd come inside me more times than I could count, and I'd been too far gone to think about it.

He went still against me.

"Yes," he said.

I'd expected that answer. It still hit hard.

"The serum," I said. "It made me – compatible. For breeding."

"For bearing." His voice was quiet, careful. "Yes. Your body is now able to carry Khorreth young. That is–" He paused. "That is part of what the serum does. Part of what it means to be omega."

I stared at the ceiling. The weight of it settled over me, not panic, not quite, but something cold and heavy in my chest. My body had been rewritten. Redesigned. Turned into something that could carry alien children, that could produce milk for alien mouths, that could slot into a role I'd never asked for.

"Among my people," Keth said, "a bearing omega is the most sacred thing there is. The highest status. The most protected."

"You keep saying that. Sacred. Precious." I kept my voice even. "What if I don't want to be pregnant? What if I don't want to – to bear?"

His arms tightened around me, just slightly. His scent shifted; I could read it now, could pick out the notes of concern beneath the warmth.

"Then we will be careful," he said. "There are ways. But Mara–" His hand splayed across the small of my back, warm and steady. "It is what your body was built for now. What the serum designed you to do. You may find the wanting comes whether you choose it or not."

I thought about that. About my body, already so far beyond my control. About the milk I was producing, the heat cycles I couldn't stop, the way I answered to his scent and his touch and his presence.

"That's a hell of a thing," I said finally. "To have your body want something you haven't decided to want yet."

"Yes." His mouth pressed against my hair, warm. "It is. But I will not rush you. Whatever comes, it will come when you're ready. I will wait."

I didn't believe him. Not entirely. But I was too tired to argue, and there was a small, worn-out part of me that wanted to believe, wanted to think that someone, anyone, might actually wait for me to be ready for something.

At least I didn't have to worry about disease, I thought distantly. Different species. And the Khorreth clearly had medicine sophisticated enough to rebuild my entire biology; if there were any risk, they'd have dealt with it already. One less thing to think about.

I let it go.

We lay there a long time.

The light in the dwelling shifted slowly, whatever passed for daylight on this planet, filtering through high windows I couldn't have reached even if I'd wanted to. Keth held me against his chest, his hand tracing slow patterns on my back, his tail draped over my hip like a warm weight.

I should have got up. Asked for food, for water, for some explanation of what my life was going to look like now. Started planning, the way I always planned, the way I'd survived nine years of relay stations and bad postings and too little sleep. Instead, I stayed.

His scent settled over me, that warm, particular smell of him I was learning to pick out from the ambient smells of the dwelling. I could read him now. The contentment under the warmth. The satisfaction. The edge of protectiveness that never quite faded.

He was happy. Just lying here with me. Just holding me.

I'd never been held like this. Not really. Not by someone who seemed to want nothing more than the holding itself, who wasn't waiting for me to get up and do something useful, who wasn't keeping track of time or obligations or what came next.

It was dangerous, I thought. Getting used to this. Letting myself want it.

I stayed anyway.

Longer than I needed to. Longer than the milking required, longer than the post-heat recovery justified. I told myself I was tired. Told myself my body needed rest. Told myself it didn't mean anything that his arms felt like the safest place I'd been in years.

But when I finally did move, sitting up, reaching for my discarded coveralls, starting the process of being a functional person again, I noticed the reluctance.

I noticed that I hadn't wanted to leave.