Page 50 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

"How do you feel?"

"Heavy." I shifted my weight, adjusting my knees. "Full. Good."

"You're beautiful like this." His voice was low, reverent. "On all fours. Carrying my child. Settled into the nest I built for you."

"You built the frame. I built the rest."

"Yes. You did. You built your space. You made it yours."

I had. I'd stopped fighting that too – the instinct to arrange and rearrange, to adjust every surface until it was exactly right. The nest was mine. I'd made it. And settling into it on all fours, my body heavy with his child, his hands warm on my skin –

Something in me had completely stopped arguing. After everything, I had simply arrived.

I was here. I was his. I was becoming something new, something the serum and the bond and the pregnancy had conspired to create.

And I didn't want to be anything else.

His hands moved higher, finding my breasts, heavy and full again already. I arched into his touch, and my own hands reached back, finding his horns in the dark.

He groaned.

I smiled.

The night settled around us, warm and quiet, and I let myself be exactly where I was.

CHAPTER 16

NO WORD FOR IT

I couldn't remember the last time I'd walked anywhere.

The thought arrived while Keth was carrying me from the nest to the window – the big one, the one that looked out over the settlement, too high for me to see through unless he held me up to it. My belly pressed against his chest, heavy and round, and my arms looped around his neck because it was easier than trying to hold myself steady.

He'd been carrying me everywhere for weeks now. To eat. To the hygiene alcove. To the window when I wanted to see outside. Back to the nest when I was tired, which was often.

I'd stopped objecting somewhere around the fifth week, when standing up had become an exercise in careful engineering and walking had become genuinely difficult. The weight was too much. My centre of gravity had shifted so far forward that every step felt precarious, and my feet – my human feet, built for a human body carrying a human pregnancy – weren't designed for what I was carrying now.

So he carried me. And I let him.

Being held against him, his arm secure under my thighs, my face tucked against the warm fur of his shoulder – it felt like the most natural thing in the world. My current body was the only body I had. This was how my current body moved through space.

"The light is good today," he said, settling me on his hip so I could look out the window. "Clear."

The settlement stretched out below us, Khorreth moving through their days, going about their lives. From up here they looked almost manageable – not quite so enormous, not quite so alien. Just people. Living.

"I used to watch the stars from the relay station," I said. "Through the observation port. It was the only window that showed anything except bulkheads."

"Do you miss it?"

I thought about the question. The cold quarters. The recycled air. The endless maintenance shifts, alone in the corridors, talking to myself because there was no one else to talk to.

"No," I said. "I don't."

His arm tightened around me. His tail swept once, warm against my calf.

"Good."

In the nest, I moved on all fours.