Page 52 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

Not about the competence – I'd genuinely been good at my job, genuinely capable of managing my own survival. But I'd called endurance peace, and isolation independence. I'd been always slightly cold, always slightly hungry, always working, and I'd told myself that was enough because I didn't know any other way to live.

Now I was warm. Now I was fed. Now I worked at nothing except growing the life inside me, and someone else handled everything else.

I'd had a word for what I was then. Night-shift operator. Relay maintenance. A job description, a function, a place in a system that made sense.

I didn't have a word for what I was now.

Mate, maybe. Omega. Producer. None of them quite fit. None of them captured the totality of what my life had become – the nest and the milking and the carrying and the bond, the way my body had been remade and my mind had followed, the quiet contentment of being exactly where I was.

I found I didn't need a word.

I just was.

Keth settled into the nest beside me as the light faded.

His weight shifted the furs, creating a warm hollow that I rolled into automatically. My belly pressed against his side, round and heavy. His arm came around me, his hand finding its usual place on the curve of my stomach.

"How do you feel?" he asked. The same question he asked every night.

"Full," I said. The same answer I gave every night. "Heavy. Good."

His tail swept against my calf. I felt him smile against my hair.

Inside me, something moved. A flutter, a shift, a small life rearranging itself. I pressed my hand over Keth's, feeling the movement through my own skin.

My child. Our child. Growing in a body that had been remade to carry it, tended by a male who had crossed stars to find me.

I reached up without thinking, my hand finding his horn in the dark.

He went still.

Not the dangerous stillness of threat, the kind I'd seen in the assessment chamber. This was different. Soft. Waiting. The stillness of someone who knew what my touch on his horns meant and was letting me take whatever I wanted.

I kept my hand there. Traced the curve of the horn with my fingertips, feeling the warmth, the smoothness, the faint ridges near the base where he was most sensitive. He shivered but didn't move.

"Stay," I said quietly.

"Always."

The nest was warm around us. His body curved against mine, protective, present. My hand rested on his horn, feeling the slight tremor that ran through him at the contact. Inside my belly, our child shifted again – a small movement, barely perceptible, but real.

I closed my eyes.

Just here, in this nest I'd built, with this male I'd chosen and this child I was carrying and this life I hadn't imagined and would choose again every single day.

The movement came once more. A tiny foot, maybe. A tiny hand.

His arm tightened around me. His breath was warm on my hair.

I kept my hand on his horn, feeling him shiver, and let the warmth of the nest settle into my bones.

I was home.