“Will it?”
“No. But female likes lies sometimes.”
I actually laugh. It hurts my injured shoulder, makes the wounds pull, but I laugh anyway.
“Seventeen more days,” I remind myself as his coils wrap around me.
“Seventeen more days,” he agrees. “Then female chooses.”
But something has shifted between us. We both know it. The dynamic isn't the same as before my escape attempt. I'm not surrendering—not exactly. But I'm not fighting the same way either. The hatred I claim feels more like habit than truth.
I curl against his warm scales, let his coils adjust around me perfectly, and try not to think about what happens in seventeen days. Whether I'll leave or stay. Whether the choice is even mine anymore, or if my body has already decided.
“I still hate you,” I whisper into the darkness, our ritual complete.
“Known fact,” he replies. “Female still needs me though.”
I don't deny it. Can't. The truth is too obvious now. Written in my wounds that he's healing. In my belly that still carries his proto-eggs. In the way I curl into his coils seeking warmth and safety.
“What happens after day twenty?” I ask suddenly.
“Female asks many questions today.”
“Near-death makes me curious about the future.”
He's quiet for a long moment, coils shifting slightly. “Day twenty or twenty-two, body ready for true eggs.”
“And those are different?”
“Very different. Proto-eggs dissolve, create need, keep female returning. True eggs implant. Create life. Actual clutch.”
“How many?”
“Twenty to thirty in first clutch. Carried for three months, then laid. Then another clutch immediately after.”
“Jesus.” I try to imagine carrying thirty actual eggs. “And if I refuse?”
“Female can refuse true eggs. Portal opens regardless on day thirty.”
“But?”
“But body prepared for them now. Without them, female always empty. Even on Earth. The modification permanent, the need permanent. Will crave eggs that will never come.”
I digest this in silence. The choice isn't between freedom and captivity. It's between being empty forever or being filled withactual offspring. Between a lifetime of need or accepting what my body has been rebuilt to want.
“Seventeen more days to decide,” I say quietly.
“Yes.”
“And you'll keep me safe until then? No matter what I choose?”
“Already answered that. Female under my protection until she chooses otherwise.”
I have been answered. He has answered. But I needed to hear it again. Needed to know that despite my escape attempt, despite my constant claims of hatred, despite everything—he'll still protect me.
Not because he has to.
Because he chooses to.
