Her vision was so blurry now with tears she could barely see Zain as he climbed onto the bed. She braced herself for the inevitable spanking that would follow; if anything had been made clear to her about what it meant to be an Atrix, it was that her opinions were not solicited or even wanted.
But Zain’s fingers worked their way gently into her hair and pulled her close to him with tenderness. She collapsed into the strong heat of his body, closed her eyes, and sobbed. She felt him turn her head upward, and his lips against her cheeks, kissing away her tears.
She opened her eyes. Zain was looking down at her, his eyes a warm amber. “You were kidnapped from Vipheon,” he said, as though he finally understood something. His voice was newly affectionate and warm, a note of... was it respect? in his question.
They looked at each other a long time. Finally, Zain touched her forehead. “You did not submit yourself willingly to the Realm’s programs?”
Lana’s face hardened again. “I did not,” she spat bitterly.
“How did you live? Vipheon is a—”
“I lived in hiding,” she explained, her voice rigid. Flashbacks of her former life, scrounging food and hiding in distant settlements, running from the Imperial raids, raced through her head and her muscles tensed. The deep-seated anger she had lived with toward the Realm all her life made her body tremble with fury.
Zain looked at her deeply, then pressed his mouth to hers. Though she wanted to fight it, even if she couldn’t say why, the touch of his lips against hers acted like a sedative, and warmth spread through her body, making her go limp against him.
He pushed her in front of him, and a shiver went through Lana as his eyes dropped, almost as if he knew it was there, to the scar on her collarbone. His fingers brushed over it and sent a tremor through her body that made her knees weak.
“So you are a warrior, Katalana. Like me.”
Tears spilled from her eyes again.
Her name leaving his lips had much the same effect as it had earlier, and she felt herself grow weak from the inside out. Zain held her, and his fingers moved down her body, to her abdomen, where they rested protectively and tenderly. His red markings had calmed, and the gesture was one of affection, not lust. Lana was surprised that she could read so much about the man she had just met, this alien creature like none she had ever seen before. And yet she knew that he was not angry with her; if anything, their bond seemed more forceful now.
Zain rose after holding her for some time and looked down at her tenderly. “My mate,” he said. “I must complete the ceremony and perform my duties now,” he told her. “I will send your companion—what is his name? Anasi?—to collect you and help you to move to my quarters.” He crouched, looking her directly in the eyes, a hand touching her face gently. “Now that we are mated, Katalana, and I am sure that you will bear my child, I cannot be apart from you. It is not in my nature. But now... I know that fate has truly brought you to me. Our child will be of warrior stock, both yours and mine, and he... they... will live to fight the Imperial Realm.” He stood up. “I cannot change what has brought you here, and I cannot let you go. I can only... promise you that you will be... a queen here, my queen. And I will endeavor to right the wrongs that the Imperial Realm has imposed upon you.” He paused. “I cannot let you go,” he said, his voice almost whispery.
Lana stared at him as he retreated from the cave, and then, her tears dried up and her heart beating wildly in ways she had never imagined it could, she turned on her side and stared at the darkness, until at some point, she must have fallen asleep.
* * *
“Idid not prepare ahome for you.”
Zain’s voice came from near the entryway of his residence, where Lana had been wandering aimlessly for half the day, since the time that Anasi had come—with two enormous guards—to retrieve her from the mating ceremonial cave.
The interior was drab, functional, and orderly. The residence of a warrior. It was a large dwelling with rooms upon rooms forking into the cave, but Lana had preferred not to go into them, after settling in a room she believed was the only one Zain used. In it, she found his clothing, his scent everywhere around her, and a cache of weapons, which she immediately backed away from. There were also a number of books, which she touched but did not open. She had heard of this item, a forbidden and rare find anywhere in the Realm. Their value, as well as the likelihood that they were written in a script she would not understand, made her regard them like precious jewels and brush her fingers over them occasionally, but leave them alone, subjected only to her awe.
She was standing in a room that appeared to be a kind of kitchen, something that she felt was all the more likely by the unused look it had. Zain’s voice reached her and bathed her in the same warm feeling she wanted to revolt from, though after this morning, her resolve was disintegrating.
“It is bad luck,” Zain told her, struggling a little with the choice of word. “If you prepare your home for your mate, it brings about bad luck, and perhaps you will not be her choice.”
Lana blinked at him. Her choice?
“I want to make you happy,” he continued. “So you will be given free rein to...” again, he struggled to find a word to match what he wanted to say, “...adjust the home,” he finished awkwardly. “As you like it.”
He frowned. “Why have you not heated the space?”
Lana forced herself not to smile, especially as the big, imposing warrior she had been claimed by fumbled with seemingly genuine nervousness, hurrying to start a fire in an odd furnace that Lana had not even considered as an object of any use at all.
The fire started, Zain stood and looked at Lana.
“My choice?” she wondered aloud, the question referring to Zain’s earlier words.
Zain looked confused.
“You said, a woman chooses her mate... you might not get chosen...” Lana prompted.
Zain moved closer to her, and she could no longer fight the feeling of deep satisfaction and contentment that his presence brought to her. “This is how our... ceremony works. All the eligible males—in this case, only the most elite and virile warriors, because you are an Atrix, present themselves to the female, and attempt to mate with her.” He stroked her cheek. “But only one will be successful.” He was almost smiling, a proud look of possession on his face. “I very much wanted it to be me. But I do not tempt fate.”
He looked around at the drab interior of his home. “Is it this way on Vipheon?” he asked. “With humans?”
