This gave her pause, even if she didn’t want it to.
“Ryvokia mate for their lifetimes,” he said, pulling her toward him. She felt all of her resolve caving, dissolving in the liquid he was turning her insides to. “If you are the mate of a Ryvokia male, he will never cease thinking of you, never cease… being your mate. He will never think of another. He will do whatever you ask, whatever it may be.” He looked at her, and his gaze captured hers so completely that she forgot everything she had ever known for an instant. “I would burn the rivers of this planet before I would let harm come to you or my progeny.”
His declaration made Sonya’s knees go weak, but Rychor had a hand on the small of her back in an instant to prop her up. Her eyelids felt too heavy to lift, her lips parted, but she could say nothing.
“Is this the same as love?” he asked her.
She looked into his eyes. “No… yes… no… maybe… but…” She gave up, sighing in exasperation. When she closed her eyes, tears squeezed from them and rolled down her face. “I don’t understand any of this,” she complained, exasperated.
She had a thought, and it moved through her like ice. “If that’s true,” she asked him, stepping back, “why don’t you want me to consent?”
Something was up here. And she couldn’t get ahead of the plan.
“If you consent,” he said, stepping toward her again, ready to pounce on her. He still had her hand in his. He squeezed it. “If you consent, you will be impregnated and that will be… the end. I will have… no more time with you.”
“I hate to be… the one to point out the obvious here,” she said. “But, you know, you already might have done that.”
“I did not release my sperm,” Rychor said, so quickly that it made her blush and laugh, all at the same time.
“This is amusing to you,” he stated flatly, and for the first time she thought he looked like his feelings were hurt.
“No, no… not amusing,” she said. “It’s just… so…”
Rychor was looking at her with interest.
“Uh, human males can’t do that,” she tried.
“They can,” he objected.
“No, they can’t, uh… they don’t have a choice. If, uh, you know, have an orgasm, then the… semen is, you know… always loaded.”
Rychor looked at her quizzically. “You do not engage in sexual practices except to mate, then,” he said.
“Uh…” Sonya was torn between clearing up an obvious, glaring, scientific misunderstanding, and her rollercoaster of feelings getting sorted out. “Uh, no, look, we do. We have things like… birth control. So, you know. We can. Avoid pregnancy.”
It was Rychor’s turn to be amazed. “So your males do not bond with females they mate with?”
She shook her head slowly, aware that her face was hanging open in every way possible: her jaw was slack, her eyes were wide, and her nose was wet with snot. Real nice.
“I mean… it’soptional,”she said, befuddled. “Some do, some don’t. This is—” she was about to say, entirely beside the point, but Rychor started talking first.
“Who, then, protects your females and offspring?”
“I… do not have an easy answer to that question…” she murmured. “It’s not…like thatin our society.”
“I do not understand this,” Rychor told her.
“Well, it’s all beside the point anyway,” she said, freshly saddened.
Rychor reached for her and gripped her arm. For the first time, he squeezed so much that she winced. He immediately relaxed his grip. “It isnotbeside the point,” he told her. “It is not beside the point tome.”
Sonya was on the verge of asking him a question, getting to the bottom of what was happening, but Rychor’s eyes, so focused on hers that she felt his stare even through her eyelids, darted behind her suddenly.
He swept up the leash with one hand and tugged it, walking past her. She was stunned, hurt again as she turned around, forced by the motion. Rychor was so hot and cold, she would be best off getting out of here any way that she could.
But the reason for his sudden change became apparent as soon as she saw the figure emerging from the door they had passed through to get here.
“Follow me, human,” he said gruffly.
