She blinked. "What?"
"Show me where the secondary channels should go. I have tools."
For a moment, something changed in her expression. The desperate need receded slightly, replaced by something sharper. Interest. Engagement. The look of a builder presented with a problem to solve.
"You'd let me modify your Keep?"
"I'd let you improve it."
She stared at me for a moment. Then she laughed. The sound was broken, edged with hysteria, but it was still a laugh.
"You're insane. I'm standing here naked and dripping and so desperate I can barely think, and you want to talk about ventilation angles."
"I want to see how you think." I stood, and her eyes dropped immediately to the bulge behind my armor. I didn't try to hide it. "You're an engineer. Show me."
For an hour, she forgot about the tonic. Forgot about her desperation. She walked me through the Keep's ventilationsystem, pointing out inefficiencies I'd never noticed, suggesting modifications that would improve airflow by at least thirty percent. Her hands moved through the air, sketching invisible blueprints, and her voice took on a rhythm I recognized.
The rhythm of someone who loved what they did. Who understood structure at a level that went beyond training into instinct.
I watched her more than I watched her demonstrations. Watched the way her mind worked, the way she saw patterns I'd missed. Twenty cycles I'd been building this Keep, and she'd found improvements in an hour.
She was magnificent.
She was also still naked, still aroused. The scent of her was overwhelming. My cock throbbed with every word she spoke, every gesture she made.
But this was worth the torture. This was what I'd been waiting for. Not just a female to breed, but a partner who could build alongside me.
"The nursery," she said suddenly, stopping mid-explanation. "You mentioned seven chambers. I've only seen five."
My chest tightened. "There are two more. One is storage. One is..."
"Show me."
The nursery was twelve cycles of hope that had never been fulfilled, twelve cycles of building for offspring that had never come. Showing her felt like exposing a wound.
But she'd shown me her wounds. Her brother. Her parents. The debt that had driven her here.
I led her to the nursery.
The chamber was smallerthan the others. I'd carved it from a dense section of skull, the walls thick and insulating, thetemperature carefully regulated by channels that drew warmth from deeper in the formation.
Small platforms lined the walls. Twelve of them, sized for offspring in their first cycles. Each platform had a warming stone beneath it, carved from material that held heat for hours. Soft bedding I'd traded for with the settlement three territories over. Everything ready.
Everything empty.
She stood in the entrance, staring. Her hand had come up to cover her mouth. The desperate arousal in her scent had changed, mixed with something else. Something like grief.
"Twelve cycles," I said. "I built the first platform when I finished the main chamber. Added one each cycle after."
"You've been waiting that long?"
"Longer. The Keep took eight cycles to complete. The nursery took four more." I moved to stand beside her, looking at the empty platforms. "Twenty cycles of building. Forty-three females. None of them stayed."
She was silent for a moment. Then: "I had plans once. When I was younger. Before my brother. Before the debt." Her voice was quiet, raw. "I was going to build things. Real things. Structures that would last. I was going to have a life that meant something."
"What happened?"
"I co-signed a loan for him. 180,000 credits. His business failed. The bankruptcy protected him but not me." She laughed, and the sound was bitter. "I've spent the last three years paying for his failure. Living in a converted storage unit. Eating meal replacement bars. Taking every overtime shift I could get. Building things for other people because I couldn't afford to build anything for myself."
