A faint breath leaves him. Not quite a laugh.
“You are joining a horde territory, not a city household. The customs are more rigid in some ways and more physically lived in others. Life is harsher. Less private. More communal. More demanding.”
“Communal how?”
“You will be seen. Watched. Judged by the women and by the household around you. You will be expected to learn. Expected to adapt. You will not be left to starve or be beaten, but that does not mean you will be coddled.”
I lift my chin.
“I’m not asking to be coddled.”
“No,” Marat says. “I do not think you are.”
Something in the way he says it sends heat up my neck. Not embarrassment exactly. More the discomfort of being seen too clearly by someone who has spent years reading women’s desperation and fear.
He returns to the file.
“Children are expected.”
There it is. The words drop into the cabin and change the air. My heart gives one hard beat. I knew this already. I read it. Heard it. Signed toward it. But hearing it now, plain and unavoidable, while Mars drops farther behind us, makes it feel different. Final. Bodily. Real.
I keep my face blank.
“Expected how?”
Marat folds his hands over the tablet.
“Marriage on Tigris is family-centered. Particularly among the hordes, and particularly among ruling households. The female shortage is severe. Children matter. Heirs matter. Daughters matter. Continuity matters.”
“Heirs.”
“Yes.”
The shuttle moves so smoothly it almost doesn’t feel like motion. Only the low vibration in the floor and the changing light through the window remind me we are still climbing away from everything I knew. I stare at the table for a moment, then force myself to meet his eyes again.
“You tested my blood. My body. My fertility.”
“We did.”
“So that was part of this.”
“Yes.”
There is no apology in him. No embarrassment. Only truth. It would be easier if he softened it. Dressed it up. Lied a little. He doesn’t. That makes the ache in my chest sharper.
“How much of the match is me,” I ask, “and how much is what I can give him?”
Marat studies me long enough that I wish I had stayed quiet.
“At your level of compatibility,” he says at last, “those things are not cleanly separated.”
My fingers curl tighter.
“That sounds like a polite way of not answering.”
“It is the most honest answer I can give.” He leans back slightly. “You were selected based on pheromone compatibility, fertility profile, and biological viability. All three matter. In Tigris marriage culture, especially among the hordes, those categories are not considered insults. They are considered foundational.”
Foundational. There is that clean language again, trying to make something hard sound noble.
