I read it before. Saw it in the file. It meant little then. A human sound attached to numbers, compatibility, legal readiness.
Now it does not feel like enough name for her. Not in my language. Not in my mouth.
She says something then. A human title of respect. Wrong for me. Too distant. Too formal. I cannot let it stand.
“I am Kaiven,” I tell her in English.
The language feels blunt and narrow around what I want to say. She is Keandra. I say that too, because hearing her name in the room matters more than it should.
Her voice when she answers hits me almost as hard as the scent did. Soft. Tired. Controlled. Human. My body reacts so fast I have to hold still to keep it from showing.
I step closer.
Mistake.
The moment I close the distance, her scent deepens, and every thin legal structure around this meeting becomes useless. I can smell the clean cloth of her dress, the fresh soap, the leftover warmth of shuttle air, the faint proof that she ate recently.
Good.
I was already angry at the thinness. That trace of food should calm me.
It does not.
Because under everything else is her skin. Soft. Not a guess. Not a pleasant idea. A fact. My body knows it before I touch her. Knows what she will feel like under my hands. Against my mouth. In my bed. Wrapped in my furs. Carrying my scent. Carrying my child.
The child-thought comes so fast, and so violently, I almost bare my teeth.
Marat is still talking.
I cut him off without looking away from her. Enough words. Enough formal delay. Enough time in a room full of strangers and polished stone when every instinct in me is already calculating how fast to get her out of this place and back under my control.
Back under my control.
That thought should shame me.
It does not.
Because control means safety. Control means food. Control means no other male comes close enough to breathe wrong near her. Control means she comes under my roof, my law, my hands, my protection, before the world reminds me how fragile human flesh looks against Tigris stone and Vek Talan wind.
She drops her gaze for one heartbeat and lifts it again. That tiny movement nearly undoes me. Not surrender. Not truly. More like a female trying not to show too much weakness in front of a male she has every reason to fear. Pride under fear. Isee it. I even respect it, though instinct pushes at me to take it apart into something softer, safer, more trusting.
I take one slow breath through my nose.
Mistake again.
Her scent goes through me like fire drawn down into bone. So right that the word compatible becomes laughably small. Marat said unusually strong match. Biological convergence across scent, fertility, and structure. High success likelihood. Good pairing candidate.
Marat knows nothing.
Those words were built for records, not for this. Not for the way my entire body locks around the simple truth that the female standing in front of me belongs in my household the way rain belongs to dry ground. The way breath belongs in the lungs. Natural. Required. Already decided somewhere below thought.
My true mate. My tirash.
The phrase rises from old language and older knowing. I keep it behind my teeth.
Not here. Not now. Not before the legal words are spoken and she is brought fully under my name, where she should have been the moment she landed.
If Marat sees anything on my face, he does not show it. Good. The matchmaker is useful because he knows when silence is survival.
