She nods again, like nodding is easier than speaking right now.
Marat leaves. Just like that, the last human structure around this process is gone. No more officials. No more screens. No more offices with smooth tables and sealed records. Only me. My transport. My warriors. And the female who now belongs to my household, whether she understands what that will mean or not.
The air changes. Keandra feels it. I see the awareness move through her.
I step to the transport door and open it myself. This is not symbolic. Not performance. Not something I do for display. I want control of every point of entry and exit around her. I want to know the step is safe, the interior clear, the height manageable for her smaller body. I want no one else reaching past her, guiding her hand, touching her arm, deciding where she puts her feet.
“Inside,” I say, keeping my voice low.
She obeys at once. That should ease something in me. It does not. It sharpens the hunger to close the distance completely.
The transport interior is larger than city vehicles, but even here she changes the scale of things. The seats are built for Tigris bodies. The ceiling height. The space between benches. The overhead storage. Everything is meant for people like me.
She stands just inside the doorway one second too long, taking it in, and I see the same thought pass through her that has been passing through her since she reached the capital. Too large. Too unfamiliar. Not made with her in mind.
I step in after her and point to the seat nearest the center brace, where the ride will be smoothest.
“There.”
She moves to it without argument and sits carefully, as if she half expects the seat itself to reject her. The thought is absurd enough to irritate me. Not at her. At the whole day. At the amount of strangeness pressing against her from every side.
One of my warriors loads the last secured case and shuts the rear hatch.
I take the seat opposite her. Not beside her. That is another discipline. Beside her would be easier on my body. Easier to scent her, watch her, feel every change in her breathing and tension as the transport moves. Easier to put my own weight between her and the world outside. Too much. So I face her instead, one stretch of floor and air between us, and tell myself that space is wisdom.
The engine hums alive beneath us. The transport pulls away from the platform with smooth force.
Keandra braces her hand against the seat frame immediately. I notice everything. The way she keeps her knees together and her shoulders straight, as though posture might hold the rest of her together too. The way her eyes track the passing capital through the side panel windows. The way her fingers tighten every time the transport turns and loosen when the motion steadies. The way she has not yet put down the contract tablet.
My wife.
That thought has changed since the office. Before the signatures, it was true. Now it feels heavier. My wife in a way the law will defend. My wife in a way that changes how every male in my territory must look at her. My wife in a way that calms my body in one direction and drives it to rage in ten others.
I watch the city slide past behind her. The government quarter gives way to broader roads, open plazas, market terraces, and the thick-walled compounds of other powerful households. Tigris Prime is not ground I prefer. Too many scents stacked on top of each other. Too many polished males pretending civility while searching for weakness beneath it. Too much stone and rule and distance from things that matter.
It is ordered ground. Ordered ground makes me more aware of how fragile Keandra will feel once the roads vanish and the real land begins.
She will have to learn fast. That thought does not harden me. It sobers me. Because learning there is not a polite matter of embarrassment and etiquette. In the Horde lands, not knowing can wound. Not seeing danger can kill. A missed sign in the sky. A wrong step near an animal track. A bad choice of shelter in harsh weather. A female like her cannot survive by softness alone, no matter how much my body delights in the idea of her softness.
And my body does delight in it. That is the problem.
I have not touched her, yet I already know I am becoming obsessed. With her size. With the shape of her face. With the way the blue dress lies over her hips. With the hollowness left by hunger where there should be more softness. With the dark waves of her hair. With the full softness of her mouth that my eyes keep returning to no matter how often I drag them away.
And most dangerously, with the thought of touch itself. Her skin against my hand. The fine bones at her wrist. The back of her neck. The inside of her thigh.
I shift one hand against my leg and force my mind elsewhere. The route. The timing. The lower gate. How far until we reach the open road. Whether she has eaten enough. Whether the camp has been warned properly. Whether Oshara will keep both her mouth and her temper in line when we arrive.
That last thought almost cools me. Almost.
Keandra finally speaks. “How far is it?”
Her voice is quiet. Careful. Not timid. She sounds like she is deciding what kind of male I will be before she allows herself simple questions.
I answer at once. Let her learn that questions are permitted.
“The camp is not close to the capital.”
She waits. I understand then that human answers need more than that.
