“I have good news,” said Steele as we took the elevator to the third floor. “Raven just got back to me. They have secured your farm. They found a large fluffy dog, four goats, and seven chickens apparently living right around your outbuildings.”
“That’s wonderful! It sounds like they are all there. Bruno must have been taking care of them all this time. He is a good herding dog.”
“Raven said he was very protective of your animals. They checked the property, and it didn’t seem like anyone had been there in a long time.”
“That’s a relief. I don’t have much to steal, but it’s all I’ve got. There’s no way to replace any of it.”
“The fence around your vegetable garden has kept out the goats, but the weeds are competing with the vegetables for space. However, there are still many vegetable plants growing and producing.”
The elevator stopped, and Steele led me to our room. “I downloaded a full schematic of the hotel stored into my CPU,”he explained, opening the door with his handprint. It was a modest room simply furnished with a king-size bed, a table for two, and a small sitting area.
“Weeds are a constant battle that I’m quite used to in the garden. I will be glad to get back to tending it.” I looked around the room. “This is really nice. I didn’t expect it to be so large.”
“You were probably thinking that it would be like a hospital room.”
“I guess… I don’t think I knew what I expected because I’ve never been away from Montana before.”
“We should be back there by tomorrow afternoon at the latest. I will help you clean up your garden, contain your animals, and anything else that needs to be done,” Steele assured me. “Zaya, you are my priority now. I was trained for two things while in stasis: To become a warrior and to care for my mate.”
I looked at him, feeling at a loss for words. He was so handsome and attentive. He looked at me with such appreciation that it made me feel self-conscious. I liked him very much, but I worried that I could never live up to his idealized genetic mate.
“What is it, Zaya? You look troubled.”
“I’m not sure that I can be the woman you need me to be. I don’t have much education, except I know how to read, write, and do arithmetic. My momma taught me. But I’m just a ranch girl scraping out a living on a secluded ranch. All I know about how things used to be I read in very old books.”
“You do not have to be anyone but yourself, Zaya. That is the woman I need you to be. As we get to know each other, we will figure out how we fit together. Recognizing you as my genetic mate triggered my instincts to make our relationship work for both of us. As long as we are open and honest with each other, we can come to an agreeable solution. Can we be honest with each other?”
I smiled shyly. “We can sure try. I do like you—very much.”
Steele smiled back. “I’d say that’s a good start. Are you ready for some nourishment? It’s been a few hours since your last meal.”
“Yeah, I am kind of hungry.”
“Would you like to have food sent to us here? Or I could take you to an actual restaurant. They have them here in New Chicago,” he asked. “I could show you some of the city, too.”
“I think I would like that. I’ve never seen a city before,” I agreed readily.
“Good. I will just secure my rifle, and we can go.” As he locked his weapon in the closet safe, Steele asked, “Do you want to eat first, or would you like to see the sights?”
“Can we see the sights and then have something to eat?”
“As you wish, Zaya.” He smiled, took my hand, and led me from the hotel room. Outside at street level, we took a waiting tram. In seconds, Steele programmed a sightseeing route through the city. The domed craft allowed us to see all around the vehicle.
“It’s so beautiful. This is nothing like the cities that I read about. The buildings aren’t crowded together, and there are lots of trees and gardens between the buildings.”
“That’s because the Mesaarkan bombings decimated Earth’s population. New Chicago supports only about a tenth of the people that the original city housed.
“In fact, most of the metropolitan areas in North America were reduced to small cities or towns surrounded by rural countryside. Not all of the major cities destroyed were rebuilt. Most of the rubble in what was once suburbia was cleared away and either returned to nature or sectioned into small homesteads to encourage people to become self-sufficient,” Steele explained.
Chapter Four
Steele
During our tour of the city, we stopped at a public park to wander among the greenery together. As we walked, I told her about how people had lived in crumbling buildings throughout the war and struggled to survive.
“Before we could start building, we had to move people from the tattered structures and demolish them. We also had to contend with gangers who didn’t want us to rebuild the city and take away the people they preyed upon.”
“I’m glad my family didn’t live in a city when the aliens bombed the world. People in our part of the country didn’t know what had happened for a long time because there was no communication, and they no longer had power except for those who were off the grid. We never had any of that stuff when I grew up.”
