It has always been dormant. That’s how we’re made, a Margol male doesn’t wake until his bare claw meets his mate’s bare skin and the reading comes back true, and mine has never woken for anything, not once, not in thirty-one rotations. Not for her. I lie beside that female every night with her gloved hand on my clothed arm and there is nothing in me that stirs, because there’s nothingtostir. The door is locked from a side I can’t reach.
And I know why.
I scented her in this kitchen six moon cycles ago, in a doorway, when she brushed past me reaching for the plates.
Not compatible.
So this is where I live now. In love with a female I cannot have, in a body that might never awaken for her, in an apartment I’ve come to think of as home, doing a mate’s work every diurnal with no right to the word.
It’s a very odd situation.
I would not trade it for anything in the Four Sectors.
The good news is that she still wants me. That’s the part that undoes me, and I’ve never said a word about it and never will.
I scent her arousal constantly. In the mornings when I put her boots on and she has to hold my shoulder for balance. Atnight when I massage her feet. When I come in off shift and she looks up from the table. It’s been there this whole time and has never once faded.
A female wants me. Me. And she has said nothing, because I originally told her that we’re not compatible, and she believed me.
And I can do nothing.
We both still wear the gloves.
I could settle it. That’s the thing I turn over some nights while she sleeps. I could take her bare hand in my mine right now and have an answer inside a heartbeat — a real one, a true one, not a scent through a doorway.
I won’t.
Because a clasp isn’t a question, it’s an eventthat takes a male’s body apart and puts it back together in about four seconds. I have watched seven of my brothers go through it and there is nothing controlled. Mara is heavily pregnant and I refuse to harm her in any way if our clasp proves positive.
So the answer sits there. Available every hour of every diurnal, one glove away, and I don’t touch it.
I’d rather not know than risk her.
“Okay,”she says over breakfast, “so I’ve been thinking about the sleeping situation.”
“What sleeping situation?”
“The baby’s.” She waves her fork. “We still haven’t fully decided yet where to put him.”
“He’ll be in the bedroom with us.”
“See, that’s what I thought, but then Lila says…” She stops. “Wait. ‘With us?’”
I look at her.
She looks back. “Right. Anyway. So he’ll be in with us, and I’ve learned that Trunk built Vela’s crib. Ines showed me. It’s beautiful. It’s got the little carved bit along the top.” She’s off again, fast and happy, and I let the moment go past because chasing it would only frighten it. “So I’m going to ask him, except I feel weird asking and I’m basically a stranger.”
“He’ll say yes.”
“You think?”
“He’ll say yes before you finish the question. He’s been waiting for someone to ask.”
That’s the other thing. It’s a male child. We talk about him all the time. We behave like a pair of beings who are going to raise him together.
She saysyour childwhen she’s tired. I sayhe’ll be in with us.And we both simply walk past it every single time.
“He’s going to be the only human,” she says, quietly, one night, out of nothing.
