“If that is what you choose,” he says carefully. “Then that is what I will make possible.”
“You don’t want that,” I say.
“I want you to stand beside me as my wife,” he says roughly. “But if you do not want this, tell me now.” His grip loosens slightly.
I let myself lean into him. His arms close around my waist, locking me against his chest.
“What if I don’t know? What if I can’t decide right now?” I whisper.
“There is time.” I tip my head up to him again, and he kisses me, gently at first, then harder. The taste of him is salt and sun and the spice of Xytheos.
The mate bond pulls at me. Every part of me is awake—skin, nerves, the pulse between my legs. My whole body wants to fold around him, and I’m not uncertain about mating with him—it’s what comes after. I know the words—father, mother, husband, wife. But what do they mean for me? What will that look like with Rythar? For a thousand years?
He pulls back, breath ragged. “You are afraid again.”
I shake my head. “No. I’m not.”
He tilts my chin, studying my face. “It’s something.”
I laugh, shaky. “No. Maybe. On New Terra, this wasn’t how it went. There’s so much here that I don’t understand.”
He brushes my hair back, fingers careful on my scalp.
I flex my hand, watching the dim light ring. The bride mark. “I don’t know what happens next. I don’t know what this really means.”
His thumb skims my jaw. “You are afraid of what happens next.”
“Not of you,” I say, too fast.
He nods, like he expected that answer.
The heat is back in my cheeks. “I expected to mate to produce a child,” I say, words tumbling out. “A way to keep the race going. Nothing more. But you’re filling my head with pictures of us together like husband and wife with children. I’ve never metanyone who lived like that. I heard about it in stories, but I can’t imagine what that would be like.”
His face doesn’t change, but his body does—a subtle tension in his arm, a tightening around his eyes.
I wrap my arms around myself, thinking of the mating chamber. Of sleeping with Rythar, in the same bed. “On New Terra, sex was never like this. Like what I think you mean. It was always so… rushed. Clinical. Even when it was good, it was just a way to… get it over with. And not miss an opportunity.”
“Did you have a mate?” he asks, heavy brow drawing down. “Your identity did not indicate a bond.”
I shake my head. “No. It wasn’t like that. We tried for children with a designated man, or tried quickly with someone we liked—if we could get a moment.”
He looks surprised, then nods. “I may understand your confusion about Xytheos now. On New Terra, those were temporary arrangements.”
It feels strange to explain it to him, and stranger still to hear him try to make sense of it in Xythean terms. I fumble, trying to explain why it made sense on New Terra. “The odds of conception were always poor, so we tried often, if it was around the right time. It was my duty to the human race. Every New Terran’s duty. Xytheos is just so different. You’re asking me to jump into something and I don’t even understand what it really is.”
He studies me. “I was engineered to protect my mate,” he says quietly. “To feed her. To warm her. To ensure her safety and care.” His thumb presses into my jaw, not unkindly. “Yet it is not enough. You are still braced. You are ready to endure me. Not to choose me. What is it you wish for now, Elena?”
I look away. I may not understand Xytheos, but choosing him feels irreversible. “I don’t know what I wish for. I’ve never had the chance.”
Rythar leans in, mouth at my ear. “Now you do.”
I shiver—not from the cold.
He picks me up and sets me on the edge of the bath, water streaming off my legs. He stays in the pool, close to me. His hands are soft on my skin. He kisses my neck, my collarbone, the hollow of my throat where my pulse hammers.
My body aches for him, but my brain is a mess of alarms and regret.
I whisper, “Why are you letting me choose?”
