J’tet!
Mentally, I shouted an Asterion curse.
This was not going how I had planned. Nothing was going as I had planned. Delle was regarding me with all the trust that an Asterion might regard a deadly rajeen spider back home. Clearly, subtility was not one of my gifts. I opted for honesty, instead.
“I am inviting you inside because I need to speak with you,” I said. “It is an important matter.”
Now her other eyebrow raised to match the first.
“You want to talk to me? What on earth about?”
The human expression made me chuckle. “Actually, it is about being on Earth,” I replied. “About my staying here. And about your life here. I promise you I simply want to talk. It shouldn’t take long.”
She regarded me suspiciously for several long seconds before finally acquiescing with a wary nod.
“Fine,” she said. “But, so you’re aware, Zyn knows where I am. He’s the one who sent me out here. If you decide to try any funny business…”
I had no reply to that as she stomped past me up the steps and into my office. Funny business—a human expression for anything untoward or underhanded. No, I wasn’t going to try any funny business. And the fact that she was warning me of mild-mannered Zyn knowing where she was…now, that was amusing. If I had been the type to harm her or take advantage of her, her brother-in-law was not someone who would have frightened me.
Harming her was the last thing on my mind as she entered my domain and turned to face me. Her dark hair was caught up in a loose ponytail, the ends trailing over her shoulder. Her glasses were slightly askew. When she reached up to straighten them, I refused to let my gaze slip, and trail over the curves I knew were hidden beneath her coat, although my mind remembered them well.
Very well. Much too well.
“Okay, now that we’re inside, what did you want to talk about?” she said. If her voice sounded nervous, the arms she folded across her chest belied her unease. The human mannerisms told me she was anxious, but trying to appear the opposite.
She was brave. I liked that about her.
There were other things I liked about her too, but I had to thrust the memories of those away and concentrate on what I wished to say. The words did not come easily. How did I tell this human woman that I wanted to marry her—that it would be beneficial to me and a protection to her? She might think I’d gone mad. Maybe I had. The more I considered it—and I had done nothing except consider it the past few days—the more reluctant I became.
This will never work, my mind warned.
It might not, but I had to try.
“Certain…a certain upcoming event has been brought to my notice,” I began cautiously, feeling like I was stumbling through a strange room in the dark, with nothing but outstretched hands to guide me. “The Asterions have decided it’s time to formulate a list of possible human…breeders. For, um, themselves.”
She gazed at me, her eyes growing larger behind her glasses. Blinked once. No other response.
“Go on.”
I shifted my weight. “The list will contain names of unattached human females who have been deemed desirable for breeding Asterion offspring. Your name is…well, it is on the list.”
Now her eyebrows rose again. I couldn’t tell if in shock or effrontery.
“You—no way. You have got to be kidding me.”
“I wish I were,” I answered grimly. And I did. We needed offspring to continue our race, and the humans needed males to continue theirs, since so many had been slaughtered in their war, but this was hardly the right way to go about it, to my way of thinking.
“Wait. So, you’re telling me that you guys have decided we human girls are worth nothing more than being bred like—like cows or something. Bred—like animals? To have your babies? Like—what the hell, dude? Who do you guys think you are? What th—what the crap?”
Clearly, the implications of my statement were sinking in. She was angry. Getting angrier. I didn’t blame her.
“I’m not just a baby breeder,” she sputtered, indignant. “I’m more than a walking womb. I—”
I knew that. I knew she was an entire person, with hopes and dreams. We’d discussed them briefly.
“I brought this up to you because I may be able to help,” I said carefully, when her indignant furious string of words seemed to fail.
She blinked rapidly. “Help? How are you going to help? Are you going to offer to take me so my name doesn’t get put on a list and I’m not given to a perfect stranger? Yeah, no, thanks, Overlord.”
