“It is time.” The voice croaked through my consciousness like a toad in the night. “ He approaches the drop off point.”

I stared at the same spot on the wall I’d been looking at for hours.

“Come to the pool.”

I rose and did as instructed, collecting the knife and nutrition pallets, then removed my outer clothes with numb fingers.

A splash drew my attention.

Something popped out of the spring where water flowed out and plonked into the pool.

I reached down and collected the package. My mind swarmed. This was really happening…

“Put the pallets into the waterproof satchel.”

I unwound the satchel, tipped out the item inside, then shoved the leather sack with the pallets into it.

“What’s this?” I picked up the bronze beak-like object that had been in the satchel.

“A breathing apparatus for underwater.”

I stared at it. The thing looked like some kind of medieval costume mask, the nose part hooked and evil looking.

“Put it on.”

I brought the mask to my mouth and nose. Cool metal touched my skin. Clamping pressure slammed over my face. My scream dissipated into the funnel.

I yanked at the beak.

“It is only suction.”

My head spun. I wedged a finger between the mask and my cheek, and broke the seal.

I gasped and threw the thing to the ground.

“Pick it up and put it back on . Time is short.”

I stared at the horrible thing on the floor. “I’m not wearing that.”

“Of course, you will.”

I backed up, the walls swimming around me. “No. Nope, I can’t.”

“You are not so precious as to be deterred by minor apprehension. What are you doing, human?”

I rubbed my face on both sides. No, I’d never been precious. There’d never been such luxury for me. I’d threaded worms through hooks and gutted fish by the age of seven. I’d completed basic military training and could’ve seen active duty if that’d been my desired path.

I was strong.

I was capable.

And an ugly face mask wouldn’t stop me from doing what needed to be done.

I covered my eyes. This had nothing to do with the stupid device. “I can’t do it. I can’t go with you.”

I’d tried . I’d tried so hard to block out what I didn’t want to know. To focus on what I had to do.

To hold on to perspective .

But all my perspectives just kept on rolling back to him.

“You can.” Macca’s volume amplified. “ You will.”

My belly seized.

“No. I can’t live with—” My fist clamped to my middle. “—the repercussions.”

Thor .

My chest heaved. What Macca told me festered in my mind, spreading to infect every inch of me. Bonding meant he’d begun genetically pairing to me from the moment he sampled my DNA.

There’d be no one else for him now. He’d never mate. He’d age slowly and unnaturally. Waiting to die alone.

To leave him would be a cruel, cruel curse.

“Repercussions?” The computer hummed. “There are a hundred woman who will starve without the pallets. Even with the energy cell there are not enough rations for all to survive the journey to Crestonia.”

I shook my head. “But with the cell you’ll leave earlier before they run out.”

“Escape pods are not intended to travel enormous distances, even at full charge. There will be many stops, it will take a great deal of time, and without currency there is only one thing we have to trade…”

No. Bitterness flooded my mouth. The women.

Macca would sell the women for the sake of the Crestonian child.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get the pallets to you.” I strode back to the edge of the pond. “I saw how the tunnel suck things down like a drain. I’ll just feed the satchel down and the drone can get it.”

“No. Fool emotional human.” Macca grew louder. “The current will suck the satchel into the bowels of this planet. You must deliver them to the drone yourself. You are needed here, Leila. Your place is with your humans.”

I glanced over my shoulder to the archway. But Thor… My insides bruised at the thought of him.

His big sweet face swelled in my mind.

“I can’t.” I squeezed my eyes closed. “I made a deal with him.”

A deal he honored, and so would I.

My head boomed. “You made a deal with me!”

I jerked at the ferocity. “I can’t do this to him when he’s been nothing but kind.”

“So kind that he keeps you captive?”

I gulped. My own knowledge battered around my mind. Didn’t I treat people who’d been held prisoner by enemies? Prisoners who started to relate to their captors. Even bond with them.

“So kind he seeks to force you to marry?”

It was survival instinct, I’d explained to them. Adapt and survive. My insides twisted. But this was different…

I shook my head. “No, he cares about me.” Pain slammed a fist into my esophagus. “He really, really cares about me.”

My blood flooded with a warm bittersweet feeling.

“He protects me.” I glanced up at the ceiling, and it was like my head opened and I knew so much more.

You could’ve asked for the stars strung on a thread.”

The memory came back to me and nothing Macca had ever told me felt truer. “He tries to make me happy.”

“He tries to mate you.” Macca’s words were a sharp bite, but I blocked them from tearing into me the way my vulnerabilities allowed.

“He could’ve mated me already, but instead he’s doing this my way.” I backed up. He got me. Every conversation we’d ever had ran through me. He understood me even though he was from another world. “I care about him, and I won’t hurt him, just as he wouldn’t hurt me.”

“You believe he truly likes you?”

I shifted. “I know he likes me.”

“You think he understands you, desires you, as no human ever did?”

My chest squeezed at the truth of it, but something about Macca’s words made the hairs rise up off my body. “He does.”

“You believe that what he feels for you is affection?” The voice in my head turned sweetly compelling. “That he can be counted on?”

The words vibrated through me, stirring up my insides. Made me churn. “Yes.”

“That he loves you the way no one else knew how to love you?”

My blood seemed to go still. “No, Macca, don’t…”

“That he wants you the way your father never wanted you.”

My heart felt as though it hit my stomach.

“Shut up.” I slapped my palms on my cheeks.

“That he will take care of you the way your mother never could?”

“I know what you’re doing,” I breathed. “I know what you’re doing, Macca.”

But it didn’t matter, the barbs hit just the same.

“That he is committed you the way Jonathan never wanted to be.”

Poisonous doubt, toxic pain, struck with flawless precision.

“That he can be relied on the way Uncle Syd could not be relied upon?”

I dropped to a crouch and covered my ears. Hurt pulsed through me, spreading from my heals to my clamping fingers. “Stop it.”

“You are correct, Human. He does want you. He will take care of you. He is committed. He can be counted on.” But those assurances were poison too. “But what he wants from you is to be bred.”

“No.” I shook. My chest convulsed. Tears squeezed out of me. “It’s so much more than that.”

“He is committed to keeping you captive.”

I rocked. “Get out of my head.”

But the voice couldn’t be shut out. “ What you can count on is spending your fertile years being split open by Baratican sons.”

I dropped down on my side. “You’re wrong…”

“Norepinephrin. Serotonin. Dopamine. Oxytocin.”

Each word dropped like an anvil.

Those were my words coming back at me. My beliefs coming back to sting.

I closed my eyes.

“Those are chemicals humans are susceptible to. I do not say this to be cruel. You wanted transparency so know that the chemicals Baratican’s are driven by are far stronger, and more compelling than yours.” Macca’s tone mellowed, but the hurt did not. “Think, Leila. Why would he care so for a stranger? Why would he want you? Remember with your own mind. Have you not noticed him grow fairer to your human preference?”

My eyelids flew open.

“He alters himself to lure you.”

My heart thumped. I sat up. Images flickered through my head. The moment he took off that mask, he’d been manly, attractive yes, but strange.

And now…

“Your desire for him is a biological trick.”

A strange taste filled my mouth as though I’d bitten my tongue. A metallic tang.

“Have you experienced his breath against you?”

My hand went to my throat. I felt his breath now. Felt it fanning my lips as he lay across from me.

“Baratican’s only require sporadic breath. Weeks apart.”

“I don’t understand.” But dawning was right there—touching distance.

“Does his heart beat for you?”

I glanced down at my hands. Palms I’d held against his chest. Skin that had absorbed the steady throb of his pulse.

“Baratican’s Cardiovasular system is non-comparable to humans. Leila, he has no heart.”

My fists snapped shut. I couldn’t get in a breath.

“He pretends…”

My own frantic pulse beat against my ribs.

No. No. No.

“He emulates you. Mimicking your breaths, fabricating a heartbeat, altering his looks, synthesizing human pheromones. He is one big manipulation.”

My ears roared with the sound of the springs and my own internal raging. Tears shook me from the inside out, wet and salty and real.

“This is not your human love. If you do not leave here, this cave will become the very breeding farm you fought to escape.”

I couldn’t keep up with the horrors in my head. Meat babies. Captivity. Thor…

“ You were right Leila, there is no such thing as love. It’s all chemicals. He would desire you if you were green, swollen, bloated, and covered in pustules.”

My chin curled in to my chest and I cried.

“So long as you could be bred.”