Chapter 13
Raevu
I drank down my qua in one long swallow as Eva made her grand exit, and I cursed under my breath. I hadn’t gotten the answers I needed, and we were stuck here waiting on her for at least another day.
There was no doubt in my mind that I should have been thinking more of her physical and emotional welfare, instead of doing nothing. The fact that I didn’t did not sit well with me, but when I was around her, I had trouble thinking logically. All common sense escaped me in her presence…and my baser urges pressed to the forefront, with strong urges to claim and mate her in the most animalistic manner.
She’s mine. My life mate…to hold, touch, stroke, and claim.
I sat there, bewildered. But for the life of me…I didn’t understand how our interaction had gone so wrong, so fast.
Before she strode through the door, I had been replaying the dream in my head and her sweet words of encouragement and enjoyment at my touch. Yet, once she was actually in front of me, all I felt and heard from her was resistance to me.
Were all human women this complicated and stubborn?
All she seemed to want to do was stay here on Earth and tend to her wounds and illness, when I had the most state-of-the-art medical treatment on my ship. And why was she so resistant to leaving her fellow humans? Didn’t she know that they could visit her on my planet? It is my duty and privilege as her life mate to make her happy. Why didn’t she understand that?
Had I made a mistake in thinking she was my mate? Was the mark just some bizarre coincidence?
No. It couldn’t be. The pull toward her was too strong. I’d never experienced it before, but I knew it was the mating call my people talked about for centuries. It wasn’t just her beauty that attracted me, but it was her strong personality that drew me to her like a moth to a flame.
Baelon came back over and sat in her vacated spot. He gave me a long, steady look and reached out to hand me his glass over the low table. I took it and knocked back its contents.
It didn’t help fast enough. I shoved to my feet and started pacing the floor, then shucked my jacket and tossed it over the back of a couch. “I don’t understand. I didn’t ask anything inappropriate. I need to know how and from whom she got the mark.”
Baelon nodded slowly, stood, took both our glasses, and went to refill them. His silence spoke volumes. He was disappointed.
“What, Uncle? You obviously have an opinion. And what the Kyrpa was that ‘Queen’s Guard’ business? Since when do we have a ‘Queen’s Guard’?”
He turned and walked back over to me and handed me another glass of the dark-flavored qua. “You, my king, are a fool.” Baelon’s words were quiet and emphatic.
My eyes narrowed. “What do you mean? I said nothing wrong.”
“No, you didn’t. But in your desire to get information, you completely forgot what the female has gone through in just the last few days. Her illness. Her exhaustion. The trauma of her time as an experimental subject, and the trauma of being kidnapped, tied, and beaten. Even just how her life has changed in the last few weeks.” He shook his head sadly. “If my Amira were still alive, she would slap me if I ever made demands of her when she was that worn out.”
I eyed him. “I have a whole planet at stake here, Baelon. All of my people are at risk. I thought this experiment, this genetic trade, could help ensure our prosperity as a people. But instead of dozens of females, we end up with one. And she somehow bears our family crest? Marking her as my life mate? How is that possible?”
“I’m your uncle and your arms master, not a scientist. How can I presume to guess? Call T’ral back in. Maybe he has more answers.”
I rubbed my hands over my smooth head and said aloud, “Geoffrey, would you tell T’ral to come back in here?” In exasperation, I unbuttoned my cuffs and rolled up my shirtsleeves. But even as I expressed exasperation with my uncle, I felt a tug of worry. Had I really made that much of an ass of myself with my future mate?
The ever-present voice replied at once, “Of course, Your Majesty.”
Within moments, a door leading off into another part of the suite opened and closed, and T’ral entered. Here were two of my most trusted advisers, military and political. Between the three of us, surely, we could come up with some answers on what to do about Eva.
He must have seen our glasses arranged on the table in front of us, for he paused briefly at the bar area to fill a pitcher of qua and grab a third glass. As he sat down on the couch next to Baelon, he asked, “What have you discovered?”
“Nothing,” I said dryly, “except that Baelon here has formed a Queen’s Guard for the soon-to-be queen. Our lady claims not to know how the mark got on her skin. It just appeared, according to her. And—” I held out my glass for a refill “—Baelon believes I am a fool.”
T’ral unbuttoned his suit jacket and leaned back on the couch. “Well, all of that could be true.”
“Thank you for your support of your monarch, T’ral.” My tone got even drier.
The corner of T’ral’s mouth actually twitched in annoyance. “Raevu, a Queen’s Guard is actually a good idea. We know that, here on Earth, there are already factions that do not want a treaty between humans and our people. It was fine when we were trading goods and services, but when we wanted to include genetics in the mix…the opposition reared its head. She must be protected at all costs.”
“Don’t you think I know this?” I barked.
They both stared at me with doubt written all over their faces. I huffed in annoyance.
T’ral spoke on, with the manner of a scholar giving a lecture. “So, as far as the mark goes, according to our history, it appears when the life mate to the king comes of age. According to archives, the mark on the female is accompanied by weakness or sickness, which can only be remedied by a mating ceremony between the king and his life mate under the Sopu tree, when it is in bloom.”
“But that doesn’t explain how a human can be an alien’s mate,” I stated.
“This is not a clear-cut answer. But in the past, the king’s female was always a distant relation, so there was a trace of the king’s family’s DNA in the female’s system. The only answer I can extrapolate from this current situation is that since it was your DNA sent for the experiment, and Eva is of age, that once she was exposed to your family DNA, her genetic material accepted you as a viable match, hence the mark indicating that she’s your life mate. But that’s just my speculation. There is no precedence for what happened between you and Eva.” He shrugged. “My theory is that if we continue with this program, exposing more of our people’s DNA to the human females, then we should expect to have more life mate matches. Now, whether that results in saving our race from extinction, well, that’s a whole other story.”
Baelon and I both looked at him in surprise.
“How did you find this information? You had several clerks looking into it when we left, and they’d had no luck as of last word,” I countered.
T’ral loosened his tie, muttering something about human males liking nooses around their necks, and smiled ruefully. “They were focused on scientific logic and deemed the human females as inconsequential to this matter. That was their first mistake. I knew the humans were the key to unlocking this mystery, so I started there first. One thing the humans have done extremely well is create ‘search engines’ that sort through information for you. For all of our advances in other areas, this is their genius. I dumped our histories into Geoffrey’s data system, and within a very short time, he had used what he called keywords to find the information we sought. And two words kept popping up every time, ‘female choice.’”
I frowned. “Explain.”
“It’s strange, really. It is a form of mate choice, when females in certain species use physical or chemical mechanisms to control a male's success of inseminating them. Namely by selecting whether sperm are successful in fertilizing their eggs or not. I believe with the introduction of your DNA to Eva’s body, this is exactly what happened. Female choice. She selected you as her life mate.” T’ral sipped his qua. “Shocking, I know, but my clerks had to read through each document. And due to the sensitive nature of the situation, I was limited in telling them exactly what to look for. Geoffrey just had to skim, and we have no worries about his allegiance or whether he’ll make a judgment against us. I am going to make a request of President Maeda, sire, that we be allowed to take Geoffrey with us when we leave.”
Baelon shook his head. “Eunuchs! Always wanting new toys!”
T’ral looked at him flatly.
“Not today, you two. I need my advisers, not an additional headache.” I interrupted their usual derisive banter before it could even begin. I rubbed my temple and forehead with my free hand, as a headache had begun to form. I set down the qua and picked up Eva’s water glass. I couldn’t believe it. Eva chose me, and she didn’t even know it.
“Raevu,” Baelon inquired, “what ails you?”
“Nothing. I am fine,” I replied. It was probably just my immune system destroying some alien bacterium. “What else did Geoffrey’s search discover?”
T’ral was looking at me curiously. “He discovered that, in many cases, the mating ceremony could not take place immediately. At one time, it was several years between the time the queen-to-be came of age and the king returned from war. The people couldn’t have a sick queen-to-be for an indeterminate amount of time, so a solution of sorts was discovered.”
“Of sorts?” Baelon scoffed. “What is this ‘of sorts’?”
“The solution is an elixir, but it doesn’t completely remove all of the symptoms, it eases them. It does have two side effects, according to the archives. One, that when her monthly cycle is upon her, the remedy will have no effect at all, and all symptoms will return.” At this point, T’ral began looking decidedly uncomfortable.
“That sounds perfectly miserable,” Baelon commented. Of all of us, he would know, having actually lived with a woman at length.
I agreed wholeheartedly. “And the second?”
T’ral took a drink from his qua and cleared his throat.
“Well?” I demanded, “What is it?”
“While taking the elixir, she will be extremely sensitive and highly suggestible to contact of a personal nature.” T’ral coughed into his fist.
As one, Baelon and I sat back and let this information sink in. T’ral had cloaked it in formal language, so we had to decipher it. A wide grin spread across my face when I finally understood.
“You’re saying she’s going to want me to mate with her…often. I think I can handle that.”
“It’s a bit more, sire. She’s going to want you to mate with her, but in the past, the urge has made females at times paranoid or angry or even fearful. As she is human, we have no idea how the side effects might manifest…” T’ral leaned forward so I could see the earnestness on his face. “She will need to be watched over by only your most trusted.”
“I have already sworn to that duty,” Baelon said indignantly.
“I trust Baelon implicitly. And I will be with her. Between us, we can handle the side effects.” I smiled again. “She may not be ready to allow me to mate with her. But surely, I can touch her intimately to ease some of her warring emotions. I look forward to it.”
“Perhaps, Raevu, we should discuss this with her present?” Baelon was most definitely her champion. I winced, imagining Eva’s reaction to this conversation in her current mood.
To my surprise, T’ral agreed. Usually, they seemed to disagree just to be able to argue.
“No, not now.” I rubbed my aching neck and shoulder muscles. “She’s bathing, and after that, she needs rest.”
“How do you know that, sire?” T’ral asked.
“I don’t know. Wait…” I thought a moment. Surely it was impossible. “I can sense her. Not her body, but her. How is this even feasible?”
T’ral and Baelon exchanged wide-eyed looks, and then both shook their heads at me. “I don’t know, sire,” T’ral said. “I will look into it. What exactly are you sensing, and when did it start?”
“I can feel the headache, the muscle aches, and the upset stomach. I can almost feel the water of the bath against my skin, but more, I can tell she’s bathing because the heat from the water gives her pleasure. She’s relaxing, not feeling as frustrated.” I felt like I was straining to hear, but with my whole body instead of just my ears. It was undeniable. “How can I feel what she is feeling? And why now? Why not when the mark first appeared?” We seemed to have answered a couple of questions about Eva and her condition, only to end up with more questions to answer than when we had started. Surely, we would find these answers when we got back to our own planet.
I slumped back in my chair and continued rubbing my ghost headache with my fingertips. It may have been Eva’s actual pain, but it felt real to me. I waved dismissal to my two advisers, who immediately stood.
T’ral said, “One other thing the histories repeated, sire.”
I looked up and was sure this was not going to be something I wanted to hear.
He continued, “She cannot be breached by you or anyone or anything else until the mating ceremony. She must remain pure…whole. Once the ceremony is completed under the Sopu tree, then she is yours to mate.”
Baelon interjected, “Nephew, if you’re sensing what she’s going through, including the side effects, and add in what you’re feeling already, that’ll make for some pretty intense moments. You will have to hold yourself aloof from them.”
“Baelon, my uncle,” I assured him, “I am a king and a warrior. I can handle this. We will hold our meeting first thing in the morning, when Eva and President Maeda can join us.”
Both nodded, and I gave them their marching orders, “T’ral, you may make your request for Geoffrey then, if you can figure out how to get him to work with our computer systems. Baelon, as you cannot be on duty for your queen-to-be at all hours of the day and night, I need you to set up a duty roster for your select few that will be rotating the duties with you. We may need to make adjustments when she begins taking the elixir.”
They nodded their agreement with this plan and went to their own rooms. I put my feet up on the low table and considered all the things Eva said she wanted, and how to supply them.