He hesitated, watching her, as if waiting for something.
Lyra tilted her head. “And the other possibility?”
Asier’s eyes darkened, his expression flattened. “You may be pregnant.”
Lyra pulled back from the glass. “No, that’s not possible. I have an implant. It prevents conception.”
Asier said nothing, but she sensed an unpleasant rebuttal in his demeanor. He chose not to voice it. Instead, he said, “The ship runs regular bioscans. It will alert us if you are pregnant.”
She wouldn’t be. “How long to the merchant station?”
“Forty zeitraums.”
A little less than ten days. Not even ten days, and she’d part ways with him. She searched his face. His expression was carefully, brutally blank, but she sensed the emotional intensity behind the facade.
She let her own emotions creep into her voice. Hoarsely, she said, “I’m going to miss you, Asier.”
He closed his eyes. Inhaled deeply. When he opened them again, that soft gleam had returned.
Asier spent the remainder of her quarantine in the medbay with her, leaving only briefly to check on things in the control cabin, and to answer whatever natural calls Scaevens were subject to.
For Lyra, the cell provided clean water, and meals in the form of a nutritional gel that tasted like yeast, chitin, and saccharine. She had stomached worse in the form of military MREs, but it still took some discipline to get the nutritional gel down. After the water and the gel, there was a small lavatory attached to the cell.
Inside the lav were three identical hatches mounted beside each other on the surface of a wide bench. One opened to a shallow well filled with a dense green vapor, one revealed a closed metal aperture, and one opened to a roaring gust of air that exerted an alarming pull on her body. She’d slammed it shut, then emerged from the lav to have an embarrassing conversation with Asier in order figure out which object she was meant to eliminate into.
Tired of being naked, she’d ripped down the privacy drape from the lavatory—a lightweight, black material—and knotted it into a toga of sorts. She wasn’t embarrassed of her body, or too modest to flaunt it in front of Asier, but there was a certain discomfort that came with constant nudity. Without the drape, when she needed the lav, she sent Asier out of the medbay.
The quarantine cell was smaller than the control cabin—with just enough space for the large bed, and a gap between the bed and the glass where she would frequently pace. The vent overhead, though silent, was a constant presence in her mind. The gentle updraft it created fluttered her hair, tickled over her skin. It was probably part of a reverse airflow system. It’d pull disease-contaminated air out of the cell, and carry it to the ship’s incinerator.
Without a work schedule, or the presence of other humans, or a simulated solar cycle, Lyra’s internal clock lost its timing. She slept at random intervals, for odd amounts of time. Every time she woke, Asier was there—sometimes watching her, sometimes staring at nothing, but always with a pained, contemplative expression.
Lyra woke from another restless catnap, with only one zeitraum left until the quarantine lifted. Asier’s long legs were stretched across the narrow medbay, his back propped against a row of cabinets. His moody golden gaze was fixed on her. He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t even notice she was awake.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?” she demanded.
He jolted, and Lyra couldn’t help but laugh. There was something strangely adorable about the sight of such a big, fierce, invulnerable creature looking as startled as a poked cat.
For the first time in days, the grimness lifted from Asier’s expression, and he smiled at her. His fangs gleamed and his pupils dilated, making his eyes less sphinx-like.
Lyra slid out of the bed and came to sit cross-legged in front of the glass. Asier shifted, and the mirth faded from his face.
“What are you not telling me?” Lyra asked softly.
His lips compressed into a hard line. He looked away from her. “I don’t want you to leave,” he said gruffly. There was more to it than that. There was something heavy weighing on him. The conflict played out in his eyes every time he looked at her.
But the emotional revelation hit her like a brick. She bowed her head, blinking hard against the sudden stinging in her eyes. When she had a grip on herself, she looked back up at him.
“Can’t we…couldn’t we still see each other? Somehow? Scaevens deal with Ravanoth, and Ravanoth deal with humans. Maybe we could…”
She trailed off at his bleak expression.
“It’s forbidden. And I am an Enforcer. It is my duty to carry out the law.”
“There must be some way.”
His expression grew intent. Gold irises ate up his eye, the pupils condensing to narrow black ellipses. “There is one way.”
Lyra leaned forward. “What is it?”
He blinked and looked away from her. “It would make you miserable. It would be my greatest joy. But you would have to give up everything. You could never return to humanity.”
Lyra recoiled from him. “I have a sister,” she said softly. “She’s my only family—my whole family. I can’t abandon her.”
Asier nodded, weary and tense.
The thing he both feared and wanted more than anything else in the world teetered on the edge of possibility. If Lyra was pregnant—the very thought of it sent a powerful surge of emotion through him—then he would have no choice but to take her to his home planet, and keep her there.
The Scaeven mating bond defied reason or principle. It was why the government didn’t enforce criminal penalties against Scaevens who bred human women. Get caught before conception, and face the revocation of intergalactic travel rights, the forfeiture of any property owned outside paternal inheritance, and up to ten solars in one of the outer rim penal colonies.
But if the human was pregnant? At worst, the bureaucrat who processed your mate’s residency might scowl a bit.
If Lyra was pregnant, Asier would take her away from everything. Her entire life would be left behind. Her friends, her career, her home. And the sister that she’d spoken of with such quiet love in her voice. He would tear her away from her family.
He wouldn’t even hesitate.
So he could only hope—an intellectual process, rather than an emotional one—that she was not pregnant. That he wouldn’t destroy her life in order to satisfy his own primitive desire. That he wouldn’t crush her happiness in service of his own.
Chapter Eleven
The medbay sounded a series of low tones when the quarantine lifted. The glass partition receded into the wall.
Lyra sat frozen on the bed, staring wide-eyed at Asier. He stared back at her, just as uncertain.
“So…” Lyra broke the silence. “What now?”
He glanced at the computer. He briefly considered putting her back in quarantine until they docked at Manftigh Station, or until the bioscans confirmed pregnancy. If she was pregnant, confirmation could come at any second. Human conception could happen within the space of hours, but it could also take several Earth days after intercourse.
They’d know for sure by the time they reached the station.