She woke in his arms, and instead of sliding out of bed and dressing, she twisted to face him, and curled into his big, hard, warm body.
He kissed her hair.
“How long til dock?” she asked. She didn’t want to know.
“Thirty-five zeitraums.”
Less than nine days. Lyra closed her eyes for a second. “I don’t want to leave you, Asier.”
His arms tightened around her in a crushing embrace. “I don’t want you to leave.”
“But I can’t abandon my sister. I’m her only family. She’s mine.” She pressed her face into the curve of his shoulder. A hot tear escaped her screwed-shut eyes. It slid down her cheek and onto his iron skin.
“Lyra?” Asier pulled back. Lyra kept her eyes shut tight. She couldn’t look at him while she wept like a child. He said nothing, and only pulled her back into his arms.
“If things were different…” she said raggedly.
“They’re not.”
But she had to say it. She had to at least tell him how she felt. So that when they parted ways, there would be nothing unsaid, undone between them. “If things were different, I would want to settle with you.”
Settlement—an old-fashioned human ritual that was rarely observed among pair-bonded couples anymore. It was an oath of eternity. It was a solemn promise. When you settled with a person, you foreswore all others, and spent the rest of your life devoted to only that one lover.
There was a word for it in the traders’ Creole, but Lyra wasn’t certain Asier would recognize it, having dealt little with humans. She blinked away her tears and looked up, searching his face.
“Settle,” he said heavily. “It’s a human mate bond?”
She nodded.
“Ach, Lyra.” He dropped his head until his forehead touched hers. He spoke again, in his native language. It was a long string of deep, growling words, made heavy with the depth of emotion behind them.
She didn’t need to speak his language. She understood. When his impassioned speech died away into fraught silence, she shifted up and kissed him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and put every bit of her heart into that kiss. She let her body say the things that words failed to convey.
But when she worked her way down his broad torso to take him into her body, he stopped her.
He gritted something out in his own language, breathing hard. “I—Lyra, I can’t do this to you.”
“We only have a little time left together,” she said softly.
He held fast to her hips, keeping her from wriggling her way down to the urgent thrust of his erection.
“If you’re pregnant, I can’t let you return to human territory.”
“Asier. There’s no way for me to get pregnant. The implant stops—”
“Its not enough. The biological process of Scaeven insemination isn’t the same as human—”
Lyra pressed her fingertips gently to his lips. He wouldn’t listen to her, so she wouldn’t bother trying to explain. “I don’t care.”
His beautiful golden eyes searched hers. His thick silver brows drew together. “You’d have to give up your entire world.” His lips moved beneath her fingers. “You’d never see your home again. You’d never see your sister.”
The last gave her pause. But she knew what she was doing. “I’m willing to take the risk,” she said softly. Because there was no risk. The implant essentially rendered her sterile until she chose to have it removed.
Asier stared at her, still uncertain, still anguished.
“You said Scaeven conception is rare.”
“With other species. But humans are very fertile.”
I’m not, she thought. Not with the implant.
Lyra leaned forward and kissed him. “I don’t want to leave you, Asier. And I don’t want to give up my family. So let’s let fate decide which one it will be.”
“Lyra…”
She kissed him again. His big body remained rigid beneath hers. He was fighting himself, fighting the pull between them. But this time, it wasn’t toxin or pheromones. It was his conscience.
“Please, Asier. We only have a little time left together.” She pressed her palm over his heart.
His resistance melted beneath the touch of her hand. His grasp eased on her hips, and his hands slid reverently over her body. She leaned down to meet his kiss. They moved together slowly, softly. He handled her as gently as spun sugar, and when he entered her body, it was with the slowest, most sensuous care. They touched and tasted and savored one another, their joined bodies sliding together into sedate ecstasy.
They spent the next days lost in each other. Lyra explored every inch of his body, mapping him, memorizing him. She took every moment of their time together and locked it deep in her mind—in her heart—so that in the future, on lonely nights, she could pull out those memories and savor them. So that she could relive her time with him as often and as vividly as she needed. And so that he would remember her, long, long after they parted ways.
He’d tried. He’d tried to be honorable. He’d tried to the do the right thing. But it turned out he didn’t have half the integrity he’d once believed of himself. In all his time as an Enforcer, tracking down predators and meting out justice, Asier had considered himself above them. He’d never set a toe out of line, never even been tempted to break the laws that protected the rest of the universe from the instinctive cruelty of the Scaevens’ conquering nature.
But when it came down to it, he was as low as the rest of them.
He told himself that he’d tried. He’d tried to explain the circumstances to her, tried to warn her. He’d laid out the truth, and she’d accepted the risk.
But he’d known she hadn’t really believed she was at risk. And he hadn’t tried very hard to convince her.
And now he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t give up the pleasure of her body, and he couldn’t give up the possibility of keeping her.
He knew he was destroying the goodness between them, and he couldn’t stop himself.
Every time he left her—which was rare—he went to the medbay to examine the bioscans.
With only twenty zeitraums left until they docked—less than five days by Lyra’s circadian cycle—Asier discovered the glitch in the ship’s biosystem. It was reading Lyra’s body as male. The scans highlighted excessive estrogen markers and extremely low androgens, but couldn’t assess her for pregnancy.
Whether it was a flaw in the ship’s system, or a flaw in the original programming, Asier didn’t have the skillset to know. He knew Scaeven law inside and out, but tech programming was something he left to the experts.
None of that mattered. What mattered, was that Lyra could very well be pregnant, and he had no way of knowing. The only way to be certain would be to get her to a health facility where she could be assessed by experts.
It meant he couldn’t take her to the merchant station. He had to take her to Varan. He had to take her home.
He went to the control cabin, and he plotted a new course.
Chapter Thirteen
With only four days left until they docked, Asier had finally succumbed to true sleep. Lyra had forgotten to ask him how often Scaevens slept—or for how long. She lay beside him for a long time, listening to his heartbeat through his ribs, feeling the rise and fall of his broad chest.