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  “All things are possible, Madeline,” he said in her mind. There was a mysterious joy in the mental whisper that puzzled her.

  But Sfilla was already at the transport, motioning for them to hurry as she looked worriedly around.

  “She thinks we’re going to be captured and tortured,” Madeline thought wickedly. “She sees plots everywhere.”

  “Humor her,” he said. “She is a fine cook.”

  “I have to agree.” She’d never cooked anything in her life, except for assorted exotic wildlife over campfires when on campaign. Food served a purpose—it wasn’t supposed to be enjoyable.

  Sfilla’s dishes were spicy and flavorful and truly wonderful to eat. Madeline thought that she was growing far too used to gourmet living. It would be difficult to go back to soldiering, now, after even this brief interlude. Her mind set had changed, and she had softened, in a way, become more vulnerable.

  “It is the child which makes you feel vulnerable,” he said gently, still in her mind. “The influence of hormones.”

  She laughed softly. “I suppose so.” She glanced up at him as they neared the transport. He was very handsome. She thought that she would never tire of looking at him.

  He glanced at her and his eyes went green. She flushed and ran ahead, to dive into the transport ahead of him. She really had to spend more time working on her mind blocks. And soon!

  * * *

  IN THE NIGHT, the child moved with fury. Another growth spurt bent her over double in the bed. It frightened her. She had never felt so alone, or so afraid. She got out of bed and looked out the insulated window, one hand on the child as she fought down her fear. It would be all right. She’d taken the drug Caneese had made for her. It would work. The child would be all right.

  The pain came again. She closed her eyes against it. She was a combat soldier. She’d seen death, even dealt it early in her military career. It was absurd, to feel so frightened, especially for a child she could not even keep.

  The air in the room stirred behind her, and she felt Dtimun’s hands on her shoulders before she knew of his presence. She jumped involuntarily.

  “Forgive me,” he said gently as he turned her. “I did not mean to startle you.”

  He moved like a cat, she thought. He was wearing a sort of pant-skirt, like the Kahn-Bo uniform the Cehn-Tahr wore when they sparred aboard ship, except of a softer fabric, and his feet and his broad, muscular chest were bare. It was the way he had been dressed in the mating chamber just before the physicians arrived. Her eyes registered how attractive he was, although she tried not to let it show.

  He was looking, too. Her long, reddish-gold hair curled around her face and over her shoulders. In the soft blue sleeping robe she wore, she looked younger.

  “The child’s movements disturb you,” he said in his deep voice, while somber blue eyes looked down into her green ones. “But you bear the uneasiness alone, thinking it a weakness to seek comfort from me.”

  She looked straight ahead, at the thick hair wedged over the muscular, pale gold skin of his chest. “I’m all right.” She shifted. “I know that Cehn-Tahr males don’t share a room with their mates.”

  He raised an eyebrow arrogantly. “Sfilla has been talking to you,” he said with faint disapproval.

  “It’s okay, sir,” she said with a hint of her old mischief. “I told her that she must not share details of familial behavior with me, because I was an outworlder. She looked quite shocked.”

  He shook his head. His eyes flashed green. “I would have told you, had you asked. However, since you and I have broken so many protocols of behavior already, I hardly think one more will matter.”

  And as he spoke, he bent and scooped her up in his arms and carried her back to his own suite of rooms without another word.

  He placed her on the huge round bed with its luxurious Yomuth-hair cover and propped her up against several silken pillows at the carved imported Seti marble headboard. “Move over,” he said, and he climbed in beside her to sit, cross-legged, beside her.

  He reactivated his virtual displays and was immediately surrounded by colorful controls and a vortex that resolved into a weapon.

  “That’s a VX3-Mexcache,” she murmured, indicating the rapid-fire rail gun.

  His eyes twinkled. “I had forgotten your background in weapons tech,” he said. “Yes. This is a prototype. I have been working on an improvement in the combustion chamber which will solve the repeated overheating during rapid fire.”

  She was surprised. “I thought your training was military, sir.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “Are you going to continue to refer to me as ‘sir’?”

  “Well, yes,” she replied. “After all, this is only a temporary mission.”

  He shook his head and sighed. “My early training was in quantum mechanics and biochemistry,” he told her. “I have doctorates in both fields.”

  She lay back on her pillows and studied him with quiet pride. “You never spoke of your education.”

  “There was no reason to.” He manipulated the image and turned it, magnifying it, to bring up the combustion chamber, which was an emerillium-based trigger mechanism.

  She turned, so that her shoulder and cheek rested on the mound of pillows. “You said that we’d broken behavioral protocols,” she recalled frowning. “Which ones? If I’m allowed to ask.”

  “The first mating, as I explained to you, is only to prove fertility.” He glanced at her and lifted an eyebrow over green eyes. “We are not permitted to take pleasure from it.”

  She cleared her throat and avoided his eyes. “Yes, well, how would anyone know what happened except us?”

  “The eldest of the court physicians is a minor royal who thinks herself a telepath,” he continued. “She took exception to the length of time we spent in the mating chamber.”

  “I didn’t realize.” It hadn’t seemed like a long time.

  “She also commented on the placement of your wounds, and the fact that I remained during the examination,” he added, his eyes showing a hint of the anger he had felt. “I sent her out the door with her belongings.” He chuckled. “Caneese almost cheered. She was not fond of her, but she has too soft a heart to manage staff. She has since been replaced by a younger healer.” He glanced at her. “She liked you.”

  “I don’t remember much about the examination,” she confessed.

  He liked the soft blush on her cheeks, but not the memory of the violence and aggression he could not control at the beginning. His hand paused on the virtual controls. “It is feline behavior, the violence. While the galots can also be passionate, their first matings are brutal.”

  “We are all prisoners of our genetics,” she said philosophically.

  He glanced at her. “Perhaps we are.”

  She closed her eyes and snuggled closer into the pillows. “You didn’t purr,” she said with a wicked smile.

  He pursed his lips and looked at her with twinkling green eyes. “No. The first mating is only to prove fertility. It is brutal, and brief. The second, however, after the birth of the first child, lasts for several days.”

  She gaped at him. “Days?”

  He nodded. “Days. Our females do not have cycles of estrus as humans do. It must be induced, which is accomplished by mating.”

  Never having treated Cehn-Tahr females, Madeline was fascinated with this new information. She raised up on an elbow. “We have access to so little information about your species,” she confessed. “I had to threaten Hahnson just to find out that the birth weight of Cehn-Tahr babies is about three times that of human ones.” She frowned. “I think you’re much larger than you appear. I know your weight is disproportionate to how you look.”

  He nodded. “We keep secrets.”

  “I wouldn’t be afraid of you,” she pointed out
.

  He only smiled. “Words.”

  She sighed. He wasn’t going to budge. “But each mating produces a child?”

  He nodded. “Another hard-wired trait. Family is everything to us.”

  She was sad. She felt the child inside her moving again and she grimaced at the discomfort.

  He looked over at her. “The child is very restless.”

  “I think he’s complaining about his accommodations,” she laughed. “He wants more room.”

  His eyes smiled at her. She looked at home in his bed.

  “You don’t have to keep me in here,” she said drowsily. “I know the Cehn-Tahr don’t sleep as humans do.”

  “I can adjust my rhythms to yours,” he said easily. He frowned. “I do not like the idea of having you apart from me at night. My mind is linked to yours, but distractions sometimes occur. I will rest easier if you are close.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing, from my point of view.” Her eyes opened, soft and hungry. “I wonder which one of us the child would have favored.”

  “Your background in genetics is superior to mine,” he pointed out. “Speculate.”

  “I think he would look more like you. I don’t know about his eyes, if they would change color, as yours do.”

  She felt sad as she realized that the speculation was a moot point. They would never see the child born.

  “You don’t think the old fellow knows we’re here?” she worried. “I hope he doesn’t try to read my mind. But, then, it wouldn’t work across so many parsecs, would it?”

  “There are no barriers of time and space that would prevent him,” he said surprisingly. “He once blew up a small attack monofighter from miles away. It would have killed me, had he not been so quick.”

  She sat up. “On Ondar, when I decoyed the Rojok guards at their outpost, one of their officers was about to shoot me.” The anger and shock on his face were briefly disconcerting, and flattering, but she continued, “I heard a voice in my mind, telling me to throw the sensor net over me. I did, and the enemy soldier gasped and died although I didn’t touch him. Then, when I escaped, a Rojok strafe ship came after me. It suddenly exploded. I never knew who saved me, or how.” Her eyes softened. “It must have been him. Nobody else could have done it.”

  He smiled. “He is fond of you.”

  She sighed, and put her hand on her belly. “If he could see me now, I’ll bet he wouldn’t be. And he’s in the Dectat.” She winced. “I guess if he found out, he’d have a front row seat at our spacings.”

  “I wonder,” he mused, without revealing what he knew. “His attitudes have undergone a conversion of late.”

  She leaned back and moved restlessly. The child’s shifting was a little painful. “I wonder if I could use a sedative without affecting him,” she wondered, sliding open the panel over her wrist unit. “Perhaps a very mild one.”

  “Is it painful?”

  She nodded. “Very. I won’t sleep if I don’t do something.” She frowned. “You took away the Altairian child’s pain aboard ship, when we rescued the colonists on Terramer. But you couldn’t take away mine, on Akaashe. The old fellow said that you were too—” She broke off, not wanting to say the words.

  He turned to her. “He said that I was too emotionally involved with you. It is true,” he added quietly. “It clouds my abilities in the matter of healing.”

  She wanted to pursue that subject, but she was too inhibited. She injected a mild sedative, one that would not linger in her system, and felt the pain slowly subside. “The old fellow is your father.”

  His eyes darkened. “A guess?”

  “An educated one. I saw in his mind that he once courted Caneese with a pot of canolithe,” she added, her tone soft and becoming drowsy. “Were they bonded?”

  He hesitated, but only briefly. “Yes.”

  She smiled. “He still loves her very much. I saw it in his mind.” She looked up at him. “He led the Holconcom, when he was young.”

  His eyebrows lifted. “You saw a great deal during the mind link.”

  “Too much?” she wondered, smiling at his expression. “Not to worry. Hahnson is going to do a short-term memory wipe on me when we get back to Memcache. I won’t remember any of it.”

  He was uncomfortable at the idea of the memory wipe. She would forget, also, that one day on Memcache when they had learned so much about each other. He studied his controls with eyes that did not see them. The child would also be gone. He would pass Madeline in the corridor and she would see him only as her commanding officer. There would be no more conversations. He shared things with her that he could not share with anyone else. He felt suddenly empty.

  But then he recalled his conversation with his father, and the sadness passed. There was a future for him with Madeline and their child, but it would be dangerous to discuss it before this mission was over. He would have to keep his secrets, for the time being, even if they brought anguish to her. Revealing what he knew was far too dangerous to the Clan.

  He turned to her. But she was already asleep. He touched her reddish-gold curls, moving them away from the soft skin of her face. She looked very feminine, very vulnerable. He wanted to protect her, to keep her close. It was the influence of the child, he was certain, that made him protective and possessive. But he had been protective of her almost from the start.

  He frowned. He spent a great deal of time looking into her mind. On at least two occasions, he had influenced her dreams. Thinking about it made him uncomfortable. He shifted on the bed. She was his mate. He did not want to give her up. On the other hand, how were they to overcome the barriers? The most important was his true self, which she had never seen. He hated the idea of revealing himself to her, because she might, as many humans had, react with fear and distaste.

  But even if he could overcome that obstacle, there were others, nonphysical but impossible to circumvent. His aristocratic status did not allow bonding with a non-Cehn-Tahr. Her child could not inherit. This was beside the fact that they would both be spaced, despite his heritage, if it were known to the Dectat that she carried his child. He averted his eyes and went back to his computations. Thinking about it did no good. His father seemed confident that these obstacles could be overcome. Dtimun was hopeful, but less certain. He glanced at her again and smiled. She was, he thought, quite unique. There must be a way to resolve the problems. He would find a way. He was not giving up his mate or his child, no matter what the consequences might be.

  * * *

  WHEN MADELINE AWOKE, Dtimun was already dressed and gone into the main part of town to talk to some shady characters he knew. Or so Sfilla related. He was looking for Chacon. They had to find him. Madeline wondered if Lyceria had made it safely to the port, and if she and Chacon had connected with each other. She smiled, recalling Chacon’s hopeless attraction to the Cehn-Tahr woman, and hers for him. At least they had a chance of a long relationship, if they survived the war. An emperor’s daughter would have choices denied to a poor soldier.

  She ate breakfast and then took a skimmer into the port city, much to Sfilla’s unease. The woman insisted on going with her. It was too dangerous a place for Madeline to go alone, she said. Madeline didn’t remind her that she’d spent her life in dangerous places. It touched her that Sfilla was so concerned for her. The woman had placed a veil over her hair and face, to help disguise her. As if, Madeline thought, the encompassing robes didn’t do enough of that already. Reddish-gold hair wasn’t that rare, she argued, even Dacerian women had it in abundance. But she was overruled. She gave in with good grace. She was also advised to keep her eyes lowered. Green eyes were unknown in this part of the galaxy, even among Dacerians.

  She paused at a shop that sold exotic silks, fascinated by a fabric that changed color with the temperature to which it was exposed. It sparkled with tiny energy particles
that danced in its gossamer depths. It was a royal blue, flecked with gold, and totally exquisite. Madeline had never had a taste for expensive garments, but this fabric reminded her of the robes Dtimun had ordered woven for her the night they went to the Altair Embassy. She had felt uncomfortable at first, but then she felt proud at Dtimun’s obvious delight in her manner of dress.

  “If you like it,” Sfilla told her, “we may purchase it. He—” meaning Dtimun “—gave me mems with which to buy anything that you desired.”

  “It’s so beautiful,” Madeline said, surprised at her own interest in fabric.

  Sfilla smiled. “I can weave it into robes for you,” she said. “I have my bag at the hotel, in which I carry my weaving tools.”

  “I would love to have it,” she confessed.

  Sfilla grinned. She turned to the shop owner, a Dacerian, and began the long process of bargaining for the best price. “This may take some time,” she told Madeline. “There is a java shop across the way, there, if you wish to sit and sample Dacerian coffee while I am occupied here.”

  Coffee! Madeline’s eyes twinkled as she saw the café, its patrons sipping from mugs. “I would love that,” she confessed. The Cehn-Tahr did not drink coffee, so she’d missed her usual morning cups.

  “I will find you there,” Sfilla promised. “But stay in sight of me.”

  What an odd thing to say, Madeline thought, but she only smiled and nodded. As if she couldn’t take care of herself! She was a combat veteran, while Sfilla cooked and kept the rooms in order. There was nothing wrong with that, but it amused Madeline that the other woman thought to protect her.

  * * *

  CHACON WAS FURIOUS. He pulled Lyceria into the back of a clothing shop whose owner he knew and closed the door.