by Viola Grace
“Well, my job was as a teacher, but I enjoyed taking mechanicals apart or researching new races and worlds that our ship had contact with while we were travelling.”
He stroked his hand down her arm, and he smiled, “You are so soft.”
Blushing was the appropriate response that preceded her gasp when Victoriol grabbed her from behind and buried his lips against her neck. “The ember is right. You are exceedingly soft.”
That was it. She brought her elbow back fast and hard, catching him by surprise. She stepped away and fetched up against Harrudan.
He said quietly, “We are allowed to touch you.”
She whirled and hissed, “Are you? Wonderful. Did anyone ask me if I wanted to be touched? No.”
He stood in her way, so she used the training that the Protheans gave to all colonists. She hooked her leg behind his and dropped him to the floor before running into the centre of the garden.
She sat next to the pool and trailed her fingers in the water, trying to imagine how much trouble she would be in. Fayra heard a shout, a grunt and another grunt. Something was going on.
Tiptoeing wasn’t necessary.
Dayan-sur and Victoriol were locked in combat, but Harrudan and Torio were lying and groaning nearby.
Altuoth was sitting and eating a fruit while he watched the senior Fire Bringers fighting. When she appeared, Altuoth got up and came to stand next to her. “So, your people put out bonding pheromones?”
She shrugged. “It should have been in the medical reports. Once a pair has decided on each other, if they are compatible, the hormonal link is formed.”
“So, Dayan-sur is your choice?” Altuoth watched the male in question land a ferocious punch on Victoriol.
“He is, and I believe that I am his as well. It isn’t enough just for one party to want the other. It has to be a two-way connection.” She watched him nod. “You figured that out?”
“Our people have been trying to breed ourselves off the endangered list so long that we have forgotten the pleasures of contact with the opposite sex. These exercises are reminding us of the lessons we need to relearn.”
She blinked. “This was an exercise?”
“Well, we knew that your instincts would pull you toward the most suitable candidate, so we are all biologically compatible with you, but what little the Death Bringers were willing to pass along to the enclaves indicated that it was your decision, your attachment that would pull your Breeder to you.”
“For us, they are not just Breeders; you know that, don’t you?” She waved at the fighters. Victoriol was down, and he was staying there.
Dayan-sur turned to her, and he snarled at Altuoth.
Fayra did as her ancestresses had before her. She walked up to her bloody mate and stroked his face, calming him. A deep shudder ran through his body as her hormones worked on his.
“I cannot believe the rage I felt.” He pressed his forehead to hers.
“You were feeling my anger, helplessness and frustration. You acted to save me from the threat, but your men were the only threat here, and Victoriol was just an ass.”
He chuckled and held her close, breathing her in. She relaxed at his touch, as she had been unable to for the other Fire Bringers.
She felt the rightness of being in his arms. He was solid, and he was her future.
“The selection has been made. You may now proceed to the couples’ quarters.” Keeper waved her hand at the men sitting and groaning. “I will administer medical treatment and clean up.”
Dayan-sur whispered, “Are you ready to retreat?”
“No, but I am ready for the next phase of the attack.”
He laughed softly and escorted her into the building, away from her previous quarters and up the stairs.
“Pick our chambers.” He swept his arm out, and it took in a very long hallway, interspersed with doors.
“Um, do you need to leave in a hurry?”
“No. We are on assigned rotations.” His gravelly voice ran over her, but she could hear the amusement in it. “Are you regretting your choice?”
She walked down the hall talking too fast with a high pitch. “No, just a little apprehensive. Experimentation was not part of my teenage years. There was always something else to study, and then, I was in cold sleep and waiting to wake. Once we were up and forming our colony, I was occupied as an instructor for the little ones and younger children who had been shipped out with their families.”
On the left at the end of a hall, she opened the room and heard an electronic chirp. “The room has keyed itself?”
“It has. If you need to choose again that will be fine as well.”
He followed her into the space and the door closed automatically behind them. Dayan-sur asked her, “You did not travel with your family?”
“No. All the unmated members of my clan were packed on ships and sent out to the new worlds. We didn’t mind too much, there was a competition for resources back home.”
She spoke and did a slow exploration of her new living space. It was huge. Two thousand sleeper tubes could be stacked in the rooms and there would still be room between them. “Why all this space?”
“Anvin enjoy making over worlds that are uninhabitable by lesser species. The first planet that your folk landed on had been bio-formed over a century or more to make it what we needed. This world is not for the faint of heart. We will slowly bring your people out of cold sleep and introduce them, one by one.”
She turned and smiled at him with a twist to her lips. “Three hundred single women first?”
He shrugged but didn’t deny it. “We need a population, and if this world is still too rough for the city dwellers of our own people, we will make our own, with your help.”
Fayra laughed. “Well, my body is willing, but my mind is taking some time to catch up.”
Dayan-sur blinked. “That was honest.”
“Apologies. I would love to say that I want you unreservedly, but I don’t know you.” She stepped toward him and placed her hand on his forearm to ease her words. “It makes it a little awkward for me.”
“Understandable. Ask me what you will.”
She twisted her lips. “Why don’t we take turns? I ask you one; you ask me one.”
He took her hand and pressed it to his lips, a frisson of heat ran from his skin to hers. “It is fair.”
She moved with him to the settee near the balcony.
“What is your worst memory from being here?”
He blinked. “I suppose it would be the first time I saw one of my men get eaten by a suula. We had just landed, the city was constructing itself, so we had no secure shelter. We camped near a river and had two men standing guard. The suula struck without warning, and by the time the second guard responded, he was impaled on the fangs.”
She shivered and squeezed his arm. “I am glad you survived.”
He quirked his lips. “We began the record of hostile species that very day.”
Fayra leaned in and kissed him.
He matched her careful pressure but did not pursue her when she leaned back.
He smiled. “My turn. How many are there in your family?”
“I am one of nine children. Six girls and three boys. My parents are still alive back home, as are my twenty nieces and nephews. Two more of my sisters are on colony ships.”
His black eyes were wide in surprise. “Thirty-one members in only three generations?”
“Well, so far. My parents came from large families as well, but if we keep going back three generations upward, I have hundreds of relatives.”
He leaned back in shock. “Ah, well, that is par for the course with your species, I suppose.”
“Do not worry. Once I reach the limit of offspring desired by the Anvin, I have no trouble in ceasing production. My family has quite a few multiple births if that makes a difference.” She bit her lip at his shock. It was the embarrassment that came with being
a Prothean. Ridiculously fertile, they could fill worlds within a few dozen generations.
“That isn’t the issue.” He leaned forward and took her hands. “No, I am still a little dizzy at the potential to become a parent. Most of the Fire Bringers do not even believe it to be possible. If you can bring even one child into this world, the news will spread a wild fire of enthusiasm for mixing with your people.”
She cleared her throat. “What is your best memory on this world?”
He smiled slowly at her change of topic. “Having you leap into my arms after the suula attack.”
Fayra smiled shyly. “I didn’t leap. I ran.”
He waved off the difference. “It is my memory. You can remember it your way, I can remember it mine.”
She laughed.
“What do you need to be happy here?”
Silence fell between them.
Fayra grappled for an answer. “I need a purpose, I suppose. I need to be able to do something for the community that satisfies my mind, my soul. A mate is fine, but a partner is better.”
He nodded in understanding.
“I would like to start with learning the history of the Fire Bringers and the other offshoots of the Anvin. Can I do that?”
He smirked, “Of course. Our archives are open to you. I will escort you there whenever you wish.”
“I have to go under escort?”
“It will be safer until there are more of your people in the population.” He lifted her hand to his and pressed a kiss to her palm. The heat transferred from him to her once again.
“How do you do that?” She licked her lips and looked up at him through heavy lids.
“Do what?” He pressed another kiss to her palm and then moved down her wrist, the heat followed his every move.
“Wherever you touch me, it is warm, very pleasantly warm.” She bit her lip again when he licked the interior of her elbow.
She draped her arm around his neck, and he lifted his head to hers.
He stopped with his lips an inch above hers. “I am a Fire Bringer.”
She shivered and kissed him, holding tight and letting her body take the lead.
He lifted her, and she squeaked but held on as he carried her through another set of doors and into a wide and open bedroom.
She ignored her surroundings and focussed on Dayan-sur.
His hands found the closures that Keeper had so carefully put in place. Eventually, she was wearing nothing but her hair. He sighed happily and stroked her breast. “They were right, you are exceedingly soft.”
She chuckled nervously as he removed his own clothing with efficient moves.
The moment he embraced her again and Fayra looked into his black eyes, she knew that she could trust him with her body, her reactions and her future.
Her body warmed with every touch, and when he moved them to the flat surface of the bed and covered her, she was warmed from within.
As he moved inside her, she kept her gaze on his, feeling her mind scramble along their link of thrust and retreat. When the fire and tension snapped inside her, she clutched him tightly, watching the relief in his own gaze as he was free to give in.
Fayra was lying against his chest, letting his body warm hers without the need for blankets. “I owe you two answers.”
He chuckled, and she smiled as the low gravel of his tone translated through his chest.
“When do you think you will be in season?”
She blinked and looked up at him. “I already am.”
He jerked in surprise. “How do you know?”
“How do you know your body makes fire? I just know. It started the moment that you touched my hand. My body recognized yours and began making the appropriate arrangements.” She grinned and propped herself up on her arms and chin.
He smoothed his hand down her spine. “Do you think we will be able to reproduce?”
She blinked at his uncertainty. “Pretty sure. The Protheans have not yet found a species that they couldn’t spawn with. Of course, now that you are my mate, we are attached for a while.”
He nodded. “I was briefed. All of us were freed from duty for a minimum of three weeks and a maximum of nine months if necessary.”
“Do you think they are waking another woman on the ship?”
“I think they are waking five or six of them the moment you are positive for pregnancy.” He stroked his hand up and down her spine again, settling at the curve of her hip.
“Well, we will know in a few days or less. If I get crazy paranoid and try to find a safe zone, you can be pretty sure that I am carrying.” It was the Prothean way. If the female considered herself at risk, she would engage in all manner of techniques to secure her own safety, including barricading herself in a safe zone.
“I will not leave your side. You are safe with me.” He lifted her hand to his lips and the warmth started to spill through her.
It wasn’t just a physical warmth, it was a chemical heat that travelled down her bloodstream every time he kissed her. “Mmm.”
He laughed and tilted her to her back again. “Who knew that my touch would be so successful?”
“If that is a question, I did. It is why you were mine from the moment you touched me. Of course, I love your voice, too, so there is that as well.”
He blinked and a world of insecurity was in his eyes. “You don’t mind it?”
“No. It runs down my system like a slow hand. It makes me smile every time you speak, as if you are touching me with your voice alone.”
He buried his head against her, and she stroked his scalp lock slowly while he inhaled next to her ear. With slow moves, she stroked his outer thighs with her inner thighs, coaxing him into action once again.
He slipped inside her and moved slowly, whispering how he wanted her to touch him and asking her questions about how she wanted him.
By the time they finished the second coupling, she sounded just as hoarse as he did.
Keeper did a scan two days later. Fayra was carrying.
Dayan-sur fell on his ass when he was informed. He remained there for safety when Fayra told him that there was more than one child involved.
Keeper registered the news with the Anvin enclaves, and the authorization came through to wake twenty single women at a time.
If the Protheans needed to choose their own mates to reproduce, they would be given as much choice as possible as long as their targets were solely the Anvin.
With the help of the planet-fillers, they just might pull their species from the brink of extinction.
Author’s Note
Bits of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast and The Golden Apples are all mushed into this story.
I am enjoying the Anvin and Prothean mix, but we won’t see them directly again until Bride of Midnight, in which a Prothean, who thinks she dodged the Cinderella-draft, finds herself in the arms of a Night Bringer, dancing the night away on a world with three suns.
Confused? Me too.
Thanks for reading,
Viola Grace
http://www.violagrace.com
[email protected]
About the Author
Viola Grace was born in Manitoba, Canada where she still resides today. She really likes it there. She has no pets and can barely keep sea monkeys alive for a reasonable amount of time. Her line of day job tends to be analytical which leaves her mind hopping to weave stories. No co-worker is safe from her character analysis. In keeping with busy hands are happy hands, her hobbies have included cross-stitch, needlepoint, quilting, costuming, cake decorating, baking, cooking, metal work, beading, sculpting, painting, doll making, henna tattoos, chain mail, and a few others that have been forgotten. It is quite often that these hobbies make their way into her tales.
Viola’s fetishes include boots and corsetry, and her greatest weakness is her uncontrollable blush. Her writing actively pursues the Happily Ever After that so rarely occurs in nature.
It is an admirable thing and something that we should all strive for. To find one that we truly like, as well as love.
