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Gently, he slid away from her and readied for the day ahead. His gaze fixed on the clock above where Mia lay supine as he tugged on his skinsuit and boots. He had no understanding of her number system, and still, he recognized the countdown for what it was: the nearing of the deadline he’d given her.

He tried to push his anticipation down, to control the excitement simmering in his blood, for her sake if not his own. In this, he would not force her, as he had promised himself and his mother. But landing in Zephyria, ensconcing her in his home, brought them one step closer to their joining, and that he could fully embrace.

Once dressed, he smoothed the sheet over her and rubbed the tip of his horn along her temple. She stirred restlessly, her hand skimming the mattress where he’d lain before curling under her chest. The gesture warmed him in a way he had not expected, deep in the parts well-hidden by years of training and discipline, and he could not resist burying his face in her throat and breathing her in. She smelled of soap and woman and him, a heady combination that aroused and gentled him in one fell stroke. How could this tiny creature affect him so? How could he resist such beauty when it found him, human though she was?

While his discipline still held, he pulled away from her and left.

He found Ryrda on the bridge manning the captain’s chair, his expression thoughtful as he stared at the viewscreen.

“You are well?” Zoran asked.

Ryrda glanced around and rose, then dropped into the chair in front of navigation, twisting around to face Zoran. “Did you find it hard to leave your mate after claiming her?”

Zoran took the captain’s chair and began a systematic check of the logs. “I have not yet claimed her.”

Ryrda nodded, as if unsurprised. “I could not claim my own mate. She is…reluctant to accept me.”

“Mia is reluctant as well,” Zoran admitted. “She will learn.”

“Pray they all do.” An uncharacteristic frown tugged at the other warrior’s mouth. “My mate has informed me that she has no intention of being forced into a mating not of her choosing.”

“You threatened to force her?”

“Never. Yet it is upon me to try.” Ryrda rolled his shoulders, then lifted a hand and smoothed the short curls growing between his horns. “Perhaps when we learn one another, she will feel differently.”

Zoran relaxed into the chair, pleased that Ryrda was searching for a way to soothe his mate to him. The task in front of them had seemed enormous when they had first conceived of finding mates among a compatible species. Now that those mates were in hand, it seemed less mighty. Or, perhaps, mighty in a different way. Like Ryrda, Zoran worried that his own mate would never yield to him. The very thought threatened to bury the pleasure she’d given him merely by seeking him out in her sleep. Threatened to reawaken the horrors of having a hand in the loss of his family.

He shook the unpleasant thoughts away, burying them deeply so they would not tempt him away from duty. No, he would find a way to woo her to his side, and to the cause that would ultimately save his people. Not as a penance, but because the Fates had handed him this path to redemption.

“Where is your second?” Zoran said, as much to distract himself from thoughts of possible rejection and failure as anything.

“Retrieving a meal for the two of us. Searching for a healing salve.” Ryrda’s eyes brightened a fraction, and he clicked his teeth in humor. “His mate is not as biddable as my own.”

Zoran searched through his memory of the mock battle they had fought for the human females’ benefit. “She is the taller female with the yellow hair. Mia’s other friend?”

“That one, yes. Kira—”

“Kira?”

“My mate,” Ryrda said easily. “She called Lorik’s mate an Amazon.”

Zoran’s translator could not match the term with any like word or phrase in Xeruvian. “What is an Amazon?”

“She did not say, but I take it the female is a fierce opponent.”

Zoran grunted. “Then she will make a fitting mate for Lorik.”

“He has…” Again, Ryrda paused, as if searching. “Met his match. So Kira says.”

That phrase roughly translated, though Zoran feared not well enough for exactness. Still, he understood. “Your Kira must be very wise.”

“She knows her friends.”

“She related something about Mia?”

Ryrda shifted on his chair, replanting his feet against the bridge’s black metal floor, dangling his hands between his widespread knees. “Kira worries that we warriors will not treat our females well. It is an old worry with her, I think, though I cannot pinpoint its origin.”

Zoran breathed deeply for a moment, searching in his own way for the right words. “Human culture is very different from our own, but in some ways, it is very alike. Do our own females not crave a warrior’s gentleness? Do they not search for a mate who will love and protect them, someone worthy of their nurturing spirit?”