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And remarkably the same. While most of the balconies were empty, a few held children and even adults leaning against protective ledges and railings. Watching their vehicle’s progress. Mia glanced behind their vehicle and noted the line of other vehicles following them. They hadn’t been the first to leave the spaceport, but they also hadn’t been the last. Farther back, just visible behind a short line of personal vehicles, Mia caught a glimpse of a larger one swaying down the road. No doubt it was carrying theunmatedfemales.

Mia turned around on a sharp harumph.

“The scenery is not to your liking?” Alara said.

“It’s beautiful,” Mia replied.

“Yet there is anger in your heart, and sorrow.”

“How could there not be? Zoran kidnapped me and—” Abruptly, Mia remembered who she was talking to. Embarrassed heat flooded her cheeks, and she hunched lower in her seat. “Sorry. I haven’t really had time to…”

When her voice trailed off, Alara suggested gently, “Adjust to being mated to a male from another culture whom you have known only a short while?”

“Yes. Exactly. He just stormed into my work, growledmine, and that was that.”

“You expected something different from a mate?”

The question was asked so tentatively, Mia had to relent. She twisted around in the seat, facing Alara, felt it conform to her new position, and spoke candidly. “Humans tend to have a longer courtship ritual. They sometimes spend months and even years getting to know each other, deciding if the person they’re dating is the right one and whether they want to spend the rest of their lives together. There’s a whole process to it. Granted, some people skip that and go straight for the gusto, but most don’t. Even with arranged marriages, there’s a process.”

Alara couldn’t quite quell her horror. “It sounds quite tedious and uncertain.”

“Oh, it can be. It doesn’t always work, but mostly people have a choice. Both of them, not just one.”

“Your anger stems from not having a choice?”

Mia waved at the mark on her throat, partially healed somehow but still, she assumed, visible. “He didn’t really explain before he gave me this. I didn’t know it would bind us together. Or, I suppose it did anyway.”

“He did not explain. My son, my son,” Alara murmured. “Did you run from him, child?”

“When we first met. Why?”

“That is part of our courtship ritual. When the mating instinct rouses, the female may choose to ignore it and stand her ground, thus denying it, or she may allow her prospective mate to run her down.”

Mia gaped at her. “Running indicates acceptance? That’s so backward from what humans do.”

“And therein lies the crux of the problem. Zoran likely scented your fear, yet did his instinct see your running as a desire to mate with him. Such instinct would have been below the surface.”

“Subconscious,” Mia murmured, her eyes wide. “Things I wish I’d known.”

“Would you truly have rejected him, had you another choice?”

Mia gave the question the consideration it deserved. If she’d been walking down the street and met Zoran, would she have introduced herself? Gone on a date with him? Wanted to be with him?

The answers made her squirm in her seat. “No. I was attracted to him the moment I saw him.”

“Then it is only the method of his claiming that troubles you.”

“Yes. I wish he hadn’t—”

She swallowed the wordforceddown, certain now that he’d thought she’d chosen him in some way. It was a cultural conflict, a misunderstanding, and she’d fully participated in that. Why, oh why, hadn’t she spent more time learning about Xeruvian mating rituals and less time absorbed in their research?

“My friends thought I should go with it,” she said instead.

“Go with it?”

“Play along.” She rolled her hand in anI’m trying to find the right termway. “Embrace the relationship.”

“Such would certainly bring Zoran happiness.”