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I didn’t ask any of those questions. Instead, I blurted, “Are you single?”

“Am I… A single person?” I could hear the smirk in his voice as he said, “There is only one Warden Tenn.”

I rolled my eyes.

“No, I mean, are you married? Or, do you have someone… Someone back home?”

Thank fuck he asked me if I was married last night. It made this ever-so-slightly less mortifying.

“No,” he said. “I am stationed here on a permanent basis. There is no one waiting for me.”

“Oh. That’s…”

“What?”

“That must be kind of hard. Isn’t it? You don’t ever want to be married?”

He hesitated, then stiffly replied, “I wanted to be married once. Almost was.”

My belly flipped, then tightened.

“What happened?”

God. Stupid, Tasha. Why are you even asking this? It’s none of your damn business!

But the warden answered anyway.

“I was courting someone when I was a recruit, training for my place in the Zabrian Imperial Guard. It was early in our relationship and I didn’t know who her father was. It turned out that he was a very high-ranking official – much higher ranking than someone like me. When our relationship was discovered, it was made abundantly clear to me that marriage was not a possibility.”

“Oh, no. And there was nothing you could do?”

“Well, there were thingsshecould have done. If she’d wanted to, she could have denounced her family’s wishes to continue seeing me. But I learned too late she never had any intention of doing such a thing. She knew from the beginning that things would never progress into anything serious.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No, I did not. Her father was furious with me, of course. For daring to try to enter their sphere.”

Oh, no. This was bad. I was havingfeelingsfor the warden. Poky, squishy, sappy sorts of feelings.

I wanted to freaking hug him. And that was dangerous. Horniness, I could deal with.

More deep-seated emotions were going to be much, much trickier.

“So what happened after that?” I nudged gently when he lapsed into silence.

“I was given a choice,” he replied. “I could be expelled from the military caste and stripped of my rank. Or I could take up a position as a warden here.”

All at once, with the crushing gravity of a boulder on my chest, I hated the Zabrian Empire. Hated their caste system, hated their laws, hated that they’d lied to get the human women here. I hated those who’d basically exiled Warden Tenn for the audacity of wanting to marry the wrong person. Hated the systems that sent traumatized children stumbling and alone into this world.

But the children weren’t alone, were they? They had the older convicts.

And they had the wardens. Just like the one behind me now.

“That’s terrible,” I whispered. “To be punished like that. Just for falling in love.”

“Love?” He sounded startled.

“Oh!” I felt myself blushing. “Sorry. When you said you were thinking of marriage, I kind of just assumed…”