Page 41 of Cozy Prisons (Human Pets of Talin: Origins #4)

Palathum

“I thought I’d find you here.”

Palathum turned around to find Utharium behind her. She’d been so absorbed waiting for Nataly and Daxus’s temporary domicile to open that she didn’t notice Utharium’s approach.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, opening her arms as he stepped into her personal space. It felt so good to hold him tight. The scent of his bonding oil hit her nose slits as he rubbed his cheeks against the top of her head. The tension in her body eased, and she let out a sigh.

Utharium sounded a brief rumble of amusement before answering. “You’ve been acting like Nataly is your business partner and you can’t make any decisions without her.”

Palathum didn’t like the sound of that. “I have not.”

“You always insist that she and Daxus sit with us at the evening meal. You have her scheduled to attend every meeting. She fell asleep when we were discussing the report we’ll need to submit to the Committee for Pet Welfare and Reestablishment Committee.”

“She’s the unofficial leader of the humans,” Palathum argued. “It’s important she’s involved in the decisions so the humans don’t feel left out.”

“We could easily sum everything up for her and ask for input individually. She doesn’t need to sit through marks of us going over every minutiae. Even Daxus looked dazed at the reports meeting.”

Palathum didn’t know how to respond. Although she didn’t want to admit it, she was terrified of making another decision that might inadvertently put everyone in danger.

“You made the best choice with limited time,” Utharium said. “You had two places to colonize. Although Arise was less studied, the other choice was much closer to Talarian. Building there meant many visits from Apogee officials, finding any excuse to interact with our humans.”

It wasn’t surprising he knew what she was thinking, since it consumed so much of her mind most days.

When she didn’t respond, Utharium kept talking.

“Even a three solar study might not have found the fault.”

He was right, but she still didn’t feel better.

“Two other faults opened that same night. One of them was at the alternate building site. I feel like no matter which way I turn, there are dangers I can’t protect my people from.

What if the other planet is unstable also?

What if there’s a plague of bugs that crawl out of the ground every 100 years, and that happens the first year we are there? ”

“What if everything goes well?” Utharium asked. “Or at least that we don’t have any major mishaps.”

Palathum didn’t have a response to that because she never considered it. “Impossible.”

“Possible and probable. Consider that what happened here is so rare that it hasn’t happened in our lifetime to any other colony.

Add that to the fact that our empire is currently colonizing at least two new planets a rotation.

That’s more than any other species I know of.

That means the numbers are in our favor. ”

Palathum was willing to concede those facts, but she couldn’t shake her fears. She hugged Utharium tighter, trying to draw his confidence into herself.

“I want to believe you.”

“I have one more detail to add,” Utharium said. “No matter where we go, Nataly will be there, so we’ll all be safe. The ancestors won’t let anything happen to their Conduite.”

That helped enormously. “True. As long as I provide for Nataly and her people, they won't want to leave.”

“None of them blame you for the instability of this planet,” Utharium reminded her. “They call it bad luck and say you can never tell when it’s going to hit. They trust Nataly to keep them out of danger, like you do. We will be a successful colony with many happy humans and Talins, including us.”

“Yes,” she agreed, rubbing her own overfull scent glands onto his chest. Utharium rumbled out a happy sound.

They stood in comfortable silence, holding each other. A memory surfaced, making Palathum sound a rumble of amusement.

“Did I tell you about the supply problem when we first got here?” Palathum asked.

Utharium sounded a questioning rumble. “Are you talking about when that one ship was running late?”

“No, that was only a very minor inconvenience. I’m talking about when we kept using up the supplies faster than I expected.

Food was consumed at a much higher rate, more blankets and bedding were needed, and there were never enough data crystals or information squares.

The food wasn’t a surprise, but everything else was troublesome.

At one point, I thought someone was hoarding things. ”

Utharium sounded another questioning rumble. “We were all living so close together at the beginning that hiding many things would’ve been impossible.”

“That’s why I dismissed the idea of hoarding,” Palathum said. “I finally decided I was underestimating what a new colony needed because I was basing my estimates on a new station.”

“It was Nataly, wasn’t it?” Utharium asked, sounding a rumble of amusement. “She was tucking bags and bags of items away in the forest and messing up your supply estimates.”

“Exactly,” Palathum said. “Looking back, I’m glad I simply ordered more instead of doing a more thorough investigation. If I'd figured out what was happening and confiscated all Nataly’s hidden hoard, we would’ve been in much worse shape.”

Utharium sounded a soothing rumble. “We would’ve survived.”

“But we would've been weak from hunger and maybe even sick from exposure. We might’ve lasted these six rotations, but it would’ve been difficult.”

“Six rotations? Do you mean a ship is coming today?”

“Yes, I got a simple code-index message late last night that identified the ship and time of arrival," she said. “It’s the supply ship. They’re fifteen rotations early, probably because they had another stop cancel an order. When I first contracted with them, they warned that it might happen.”

“That’s excellent news. Why aren’t you waking everyone up so they can start packing?” When Palathum didn’t answer right away, Utharium pressed her. “What’s wrong?”

She let out a worried rumble. “I didn’t want to tell anyone until I spoke to Nataly.”

Utharium remained silent, as if judging his words. She continued before he could decide what to say.

“After this, I’ll stop dragging Nataly into everything, I promise!” A rumble of amusement escaped her. “And I’m going to buy her all the data crystals she could ever want.”

“She’ll like that. I’ve never seen an entire bag full of data crystals until I saw the pile she left with Hale. They made sure to tell me the crystals and bags belonged to Nataly.”

“Most of them she brought with her,” Palathum said. “I don’t know how she managed to keep them from being stolen on Dandilow II.”

“What was stolen?”

The soft human voice made Palathum pull away from Utharium to see that both Nataly and Daxus had emerged.

“Should you be standing?” Palathum asked. Because they only had the most rudimentary tools for Falkilm, Nataly’s feet were taking a long time to heal. She wasn’t happy about it, but Daxus insisted on carrying her everywhere. This was the first time in six rotations that Palathum saw her standing.

Nataly made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “My feet are only a little sore. I’m fine to walk for a little while. What was stolen?”

“I was only saying that it was amazing that you kept the data crystals from being stolen on Dandilow II,” Palathum answered.

She seemed to relax a little. “Oh, that. It wasn’t hard because we didn’t need to access them all the time, so I dug a deep hole and buried them.”

Daxus sounded an amused rumble. “You like to hang things from trees or bury them in the ground. You’re like a numli from the Ossiso homeworld.”

“That’s more fitting than you think,” Utharium said. “The Ossiso believe numli represent good fortune. Nataly has—”

“Stop!” Nataly ordered. “I don’t want to hear another word about how I’m some kind of magical presence!”

Palathum was alarmed by the tone of Nataly’s voice. She was normally so calm and even-tempered, but now she was becoming upset during a teasing conversation. It occurred to Palathum that she wasn’t the only one constantly seeking Nataly out for reassurance.

Daxus wrapped his arms around her from behind, rumbling out a soothing sound. “As soon as we leave here, they won’t need you as much.”

She leaned her head back against his chest. “I hope you’re right because I’m tired.”

“Speaking of leaving Arise,” Palathum said. “I walked over here to inform you that a ship should be arriving later today to pick us up.”

She watched Nataly’s face closely while talking. The human’s expression showed only intense relief, nothing else.

Nataly gave a little cheer. “Great! Is the ship Talin? I’m so tired of only having jol to eat. I can’t wait for some jorjuk stew or tolk.”

“I agree,” Daxus said. “And flatbread. It’s not really a meal without flatbread.”

Palathum just barely kept herself from saying something about the only reason they had so much food was because of Nataly. That would be followed with gratitude and a question about whether Nataly was having intuitions about anything. It was hard, but she kept all the questions locked inside.

“It’s one of the resupply ships I contracted with,” Palathum explained.

“Do they know about us?" Daxus asked.

Palathum sounded a negative rattle. “No, we’ll have to pretend to be owners and pets, as is expected. There are two Talins on the ship that were traveling to settle here, so we’ll have more help to keep the humans safe from the crew's attention.”

“I have a question,” Nataly said, stepping out of Daxus’s embrace to put herself in front of Palathum. “Are we still going to that other planet?”

Palathum could hear the worry in the human’s voice. “That is still the plan, but we could go to my family’s property on Talarian instead if you’re concerned.”

Nataly shook her head. “Starting fresh on another planet sounds great. No offense, but I don’t want to go to your homeworld.” She put a hand on her neck where a collar would rest.

About half the humans hated wearing the collars, even though they could take them off at will. Only a few of them had them on when everyone evacuated. Palathum already had an elaborate lie to tell the ship’s command about why the humans weren’t wearing the collars that were required by law.

“Does the place have a name yet?” Daxus asked as he drew Nataly back against him.

“Kalor,” Utharium answered for her.

He sounded an approving rumble. “That’s a strong name.”

“What does it mean?” Nataly asked.

The three males all looked at Palathum, but her eyes were focused on Nataly.

“It’s a word in old Talin,” she said. “It roughly describes the way a group can work together like individual cells in an organism, but it also means a strong community.”

“Kalor,” Nataly repeated with a beautiful smile. “It’s perfect.”

Nataly’s smile suddenly disappeared, and her eyes focused on Palathum’s belly. She blinked a few times, then her gaze jumped back to meet Palathum. A wide, happy smile appeared on the human's face.

“Congratulations!” she cheered. “Grace isn’t the only one!”

Utharium sounded a questioning rumble. “Why is she congratulating you?”

Nataly’s expression fell, and her hand came up to cover her open mouth. “Oh shit, I'm sorry, Palathum! I thought you knew. It felt like you were already aware.”

Palathum deliberately didn’t look at Utharium as she answered Nataly. “I did.”

The silence from Utharium was deafening. She didn’t dare look his way.

Suddenly, he was in motion. He grabbed her up, cradling her against his chest like many Talins did with the humans, and walked away rapidly into the nearby woods.

Utharium

So many emotions raged through him that they created a cacophony in his body, which he was desperate to calm.

The first step was to find a place where he and Palathum could be alone. Once they were far enough into the woods that he couldn’t hear anything from the encampment any longer, he stopped and set her down.

She stood before him, tall and proud. It was almost as if she was ready for a fight, but that wasn’t his intention at all.

“You’re pregnant?"

She answered with an affirmative rumble.

“You knew. Nataly knew. Why didn’t I know?” he asked, sounding a mournful rumble.

“I found out the night Hale and Cassius got into a fight,” she explained.

“That’s why your scent changed!” Utharium said with an excited rattle. “You’re not dying! I thought you were dying, and that’s why you wouldn’t tell me what Falkilm found out. Do you know how terrified I’ve been?”

“I’m sorry, Utharium. I should’ve told you.” She rubbed her hands over her face. “I was going to tell you, but then everything happened.”

”We’ve been peacefully camping here for five rotations,” Utharium said. “Five rotations! You had plenty of time to tell me!”

She was quiet for a moment, then finally spoke. “I was scared.”

Utharium flinched back. “Of me?”

She moved fast, grabbing hold of him and holding on tight. “No, never scared of you.” She let out a mournful rumble. “What if the life growing inside me didn’t make it?”

Understanding made his feelings of anger and betrayal vanish. “Then we’d grieve together.”

He pulled out of the hug and sank to his knees in front of her. He put his face to her belly and whispered to their future child.

“I don’t know you yet, but I’m ready to die for you. I swear to you that I will be there for every moment. I will care for you as no parent has ever cared for a child. You will always know you’re safe and cherished.”

He felt something drop on top of his head. He looked up to see bonding oil dripping down Palathum’s cheeks. He reached up and gathered some of her oil in his hand and then squeezed his own scent glands until his hands were covered in both their oil. Then he rubbed it over her belly.

“Know these scents, my child,” he murmured without breaking eye contact with Palathum. “This is the scent of safety and adoration.”

“Yes,” Palathum said, her voice thick with emotion. She put her hands over his, pressing them against her stomach.

He knew it was far too soon to feel or hear their child, but he could’ve sworn he sensed a life within Palathum responding to them.

Closing his eyes, he pressed his face against Palathum’s sternum. “Whoever they are, they will be perfect.”

Palathum hugged his head and shoulders. “As all children are.”