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All this happiness, and our coming threatens it.

We tuck in, and it’s small talk only—questions about Virelia’s climate and the different foods of Pentaris, how Evelyn’s been craving wine.

I watch Cal eating out of the corner of my eye, smiling to myself at the way he dissects a lobster with surgical precision, removing every piece of shell before finally enjoying the meat.

Bruton’s booming laugh rings out whenever Titus makes a joke, and Doman has eyes only for me, staring with an intensity that would be uncomfortable if I didn’t crave it.

Being around Evelyn, I know exactly why—he’s imagining the moment when he finally seeds me, my body changing and molding in response to his ownership.

It would have terrified me just a month ago, but now I’m filled with anticipation that I can’t quite push down.

It’s a relaxed atmosphere on the surface, but I can’t lose the ball of stress, waiting for the moment when Doman drops the bombshell that we’re planning on breaking the enemy out, and soon, that we’re plotting to release the Fated Mate of the sworn enemy of Colossus.

Obsidian would raze this planet, would lance out Orb-Beams and drop nuclear bombs to level everything beautiful that grows here, and we’re going to free his pregnant Mate.

When we’re done eating, Doman pushes his plate away. “Bruton. Can we get a drink at your bar?”

The big man looks over at Evelyn, then Doman, and he strokes his beard. “Of course.” Doman rises with his triad, and the four of them walk deeper into the home.

“Let me show you around,” says Evelyn. “Cal, can our convo wait a little?”

Cal just nods. He barely said a word all night, but it’s not rudeness. I can tell he’s introverted, and he flicks his smart-watch, already engrossed in a stream of data before I’ve stood up.

She takes me down a hallway. “I barely know half the rooms in this place. It’s way too big for us. I spend most of my time in the lab, but that’s probably boring…” She has a hopeful look in her eyes.

“No, I’d love to see it.”

“Sure!” She takes me back into the grand hall, and down a set of stairs into the depths of the manor.

Doors lead out to glass-windowed rooms with workout equipment and training dummies for Orb-Blade practice, but we go down a deeper hallway, into a spacious room that feels smaller than it is, packed full of processors running at full whir, spitting out data into holo-vid feeds.

The steel, skeleton structure of a Mark-10 Cyborg stands strictly to attention, like a silent guardian, unthinking.

Her wooden desk at the end of the room is covered with papers, a bracken coffee mug half full of ancient brew.

It sports a couple of chairs, one sized for a human and the other much larger.

“Me and Cal spend a lot of time down here. He’s a genius… a little different, but a genius. Coffee? It’s not half bad,” she says, pointing to the organic replicator on the wall. “I hate bothering Hazel and Grace, and since I’m on decaf now it’s not going to taste good either way…”

I smile. “Don’t worry, I’m okay. I don’t think I could put anything else in me after that meal.”

“Just one thin wafer?”

I blink, confused, and she smiles, embarrassed. “Sorry. It’s a really old reference, my team used to watch these skit shows from Old Earth back in the lab. It was this recurring joke we’d use and… never mind that.”

She trails off, a little sheepishly, and I realize she’s really been spending a lot of time with the awkward Aurelian Cal, who rubbed off on her. “So, what do you work on down here?”

“I’m split. Queen Jasmine wants me on the Cyborgs, and that’s what my triad is working on. Tarik and Griffon are at the main factory right now, doing some simulated combat to model the next generation of Cyborgs off them. But my true passion is the Rift.”

“Can I touch it?” I walk closer to the skeleton of the Cyborg. It towers over me, with thick metal bones, and I shiver as I imagine a civilization finding these remnants in a million years and picturing a race of giants.

“Go for it.”

I run my hand over the arm, cool to the touch. “Do you ever worry they’ll… stop listening to you?’

She nods. “Yeah. That was a big factor in the Mark-10s, which were the first combat-ready model. The previous ones… well, it’s a top-secret scandal, but… shit, I should watch what I say. I keep forgetting you’re a Prime Minister.”

“My lips are sealed. But it’s okay. What are you trying to learn about the Rift?”

Her face lights up. She pulls herself up on the oversized chair, spinning it to face me. “I’m obsessed with it. My triad was trapped in it… you heard about that?”

I nod.

“They spent near a century in that… place. I thought I’d lost them, that they’d never come back. I made it my mission to break them out, no matter how long it took. We were lucky. They had the will to escape.”

A cold thread of unease works through me as I try not to remember the endless darkness of that place between worlds. She sees my discomfort, and winces. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“No, it’s okay, I mentioned it. How’d you know we had a failed shift?”

“Doman broadcasted it on coms, when he was messaging the palace. And well, Cal’s got coms cracked.

We also saw signatures from the shift. First one seemed normal, but then there was a second one at the same location—the only thing that made sense was that someone was lost in the first shift, and Doman ordered the ship back in to get them. It was you, right?”

“Yeah. It was me.”

“Your crew is the first humans to have been in the Rift in… decades.”

“I’ll tell you whatever I can, but I doubt it’ll be much help. The first shift. Everyone else got out, but it… it grabbed me. My triad went back in to get me out. They lost Aurelians to save me.”

The icy coldness of it. No, something deeper than cold, a place that have never touched warmth, and when it sensed me, it had no hunger. The rules of that place simply meant it must consume me. I can still feel it, when I close my eyes, my mind melting and atrophying

“Gods,” says Evelyn, shuddering. “I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have said anything, it’s too soon. I’m an idiot, bringing you to my lab where I study your worst nightmare.”

“It’s fine. You know, I think Doman’s been wanting us to get together for a long time.” I take the human-sized chair, resting my elbow on a tiny empty space of wood on the desk between stacks of papers, most written in Aurelian, the tall, lilting letters of the alien species.

“Why’s that?”

I look down at her swelling belly and back up at her.

“Oh. Yeah. Bruton said you’re Doman’s Fated Mate… but unless Titus and Gallien are wearing grey contacts, you haven’t done anything about it. So, logically, Doman thinks that talking with me means I’ll convince you to be Bonded?”

“I guess he thought it was worth a shot.”

“It’s all so… easy for Aurelians.” Her brows furrow, and she has a far-off look.

“They’re a species who wants something they can never get.

Nearly all of them live and die never having seen their Fated Mate.

So everything they do, everything they endure, and fight for, it makes sense to them, because in their minds, if they are blessed by the Gods and find her, they think instantly everything will be perfect.

And since most of them never find her, they never have to face the fact that life’s always going to be messy. ”

“How did you and Bruton get together?”

“I’m sure you saw it in the news.”

“The sanitized version. Through the Aurelian propaganda machine.”

“I went from prisoner to his wife. My machines, the Mark-10s. They were very good. But I didn’t take into account safeguards from human tampering.

Someone on my team was blackmailed by Fanatics and turned the Cyborgs against Bruton in an assassination attempt.

Shit. This is all super-confidential stuff. ”

“I promise, none of it leaves this room.”

“Alright. Well, I took responsibility. It was a member of my team. Looking back, it was a really stupid idea, but it all worked out. I was thrown into a jail cell on his ship, and I thought I’d be thrown into prison for life on Colossus… or worse.”

“You seem pretty happy here.”

“I am. I really am,” she says, then bites her lip.

“It’s not perfect, but nothing is. I’m most valuable here, on Colossus.

We’re setting up factories to produce more of the Mark-10s, and to improve the next generation.

I’ve got my research. But… he’s coming.” She swallows, hard, and shifts uncomfortably on her seat.

She places her hand on the gentle swell of her belly.

“Any second, he could decide to launch his final assault. It just makes me work harder, knowing Obsidian will strike. We have numbers. He has an advantage in the Rift, and I’m going to crack it. ”

I glance upwards, instinctively, though it makes no real sense. Obsidian could strike from any vector.

“I don’t want to pry, but can I ask you something personal?”

Sitting so close to Evelyn is like seeing a window into my own future. I don’t know how long she’s been pregnant—it can’t be more than four months—but her body has already changed.

Her dress, a mixture of elegance and comfort, long and white, flows gently over the curves of her body, her swollen breasts, heavy and hanging, her hips that I swear have widened since I last saw a photo of her.

The Bond has changed her, molding and shaping her to survive a pregnancy with a massive Aurelian babe, filling her breasts with milk, laden for the growing alien boy.

The difference in her is striking. She looks healthier, her cheeks rosy, her complexion with more color. Even her eyes seem brighter.

“Shoot. I’m an open book.”

“The Bond. Are you still… you?”

She pushes her chair back.

“I get it. You saw pictures of me, before?”