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“Why don’t you use your last names?”

He raised his head slowly and focussed on her. Rothaway’s eyes were no longer crimson. “They are clan names and we only use them for formal occasions and documents. How do you know about the other name?”

She winced. Busted. “Your knowledge came to me in your blood.”

Rothaway looked at where their wrists were still pressed together. “I did not receive that effect.”

She blinked. “Do you think it could have something to do with my potential?”

“What precisely did you gain?”

She touched his knee with her free hand. “You have a scar here from when you were ten, climbed a tree and got attacked by another shifter in a feline form.”

Her eyes widened as she realised that he actually could change his shape. “You can really shift your form?”

He raised one eyebrow. “You would like a demonstration now?”

She blinked. The bonding was a sacred moment on the mother ship. They were in a bonding grove and Lyneer was acting as their guardian, keeping others away while they were vulnerable. “I suppose not.”

Rothaway laughed and lifted her bleeding wrist to his lips, licking the wounds closed. He did the same to his own wrist a moment later and then helped her to her feet.

She still had the dagger in her hand. “What do I do with this?”

He smiled, “Place it back in the stone.”

Shrugging she walked back to the rock and slid the dagger home. It immediately sank into the edifice and disappeared. “Where did it go?”

“It is being filed for proof of our bonding. My blood and your DNA on the handle is proof of our union.”

She smirked. “Or that I stabbed you and left you for dead.”

“In that case it is doubtful that you would have put the dagger back into the stone.”

He grinned, at ease.

“Why did it come on you so suddenly? The rut is supposed to take weeks to reach its peak.”

“I stopped my suppressing medications when we found the ship. I wanted to make sure that I was ready for you the moment that we met again.”

She followed her impulse and hugged him. “How did you know I didn’t die on that ship?”

“Because a woman who could face down an entire ship of Tokkel with nothing more than bare feet and attitude, would not die in a simple ship crash.”

She blushed as his arms came around her and rubbed her back slowly but pressed her tightly against him. He was still interested in her and the ridge of his sex against her belly was both hot an insistent.

Ziggy pulled slightly away and he let her go. “What is next?”

“A kiss to finish what the first kiss started, and then we share a meal.”

His eyes gleamed as he looked at her.

She held still and then went up on her toes to meet him halfway. Her mouth tingled as it made contact with his and she shivered at the static charge that flowed from his lips to hers.

Her heart started a heavy pounding in her chest that increased as the kiss intensified. Ziggy felt a cascade of heat rolling into her body and it spread throughout her limbs. She reached up and held Rothaway’s mouth to hers as her reflexes took over and she sought a taste of him.

He pulled her away from him and his eyes widened in surprise when he looked at her. “Signy, does your species go into heat?”

She blinked rapidly and tried to press against him. When he thwarted her, she snarled.

He shook her lightly. “Signy, how often does your species go into heat?”

She dragged in a soothing breath of the flowers. “We don’t specifically go into heat, but we ovulate every twenty-eight days.”

“Then we had better get to lunch and I will explain the ritual in which we just engaged in more detail.”

He wrapped an arm around her waist and he escorted her back down the path that had taken them into the bonding area.

Lyneer was waiting for them and he smiled in relief as they approached. “Congratulations. I was getting worried.”

“No need to worry, Lyneer. We managed it without much difficulty.”

Ziggy still felt weird. Her body was hot, pulses were pounding in all the wrong places and the skin of her inner thighs was hyper sensitive.

Lyneer took one long look at her and nodded. “Do you wish to have the customary luncheon, or privacy?”

Rothaway looked down at her and frowned. “Both. No sense tempting fate.”

“Can I contact my parents?”

She needed to distract herself from the hormonal surge she was having and thinking about her parents was definitely effective.

“Of course. With you here as the representative of the Gaians they will be able to visit you whenever you wish.”

Rothaway kept his arm around her.

Lyneer lifted a small com unit to his ear and began speaking in the tradition of assistants across the universe.

Rothaway kept a supportive arm around her and they walked slowly through the garden and out into the halls. A quick pod ride later and they were in the VIP area.

“We are going to my quarters. I believe that they will afford us more privacy than the restaurant normally used for these purposes.”

She didn’t care, she simply wanted to be alone with him and discovering the details of his physiology. Ziggy had images of Wilder anatomy in her mind, but she wanted to learn the real thing in touch and taste.

Lyneer escorted them the entire way, speaking urgently on his com in a language that she couldn’t understand. That little fact freaked her out.

“Why can’t I understand what he is saying?”

“He is speaking to a member of his clan. There are sub languages of the Nine that you may not have absorbed yet.”

She liked that he mentioned an oblique future where she would be picking up more knowledge. It made it feel less like a bizarre dream and more like a glowing reality.

Ziggy had gotten married to a male she had met once after she savaged his mind and took what she wanted from him. In a weird way she had made an honest man of him.