Chapter 34
Tsok
Misty was with the High Imperium. She and Jeanie both had been summoned to give their opinions on his intergalactic chat to help humans meet potential sponsors. And how that might be done carefully and safely. She was still concerned about what the Imperium had done at True Match, but Tsok wasn’t. He trusted Misty when she said it happened. He also trusted that, whatever the Imperium had done, it had been harmless and for a good reason.
While she was doing that, he was meeting with Boktare, Boktare’s assistant, Davard, and a few others to begin the planning process for their wedding and mating. Nothing that would require her attention. This was all technical things – documentation, timelines, orders, etc. Things of that nature. He’d already described it all to Misty and she agreed he could handle all that. But she also made him promise to comm her if there was anything she could help with, no matter how esoteric, strange, or boring.
Tomorrow, they were going to announce the marriage idea to the public. Tsok had an appointment with his mate this afternoon to get his fur braided – an actual appointment this time, not one he took from someone else. He would be displaying her braids as she displayed his ring. She would be wearing one of her Earth dresses. They wanted her to do that on purpose to signal the start of the combining of their species with the ceremony later.
There were a lot of small things to plan when it came to a big press conference like this. But it wasn’t anything they weren’t accustomed to.
And when they had breaks, he spoke to Boktare about what it was like being a mated male.
Mating was rare on Kree. Those who did mate tended to hide it. There was a very small, fringe population that still mated in the old ways, but they weren’t the type to live in the city. They also weren’t the types to mingle with those that looked down on their way of life. In other words, Tsok had no concept for how to be a proper mate to his female.
And he was tired of messing up.
Boktare might not have meant to mate Fia, but he had certainly not bemoaned his fate. He took excellent care of her. Their mating was accidental, but he’d devoted his life to making sure she was safe, happy, and, most importantly, loved.
Boktare and Fia didn’t call it that. They knew they liked each other, their affections were deep, and they certainly practiced romance like Misty insisted they must do. But they didn’t know to call it romantic love.
Still, there was a lot that Tsok could, and did, learn from him.
He couldn’t do right by her as a human male. He wasn’t one. He had no point of reference. The data packets were helpful, of course, but understanding what he was supposed to do and what it all meant was impossible. There were so many layers of tradition and inherent understanding baked into all of it, he would never be able to appreciate everything unless he had been raised in that world. He already proved that time and again.
But what he could do, what he was determined to do, was treat her like a kreecharma male. In that, at least, he could say that he had his own natural instincts to rely upon.
And with just a little direction, he could do right by her.
The next day, at the press conference, he had to leave before her to set everything up. When she finally came around, just before they were due to start, he went to meet her. She was wearing another one of her gorgeous, black Earth dresses. It was simpler than the others, but it did have a wonderfully tight corset that he growled at appreciatively as he took her by the hand.
“Ready?” He asked, leading her towards the back of the conference room. There was a long table set up inside, in front of a group of reporters and media persons. They already released a briefing announcing that Tsok and Boktare had come to a compromise, so they already knew what was about to be discussed, though not what the compromise was yet.
“I guess so,” Misty said, fingers lacing through his.
“You don’t have to say anything. Boktare and I will handle it. The only thing required of you is that you sit there and look beautiful. A job you are quite overqualified for.”
Misty gave him a stunned look, then broke into delighted laughter. “That was good.”
“Yeah? You liked that?”
“Very much.” Her eyes sparkled as they joined Boktare. His mate wasn’t with him today. They wanted to keep the focus on Tsok and Misty, on their new way of mating, and not on the accidental method that was, currently, the most common one.
Not long after Misty arrived, they went out to sit at the table. True to his word, Misty didn’t have to do anything but sit to one side of Tsok, Boktare on the other, as Tsok detailed the compromise. He kept it in broad strokes, starting with their own, abandoned traditions. While he appreciated the human elements they were going to be taking to make this new tradition, he wanted to ground it mostly in his people’s old, once beloved traditions first. Surely, there would be others that already knew of them. Historians, history enthusiasts like Davard, and even those that simply listened to stories that were passed down through friends and ancestors. He might not know the old traditions, and this part of their past might not be common knowledge, but it would be soon. And from that, he could build this new future going forward.
“My female has, graciously, agreed to marry me,” Tsok announced, finishing his speech. “She will be borrowing from her own customs, adding them to our own. And to help ease the concerns of my people, she’s agreed to allow cameras to record the entire process, up to but not including the mating itself, so everyone can see what all of this involves. I’ll be taking questions now.”
Before he finished speaking, there were already people rushing to speak. To ask. He had to point out the first person to get their question first.
“Mating is notoriously dangerous,” the female reporter started the moment he gave her leave. “This is known. Resisting that violent impulse is the basis of our society. You really think that this is something worth reviving?”
“I can answer that,” Boktare took over smoothly. “What scared our people was never the mating rut itself. In fact, that part was always considered enjoyable. For both parties. Having gone through it myself, I can assure you, the rut is not, and never was, the problem. The problem was being unable to control when it happened. The scars of our past came from it happening when it ought not have. But with the new technology, with the help of True Match, we can find our mates without needing to scent them and get close to them without losing our minds. As Tsok has demonstrated with his stunning amount of control and will.”
Everyone’s attention turned to him and his female. Tsok held his head up proudly. Seated next to the larger, mated Boktare, wearing a nasal filter while the older male did not, it was clear he hadn’t given himself over to that base urge, despite his matched mate being right beside him.
“Make no mistake,” Boktare continued firmly. “I have not changed my beliefs. I do not think it is wise to return to our old roots. We have moved past this. We have seen it go wrong in the worst kind of ways. But with True Match, we can do this right . And I know that Tsok is the best person to show us how it can be done. We can do this. For Her.”
The reporters all tittered and mumbled, making the connection between the old call to action and this new direction forward.
There were more questions. A lot of them basically just repeating that first question with different words, in different forms. It was the biggest concern. However, this was also the first time Boktare had been open about what happened to him when he mated Fia. Everyone knew it had happened, of course, but he hadn’t actually described what it was like living through the rut.
Between Tsok and Boktare, they were able to answer almost every question. However, when Tsok called out for the last question, the person he picked to ask it didn’t look at either of them. Instead, they faced Misty.
“Charina, is this sudden change in Senior Boktare’s ideology an influence from you? Are you pushing your human ways onto him?”
Misty, unprepared to be addressed, made a sound of confusion. The reporter took that as a request to repeat himself.
“Have you forced your human ways on your mate and the seniors?” He asked, the harsh, accusatory edge to his question very ill-concealed.
“You are out of line,” Tsok growled at the male.
But the reporter didn’t turn his gaze from Misty.
And his mate, of course, met him with a cool expression of her own. She had been sitting there, calm and patient and silent this whole time. Tsok was not foolish enough to think that she was maintaining those things because she was incapable of speaking.
No, of course not.
And the smirk that crossed her face at the question hurled towards her so rudely sent a thrill through Tsok. He was eager to hear his female’s answer, so he didn’t interject himself between the two of them again.
“My human ways?” Misty asked so sweetly, cocking her head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, of course, your human instincts.”
“Which instincts are those?”
The male hesitated. “Your instincts towards mating, of course.”
“My species doesn’t have any good mating instincts. Everyone knows that. We’re notorious for it. So, that can’t be what you mean. So, what did you mean?”
They all knew exactly what he meant. But Misty was so innocently, kindly demanding that he lay it all out for everyone to hear. To say the accusation he was only alluding to.
He side stepped it, but clumsily. “I meant no disrespect, charina. But it is known that your people are considerably more… free than ours sexually.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” She asked cooly. “Unless you’re meaning to suggest that I’m using sex to control the honorable senior somehow. You think that’s what’s happening?”
“I did not-”
“Or are you suggesting that the senior, a mated male, is so completely turned around by my abundance of sexual charms, that he simply must cleave to my every desire. Is that it?”
“No one would dare-”
“Or are you just bringing up the fact that I’m human as some kind of shot at me for being human, a species that you surely must consider especially deviant when it comes to romance and sexuality compared to yours?”
The reporter had a sour look on his face. She’d struck dead center on target, but he didn’t want to admit that she was correct. It was one thing to slyly suggest that she was a whore, it was another thing entirely to state it outright.
And, worse than that, he was suggesting it about Boktare . That expanded the insult to not just include her, but Boktare, Fia, and Tsok. And it was obvious by the way his face tightened as Misty continued to smile down on him, like he was an amusing insect scuttering about around her feet, that he was only just realizing it now.
“I’ll admit,” she continued, “to telling the honorable senior about weddings amongst my people. I will also admit to telling the honored char that it is my desire to be mated. That’s why I came here, after all. It was my aim to meet my mate and then mate him. But are you perhaps suggesting that the two of them are both so weak willed as to be led about by my desires like that?”
“Well,” Tsok smirked, leaning back in his chair, giving her an affectionate look, “I might be.”
“But I’m certainly not,” Boktare said, leaning forward, icicles, sharp and cold, dripping from his tone as he glared down at the male who’d made such a suggestion. “I am a mated male. Moreover, they might not be mated biologically, but Tsok and Misty are matched to each other, so they are mated in practice. You besmirch all of our honor for your crude and, frankly, disgusting suggestion.
“My mind has not changed. The safety of my people remains first and foremost in my thoughts. I am simply adapting to new ideas and suggestions. I am not against mating as a practice. I am a mated male, and I enjoy, greatly, the life I lead with my female. My reservation has only ever been about safety. They have satisfied my concerns. That is why I put my support behind them.”
Boktare sat up tall and proud. “I will bear witness to the marriage of the char and charina. The first charina our people have seen in centuries. And I will watch as they lead our people into a new future. One where we are safe but also free to love each other, our families, our instincts without the fear of what they could do to us.
“We are the kreecharma! We have proven that we are stronger than our instincts by denying them completely. And now, we will prove our strength and determination by conquering them. We will not be slaves to our instincts. But, instead, our instincts will serve us. As they were always meant to do. As they shall ever do again. And it begins today! I am proud to support our char and see them through this transition to marriage and matehood. And our people’s transition into our brighter future!”