Chapter 1 #3
Good. Perhaps she’d get the message.
He set the crate down in the kitchen and went back for another. Gaauth was already carrying a box of linens, his face neutral.
They worked in silence. The supplies piled up in the kitchen until there was barely room to walk. Food, linens, something that looked like bathing supplies, a box of items Goraath didn’t recognize and didn’t want to examine too closely.
When the transport was empty, his uncle didn’t leave. Just stood in the kitchen, looking around as if he was cataloging everything wrong with the space.
“When’s the last time you cleaned in here?”
“It’s clean.”
His uncle snorted. “It’s functional. That’s not the same thing.”
Goraath moved to the cold storage unit and started putting food away. His movements were controlled. Everything in its place. Nothing out of order.
“You still haven’t prepared the guest room,” Gaauth said.
“I will.”
“When?”
“When I’m ready.”
“She arrives in four hours.”
His hand tightened around the container he was holding. Hard enough that the material creaked. “I know what time she arrives.”
Gaauth was quiet for a moment. Then he moved to the table and sat down heavily in one of the chairs. “You’re angry.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re angry you got drawn in the lottery.”
Goraath slammed the cold storage door shut. “I didn’t want to enter. I told them no. I told that draanthic Kaalden no. But the colony needed volunteers, and I’m apparently the perfect candidate because I have space and resources and no family obligations.”
“You are the perfect candidate.”
“I didn’t want this.”
“Yeah, well… None of us wanted the plague either. Or losing every female of our species. But it happened, and now we’re trying to survive.” Gaauth’s voice stayed level. Reasonable. Which made it worse somehow. “The humans are our best chance.”
“They’re desperate females who had no other options.”
“And we’re desperate males on a colony that won’t survive another generation without mates. Seems fair.”
The logic was sound. He hated it.
Turning, he walked out of the kitchen and down the hallway toward the back of the house. The guest room sat at the end. Door closed. It hadn’t been opened in years… not since his father died.
His hand rested on the doorknob. Cold metal against his palm. He could open it. Walk in. Prepare the space like he was supposed to. Or he could leave it closed and tell the warriors there’d been a mistake. That he’d changed his mind. That he wasn’t doing this. Give the female to someone else.
Except he’d signed the contract. Entered the lottery. Drew the short straw, or the long one, depending on perspective… and now a human female was on a transport ship about to land, expecting to be brought to his ranch.
Draanth it. He opened the door.
The room looked exactly as he remembered. His mother’s furniture, his father’s organized belongings, everything precisely where it had been the day his father died. Goraath had closed the door and never come back.
Dust covered every surface, thick and grey, and the bed was still made. His father had been meticulous about things like that. Even after his mother died, even as grief ate him alive from the inside, he’d still made the bed every morning.
Right up until the morning he didn’t wake up.
Goraath’s throat went tight.
“You kept it the same.”
He hadn’t heard his uncle follow him down the hall. Didn’t turn around now.
“Never had a reason to change it.”
“Or a reason to let it go.”
The words hit too close. Goraath moved to the window and opened it. Cold air rushed in, cutting through the stale smell of disuse.
“Come on, pup. Many hands make light work.”
They worked without talking. Gaauth stripped the bed while Goraath cleared surfaces. The dust made his eyes sting. Or maybe that was something else. He didn’t examine it too closely.
His father’s boots went into the closet. The small personal items, the things that were too painful to look at, got packed into a crate that Goraath carried to the storage building without comment.
By the time they finished, the room looked empty. Clean but impersonal. Like a room waiting for someone to make it theirs.
“She’s going to hate it here,” Goraath said.
Gaauth looked up from tucking the corner of a blanket. “You don’t know that.”
“We’re forty-seven kilometers from town. The winters are brutal. The work is hard. I don’t talk much. I don’t socialize. I don’t—” He stopped. “She’s human. Soft. From Earth. What part of this life is going to appeal to her?”
“Maybe none of it. Or maybe all of it.” His uncle straightened. “You won’t know until she gets here.”
“I know enough.”
“You know what you’ve decided. That’s not the same as knowing the truth.”
Goraath wanted to argue. Wanted to list all the reasons this wouldn’t work, that she’d leave as soon as the six weeks were up, that he was wasting time preparing for something that would never happen.
But his uncle was looking at him with too much understanding, and Goraath didn’t have the energy to fight.
“The room’s ready,” he said instead.
“Good.” The older lathar moved toward the door, then paused. “You going to be okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“Not what I asked, pup.”
Goraath didn’t answer. Couldn’t. Because he wasn’t sure if he was going to be okay or not. All he knew was that a female was coming, and she was going to invade his space and disrupt his routine and force him to interact with another person on a daily basis.
And he’d agreed to it. Signed the contract. Put his name in the lottery.
So this was his own draanthing fault.
Gaauth left without pushing further. The sound of his transport starting up carried through the house, then faded as he drove away.
Goraath stood in the doorway of the guest room, looking at the space they’d prepared.
Clean sheets. Clear surfaces. A window that let in the cold morning air.
It looked nothing like the room his parents had shared.
All the personality had been stripped away, packed into crates or stored in closets. Now it was just... empty. Waiting.
His datapad chimed from the kitchen. Probably the warriors confirming the female’s arrival time. Or logistics about the transport route and where to meet them.
He didn’t go check. Not yet.
Instead, he walked out the back door and stood on the porch, looking out over his land. The valley spread before him, purple crops swaying in the morning breeze. The krulaati grazed in their enclosure. The mountains rose in the distance, snow-capped peaks catching the first rays of sunlight.
His.
All of it his. Built by his parents, maintained by him, preserved through years of solitude and hard work. But in a few hours, he’d have to share it with a human female who probably wouldn’t last a week.
The thought should have been comforting. Should have made this easier.
It didn’t.
The datapad chimed again. Insistent and annoying as draanth. With a sigh, he went inside to check it. It wouldn’t shut up until he did. He suspected Kaalden had coded it that way just to be annoying.
ARRIVAL CONFIRMED - 1300 HOURS
TRANSPORT WILL ARRIVE IN THE COLONY CENTER
TRANSPORT WILL DEPART AFTER 24 HOUR SETTLEMENT PERIOD
Reading it twice, he set the datapad down.
Three hours.
Grabbing his jacket, he headed back outside.
Three hours until she arrived.
Three hours until he lost the last thing he had left to protect.
His solitude.