Chapter 18
eighteen
. . .
Kex
I awoke early, just as the sun peeked through the trees. I was warm and comfortable with my mate pressed against me, and the forest I woke in brought me peace and memories of my grandfather. There was little more I needed. Unfortunately, responsibility once again weighed on my shoulders.
I carefully extracted myself from my mate’s side and rose to begin the morning chores.
Before long, Rainair awoke, grumpy as ever first thing in the morning. I handed him a mug of tea and took a second to my mate. I woke her gently, and once she was sitting up, handed her the tea.
“Take a few minutes to wake, my mate. Then we will set off.” She yawned and stretched, and I watched her breasts press tight against her shirt, her nipples forming points. She sipped her tea, and I broke eye contact with her breasts and fetched her breakfast.
We broke down camp and set off. It would take us a few days to reach the crash site.
It took the protectors two days to reach the site, then send someone back to update the report and request more help.
When we left, backup had not yet been dispatched.
It would take us a few days longer, even with me carrying my Emily for part of the day.
“Would you allow me to carry you the full day?” I asked my mate when we stopped for a brief break.
She sighed and picked up her pack, hers much smaller than those carried by me and Rainair. “Am I slowing us down that much?” she asked.
“No,” I told her truthfully. “No one is expecting us, and we will arrive when we arrive. Your friends have other protectors helping them, and while our supplies will be appreciated, they are reasonably safe.” I ran my hand over her cheek.
“I ask because I know traversing the forest tires you, and I want you to save your energy for the life you are creating.”
She snorted. “Our baby is barely a cluster of cells, I can manage. And—” She looked down at her shoes. “I feel bad with you carrying me. You need your strength too.”
I gasped. “My mate, you wound my warrior sensibilities.” I grinned, and she smacked my chest. “Truly, you are such a little thing, your weight is nothing but a warm comfort on my back.”
She smiled softly. “You know, on my planet I’m considered huge.”
I frowned at her. “Your people are so short?”
She laughed. “No, my height is about average for a woman. I mean I’m fat. Like, very overweight. Some human men would, well, have, said I’m grotesque.”
It was my turn to snort. “Human men sound stupid and weak. I like your soft bits. And besides, in my arms you are a small thing.”
She smiled, and I picked her up. She wrapped her legs around me and I held her with one hand on her ass, while running the other through her hair. “Their loss is my wonderful gain,” I said, and kissed her.
“All right, break it up,” Rainair hollered as he returned from his personal break. “This isn’t your mating trip.”
“It could have been if you hadn’t joined us,” I growled, and resumed kissing my mate.
“What luck I joined you then. It would take you a month to reach the crash site without me to hurry you along.”
My mate laughed and dropped her legs from around me. I reluctantly set her back down, but rearranged my pack to my front and made her climb onto my back before we set off again.
The next morning, my Emily seemed pensive. We packed up our camp, and I helped her adjust the straps of her pack.
“What happens next?” my Emily asked.
“When do you mean?” I asked.
“After we get my friends out of the forest, where will we take them exactly?”
“There are a few options,” I said, rubbing my chin.
“The protector who checked in from the original incident put in a request of sanctuary and lodging for your friends. That would place them in the capital, but in a different tower from us. Preparations have already started there, but we could also host them in our tower if you prefer. They would be close either way.”
“Is their species registration complete?” Rainair asked.
I winced. “Not yet.”
“Hmmm, what’s the delay? It’s not exactly safe to make their presence public until it’s complete,” he said.
“What’s not safe about it?” my mate asked.
I sighed. “Until your species has been properly documented and registered with the empire, there are certain rights that don’t apply,” I said carefully.
“He means your people won’t be recognized as people, more like animals until it’s complete,” Rainair said.
My mate gasped and turned to me. I tugged her against me and glared at my friend. “Which will not be an issue, because they will be under my protection until it is filed.”
“What do we need to do? Should we have stayed in the city longer to get it completed?” my mate asked.
“The filings are complex,” I said.
“And you have an army of retainers. What’s the holdup?” Rainair asked.
I sighed. “There are two. The first, we don’t know the location of your home planet, which is usually required. We could bypass that requirement, but it would need a majority vote in the Galactic Senate and getting it on the books will take ages.”
“Ouch,” Rainair said.
“There is another option,” I said casually.
“What?” my mate asked.
“If we could track down your home planet independently, perhaps have someone investigate the lmmp, who have been in this quadrant in the last week, and hack their flight logs. If only we knew someone with the right skill set, perhaps a gift for skulduggery and a love of romance stories,” I said.
Rainair was spiraling. He needed a task now that his commitments to the war were complete, and this could achieve two goals at once.
My mate turned to Rainair. “You could track down the goopy guys who kidnapped us and find Earth’s location?”
“I could,” my friend said, running a long hand along his whiskers. That was his thinking gesture. He was considering it, and if he considered it, he would do it. “I’d need the right resources, of course.”
I snorted. “You’ll have them.”
“Good!” My mate’s face brightened. “One problem down. What was the second one?”
“The documentation would need the sign-off of the Global Representative,” I said, making eye contact with Rainair.
“Fuck,” Rainair said.
“Who is it for Ormon?” my mate asked.
“We don’t currently have one,” I said.
“Because he doesn’t want the job,” Rainair added.
My mate gasped. “It was your grandfather?” she asked, and I nodded.
She sighed. “Well, what is the fallback if there isn’t a representative?”
“That’s not an issue,” Rainair said. “Kex will do it, he’s just being stubborn.”
My mate glared at my friend. “It’s his choice to make, and he doesn’t need to take a job he doesn’t want just because it’s the quickest solution. It will take you time to track down Earth anyway.”
“No, my mate. He’s right. I will do it.”
She turned to me. “Kex, don’t do this just for me.
It’s your life, and if you would be more content living in a hut where we could hopefully set up some kind of plumbing, then do that.
If you’ll be happier being a spoiled lord living at the top of a tower with no responsibilities at all, do that.
Do what would make your life worth it. We’ll figure the rest out. ”
I cupped my mate’s face in my hands. “You make my life worth it, my Emily. The rest is just details. And perhaps I was always going to take on the legacy.”
“But you said you wanted peace,” my mate said, placing her small hand on my chest.
“I do want peace, but you bring me peace.” I sighed. “And as Rainair said, I was always going to take it. I just wanted to pretend I had an option for a little while. My grandfather raised me to take over for him, I just expected to have a few more decades.”
My mate pulled me down and planted a kiss on my chin. “We’ll take lots of breaks to your grandfather’s hut. Just the two of us. We’ll find someone to watch the kids.”
“Deal. We can make Rainair babysit,” I said.
My mate turned to my friend. “You’ll have to learn some kid-appropriate stories.”
I pulled my mate against my chest and wrapped my hands around her to hold her stomach. “What do you say, Uncle Rainair?”
Rainair frowned at us. “These are theoretical children, right?”
“Nope,” my mate said. “Apparently Kex has super jizz and humans are compatible.”
“I do not think that translated completely,” I said into my mate’s ear while my friend stood in stunned silence. After a moment, a grin broke across his face and he crossed to us. He wrapped his arms around us both and picked us up.
“That’s fucking brilliant!” he shouted and spun us around in the air.
He set us down and my mate laughed. He pressed his muzzle against my mate’s temple, then tackled me in an embrace.
“You fucking bastard, I can’t believe you managed to reproduce before me.
Fuck, now I’ll have to find someone so we can do pair things. ”
I placed my hand on his shoulder. “I hope you will be so blessed one day, my brother.”
We walked on, a happy buzz in the air and my mate on my back where I liked her most. After some time, my mate interrupted Rainair in the retelling of one of his typical love stories. He’d just finished describing the ravenous way a man took his true mate after discovering her.
“Question!” my mate called out in that way she did when she lacked cultural or technological understanding of a specific point. “The whole true mate thing, can you explain that a little more? Like, why is a true mate special?”
I came to a stop, a small bead of fear running down my spine. Did she not understand what we were to each other?
My mate tapped me around the middle with her ankles. “What? Is it something I should know already?”
I tapped my mate’s legs, and she dropped. I turned to her, but her expression was confused. “You are my true mate, my Emily.”
“I know you said that, but like, what does it mean? It’s like getting married or choosing a partner, right?”