Chapter 43
It had been what felt like weeks waking up to an empty bed and an empty room.
The Emperor had vanished.
I didn't spend much time looking for him.
A cat elf named Meganar brought me meals and anything else I asked for.
She had been assigned as my steward, and though I wanted to get to know her, she was standoffish, so I gave up quickly and focused on reading instead.
My translator worked for the written word, so I was working my way through a series of romantic literature, trying to get a grasp on their species interactions.
It seemed like they favored monogamy heavily when it came to mates, but if the osae didn't choose the other person, those relationships tended to be casual or have an end date.
The fact that both the Emperor and Zale's osae reacted to me meant that I was a prime candidate for a long-term relationship for both of them.
Why the Emperor would want that with an alien who couldn't even speak his language, I had no idea.
I wasn’t trapped in my room.
The door had been outfitted with an eye scanner that was at the appropriate height for me, so exploring was on the menu.
I fell into a routine of stretching in the morning, bouncing around the zero gravity corridors, reading in the room, then wandering around the ship, half-heartedly searching for the Emperor while I tried to get my bearings.
Then it was back to zero gravity play and alien romance novels.
Meganar brought food to the room for me, but avoided my questions and any form of small talk, so after a few attempts to get any information about the Emperor's whereabouts, I gave up.
I found a mess hall that the other cat elves on the ship used, but whenever I peeked in there, I felt a massive wave of embarrassment and ducked away.
These were the Emperor's people, not mine.
I was the alien.
And it was a spaceship.
He was here somewhere. He just didn't want to see me.
His people on this ship had to know that he was avoiding me.
The fact that the alien man would sneak off and sulk about me not wanting to bang him right after we had an argument was ridiculous, and I didn't need to be around that anyway.
Even so, his absence still ate at me.
There was the edge of fear that he had changed his mind, that he would take it all back and say he didn't want me. That fear was paired with an equal amount of hope.
I should have waited for Zale to talk to him, at the very least.
I shouldn't have just left with this Emperor even if he promised me a moon of my own.
Then again, the Emperor had felt safe.
The way he treated me the night he crawled into my bed felt familiar, so much like Zale I hadn’t known the difference. It felt like there was something I was missing in the equation. Maybe they were related?
It didn’t matter, I still had made my choice.
The thought floated in my mind that if the Emperor was avoiding me now, maybe he was regretting his decision to take me with him, too. Maybe he wouldn't want me anymore. Maybe he would be open to me leaving so I could go back and try to work things out with the alien I really wanted to be with.
I rolled around in the bed at that thought, a wistfulness drifting through me.
My heart had gotten over those moments of unhappiness when Zale vanished, and the Emperor slid into his place like a well-worn replacement.
Would he forgive me for leaving?
Was I even sure I wanted to go?
There was a covered tray on a table nearby that Meganar had brought before rushing off, steaming and smelling delicious, so I rolled my way out of the massive, comfy trap of a sleeping space and went to dig in.
There was a translucent cube next to the tray.
I set it to the side to investigate later and focused on the food.
As I lifted up the cover of the tray, a wave of nausea washed over me, and I dropped it back down. I rushed into the washroom.
I dragged the toilet out from where it was embedded in the wall and heaved.
I sat back on the strangely warm floor. Maybe there was a temperature setting for that? I focused on the sensations of my body. My breasts felt a little heavier than normal.
Oh no.
I went back into the bedroom and found the largest empty space on the floor. I sat down and straddled my legs out wide. I placed one hand in front of me and the other behind my butt, and scooted my hips forward, keeping my heels firmly against the ground, opening my straddle wider and wider.
I leaned forward and put my chest flat on the ground.
There wasn't even the slightest bit of resistance.
I rolled my hips forward, my knees rotating as I moved straight into my middle splits without any discomfort.
I was flexible. I had trained in flexibility with utter determination, as that skill set fit well into both my passion and my money-making job, but I was not the kind of flexible that could go straight to the money maker right after waking up.
A lady has to warm up her muscles before she starts using them to spread herself wide open.
I got up, grabbed a couple of pillows off the bed, then sat back down and straddled my legs again. This time, I put a pillow under each ankle, lifting my feet up off the ground, and then very carefully began to roll forward again.
This was my edge normally.
This was where it would hurt in that beautifully special way. Where you know that if you relax into it and just let it happen, you won't incur any damage. All you have to do is let go, and it gets easier.
There was a very strange sensation this time.
Instead of that delicious ache of pushing myself to the limit, it was just easy.
And wrong.
It felt like if I continued, I could genuinely hurt myself.
"Relaxin!" I gasped out.
I had felt this before.
I noticed it a couple of weeks after my falling out with Arnina, after that morning I'd woken up, disoriented, in her now ex-boyfriend's bed
I learned that the extra flexibility was caused by the hormone called relaxin that the body releases under very specific circumstances.
I didn't tell anyone.
I'd just taken care of it.
I didn't want to do now what I had done then.
But my life also wasn't a romance novel.
My life had been one struggle after the other that I painted over with glitter and sheer determination to find joy and beauty in every moment.
I put my hands on my belly as intense longing and protectiveness washed over me.
Oh, I wanted this child.
A thought returned to me - something that had already crested the edges of my awareness. I had put that thought aside, not ready to deal with it.
Now it was time to face it.
There was no guarantee this was the Emperor's baby.
It could easily be Zale's.
If my baby was born with fur, the color would leave no doubt as to whose child it was.
The Emperor had already shown himself to be emotionally unstable at the mere mention of me knowing another guy.
There was no way he would handle this well.
I had to get out of the situation before he found out.
But why would he ever let me go when he thought I was carrying his child?
I took a deep breath.
I couldn't let my emotions run away with me. It was one thing to rage and cry when my life was the only one on the line. There wasn't room for instability in my heart anymore.
I had to be practical.
My baby needed me.
There was no way the Emperor was going to let me take off in his flagship without him, no matter how much talk he threw down about it being mine.
If he wanted me to learn how to speak his language before I learned how to operate it, then it was going to take longer than nine months.
If I even had nine months. I didn't know how long his species gestation was or whether it would impact my birth.
I let go of the breath, trying to remain calm, and took another low, slow inhale.
It was going to be OK.
All I had to do was convince the Emperor to let me go and return to my friend and the alien man I left behind.
Then I needed to tell the Emperor that it wasn't his kid - cub? -after we had some serious physical distance between us.
That, or I would need to lie and claim a miscarriage.
That didn't feel right to me, but neither did risking my child's life betting on the fact the possessive Emperor would take the news well. What if his species killed the young that wasn’t genetically theirs, just like lions did?
I stood up and walked over to the table where the food was. I put the cover back on the food and picked up the small cube I’d set to the side of the tray. It didn't do anything. I tapped it lightly, trying to see if it was hollow.
When I tapped it, a projected image of the Emperor floated in the air above it.
My gut fluttered with emotion at the sight of him.
I was angry he’d been avoiding me - but I also kind of missed him.
"This device is keyed in to allow you to communicate with Arnina," the image said. "Devices like these are commonly used for those who are having trouble vocalizing to initiate calls with verbal commands. Squeeze both sides to initiate a call."
I immediately did just that.
The cube glowed, changing colors and letting out a soft chime when I squeezed it. I set it down on the table. I waited. And waited. Suddenly, an image of Arnina popped up.
"How is this even possible?" she asked as though we were already in the middle of a conversation. "I'm on a moon city, and you are who knows how far away? This is so cool. I can't see any lag at all. Do you see any lag?"
I didn't.
Her mouth and words lined up as if she was speaking and it was instantly transmitted.
"Let's just call it crazy alien quantum entanglement technology and not actually worry about that right now. If you really care, I'm sure you can find out later, but now
I need you," I said. "I need to talk to you. I've made a huge mistake."
Arnina's big smile faded, and she looked at me.
"Are you in a Jekyll and Hyde situation?" she asked. "Blink twice if he's in the room."