30. Taurex #2
The answer was clear. She couldn’t, and he wouldn’t ask her to.
Taurex rose and began pacing slowly across the room as he tried to think what he could do.
He would pay her whatever she needed—not as a bribe, never that, but Terra had left The Doll House because he had offered her security.
She had children to support and a mother to care for, and he would not allow his own stupidity to put her back in a position where she had to dance for strangers just to keep food on her family’s table.
If she quit, he would give her severance, he decided.
A year’s salary, perhaps two years—enough to finish her accounting degree if she wished and enough to find another position without fear.
He could also give her a recommendation, though the idea of Terra working for someone else made something savage inside him snarl with jealousy.
Taurex crushed the instinct immediately—that was exactly the kind of thinking that had frightened her. Terra was not his to direct. She could work wherever she chose, live wherever she chose and love whomever she chose, even if that male was not him.
That thought was worse than all the others, and Taurex stopped pacing as he imagined another male touching her…
another male sitting at a dinner table with Cody and Lisa…
another male earning Lucy’s trust. Another male hearing Terra laugh first thing in the morning and holding her when she was frightened and learning exactly how she liked to be kissed.
Pain tore through him so sharply he actually pressed a hand to his chest, but he forced himself to breathe through it. If another male made Terra happy, then Taurex would have to accept it. Was that not what loving someone meant? Wanting their happiness, even when it destroyed your own?
For one terrible moment, he wished the Goddess had never allowed him to find her.
The thought came from such a dark place that Taurex immediately hated himself for it. No, he would never wish that.
Even if Terra left him tomorrow and never spoke to him again, he would still be grateful he had known her—grateful for the month she had been in his life, grateful for every exasperated look she gave him when she discovered another unpaid invoice and grateful for the way she laughed when he said something she found unintentionally humorous.
He would be grateful that he had met Cody and Lisa and Lucy and grateful that for one evening his domicile had felt like a home rather than simply a place where he slept.
Taurex returned to the couch and sat heavily again, and he did not know how long he remained there. Hours, perhaps.
The glow-vines dimmed until only tiny points of light remained scattered along the walls like stars, while outside, the artificial night cycle deepened over the inner forest and the living domicile settled into its resting state.
Taurex did not sleep. Every so often he found himself listening for Terra—a cry, a footstep, anything—but her room remained silent.
Several times he had to fight the urge to go check on her, and each time he remembered the terror in her voice.
“Please, I just need to feel safe right now. I need to be alone.”
So he stayed where he was. It was the only gift he could still give her—distance.
Near what he guessed must be the middle of the night, Taurex rose and walked quietly to the kitchen. The cooking plants were dormant, their heat-veins dark, but when he touched one of the illumination blooms it opened and gave off a faint amber glow.
Terra would need First Meal in the morning. Would she eat? Probably not, but still, he would make something simple, something that did not require her to sit with him. He could pack it for the shuttle if she wished.
The shuttle.
His stomach tightened again. Tomorrow he would take her home, back to Earth, back to Lucy and Cody and Lisa—the people she trusted and loved.
He would not ask her to stay on the Mother Ship another hour longer than she wanted, and when they reached Tampa, he would tell her that she never had to see him again.
The thought nearly brought him to his knees.
Taurex gripped the edge of the living food prep surface until the plant beneath his hands stiffened in response. This was what he had wanted to avoid from the beginning.
He had believed that if he moved slowly enough, if he showed Terra day after day that she was safe with him, then eventually she might look at him and see what he saw—a future, a family, a Bond. Instead, one careless confession had destroyed weeks of trust.
How could he possibly ask her to Bond with him now?
The answer was brutally obvious—he couldn’t.
A Bond required openness so complete that nothing could be hidden.
Their minds would touch, their emotions would flow between them, and at the deepest level of Joining, they would know one another in a way no unBonded beings ever could.
Terra had been horrified merely hearing about it.
There was no universe in which a female who flinched at the sight of him would willingly open her mind to his. There was no universe in which a woman who begged him not to hurt her would place her soul in his hands.
Taurex bowed his head. He had found his fated mate, and he had lost her before she had ever truly been his.
The old Monstrum teachings said that finding one’s mate was the greatest blessing the Goddess could bestow.
They spoke endlessly of joy, completion and the profound peace of finally encountering the soul meant to walk beside yours, but no one spoke much about what happened when that soul did not want you.
Perhaps it was because so few males survived it well.
Taurex understood why now. The pain wasn’t like heartbreak as humans described it. It was deeper, almost cellular—a sense that some essential part of him had been shown the place where it belonged and then was torn away.
And yet Terra was still only a few rooms away, which somehow made it worse. He could feel her presence in some instinctive way, like warmth just beyond his reach.
But he would not reach for her—not again.
Slowly, Taurex straightened.
“All right,” he whispered into the quiet kitchen. “It’s over.”
If releasing her was what she needed, he would release her.
He would take her home in the morning and apologize without excuses.
He would explain that the Bond was voluntary only if she wanted to hear it, and if she didn’t, he would say nothing more.
He would make certain she and her family were financially secure regardless of whether she continued working for him, and then he would let Terra decide what happened next.
Even if her decision broke him.
The artificial dawn began gradually, a faint green-gold light appearing beyond the windows as the Mother Ship’s enormous interior sun prepared to rise over the forest. The glow-vines responded by brightening one blossom at a time, bringing soft light back into the domicile Terra had filled with laughter only the day before.
Taurex stood alone in the kitchen and watched the light grow, thinking of how differently he had imagined this morning.
He had imagined Terra waking in his arms. He had imagined preparing breakfast for her, teasing her about the ridiculous names she gave his household plants and perhaps later taking her to one of the restaurants she had wanted to see. He had imagined another day of showing her his world.
Instead, he would be taking her away from it…away from him.
Taurex swallowed around the ache in his throat and began preparing a small breakfast she probably wouldn’t eat. It was the last thing he could do for her before he took her home and, perhaps, the last thing he would ever do for his mate.