Kerris
The routine established itself without discussion.
Morning: I woke to his hands on my body, his cock already hard against my thigh.
He'd turn me onto my back or pull me onto my hands and knees, and he'd breed me slowly, thoroughly, until the knot locked us together and his seed flooded my womb.
We'd stay connected for thirty or forty minutes, talking, planning, existing in that strange intimacy of being physically joined while our minds wandered.
Then breakfast. Water from the channel he'd carved through the Keep. Dried meat and preserved fruit from stores he'd built up over twenty cycles. He fed me more than I needed, watching to make sure I ate everything, already treating my body like something precious that required fuel.
Midday: Work. The ventilation modifications I'd suggested needed implementation, and he let me direct the project.
I stood in the main chamber and pointed, explaining angles and airflow patterns, while he did the physical labor of carving new channels into ancient bone.
Watching him work was its own kind of pleasure.
The way he tested each cut before committing.
The satisfaction on his face when a piece fit exactly as intended.
Sometimes he'd pause in his work to cross the chamber and touch me. Just a hand on my hip, a brush of claws through my hair, a kiss pressed to the top of my head. Small reminders that I was there. That I'd stayed.
Evening: He'd breed me again. Harder this time, hungrier, the day's restraint burning off in rough thrusts and growled commands. I'd come screaming, my voice bouncing off the walls he'd built, and then his knot would lock us together and we'd lie in the gathering dark while his seed pumped into me.
Night: We'd talk. About the Keep's structural integrity. About the modifications I wanted to make. About the ferals he could smell gathering at the boundary, drawn by my scent even though I was thoroughly claimed now. About the portal that would open in twenty days. Nineteen. Eighteen.
I stopped counting somewhere around day fifteen.
My body was changing.
I noticed it first in my breasts. Fuller than before, heavier, the nipples darker and more sensitive. When Bruk's mouth found them during our morning breeding, I gasped at sensations that hadn't been there a week ago.
"Tender?" he asked, lifting his head.
"Different." I touched my own breast, feeling the new weight of it. "Fuller."
His nostrils flared. That look came into his eyes, the one that meant he was scenting something I couldn't smell. "Your body is preparing."
"Preparing for what?"
He didn't answer. Just lowered his mouth to my other breast and sucked until I forgot the question.
My belly changed too. Not dramatically, not obviously pregnant, but softer somehow. Rounder. When I lay on my back after he'd bred me, I could see a slight curve that hadn't been there before.
The tonic effects had faded but hadn’t disappeared entirely. I still felt the baseline arousal, still grew wet when he walked into a room. But the desperate, consuming need was gone. My body had gotten what it wanted. Now it was settling into something more sustainable.
I found myself resting more. Taking naps in the afternoon, curled on the sleeping platform while he worked. Eating everything he put in front of me and then asking for more. My body was doing something, preparing for something, and I let it happen without fighting.
"You're different," I said one evening, watching him carve a new channel near the ceiling.
He paused. "Different how?"
"Gentler. The way you touch me. The way you breed me." I thought about it. "Not less intense. Just... more careful."
"You're carrying something precious." He descended from his perch, crossed to where I sat, knelt before me. His hand rested on my belly. "I can smell it. Have been able to smell it for days."
My breath caught. "Smell what?"
"The change in your body. The way your scent has shifted." His amber eyes met mine. "You're pregnant, Kerris."
I stared at him. My hand moved to cover his on my belly.
"Are you sure?"
"I've been sure for five days. I was waiting for you to notice."
Five days. He'd known for five days that I was carrying his offspring, and he'd let me figure it out myself. Had watched me notice the changes in my body, had fed me extra portions and let me sleep longer, had been more careful when he bred me.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because you needed to feel it yourself. To know it in your body, not just in your head." His hand pressed gently against my belly. "Do you feel it?"
I closed my eyes. Focused inward. And yes, underneath the familiar sensations, underneath the arousal and the satisfaction and the strange peace I'd found in his Keep, there was something else. Something small and new and growing.
"Yes," I whispered. "I feel it."
His forehead pressed against my belly. Just for a moment. A gesture of reverence that made my throat tight.
"The nursery," he said. "It won't be empty anymore."
I should have been terrified.
Pregnant on an alien planet, carrying the offspring of a creature I'd known for less than three weeks. No medical facilities. No prenatal care. No way to know if the pregnancy would even be viable, if human and whatever-he-was could produce offspring that would survive.
I wasn't terrified.
I was working.
The ventilation project led to other projects. Improvements to the water channel. Reinforcements for the main entrance. A better system for storing food. My engineer's brain had found its purpose, and Bruk let me direct every modification, trusting my calculations, implementing my designs.
We worked well together. He had the physical strength; I had the structural vision. He'd spent twenty cycles building alone; now he had a partner who could see improvements he'd never considered.
"This joint is weak," I said, pointing to a connection near the eastern archway. "The load distribution is uneven. If the ferals hit it hard enough..."
"They'd break through." He studied the joint I'd indicated. "I built that section in my third cycle. Before I understood proper weight distribution."
"We can reinforce it. Add support here and here." I sketched invisible lines in the air. "It would take maybe two days."
"Two days." His hand found my hip, pulled me against him. "And what will you do while I work?"
"Direct. Criticize. Tell you when your angles are wrong."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. "You're already doing that."
"Someone has to maintain standards."
His mouth found my neck. Bit gently. "Tonight I'm going to breed you until you can't criticize anything."
"Promises, promises."
He kept the promise. Twice. I fell asleep still locked to him, his seed warm in my belly, his offspring growing somewhere deep inside me.
Day sixteen. Fourteen days until the portal.
I woke before dawn, which was unusual. My body had settled into a rhythm of sleeping late and napping often, conserving energy for the pregnancy.
But something felt different. Wrong.
I lay still, listening. The Keep was quiet. Bruk was warm against my back, his arm draped over my belly. Outside, the wind had picked up, carrying sounds I couldn't quite identify.
Then I heard it. A scratching at the perimeter. Multiple sources. Moving.
"Bruk."
He was awake instantly. Alert. His arm tightened around me protectively.
"I hear them." His voice was low, dangerous. "Seven. Maybe eight. They're testing the walls."
The ferals. The ones he'd been tracking, the ones drawn by my scent.
"They're getting bolder," I said.
"You're pregnant. The scent has changed. They know now that you're fertile, that breeding you would produce viable offspring." His hand pressed against my belly. "They want what's growing inside you."
I'd known, abstractly, that my presence attracted ferals.
That being hunted was part of the deal I'd made when I stepped through the portal.
But hearing it stated so plainly, that creatures wanted to take me, wanted to breed me, wanted to claim the offspring already growing inside me, made my stomach clench.
"What do we do?"
"The Keep will hold. I designed it to withstand assault." He was already moving, rising from the sleeping platform, his body tensing for a fight. "But they're getting bolder. Testing more frequently. Eventually they'll attack in force."
"How many?"
"Now? Seven or eight. In a week? Could be fifteen. Twenty." He turned to look at me, his amber eyes serious. "They'll keep coming until you're too pregnant to attract them, or until I've killed them all."
I sat up. My hand went to my belly automatically, protective.
"Then we prepare," I said. "The Keep's defenses. The weak points I've identified. We reinforce everything, and we design traps."
"Traps?"
"I'm an engineer." I met his eyes. "I don't just build things. I understand how things break. And I understand how to make things that break other things."
He crossed to the corner where he kept his tools and came back with a sharpened bone shard. Handed it to me. For sketching. For planning.
We got to work.