Kerris
Day thirty. The portal opened at dawn.
I felt the shift before I saw it. A vibration that traveled through the bone beneath my feet. The same sensation I'd felt thirty days ago, when I'd stepped through from the other side and landed in a world of calcium and dust.
Bruk stood at the entrance to the Keep, watching the horizon where the light had begun to shimmer. His hand rested on my shoulder, warm and steady.
"You can still go," he said.
I looked at him. Eight feet of calcified armor, amber eyes that had watched me suffer and break and choose. The monster who'd hunted me through a maze, edged me until I crawled, bred me until I passed out. The builder who'd spent twenty cycles constructing a home for someone who might never come.
My partner. The father of the offspring growing inside me.
"I know," I said.
We walked to the portal together.
It hung in the air at the center of the territory, a shimmering oval of light that hadn't been there yesterday and wouldn't be there tomorrow. Through its surface, I could see hints of the human world. Sterile corridors, artificial lighting, the clean lines of a processing facility.
The debt was cleared. The contract was fulfilled. I'd survived thirty days in the Ossuary, and now I was free to return to human space with a clean slate and a new identity.
Free to return to a converted storage unit. To meal replacement bars. To a life of building things for people who didn't care about me.
I stepped closer to the portal. Close enough to feel its pull, its promise of escape.
Behind me, Bruk went still. Waiting. Always waiting.
I thought about my parents. About Jonah. About the 180,000 credits of debt that had been the excuse I'd used to come here. About the real reason: the need to disappear from a life where no one had ever chosen me.
I thought about the Keep. About the nursery with its twelve platforms, waiting for offspring. About the ventilation system I'd redesigned, the traps I'd built, the defensive network that had saved our lives.
I thought about the offspring growing inside me. Already two weeks along, if my calculations were correct. Already changing my body, preparing me for motherhood on an alien world.
I turned my back on the portal.
Bruk was watching me. His expression was unreadable, but I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hands had curled into fists at his sides. Twenty cycles of waiting, and this was the moment that would determine if the waiting had been worth it.
"I'm not going," I said.
He didn't move. "You're certain?"
"I'm certain." I walked back to him, stopping close enough to feel the heat radiating from his massive body. "I have a home now. A partner who builds things with me. An offspring who's going to need a nursery."
"The portal closes in minutes. Once it's gone..."
"I know." I reached up, touched his face. "I know what I'm choosing. A lifetime here, with you. No going back. No escape route."
"That doesn't frighten you?"
I thought about it. Really thought about it.
"No," I said. "What frightens me is the idea of going back. Of returning to a life where I was invisible. Where I built things for people who didn't deserve them. Where no one ever..."
He kissed me before I could finish the sentence.
The kiss was different this time. Not claiming. Not desperate. Tender. The kiss of someone who'd been given a gift he'd spent twenty cycles hoping for.
When he pulled back, the portal was flickering. Destabilizing. Beginning to close.
"Let me watch," I said. "I want to see it go."
We stood together, his arm around my shoulders, and watched the portal collapse in on itself. The shimmer condensed, brightened, and then vanished entirely, leaving nothing but empty air where escape had been.
Gone. My last connection to human space. My last chance to return to the life I'd left behind.
I felt nothing but relief.
"It's done," Bruk said.
"Yes." I turned to face him, pressed my body against his. "Now breed me."
His eyes darkened. "Here?"
"Here. Now. Where the portal was." I pulled at his armor, finding the gaps, feeling the heat of his skin underneath. "I want you to fill me in the exact spot where I chose to stay."
He didn't argue.
He laid me down on the bone surface, right where the portal had been. Stripped away the simple clothing I'd been wearing. Looked at my body, fuller now, rounder, obviously pregnant, with an expression of pure possession.
"Mine," he said. "You're mine now. Permanently."
"Yours," I agreed. "Now prove it."
He proved it.
Slow this time. Almost reverent. He entered me inch by inch, letting me feel every ridge, every texture, every bit of the cock that had bred me and would breed me again.
I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him deeper, wanting all of him, wanting to be filled in the place where I'd made my final choice.
He fucked me slowly, deeply, his forehead pressed against mine, his eyes locked with mine. Not the desperate rutting of survival or the hard claiming of victory. This was worship.
"I've waited twenty cycles for you," he said, his voice rough. "And you stayed."
"I stayed." The words came out broken, punctuated by the pleasure of his slow thrusts. "I chose you. I chose the Keep. I chose this life."
His knot began to swell. I felt it pressing against my entrance, that familiar stretch, that burn that had become pleasure.
"Push out," he said.
I pushed. The knot slid inside me, locking us together again. Then he came, flooding my already-pregnant womb with seed, marking me, claiming me, filling me in the exact spot where the portal had closed.
I came with him. A soft, rolling orgasm that went on and on, my walls clenching around his knot while our offspring grew somewhere deep inside.
When it was over, we lay locked together on the bone surface, looking up at the pale sky of the Ossuary.
"The nursery needs finishing," I said eventually. "Three more platforms, at least. Maybe four."
"Four?" His voice was curious.
"My calculations suggest multiples are likely. The tonic, the repeated breeding, my body's response to your biology." I touched my belly, where his knot pulsed inside me. "We might need more than one platform."
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. "Then we build more."
"We build more," I agreed. "We build everything."
The portal was gone. The ferals were dead. And somewhere inside me, our offspring grew, unaware of the future waiting for them.
A future I'd chosen. A home I'd helped build. A life worth staying for.
I closed my eyes and let myself rest, still locked to my mate, still full of him, still exactly where I wanted to be.