Chapter 1
KAZAN
The annoying flea from the matchmaking office thought he could keep me from Maisie. When I’d insisted on a meeting, he’d made some excuse about ‘inoculations’ and ‘an assimilation briefing’ that made an immediate meeting impossible.
Lies.
It had taken me three days to finally get the meeting. Theeodus had bought himself a delay. He had not bought himself my patience, and that well had never run deep to begin with.
New Knossos wasn’t built for waiting. It was built for work.
The main street ran wide and rutted, packed dirt churned to mud where the loggers dragged their wood sleds in from the tree line, and the buildings hunched along either side in heavy dark timber, low-roofed and broad-doored to let a bull pass without ducking.
Smoke from Lorkin’s forge hung over the eastern end.
The market crowded the west, stalls of figs and cured goat and woodwork still smelling of the saw.
My people filled the street, broad-shouldered males in flannel and canvas, horns catching the sunlight, voices pitched in the low rumble that passed for our quiet talk.
Here and there a human female moved among them, swallowed in a mate’s borrowed coat, looking small and warm and watched over. There weren’t many. A handful, no more. Enough to make a male notice how empty the rest of his life still felt.
I noticed. I shouldered through the crowd toward the agency office without slowing, and the males who knew me stepped clear.
The Alien Matchmaking Agency had taken the narrow storefront between the apothecary and the cider house, a clean prefab box that looked wrong wedged between honest timber.
The door was sized for humans. I had to turn my horns to get through it, and I let it bang against the frame on the way in. Inside smelled of cheap paper and the sterile bite of off-world cleaning solvent. A counter ran the length of the room. Behind it, someone rose to meet me.
The woman behind the counter was... a minotaur. The sight of her stopped me cold, one hand still flat against the door.
I hadn’t stood this close to one of our females in longer than I let myself count.
Her hide was a dusky gold, her horns shorter than mine and filed clean, and she watched me with the unbothered steadiness of someone who had seen larger males than me lose their tempers and live to regret it.
The shock of her sat heavily in my chest.
I would not let her presence distract me.
“Maisie,” I growled. My tail flicked behind me in irritation. If Remmen insisted I take a woman, I would. But there was only one I wanted.
“My name is Nezara,” she nodded her horns at me.
“And you must be Kazan. You gave poor Theeodus a fright.” She set her hands flat on the counter, unhurried, and tipped her chin in a way I recognized, the same easing tone I used on a spooked goat.
“Sit if you like. Or stand and glower, that’s fine too.
We’ve received a shipment of a dozen brides.
I should think you could find an appropriate match, at least for the trial period. ”
Those women had been fragile things, tittering creatures who had no place here. I would bet good coin that most of them went home unmated when the month was out.
“I’ve made my choice.” I barely recognized my voice.
Nezara sighed. “Very well, but we have encountered a slight paperwork issue with Maisie.” She came out from behind the counter and crossed to a bank of filing crates against the wall.
She flipped through a stack of hard-copy forms, paper rasping under her fingers, then pulled one free and frowned at it.
“What sort of paperwork issue?” I had slaughtered thousands in the arena. I had freed my people from slavery.
I wouldn’t let a little ink keep me from what I wanted.
“It’s simply a flag on her account. I’ll need my agents back on Earth to review her file and confirm that she is an eligible candidate. If you take her now, I cannot promise you will be able to keep her as your bride.”
“Bring her out.” The words came flat and final.
Whatever Earth wanted to dredge up about her, whatever box on her file had a mark beside it, none of it changed the only thing that mattered, which was that she was here and I was not leaving without her.
Nezara held my stare a moment longer, then set the paper down and called something soft through the door behind the counter.
Maisie came out slowly, the way she’d come down the ramp, like the ground couldn’t be trusted to stay where she’d left it.
Up close she was smaller than the dock had let me believe and softer too, the gray sweater slipping again off one shoulder to show a stretch of pale skin I had no business admiring.
Then she lifted her eyes to me and stopped walking entirely.
They went wide, hazel gone bright in the low light, and her lips parted around a breath she didn’t quite take.
Her scent reached me a half second after, warm and sweet and threaded with rain, and it wound through the air and settled somewhere behind my ribs.
My hands curled at my sides without my say-so.
Mine. The word arrived before reason did, and reason didn’t argue.
“Maisie, this is Kazan,” Nezara introduced me. “He owns an orchard just outside of town and would like to invite you to his home for a trial period. Do you consent to the matching?”
I watched Maisie’s throat move as she swallowed thickly. “Yes, I do.”
Nezara nodded. “Wonderful, then it’s done.”
I held out my hand and couldn’t breathe until Maisie placed her own in mine. Her fingers disappeared against my palm, cool and slight, and I closed mine around them with a care that cost me something, every old lesson about my own strength loud in my skull at once. “Let’s go.”
Outside, the morning mist had thinned to a silver haze, and the market noise rolled back over us.
I led her down the street to where I’d left the truck, and I felt the exact moment she saw it.
Her steps faltered. It was a minotaur rig, built tall and heavy on tires that came up past her waist. Beside her compact frame the thing looked absurd, a mountain of dark metal meant to haul fig crates and wood, not carry a woman who’d snap if I closed a fist too hard.
She studied the running board, which sat higher than her knee, and then she studied me.
“I can lift you,” I offered.
Maisie didn’t take the offer, and she didn’t complain.
She set her bag on her shoulder, gripped the handhold, planted one sneaker on the tire, and hauled herself up into the cab with a grunt of effort, ending up half-sprawled across the bench before she righted herself.
Something in me eased at that, a small, private warmth. She could handle herself. Good.
“Ceres-9 is a good place,” I told her. “Peaceful. Clean. We don’t have a lot of trouble here. It’s a good home.”
Maisie’s lips twitched like she was trying to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it. “That’s what the agency said.”
I wanted to ask what had brought her so far away from her home, but I forced the curiosity away; there would be time for that later. If I pushed her now and she’d close up tighter, and I’d learned long ago that some things only opened when you stopped reaching for them.
The truck rumbled to life, and we rolled out past the last of the timber buildings onto the road that wound through the woods toward my orchard.
And that was when her scent truly began its work on me.
Trapped in the cab, it had nowhere to go. It pooled around me, thick and sweet, deepening every time she shifted on the bench or pushed a loose strand of hair off her face. My nostrils flared, the ring clinking against my lip, and a heat coiled low and dark in my gut and pulled tight.
I kept my eyes on the road. It didn’t help. I could hear her breathing. I could hear the small sounds she made adjusting the bag in her lap, and each one dragged my focus back to her like a hook behind my sternum.
The wanting wasn’t gentle.
It was the oldest thing in me, older than the orchard, older than the rebellion, a low animal drive I’d thought the arena had burned out of me for good. I wanted to pull the truck off the road into the soft dark under the trees.
I wanted to lift her out of that seat and settle her across my thighs and bury my face in the curve of her throat and just breathe until the scent of her was the only thing in my whole ruined world.
I wanted to rut.
The need of it sat behind my teeth, raw and unspeakable, and I clamped my jaw down against the growl that wanted out.
I held onto the steering wheel so hard that I feared I would leave imprints.
Whatever this problem was, I would solve it.
Maisie might not have known it yet, but she was mine.
And I wasn’t letting go.