Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
“Your people are dying?”
Melissa repeated Becsul’s words back to him, letting them hang in the air of her cell. She watched his face and tried to read his expression. Sorrow, but also what appeared to be shame.
Good. Whatever terrible reason had brought her here, at least he had the decency to feel bad about it.
“The Red Death swept through our world twenty years ago.” His voice was quiet, rough. “It killed millions. Most of our females died within the first year. The survivors…” He paused, his jaw tightening. “There were so few. And they kept dying. One by one, until there were none left.”
A chill settled in her stomach. The Vedeckians had referenced the destruction caused by the plague, but they hadn’t mentioned an entire race dying.
She understood the mathematics of extinction, and understood what it meant for a species to lose its ability to reproduce.
But she also understood what it meant to be sitting in a cell with her infant son, while an alien told her why she’d been kidnapped.
“So you need women.”
“We need mates.” The distinction seemed important to him.
His tail—that damned tail that kept trying to touch her—curled tighter behind him.
“Among my people, reproduction requires more than physical compatibility. There must be what we call a mate bond between the male and female. Without it, conception is impossible.”
“That sounds like mysticism, not science.”
“No. In our case, it is an actual physical response. Without that bond a male cannot find true… completion with a female and a child is impossible.” He looked down at Robbie, still sleeping peacefully in his arms, and something in his expression softened.
“We have always believed that such a bond could only occur between a Cire male and a Cire female. But apparently the Council has heard… rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“That others had succeeded. That Cire males had formed bonds with females from other species and had children with them.”
Reproduction within a species could be problematic, but across species? It sounded even more farfetched. “Are you trying to tell me that there are half-Cire babies running around out there?”
“I’m telling you that I have just learned that the Council has reason to believe it’s possible.
” His eyes met hers, and she saw the weight of everything he wasn’t saying.
“I am unsure about the bond aspect, but a scientist claims to have documented a case of successful interspecies breeding. His nephew is here in charge of this facility.”
“Which is why I am here as well. Because now you’re desperate enough to try anything.”
“Yes.”
The honesty of the admission hit her harder than she expected. She had been prepared for lies, for evasion, for the kind of clinical detachment she’d seen from her Vedeckian captors. But not this raw, painful truth…
Don’t feel sorry for him. He’s part of this. He’s one of them.
But even as she thought it, her eyes were drawn to the protective way he held Robbie. Like the baby was something precious rather than an inconvenience.
“I’m sorry for what your people have suffered,” she said carefully. “I am. But I didn’t cause it, and I don’t deserve to be punished for it.”
“No. You don’t.”
“Then let me go.”
“I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“I mean I can’t.” His voice hardened on the word. “The people in charge of this project will not let you go. If I tried to release you, I would be punished and perhaps even eliminated. They will not allow their last hope to simply walk away.”
Her hands were shaking, and she pressed them flat against her thighs to hide it.
“So you expect me to have a Cire child.”
The words came out flat and brutal. He flinched, and his tail lashed behind him before he brought it back under control.
“That is the hope, yes.”
“And how exactly do you plan to accomplish that?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice, remembering the examinations and the casual violation of her autonomy.
“Am I going to be strapped down while some Cire soldier does his duty for the good of the species? Or is it more clinical than that—artificial insemination in a sterile room, like breeding livestock?”
He flinched again.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I was only brought in yesterday.” The frustration in his voice sounded genuine. “I was told about the project and assigned to oversee security. But the medical protocols…” He shook his head. “I haven’t been briefed on the specifics.”
“How convenient.”
“It’s the truth. I suspect your first… suggestion is impossible for the reason I mentioned, but I don’t know how the second would work either. Our sperm loses viability almost as soon as it leaves our body. That is why our previous artificial breeding attempts have been failures.”
She laughed—a harsh, ugly sound that made Robbie stir against Becsul’s chest. She forced herself to take a breath and lower her voice.
“Do you know what I do? What my job was, before your people’s friends grabbed me off the street?
” She didn’t wait for him to answer. “I was a doctor. I ran a fertility clinic. I spent twelve years helping people have children. People who thought they’d never be parents, who’d given up hope.
I gave them hope. I gave them families.”
“Melissa—”
“I chose to have a child alone because I wanted to be a mother more than anything in the world. I did it myself, on my own terms, because I believed that every person has the right to decide what happens to their own body.” Her voice was shaking now.
“And now you’re telling me that I’m going to be used as a broodmare for a dying alien race, and you don’t even know how they plan to do it? ”
“I will find out.” His voice was low, intense. “And I swear to you, whatever the method, I will protect you.”
“Protect me? You can’t even let me leave this facility.”
“I can make sure no one hurts you. No one touches you without your consent.” His tail had escaped his control again, curling towards her. “I don’t know why, but since I walked into this room, I have felt…” He stopped, clearly struggling for words. “You matter. You and your son. You matter to me.”
She stared at him. The alien warrior, towering and powerful, cradling her baby against his broad chest. His tail reaching for her like it had a will of its own. His black eyes filled with something that looked almost like devotion.
This is insane.
“That’s a nice sentiment.” She made her voice hard. Cold. “But sentiment doesn’t open doors. Sentiment doesn’t get me home.”
Pain flickered across his face, quickly hidden.
“I know.”
“Then why bother promising?”
“Because it’s all I have to offer.” He looked down at Robbie again, and she saw his throat work as he swallowed. “Because when I hold your son, I feel like I’m holding something that matters. Something worth fighting for. And when I look at you…”
He stopped and took a breath. When he spoke again, his voice was carefully controlled.
“I should return him to you. You need rest.”
He crossed the room in three long strides and bent to transfer Robbie into her arms. The brush of his subtly textured skin against hers sent a spark of electricity down her spine that she quickly suppressed.
The baby made a small sound of protest at the transfer but settled quickly against her chest, his familiar weight both comfort and anchor.
But as Becsul straightened, his tail finally achieved its goal—sliding around her waist in a gentle hug before he jerked it back with a sound of frustration.
“I apologize. Again.”
“Does it always do that?”
“No.” The admission seemed to cost him. “Only with you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what to do with the information, or with the strange flutter it caused in her chest.
Stop it. He’s your captor. This is probably some kind of trick.
But his eyes, when they met hers, held nothing but sincerity.
“I’ll return tomorrow with the things you requested. Clothes. Something to read. And I’ll arrange for you to go outside.”
“I won’t say thank you.”
“I don’t expect you to.”
He turned towards the door, and she watched the way he moved, powerful and controlled, every motion deliberate. At the threshold, he paused.
“Melissa.”
“What?”
“I meant what I said. Every word. Whatever happens, I will protect you and your son. Even from my own people, if I must.”
Then he was gone, the door sliding shut behind him with a soft hiss, and she was alone again.
Robbie squirmed against her chest, making hungry sounds as he began to wake up, and she adjusted him automatically, bringing him to her breast. He latched on with the single-minded focus of a hungry infant and she breathed a sigh of relief that he was feeding properly this time.
He’s gone. Robbie’s eating. Everything’s fine.
But the cell felt different now. Emptier. The silence felt lonely in a way it hadn’t before.
She tried to summon her anger, her outrage at everything that had been done to her. And it was still there—the fear, the fury, the desperate need to escape. But layered over it now was something more complicated.
When I look at you…
He hadn’t finished the sentence, but he hadn’t needed to. She had seen it in his eyes, in the way his tail kept reaching for her, and in the tenderness with which he’d held her son.
This is insane, she told herself again. He’s part of the system that kidnapped me. He’s complicit in everything.
But he had also been honest with her when he didn’t have to be.
He had promised to protect her when he had nothing to gain.
He had held Robbie with more gentleness than she’d seen from anyone since her capture.
And for a moment, standing there in the middle of her cell, the three of them together, it had felt almost like…
No. Don’t think it. Don’t even let yourself imagine it.
She closed her eyes and focused on the sensation of Robbie nursing, on the solid reality of his small body against hers.
Her son. Her responsibility. The only thing that mattered.
But even as she told herself that, she couldn’t shake the image of Becsul’s face as he’d talked about his dying people.
The grief in his voice. The desperate hope.
We’re not so different, she thought unwillingly. Both of us fighting for the people we love. Both of us trapped by circumstances we didn’t choose.
Robbie unlatched with a satisfied sigh, and she lifted him to her shoulder, rubbing his back in slow circles.
“It’s just you and me, baby,” she murmured against his soft hair. “That’s all that matters. You and me.”
But even as she said it, she was listening for footsteps in the corridor outside. Waiting, despite everything, for the door to open again.