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“You didn’t have to chase him off like that.”
“Juliet, we must converse.”
She finally looks at me, her eyes flashing and angry. “Oh, now we must converse? After you’ve gotten what you wanted and knocked me up?”
Why does she speak in riddles all the time? “How have I knocked you?”
“Got me pregnant, spread your seed, put a damn baby inside me and done this to me.” She thrusts her arms out towards me.
Some of the human skin has peeled away completely, exposing delicate golden scales. It is not everywhere, though. Only on the outsides of her upper arms and her forearms, and then it grafts quite naturally back into her human skin.
I reach out to touch the scales but she jerks her arm away from me.
I shake my head in wonder and then meet her eyes again. “Juliet, I had no idea that such changes would occur in your body. And I did not expect you to become pregnant at all. You said that your con dom would prevent such a thing.”
“Yeah right,” she scoffs. “You knew it wouldn’t work.”
I grit my teeth. Normally I would not allow an accusation of lying to go unchallenged, but Juliet does not know my world. So I will try to explain. “How would I know that? All we know of humanity is what we have seen from afar. I am the first to venture into the wilds of your world.”
“So you say,” she shoots back.
“I tire of your accusations.” I’m growing frustrated in spite of myself. “I never spoke false to you.”
She scoffs again and so I continue, “Yes, there were omissions. I did not tell you the Draci’s true intent when coming to this planet. Our sun went dark. We had no choice but to flee and try to find a new home.”
“So you are here to take over the planet.” She looks at me in horror.
“No! Not like you are thinking.” I shake my head. “It was not just that our sun and planet died. As a race, we have become infertile. No babies have been born to our kind in two hundred years. I told you we were here so we could integrate new genetic material and that is true.”
She frowns and I continue with what I know might be the hardest for her to hear. But there is nothing else other than to say it.
“We hope to breed with your race so that we might continue ours. It is our hope that we can integrate with your population and help this precious planet with our advanced technological resources so that it may last many more millennia than it might have if we never showed up. We are reversing your global warming, do you not see? We can each help the other have a long future. Is that not something worth fighting for?”
She is quiet, biting her lip as her head shakes quickly back and forth. Finally, she looks up at me again. “Why should I believe you? You lied about everything. You aren’t some poor man struggling in a lower caste. You’re the son of the king.”
“I’m the bastard of a king,” I explode, turning away from her, unable to watch her response to my greatest shame. “Shunned and reviled. If I had not exiled myself, I would have been killed in some palace plot or other. The Queen has always wanted me dead.”
And then the final truth. “The only reason I was allowed to take on this mission is because I am completely expendable.”
I look out the window to the earth below. “Should I succeed, then the first of the new race would be of the King’s blood. But should the experimental combining of DNA have failed, my death would be of no great loss to anyone.”
“God, Shak, don’t say that.”
I frown, finally looking at her. “It is nothing but the truth.”
She shakes her head. “Well my truth is that I was never meant to have kids. You want this thing inside of me so bad, you can have it. Just get it out of me!”
Then she covers her face with her hands. “All I’ve ever done is get with guys who treat me like shit. I should know by now never to trust my guy radar. Last time it led me into the nest of a motorcycle gang and this time I’m in even deeper shit.”
She drops her hands, laughing mirthlessly. “And I always swore I’d be nothing like my mama. Ha!”
I do not understand all of her words but one thing I hear loud and clear. “This child is no mistake,” I growl, my voice low. “And you would abandon it? You care so little for the life growing inside you?”
Her eyes flash. “I don’t want it!”
“As my mother and father did not want me.” I step into her, backing her against the wall. My chest brushes hers and her breath hitches at my closeness. It is not from fear. I am beginning to scent her on the air. My closeness affects her as much as she does me. “But I will not have my child grow up so. You are mine. Both of you. And you will not abandon us.”
