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My ear navigator tells me to turn left and I am alone with my disturbing thoughts as I walk the last three blocks to my destination.
I look up at the sign. 3rd Street Coffee House. Coffee is one of the things Ezo is terribly curious to try. If nothing else, I can purchase a cup and tell him about the experience.
I walk in and join the line at the counter, proud of myself for remembering the social etiquette. Humans are very fond of lining up one after the other for some reason.
There is a female ahead of me and I wonder if she will behave like the group of women outside.
I tense, waiting for her to accost me.
But she takes no notice of me and when she gets to the front of the line, begins to talk easily with the male behind the counter.
My head tilts, curious as I listen and watch them interact.
Ezo says that all the males and females on this planet think about is copulation. Are these two copulation partners, I wonder?
Before I can make a determination, the female spins and run straight into my chest.
“Oh!” she says but then she stops, frozen as she stares up at me. “Hi.”
I, too, am stopped in place.
This female is nothing like the others I have seen. She is petite, with long flowing black hair. Her features are as foreign to me as any humans, but for some reason I find her face pleasing. Before I can think better of it, my tongue sneaks out over my lips to scent my surroundings.
But all I can smell is her.
And I’ve never scented anything so delicious in my life.
MINE.
It’s all but a convulsion that tears through my body.
What? No! No, this cannot be happening!
My denials are weak, though.
Far louder is the cry: Mine, mine, mine, mine, MINE, MINE.
By all the ancients, I’ve heard of this, of course. All Draci have. It is the hoarding impulse—the ancient curse of the Draci that caused so many wars and deaths among my kind. Kingdoms rose and fell because warring Draci became so possessive of their treasures, they sent out armies to demolish any who ventured near their borders.
But hoarding was one of the things those geneticists had supposedly bred out of us hundreds of years before I was born.
“Next!” shouts the male behind the counter and the female jumps.
“Oh, sorry.”
And then she scurries away. Just like that. As if my planet did not just tilt on its axis.
I stare after her.
The male behind the counter laughs. “I know man, believe me, I know. But Juliet’s not the kind of girl to be impressed by a lot of muscles.”
“Juliet?” I whisper.
The male just shakes his head. “Dude, I’m telling you, lost cause. What can I get for you?”
“I will have what she had. Juliet.” I like the sound of her name on my tongue. I would like much more of her on my tongue.
I have had only the tiniest scent of her essence, mixed with a hundred other competing fragrances.
What would it be like to taste her skin? I can only imagine the explosion of sensation such an experience might bring.
It is difficult but I manage to focus long enough to exchange currency and then pull myself away to sit at a table nearby the female, Juliet. I do not trust myself to be too close to her at the moment.
The hoarding instinct—I cannot believe how strong it is. No wonder our ancestors collected vast stores of gold and other precious items to hoard deep in the mountains in the ancient times.
Have others felt this or is it simply because I am an aberration now? Did the human DNA somehow trigger it?
A sudden beeping in my ear distracts me from my thoughts.
Target in range. Target in range.
I look back towards the counter and there she is. The female I am meant to target. The female with the ideal DNA. I recognize her face from the scans I was shown.
Then my head swings back to my Juliet.
No. They got it wrong.
I cannot mate with anyone but Juliet. I am sick at the thought of anyone else but her.
Once Draci mate, in almost all circumstances, we mate for life. It is why my bastardom was such a shock to the royal court. Why did my father abandon my mother and marry another, even when she carried his kit? But then again, First’s mother, the Queen, is famously the most cunning of the Draci.
Still, this human and I have not even touched, much less mated. So why do I feel so drawn to her?
First’s voice comes over my ear com. “Affirm that the target is in range.”
My teeth grind at his voice in my ear. The fact that he has been chosen as my liaison to the ship is another stone in my gullet. I pick up the large flimsy paper with human scrawl covering it. A newspaper, the word pops in my head.
