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’vereceived 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 lipsparted 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 beforeshe 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.”
