Page 11 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

I could smell that he was happy to see me.

"You're awake," he said.

"Obviously." I crossed my arms over my chest, which was a mistake, because it pressed my newly sensitive breasts together and sent another jolt through me. I uncrossed them. "How long was I out?"

"Thirty-six hours."

"Right." I looked down at myself again. "And in that time, my body has apparently decided to–" I gestured vaguely. "Grow."

His eyes dropped to my chest. Not with hunger, exactly, more as if he were noting the changes, weighing them.

"The serum is working," he said. "Your body is adapting."

"Adapting. Yes. That's one word for it."

He crouched in the doorway, bringing himself down to my level. It was becoming familiar, that motion, the way he folded his massive frame to meet my eyes rather than looming over me. I wasn't sure if it was consideration or instinct.

"Are you in pain?" he asked.

"No." I thought about it. "No, not pain. Just–" How to describe it? The sensitivity. The warmth. The way my body felt as if it belonged to someone else, someone who hadn't bothered to leave instructions. "Everything's very loud. Sensory-wise."

He breathed in. "Your scent has changed."

"Has it?"

"Yes." His tail moved faster, a quick flick. "Stronger. Sweeter. You smell–" He stopped, and the small translator disc at his throat hissed static where the word should have been. He wore it always now, a dark coin on a cord; I'd half stopped noticing it.

"I smell what?"

"Ready," he said, and the word landed strangely, loaded with meaning the translator couldn't quite carry.

I decided not to ask ready for what. I had a feeling I already knew.

He brought me food.

Real food, not the nutrient bars I'd been eating for the last few days. Some kind of grain, cooked soft, and strips of meat I couldn't identify and decided not to ask about. Vegetables that were the wrong colour but tasted like something between carrots and sweet potato. I ate until my stomach ached and then kept eating, my body demanding fuel for whatever changes were still happening inside me.

Keth watched.

He did that a lot, I was learning. Sat nearby and watched me with those huge dark eyes, his attention fixed on me as if I were the most interesting thing in the universe. It should have been creepy. It probably was creepy. But there was a quality to his watching that made it feel less like surveillance and more like–

The closest word was reverence, which sounded ridiculous. You didn't revere someone eating alien porridge in a padded cell.

"You're staring," I said, around a mouthful of grain.

"Yes."

"It's weird."

"I don't understand weird."

"Strange. Unsettling. Makes me want to throw food at you."

"You should not throw food. You need to eat."

"I know I need to eat. I'm eating." I shoved another spoonful into my mouth for emphasis. "I'm just saying, the staring is–"

"I like looking at you."