Page 23 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

"The chair was me failing to think far enough ahead," he said. "Leaving the rest undone – that was the gesture."

I opened my mouth. Closed it.

Nobody had ever done anything like this for me. Not once, in twenty-eight years. Nobody had ever watched me struggle with something and then just... fixed it. Without being asked. Without expecting anything back.

I looked at the chair with its shortened legs. The table with its carved-in steps. The nest in the corner, built to my scale, in the warmest part of the room.

He'd started changing his world to fit me.

I had no idea where to put that.

"Tell me about your people," I said.

We were sitting in the main room – me in the modified chair, him on the floor beside me so our eyes were roughly level. He'd brought food again, simple things I could eat with my hands, and I was working my way through it slowly while my breasts ached with the first stirrings of needing relief again.

"What do you want to know?"

"The structure. Alphas, omegas, betas. You mentioned hierarchy. I want to understand how it works."

"Alphas are the dominant caste. We hold territory, make decisions, provide for omegas. Betas are–" He searched for words. "Support. Workers. They do not hold omegas or territory, but they are essential to the functioning of society."

"And omegas?"

"Omegas are–" He stopped. Started again. "Without omegas, there is nothing. No future. No young. No continuation of the species. An omega who produces is the highest status any Khorreth can have. Not the omega herself, the alpha who holds her. His status rises with her presence."

"So I make you more important. Socially."

"Yes. But that is not why–" His tail lashed once, frustrated. "I did not take you for status, Mara. I took you because you are mine. Because I knew you from a single trace of scent in a dataset, three rotations before I ever saw your face."

I thought about that. About the years he'd spent arranging to find me. About the certainty in his voice every time he said mine.

"What happens to omegas who aren't bonded? Who don't have an alpha?"

His jaw tightened. "They are taken. By whoever is strongest. There is no law to protect an unbonded omega. No recourse."

"But I'm bonded. To you."

"You are claimed. Not yet bonded." He looked at me steadily. "The bond-claim means I have first right to you. It means others cannot take you without challenging me. But the true bond, the permanent one, requires the mating bite. Until then, a higher-ranked alpha could still file a challenge."

"And if they won?"

"They would not win." His voice was flat. Certain. "I would die before I let anyone take you from me."

By rights it should have frightened me. It didn't, not really. What stayed with me was how plainly he said it, as if it were simple fact, as if protecting me were as natural as breathing.

"What do I do here?" I asked. "In this life. What's my role?"

He tilted his head. “I don't understand the question."

"What am I supposed to do? Every day. While you're doing whatever alphas do. What's my job?"

"You don't have a job."

"Everyone has a job. Everyone contributes something."

"You contribute everything." He reached out, his hand hovering near my knee. Asking. I nodded, and he let it rest there, warm and heavy. "You produce. I provide. You are tended. That is enough."

I stared at him.