Page 28 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

CHAPTER 9

I FOUND HIS OFF SWITCH

The heat came early.

I knew it the moment I woke – that familiar warmth pooling in my belly, spreading outward through my limbs. But it was different this time. Sharper. The last heat had built slowly over hours, a rising tide I could track and brace against. This one had already crested by the time I opened my eyes.

I lay in the nest, breathing carefully, trying to assess. My skin was flushed, oversensitive, feeling every individual fibre of the furs beneath me. My breasts ached with the pressure of needing to be emptied, but underneath that was a deeper ache – lower, hotter, impossible to ignore.

And underneath all of it: Vorreth.

Not his scent – that had faded hours ago. But the memory of it, the threat of it. My body had read his presence as danger, and now it was responding the way serum-changed bodies apparently did to danger.

By demanding safety. By demanding Keth.

I could smell him from here. Somewhere in the dwelling, moving through rooms I couldn't see, his scent threading through the air like a lifeline. Sun-warmed earth, musk, the green note beneath it. The smell of the only safe thing in this entire world.

I pushed myself upright. The motion made my head spin, made the heat flare brighter, but I got my feet under me and stood anyway.

I wasn't going to lie here and wait for it to take me. Not this time.

I found him in the workshop.

He was bent over some piece of equipment, his back to me, the thick fur across his shoulders catching the light from the window above. His tail moved in slow, steady sweeps – focused, content, unaware.

He turned before I could speak. He caught my scent and his expression changed – concern, then understanding, then something darker and warmer that made my skin tighten.

"It came early," he said.

"I noticed."

"The threat." His eyes swept over me, assessing. "Your body perceived danger. This is the response. It happens, sometimes, when–"

"I know why it happened." I stepped into the room. My legs felt unsteady, my body too hot, but I kept moving. "I don't need an explanation."

"What do you need?"

I stopped in front of him. Tilted my head back to meet his eyes – those huge dark eyes, patient and warm and waiting for whatever I would give him.

"You," I said.

His tail went still.

"Mara…”

"Don't ask me if I'm sure. Don't ask me if this is the heat talking, or if I'm making a choice I'll regret, or if I understand what I'm doing." I reached up, my hand finding the warm fur at his shoulder, fingers sinking into the dense softness. "I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you. Right now, on purpose, because I want to."

His chest vibrated with that low rumble I was learning to love.

"Say it again," he said.

"I want you."

He moved.

He carried me to the main room.

One arm scooped me up, tucked me against his chest, my face pressed to the thick fur of his shoulder. I could feel his heartbeat under my cheek – slow and steady, even now, even with my scent flooding the air around us. The control he was exerting made something in my chest ache.