Page 45 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

And for the first time since I'd woken up in that padded containment space on his ship, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

CHAPTER 14

TERMS AND CONDITIONS

The dwelling was quiet.

Late afternoon light filtered through the high windows, casting warm patterns across the floor. I was in my nest – my nest, the one I'd rebuilt three times now, adjusting the walls and the layering of furs until it was exactly right. Keth had watched me do it each time, his tail sweeping in slow, contented arcs, and he'd never said a word about the instinct that drove me to rearrange bedding like my life depended on it.

I didn't fight it anymore.

Outside, I could hear the distant sounds of the settlement – other Khorreth moving through their days, the low hum of machinery, the occasional rumble of conversation too far away to distinguish. Inside, there was only the soft rhythm of my own breathing and the warmth of the furs around me.

Vorreth had retreated.

Word had come three days after the bonding – formal notification that the challenge had been withdrawn, all claims to me relinquished. Keth had read the message with his jaw tight and his tail lashing, and then he'd set it aside and pulled me into his arms and held me until the tension drained out of both of us.

He wouldn't try again. A mated omega couldn't be challenged. The bond was legally inviolable, written into Khorreth law at the deepest level. And even if the law hadn't protected me, Keth's reputation after the facility incident would have. Everyone knew now what he was capable of when someone threatened his mate.

I was safe.

The word still felt strange in my mind. Safe. Not the temporary safety of a locked door or a functioning air recycler. Not the conditional safety of competence and vigilance and always watching for what might go wrong next. Real safety. Permanent safety. The kind that came from belonging somewhere.

I shifted in the nest, adjusting the furs around my shoulders, and my hand drifted to my stomach.

I'd known for three days.

The scent had changed first – a sweetness underneath my usual warmth, something rich and new that I couldn't identify until Keth went very still one morning during the milking and his eyes dropped to my belly with an expression I'd never seen on his face before.

"Mara," he'd said, his voice strange and rough. "You're–"

"I know." I'd put my hand over his where it rested on my hip. "I can smell it too."

He'd cried. Big, silent tears rolling down his face while his tail swept in wild, joyful arcs. He'd pressed his forehead to my stomach and breathed deep, and I'd felt his whole body shudder with something that went beyond happiness into territory I didn't have words for.

Reverence. Wonder. A devotion that had somehow found room to grow even deeper.

I was carrying his child.

The pregnancy was early – barely begun, my body just starting to adjust to the new demands being made of it. But the changes were already noticeable if you knew where to look. My breasts were fuller, heavier, my production increasing to meet needs that didn't exist yet. My appetite had sharpened. My nest-building instinct had intensified to the point where I'd spent an entire afternoon rearranging every soft surface in the dwelling before I even realised what I was doing.

And underneath all of it, that new sweetness in my scent. The unmistakable marker of what was growing inside me.

I lay in the nest and let my hand rest on my stomach, feeling the warmth of my own skin.

It wasn't showing yet. Wouldn't for a while, according to Keth, though the Khorreth pregnancy timeline was faster than human – weeks, not months. Eventually my belly would grow round and heavy, and I'd move on all fours in the nest because the weight distributed better, and Keth would carry me everywhere else because that was what Khorreth alphas did with their pregnant mates.

The thought of being so dependent, so unable to manage my own body – it should have alarmed me.

It didn't.

I thought about the years on the relay station. The cold that never quite left my bones. The hunger that lived underneath everything, no matter how carefully I rationed. The exhaustion of being solely responsible for my own survival, day after day, year after year.

I'd mistaken endurance for peace. I knew that now. I'd been so proud of needing no one that I'd never let myself imagine what it might feel like to be needed by someone. To be tended. To be the centre of someone's world instead of a lone figure at the edge of everything.

You produce. I provide. You are tended. That is enough.

When Keth had first said those words, I'd found them offensive. Reducing me to a function. Stripping away my autonomy.