Page 7 of The Alien Minotaur's Bride

I looked down at the datapad. The screen showed a dense block of text I'd been working through for the last hour, some kind of historical document about the Claiming Serum. The translation was rough, full of gaps and guesses, but the broad strokes were clear enough.

The Khorreth were dying.

It wasn't quick, and it wasn't dramatic. But their omega population had been falling for generations, and about fifty years ago they'd hit some kind of critical threshold. Too few omegas, too few births. A species looking at its own extinction and scrambling for a way out.

The Claiming Serum was the way out.

"You developed this," I said, tapping the screen, "because your own omegas are nearly extinct."

"Yes."

"And it works on what? Any species?"

"Compatible species." He shifted, his hooves clicking against the floor. "Not all. The serum requires a biological foundation. Certain hormonal structures. Certain..." He trailed off, searching. "Receptiveness."

"And humans are compatible."

"Some Peritans. Not all." His eyes found mine. "You are."

"Because you smelled me in a dataset."

"Your scent signature indicated compatibility. I confirmed it when I–" He stopped. His tail flicked, quick and sharp, and went still. "When I took you. Your response to my scent. The way your body–"

"Went weird," I finished. "Yeah. I noticed."

I'd been trying not to think about that. The strange calm that had washed over me in the cargo bay. The way my shoulders had dropped, my jaw unclenched, my whole nervous system apparently deciding we were safe before my brain had any input. I'd told myself it was shock. A fear response gone sideways.

But I'd been on the ship three days now, and every time he came into the cell, the same thing happened. That low warmth in my belly. The loosening in my chest. My body easing towards him, the way it had started to no matter how I fought it.

It was bloody irritating.

"The Claiming Serum," I said, dragging my attention back to the datapad. "It does what, exactly? Turns me into one of your omegas?"

"It restructures your biology to be fully receptive." He said it carefully, as if reciting something he'd memorised. "Heat cycles. Scent bonding. Physical compatibility. The ability to produce."

"Lactation."

"Yes."

"And pregnancy, presumably."

Something in him warmed.

"Yes."

I stared at the screen. The text blurred in front of me, the translation flickering as the device struggled with a concept it couldn't quite render.

Heat cycles. I knew what that meant. I'd read enough terrible fiction in my life. The uncontrollable biological need, the fever, the–

I put the datapad down.

"No," I said.

Keth tilted his head. "No?"

"I'm not taking your serum. I'm not restructuring my biology. I'm not becoming your omega, or whatever it is you're expecting."

"You don't understand–"