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“The Danickan fae are descended from humans, actually—one of your planet’s colony ships crashed there.” He rolled his shoulders and waggled his head again as if shaking off the thought. “But my people are different. We evolved on my planet from the beginning. That’s why, if you and I choose to mate and want to have children, we'll need to go through a gene modification procedure.”
He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, gauging my response. I simply nodded, though part of me wanted to ask questions about that. But first I wanted to hear about this magick business.
“We are a warlike people and having magick powers simply exacerbated that issue. We went to war with one another, first on the tribal level, then as nations.”
“I’m familiar with that kind of history,” I murmured.
“The longer we battled against one another, the darker our powers became. More and more of our people were born with the ability to use their powers only in opposition to others—never for the greater good, but all too often, to our entire species’ detriment.”
“That sounds pretty rough,” I ventured. Goosebumps sprouted on the back of my neck, and I rubbed at it gently. It was the same thing that happened when I felt like I was being watched. Only this time, I think it was Kaio’s story sending chills through me.
“And of course, the most powerful and the strongest moved more and more to gain power only for themselves. Until my great-grandfather decided to unite the nations and outlaw dark magicks altogether.”
“Dark magicks?”
“Any kind of magical power used to harm other beings.”
My mind raced. So what he had done earlier—was that dark magick? I opened my mouth to ask, but Kaio began speaking quickly, as if he knew what I was going to ask and wanted to avoid answering the question.
Which he probably does, actually.
“Mating magick is one of the few powers that virtually every member of my species maintains. When we find our lifemate—or, in a few cases, our lifemates, our inherent power swirls through us and enters our mate, binding us together forever.”
“Lifemates? Your people have polygamy?”
He turned the word over in his mind, taking it apart and, I presumed, figuring out what it meant in his own language.
“That word seems to imply multiple wives. My people don’t make that distinction—and we do not place restrictions on the number of mates any member of our society may take. It is considered a personal choice.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t really have any interest in sister-wives. Or brother- husbands, I guess.”
Kaio laughed, and this time the sound was less strained than it had been since he’d started talking about magick on his planet. “I have no desire for more than one mate, either.”
That’s a relief.
Wait. What the hell was I thinking? I couldn’t marry an alien several hundred years in the future.
Or at all.
But I had to admit, the idea of a life partner who was bound by more than simply empty promises sounded kind of nice.
I thought back to my ex-boyfriend, with all his I will love you forever and I will never leave you promises.
The firelight flickered against Kaio’s muscular body outlined by the shiny black jumpsuit as he removed cooked meat from one stick and began threading other strips onto new sticks. “You can have this one,” he said, handing me the strip of cooked meat on a giant, shiny purple leaf functioning as a kind of floppy paper plate.
What would it be like to have sex with someone like Kaio? Someone who was muscular and strong, so big I could climb him like a mountain.
In the firelight, his lip quirked up in a half-grin.
Dammit. He might’ve figured out how to block me from hearing him, but he was still listening to me. A deep, hot blush crawled up my cheeks, and I was glad I had the excuse of the fire to hide my reddening face.
Anyway, that moment passed. Or I might want to skirt the fire, sit on his lap, and ride him until my eyes rolled back in my head. But the rest of me knew it was a bad idea.
For now, at least.
The adrenaline rush I’d felt earlier had washed out of my system, leaving me shaky and exhausted.
I nibbled on my lizard meat, surprised to find that it tasted as good as it smelled. After that, I ate eagerly, determined to store up as much energy as I could for whatever eldritch horror the Galactic Gladiator Games threw at us next.
