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“You yourself left the Authority, or tried to, in order to live the life the ladies of my harem have lived as long as it has existed. My world will provide you with all you truly need, if you can forget the programming that turned you into a worker drone for a colony that did not care for you.”
“Yes. I know. Authority bad, Dinavri good,” I say, folding my arms over my chest. There are still many weeks to go until I can be certain my pregnancy is stable. I have to tolerate this Dinavri propaganda until then without giving into it.
“You do know that,” he says. “That’s the thing about you, contrary human. You know what you want, and you know that what you want is here. Why keep running? Searching for something that does not exist anywhere else?”
“Men who fuck dozens of women exist all throughout the universe,” I retort. “The only way to deal with your kind is to take you for what you’re worth and abandon you before you move on to another.”
There’s a long pause after that statement in which I realize I have said too much, and he gains an understanding of me I wish he did not have.
“I see,” he says. “You have been the victim of infidelity. Your culture values monogamy, while the players in it find it challenging to enact.”
“I have never been the victim of anything. But yes, I have been with men who promised fidelity and did not maintain it. I was always away on work. It’s hard to maintain a relationship when you’re not there.”
“And you will look for another relationship when you have the infant you desire?”
He is humoring me with the notion that my escape is inevitable. I have noticed that he is taking extra precautions to make that more difficult. There are greater numbers of guards now. I am sure there are other changes being made around the place to make it more secure.
“I don’t know. I don’t think you can plan these things.”
“Of course you can. You can plan for anything you want. You must plan for what you want.”
“My plans have rarely panned out. I am here now, and I did not plan that. I am possibly pregnant with your baby, and I did not plan that. And I am sure you did not ever plan to be a single father. The universe laughs at plans. No matter what you or I think we are going to get, we are wrong.”
“You may be right,” he allows. “What is the most objectionable prospect about staying here?”
“I would never be with a man who was with other women. If I am to be with a man, he must be as devoted to me as I am to him.”
“Interesting. So it is not the captivity. It is merely the polygamy.”
“It all stems from the polygamy. Almost everything wrong in the gender balance of your world stems from one man taking many women.”
“Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea of what she speaks. Still, if I were to devote myself to you, and take no other, and breed only you, that would satisfy you?”
“If you loved me, and I loved you. If this weren’t the union of two desperate souls, then yes.”
“You admit we are united, then.”
He is working on me on all fronts, this alien. He is not content with the conquest of my body; he wants my mind too. And I have no doubt he wants my love, not because he loves me, but because love is the most convenient handle by which to pull another creature about.
“Stop trying to trick me into thinking I want this,” I tell him. “You know as well as I do that once I choose to go, I will be gone. You’re hoping to manipulate me into staying because you mistook the fact that I didn’t let your daughter hurl herself into an abyss for some affection on my part. Let me be clear. You abducted me. And you ruined my chance to have a baby on my terms. So I’ll have the baby I can have. But don’t think this makes us lovers, and don’t think I’m going to play happy families.”
“You don’t like me!?” A gasp at the door heralds Tethys’ untimely return. Of course she didn’t pay attention to anything else I said. All she heard was that I don’t have affection for her — which isn’t strictly true, but I am not going to let her father use her as a tool for emotional blackmail, either.
“Tethys…” I try to say something to make her feel better, but I know I am not going to get the chance.
“I hate you!” She screams and runs away.
I turn back to Sithren, eyes narrowed. He simply gives a little shrug. “She’s screamed that she hates you twice now. If that’s not being a parent, I don’t know what is.”
