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Yas’kihn pressed his advantage. “Lady Evangeline saw a lack of knowledge in Ahn’hudi agricultural knowledge and practice. We welcome her efforts to make us more self-sufficient in producing our own food, especially as our planet now supports more than its native species. She is doing excellent work and has the support of both the god Ulmjar and the Solari.”
“Oh.”Who is Ulmjar?
He nuzzled her again, and the hand splayed over her abdomen moved to cup her breast while the other gently kneaded her thigh. His tail pulled her leg aside, opening her thighs to his touch.
“You will not be an idle empress consort, I know, and I will do my best to fulfill your every need and desire,” he murmured, pressing his lips to the tender skin on the underside of her jaw. His mate sighed and raised a hand to stroke his crest. The warmth and gentleness of her touch was almost unbearably erotic to him.
As her thoughts began to dissolve beneath the sensual onslaught, Louella began to wonder if he wasn’t right after all.Perhaps I’ve been fighting shadows that don’t need to be fought.
Chapter20
Late the next afternoon, the emperor’s carriage arrived in the transportation hub beneath the capitol. The journey had taken place mostly through subterranean tunnels, reminding Louella of the vacuum tubes she’d seen in movies, on TV, and at one old-fashioned bank that still used the system at its on-site drive-through kiosks. The long hours in transit stretched with little more to do than fuck, eat, converse, and sleep in the privacy of their luxurious conveyance. When informed of the distance they covered in those hours, Louella had difficulty imagining the planet’s size and the speed at which they traveled. During the few stretches of travel above ground, she peered with interest out the window, once at a wide expanse of water which she learned was one of the planet’s five freshwater oceans, and other times at the arid, scrubby landscape of high desert.
“Ahn’hudin orbits between two suns,” Yas’kihn explained to her when she commented on the strangely uniform landscape. “This orbit prevents our planet from the extremes of climate found on many other planets. Unlike Earth, we do not have icy polar caps or jungles at the equator.”
“Fascinating,” she murmured and stifled a yawn.
“Most of our freshwater is located underground or in the oceans.”
She nodded.
“We have mines in the nine mountain ranges crossing Ahn’hudin. That is where most of our native metals and precious stones come from.”
She nodded again, eyes glazing over.
“Lady Evangeline’s work has resulted in enormous swaths of formerly unproductive land being converted into bountiful agricultural enterprises. Many Ahn’hudin see great opportunity now in working the land. Ulmjar is receiving unprecedented devotion. Gruo and even Durja must share worshippers like never before.”
Louella had not expected such social fluidity on Ahn’hudin. “So, people aren’t locked into their … er … castes?”
He chuckled. “Could you see me as anything other than a warrior?”
She grinned and shook her head. “No.”
Again, Yas’kihn pressed his point home. “But had I wished to become, say, a merchant of off-world games and other entertainments, then Gruo would have welcomed me into his fold and none would have denied me the vocation.”
“But what about your cousin, Masey I believe her name is?”
“What about her?”
“What if she wanted to become a merchant of off-world games and entertainment. Would she have been allowed to do so?”
“She is pursuing such a path now,” he said, not quite answering that question. “She will soon be mated to a merchant.”
Louella pursed her lips as she considered what Jax said. “Does she have to get your permission to be mated to the merchant?”
“No,” he admitted. “But if I disapproved of this union, I would certainly make it difficult to accomplish.”
“And why would you do that? Don’t you trust in her choice?”
“Masey’s first mate was a soldier, a decorated warrior who treated her poorly. I did not object to the match, thinking he would be kinder to her than he was his own soldiers. I was wrong.”
Louella raised her eyebrows at this rare admission of fault.
“But once she was mated to him and I learned of his poor treatment of her, I could do nothing.”
“Because she was his property,” Louella concluded, her tone bitter.
“Females are not chattel,” Yas’kihn objected, stung by her assumption. “We do not sell our females; we cherish them.”
