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By ten that evening, I’d almost given up hope that Omak would arrive, but then I heard voices in the corridor and sat up eagerly in bed.
The door opened and Blake arrived in a flurry of blue robes and furs and a lot of chatter to his guards. He was smiling broadly as he came directly to the bed to give me a kiss and a hug.
“You look fine, though a little pale, darling. What on earth have you been doing to yourself?” He said things like that, calling us all human “pet names” like “darling,” and talking about Earth, though we were nowhere near it, and the planet had nothing to do with anything that was going on.
“I just have a stomach virus, I think, though the doctors can’t find it, and they’ve come up with some other crazy story to explain it away.”
“Yes, so I’ve just heard.” He turned to his guards by the door. “I’ll be fine now. If you don’t mind, will you wait outside for me? I won’t be too long, I hope.”
Like it mattered how long he was. They’d stay there all night until he showed up, but he said it was called “being polite,” and that I should try it some time. They saluted him and stepped out.
“Now,” he said, facing me again as he sat down in the chair Mikol had been in. “Tell me all about this. What’s this about you being pregnant?”
“It’s wrong, Omak. Just a crazy story the doctors came up with.”
He gave me a piercing look. “Crazy story, huh? Mikol told me you said that. Are you sure?”
“Omak, I would know.”
“But are you sure you’d know? What have you been up to? And with whom?”
“Omak…”
“Stop saying my name and just tell me what makes you so sure you couldn’t possibly be pregnant. Then we can easily get this straightened out.”
“I’m sure, because I haven’t had any sex, if you must know.”
“None at all?” he asked suspiciously. “Not even a little?”
“Well, I…”
“Uh huh. Tell me exactly what you’ve done. This is with Colonel Tariq, I presume.”
I gasped in shock. “Why would you say that?”
“Just a hunch,” he said and settled back in the chair to make himself more comfortable. “Really, Rakkur, I’ve seen the way you look at him. Not to mention the way he looks at you. Okay, spill it. Tell me everything.”
“Did you ever consider this might be none of your business, Omak?”
“Not for a moment. Not while you’re still unmarried. And frankly I don’t care if it is or not. You’re my son and you’re my business until you marry. And even after that. I need to know, so you can tell me, or I’ll get Tariq in here and ask him.”
“No. Please don’t do that.”
“Well, then?”
“All right—but I don’t think this lack of privacy is right or does either of us any credit in any way, shape or form.”
“Duly noted. Now talk.”
“First of all, I have to tell you that none of this is Tariq’s fault.” I proceeded to explain how Tariq and I had accidentally bonded years ago and how when Tariq found out, he left and got married to another soldier, in an effort to help himself get over it. It didn’t work, but he’d tried.
“So you see, you can’t blame him for any of this.”
He was looking totally shocked and incredulous, shaking his head. “Oh yes, I can. Why did he never come to us and tell us what had happened?”
“I guess he was scared.”
“We still needed to know. And he must have suffered. You might have been affected too.”
