"Your consort ought not to be present for matters this substantial, Majesty. Not when he's still this insubordinate." Hyax's eyes flash red. "Leave, Maekyonite. Fetch us some tea."

"Get it yourself," he says.

"Hyax, you forget yourself." Sykora nails her Brigadier with a glare. Everyone is treating her like she's come back unstable, unable to think for herself. Like she's damaged. "You will not compel my—"

Her brain rubbernecks, trips over itself and smashes face first into reality.

She turns her stare to Grantyde, who's sitting, arms folded, with that look of stubborn defiance stuck to his face.

"What did you say?" Sykora asks.

He shrugs his broad shoulders. "I'm not gonna run around making your people tea."

She shrugs her broad shoulders? What is happening? But Sykora saw female Maekyonites. There was that old woman with the glasses and the four-legged kindek thing. Grantyde said I'm not her husband. Does she mean she's her wife? Is this—

But she compelled him. She compelled him the entire time on Maekyon. "Hyax," she says. "You did compel him. I didn't imagine that. Yes?"

"Yes." Hyax is in frowning marine strategos mode as she flashes Grantyde again. "Consort. Tea. Go."

Grantyde's mouth is hanging open. It's just some kind of delayed reaction or fluke. It has to be.

"No," he says.

Sykora's mind is fragmenting. Every scrap of control she cobbled back together is dropping off her. "Will you stop compelling my husband, Brigadier!"

"Gods of the firmament." Waian's face is full of intrigue. Why is nobody else horrified? "Are you sick or something, Hyax?"

Vora is scribbling notes furiously. "And you're sure he's male by birth?"

Sykora stutters. "I—I had assumed—"

"I am." Grantyde's flat, rumbling voice, like a door closing. "By birth."

"Has he had some kind of alien anticomps implanted?" Waian asks. "Was the implant installed right? Does he understand?"

"I understand you perfectly. The words, anyway."

This can't be right. This can't be happening. Not to her. It doesn't make any sense. She's been compelling him. She has. She has to have been. She sends another flash his way. "Take your clothes off."

"On the deck? No."

Come on. No, no, no. "Stand on one foot." Flash.

His brow furrows. He stands on one foot.

Sykora leaps to her feet, heart slamming into her throat. "Why did you obey that one?"

"Because it doesn't involve mooning your command group."

Hyax is beginning to look as distraught as Sykora feels. "Does it not work on him, Majesty?"

"It must." Sykora paces around the table to where Grant stands. "I used it on him in my escape."

She did. She—

He stares at her. A huff of air escapes him. His eyes are widening in comprehension.

This can't be happening. This can't be true. If he's immune to compulsion, then every look, every risk, everything he sacrificed for her…

It was real.

God help her.

It was real; it was real; it was all real. Sykora, you blind, cruel idiot. It was real. How many times did she admonish herself to stop being a foolish little love-struck girl, to listen to her brain instead of her heart and to treat him like a tool?

"Vora. Compel him."

He saved her and she enslaved him. She's ruined his life.

"Um. Uh. Sing a song."

She's ruined her own life, too. She's ruined everything.

"Am I supposed to be refusing, here, or obeying?"

"That's enough." Sykora pulls herself out of her tailspin. "We're adjourning."

Vora is centimeters from panic. "Majesty—"

"Now, Vora." Sykora can't keep her voice down.

"We haven't even started the damn briefing." Hyax is grappling for normalcy. "I had slides."

"We'll reconvene soon, Brigadier. Thank you for your time." Sykora turns to her impossible husband. "Come with me. Now."

She barely remembers the walk back to the cabin. She moves as if through a nightmare, all muffled blur, her mind racing and yet her thoughts too slippery and amorphous to catch.

Sykora marches Grantyde into her cabin and aims another flash at her. "Stand on your head."

"No," she says. There's a smirk on her face now. Sykora wants to scream it off, to compel Grantyde into obedience. But how can she? And what right would she have? Grantyde's looking at Sykora like she's a fool, because she is. She's a fucking fool.

"Count backwards from twenty."

"Nuh-uh."

"Kiss me."

Grantyde shakes her head. "No, Princess."

Sykora tries again, as if it could change anything. "Please."

"No," she says.

He says. Grantyde is a man. He said as much.

"The compulsion doesn't work on you," Sykora says. "You're maleborn, and it doesn't work."

"You're talking about mind control," he says. "You thought you were doing mind control on me."

"Of course I did. I thought—But—I compelled you on Maekyon."

"No, you didn't."

"You betrayed your species for me. You did everything I commanded you to do. You…" She feels a wave of horror so intense it borders on nausea. "You freed me."

"I wanted you to be free," he says.

"Gods of the Firmament," Sykora whispers, as piece by piece the world she'd reconstructed falls apart again. "You chose this."

The care on his face when he looked at her. The hand he held out to her, on the other side of the glass. The songs he sang, the way he watched her. The desire on his face for her, matching her own. The sheer weight of the connection she felt to him. The feeling she had, that this was it. That he was the one, that she was face-to-face with the rest of her life.

She feels it all again, inverted. A crumbling, vertiginous despair as it all goes away. She can hear his breath, feel his heat. But it's as if the glass were back up between them. The man whose face was so full of desire and loyalty, freely given, has shut the tap fast. And why shouldn't he? She's a fucking monster.

She met the most wonderful man in the firmament. She met the man who could have made her life beautiful. It was all real. All of it was real. He did all of it for her. His gifts and his trust and his selfless sacrifice. He laid everything at her feet. And she kicked it back into his face.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Sykora, in her wrath and pride and ignorance, has murdered the future they could have shared.

The concrete is hard and cold against her bare feet. So cold. She's trying to run but her legs are like sandbags. The pacing beep of the treadmill picks up and she tries so, so hard to keep up with it, but finally she falls, and skids to the churning ground, but it's not concrete or a treadmill at all, it's not the laboratory, she sees that now; it's one of the echoing halls of the Imperial Palace, the floor speeding her along, the Heavenly Court of Empresses Past whizzing by, frowning down at her because she's failed, she's failed so utterly and irrevocably, until the moving walkway jerks to a halt and dumps her into her cell. She's back in the cell. The glass, the bars, the tests.

A shadow falls over her, a massive hulking shadow, and she blinks tearfully into the blinding light above her head and pleads no, please no, please just let me go home, and the shadow only deepens, and massive hands catch the light and she writhes as they wrap around her.

And then she feels the calluses at the ends of the fingers from the strings of his guitar. And her heart leaps into her throat, and she weeps with relief, and she sees his smile, his dimpled smile as he lifts her off the floor and into his arms, and her lungs fill with his smell and the air he breathes mingles with hers, and she's going home. He's taking her home. And the light is so beautifully bright it fills her vision

and then it resolves into an alien sun, filtering through gossamer curtains. Her husband snores underneath her.

Sykora snorts and shifts. She isn't sure when she fell asleep. Her head is laying on Grantyde's stomach. Her legs are propped in the air at the lip of the bed. She's stuck a pillow under her butt. She's sure it worked, of course. But surety takes security, as Princess Nura once opined.

The light flows and undulates aquatically as the curtains billow in front of the breeding suite's picture window. Like the Princess and her husband are under the sea. Sykora takes a moment to stare at it. It's so beautiful. Everything is so beautiful.

Grantyde lets out a low sigh and his chin tucks in as he comes half awake.

"Oh, God." He yawns. "I'm fucked up."

Sykora lets out a humored half-laugh, half-sigh. "What time is it?"

"I have no idea." Grantyde barely has the energy to roll his head over.

"Computer," Sykora says. "what time is it?"

A chipper synthetic voice says, "The time is 0900, Majesty."

"So it's been what." Grantyde tugs Sykora further onto him. "Two hours?"

"Mmhmm." She nuzzles into his stomach. She props her leg back up. "My first two hours of motherhood."

He yawns again. "Do we know it worked?"

Sykora opens one eye. "Grantyde. Be serious. You just pumped a goddamn beachful of sand into my oyster. We'll give it some time and we'll see if I get the cramps by tonight, and we'll do some tests later this tenday. But it worked."

He chuckles. "Sand in your oyster?"

"Is that not an expression on Maekyon? Do you know what oysters and pearls are?"

"Sure I do. It's just new."

"Get used to it, Mr. Maekyonite." She wraps his arm around her and lays his hand on her stomach. "There's going to be a lot of new in our life."

"Bun in the oven is what we'd say," he says.

"Bun in the oven." She beams. "That is so cute. Well, you put the whole bakery in me. If it somehow doesn't work, I'll pop over to the Core and toss Axyna out an airlock."

"Hon."

"Kidding. We'll do it artificially after all, I suppose, and call it even. Or we'll do another bite, but give you a nectar blocker first. Because that was fucking amazing, but I don't think I can do it again for a while." She giggles. "I mean you flattened me, dove."

"I flattened myself." He blows out air and bends his knee. "I have to pee but I can barely move my legs."

"I have a bottle." She points at the clutch of supplies on the nightstand. "Do you need a bottle?"

He eyes it. "I'm gonna try for the bathroom."

A wobbly few seconds and he's managed to find his footing enough to stumble to the toilet. She finds her communicator in the wreckage they've made of the bed. Oh, Gods of the Firmament. She's sloshing.

She flops onto her back and finds the earliest appointment she'd made for them. An early evening room service. She pushes it back a half hour.

Grantyde comes wobbling out of the bathroom like a baby throok and falls back into bed. "Jesus," he says, which Tymar has told her is the name of a Maekyonite demigod.

"I had it in my head we'd make love again tonight after the infinity ritual." Sykora rolls back onto him. "But I might be all dicked out."

"What's the infinity ritual?"

"It's what we do before we go to sleep together," she says. "A linking of our souls to make sure that we'll be able to find one another and the rest of our clan in the heavenly court. There's a clerk waiting for us. There's paperwork."

"There's paperwork for heaven?"

"Sure. We fill it out and then we burn it so it's there once we need it."

"The ghost of our paperwork."

She laughs. "I guess so." She props her head up on his lap. "I know it's silly. But I hope you'll do it with me. I'm not exactly an observing Omnideist but I've always had a silly little daydream about doing it."

"It's not silly." He rubs her horn. She shivers at his textured touch. "Everything you want us to do together, I will."

She finds her way up to a sitting position. "Will you do something now, then?"

"Of course."

"Grab that first aid kit there for me, then. Let's do the scarification rite."

Grant obeys, and with trembling hands, Sykora finds the ointment and dresses his wound. "Grant Hyde of the Black Pike," she intones. "May this mark remain forever as seal and testament to the bond we this day have sealed." She never really thought she'd say these words. Only ever daydream about them. "May the scar never fade as my devotion shall never fade to you. May all who witness it know that you are kept by Sykora of the Black Pike. That I am your home and hearth, your spear and shield. May our lineage bloom safe and strong within me. May the Empire rejoice at their nativity." She glances at his face. "May they bring glory to their mother and father, and to their Empress."

She searches for a cloud on his face. Maybe a flicker of one?

"Is that okay?" she asks.

He nods encouragingly.

"Okay." She binds the pad over-and under his chest, and kisses it where it crosses over his heart. "And that's the first thing done. How's it feel?"

He rubs the dressing. "Kind of stingy."

"That'll be done in a minute. It's just making sure that the scar stays." She finds her communicator, turns on the camera. "I don't think your teeth were sharp enough to really get me, I'm afraid. Can you take a picture of it?"

He obeys and the shutter clicks. "Why's that?"

"I'm getting it tattooed. Like Wenzai did." She touches the tender skin. "Just the canines, I think. Don't need the whole crescent."

"Is that today, too?"

"No way. No overcrowding." She yawns. "Right now what I want to do is lie here and nap more." She lies back down and makes grabby hands at him. "Everything that requires anyone else I made sure to scheduled for the evening. Except the bathing ceremony, and the first meal, but we just do that ourselves."

He crawls over and lies halfway on her.

"How long?" he whispers.

"Told you, dove. About seven cycles."

He does that lip thing he does when he's calculating. "Humans take way longer. Like twice as long."

"Gods of the Firmament." She tuts. "Your poor females."

"Did I dream this," he says, "or did you say you wanted to call one of our daughters Ziavra?"

"Mmhmm. I did. What do you think?"

"I think that's a beautiful name." He kisses her ear. "What does it mean?"

"In old Taiikari it means Miracle. It was the name of the first Empress to settle another world." She looks around for a place to prop her ankles up again, and gives up. It's fine. "I think our other, maybe we give her a Maekyonite name."

"Would that be okay? I don't want to saddle her with anything."

She scratches his chin. "As long as it's as pretty as Grantyde, I think we'll be just fine."

His hand fans out, and cradles her stomach. And her toes curl at the thought of him doing this over the coming cycles. Of being taken care of by her big gentle Maekyonite. "Aurora, maybe?" he offers.

"What does it mean?"

"It's the Maekyonite word for the aurora we saw last night," Grant says. "And also the name of a town I used to live in on Maekyon."

"Were you happy there?"

"I thought I was. I don't think I knew what it felt like to be happy."

"Aurora is perfect." She snuggles further up against him. "All of this is perfect."

"Was it everything it was supposed to be?"

"It was better." She shivers with the euphoric memory.

Neither of them were supposed to live to see this. This was supposed to be impossible in a dozen different ways. And now…

"Do you know what's happened, by now? In here?" She lays her hand atop his, at her stomach.

"What?" His voice is thickening with sleepy desire.

"Your seed is planted, Grant Hyde." she whispers. "That's what."

He hums gently against her neck.

"A little piece of you has found a little piece of me, and burrowed inside my shelter," she says. "And we're together now. Both of us, mingled in a grain of sand. Sharing one tiny cell."

His eyes are drooping again.

"And tomorrow morning, it'll be two. And by the end of the day it'll be four. And then more and more, faster, until it's Aurora. And Ziavra. And our son."

"Our son," he repeats, as he slips further.

She plays with his fingers, rotates his platinum wedding ring around his finger. "What do you think, dove? What's our son's name?"

"Kiar," he whispers, on the drifting current at the edge of sleep. "Let's call him Kiar."

And then the father of her children is snoring softly in her ear.

She smiles so hard her cheeks ache. Harder than the rest of her already aches.

This big beautiful alien has claimed her. In every way you can be claimed. There's no piece of her that he hasn't touched, that doesn't smell like him, or bear his mark, or tingle with the memory of his unrelenting grip. No undoing what he's done to her. No going back from being…

"Yours," she breathes, in the warm warren dim. She takes his hand and puts it on her neck, where her collar goes. She didn't wear it; she was too afraid he'd break it in his frenzy. His palm feels better, anyway. "I'm yours."

He hums in his sleep, and rolls over, so that his face is cushioned up against her heart.

She kisses his sleeping face. "And you're mine."

The metal of his wedding band kisses her palm as she draws his hand back down her front, to where it lay on her stomach.

"And they're ours," she whispers.

For a decacycle now Grantyde has been her warm hearth. And every time she's been kept from him, the shivering deprivation has lodged itself in her. She's been so cold, and he's been the only heat.

Now there's something new on the inside, too. A warmth within, not just without. A deep and fundamental peace. A great knot that has gnarled itself in her, for as long as she can remember, is slowly untangling.

Aurora. Ziavra. Kiar. She sings their names in her head like a mantra. Aurora. Ziavra. Kiar. She drifts off on their song, further into rest and her lover's arms. And tomorrow she'll wake up and he'll be right there, and it will be another beautiful day in her beautiful life, and she'll be another day closer to meeting them. Three more loves. She rests her hand on her stomach. Don't make me wait too long, she thinks. And don't make me too round.

And the frozen cell is so, so far from her, is a speck on a speck on a speck in the dark, and she is warm and safe and kept, and her husband is right here, and he'll never let her go. Never throw her away. She knew it before, knew it with her head, but now she knows it with all of her. Her heart, her skin, her aching body. All of her.

They lie together in rest there, on their alien world, in their alien love.

Grant and Sykora, and Aurora, and Ziavra, and Kiar.

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