Moon Madness

Since leaving the rearing facility at fifteen planet-cycles-old, Orix Monash had been a soldier. That was a long time. Certainly long enough to look at a room to size up the situation immediately. There was a lot of hostility, and though it shouldn’t have surprised him, it did. He could understand the negative reactions, particularly among the humans seated around the large table, but it still startled him to see a range of emotions from distress to blatant suspicion on many of the faces around him, including faces of those he had known for a long part of his lifespan.

In particular, Commander Sash Darvig was regarding him with flagrant mistrust, indicating he wasn’t certain of Orix’s motives, or why roughly thirty percent of the armada had defected with him. He cleared his throat as silence finally descended, and all gazes fell on him. They were waiting for an explanation, and that was something he couldn’t offer, not really having one himself, which was likely to add to the mistrust surrounding him.

Ambassador Embeth Williams, who sat beside her mate, Second Prince Ysaak Chon, gave him an encouraging smile. He wanted to rebuff the gesture, to remind her he was a hardened warrior, not a nervous schoolboy. It would be ill-form to do so, especially since he also felt disconcertingly like a nervous schoolboy for just a moment.

Orix cleared his throat again, waiting for someone to ask the first question. It was a negotiating tactic he had learned early on in his military career, and it also revealed a great deal about the other party’s position. They shouldn’t be in negotiations, since he and his comrades had voluntarily defected from their military and home world, but he knew they were going to take some convincing to believe it for certain.

Sash was the first ask, “What are you really doing here?”

Orix maintained a calm expression, fixing his one good eye on his old friend. “We’re here to defend Earth from Emperor Aryk’s intentions, Commander Darvig.”

“Or maybe you’re here to finish the task,” said a small Earth woman farther down the table. She hadn’t identified herself, and she bore no name tag or other way for him to discern her position.

He shook his head just once. “As soon as we found out what the First Prince…I mean Emperor…had planned, those of us who objected strongly organized and made the decision to break away from the home world and the main armada. We arrived as quickly as we could.”

“I find it very convenient that you didn’t arrive until after your military had deployed the biological weapon responsible for spreading ROMKS among Earth women,” said the same tightlipped human.

He scowled at her, starting to feel tendrils of anger creeping over him. He wasn’t used to being questioned or having to account for his every movement. It had been some time in his career since he been accountable to much of anyone other than the emperor or the first and second princes.

“I assure you we arrived as quickly as we could. There was heavy fighting to break away. As soon as Emperor Aryk realized we were defecting, he threw everything he had at us. My ships have sustained heavy damage, and we’ve lost at least five percent of the personnel who made the choice to turn their backs on the home world and come here. Your interrogation and insinuations are insulting, Ms.…?”

She wrinkled her nose at him, as though he was something foul. “Jordan Saunders. I’m the president’s daughter, and her liaison for the Moon Consulate.”

He nodded once to indicate he had heard her introduction. “We’re here to help in whatever capacity we can do so. If we could have arrived sooner, or managed to warn you before the weapon deployed, we would have done so. Those of us who have chosen to defend Earth are appalled at the emperor’s actions. Three generations ago, the Veluvians did something similar to us, and though the emperor and Jorvak Ha are trying to solve that problem, this is not the way to do it.”

Prince Ysaak cleared his throat, drawing all eyes to him. “General Monash, you said about thirty percent of the fleet has come with you?” At Orix’s nod, he frowned. “That leaves at least seven hundred thousand troops at my brother’s disposal. Did he give any indication of his next step or overall plan?”

Orix shook his head. “No. The emperor was tightlipped about all the steps. He simply revealed that Dr. Ha had created a retrovirus that would make all Earth women compatible for breeding, and it was about to be deployed. There was truly no time to warn the Earthlings, especially amid the battle to break free.” He shifted slightly in his seat, overcome with a strange surge of guilt at having abandoned his duty and his post.

Only a stronger moral conviction could lead him to such an action. His doubts had begun when he had learned of Aryk murdering the former emperor to seize power, but that hadn’t been enough to make him deviate from his duty. It had taken the abrupt and appalling wake-up call of hearing that their own people were preparing to deploy a biological weapon against people who should not be their enemies that had forced him to make a sudden and decisive break with his military career and life on Dazonia Major.

It was still an unsettling situation, and he found himself struggling as they threw questions at him. It wasn’t that he struggled to answer, and if he didn’t know the right response, he bluntly stated that. The entire process was just an emotionally draining struggle. Inside, he was a mass of turmoil, far more emotional about the situation than he was prepared to reveal to a group of strangers—especially since many of them still maintained a hostile front and seemed convinced he was part of a bigger plot perpetrated by Aryk.

Did they imagine he and three hundred thousand other soldiers, minus fifteen thousand lost to casualties, had arrived as part of a ploy on the emperor’s part? It was a slightly ludicrous idea, but he supposed he understood their caution and fear. Half the population was ill, and only a few essential personnel in government had been given the nanotechnology that would keep the retrovirus in check and reverse the symptoms of ROMKS.

He was in the midst of debriefing the prince and the commander about the status of the ships and the troops available, wishing the men would wait until they had a smaller audience before asking him to reveal their strengths and weaknesses, when his heart rate increased, and his hearts thundered in his eardrums. It was a disconcerting sensation, especially since he had no logical explanation for it. Orix glanced around, his gaze locking on a small Earth woman just crossing the doorway of the meeting room, which was open to allow as many essential people to cram inside as possible.

Clearly, the honey-blonde woman hadn’t been considered essential personnel, but his body suddenly found her very essential. A wave of dizziness swept over him, and he gripped the edges of the table as his hearts continued to pound, and his libido switched into overdrive. He was hard and aching for the woman, who seemed startled when their gazes met. He imagined her reaction was to his scarred face and missing eye, currently hidden under an eyepatch as a nod to decorum for the Earthlings. The piece of fabric itched and irritated his golden-brown skin, making him suddenly, almost painfully, aware of its existence by the way it rubbed his skin raw as she looked at him.

A second later, the woman was gone, but certainly not forgotten. It took Orix a long moment to realize people were still speaking to him and asking questions, and another, even longer, moment to compose himself and reorganize his thoughts. As he answered, his mind was preoccupied with the woman who had passed by.

His mate.

It was inconvenient and unexpected, but he couldn’t deny he’d experienced the mating flare. What else could such an intense reaction be? Orix certainly hadn’t expected to find a woman who stirred his mating instinct under the circumstances, at least not at this time. He hadn’t even considered in more than a passing fashion that one of the Earth women might be a possible mate for him. His primary concern had been security and doing the right thing, and while those remained focal points for his attention, he couldn’t deny he was quietly obsessing about the woman he had barely seen.

When the interminable meeting finally concluded, the first thing he was going to do was see if he could track her down and confirm his reaction. If it was the mating flare, Orix had no idea what to do next. Claiming a partner right then was inconvenient and more than a little dangerous. He couldn’t afford anything that cost him his focus, especially since he soon gleaned human technology would offer little resistance to Emperor Aryk and his remaining armada.

It was up to Orix and the rest of the defectors to protect Earth, particularly the human women, from the emperor’s machinations. The task was monumental and required his full attention. It would help if he knew what Aryk planned to do next, and if he could stop thinking about the woman with her golden-brown locks and wide blue eyes that had seemed to dominate her face during the brief millisecond they had locked gazes.

Mary Catherine, or Mac as she was commonly known, had been running late, an unintentional side effect of an unplanned nap in her quarters during her afternoon rest break. She had woken to furor in the consulate, everyone stirred up first by the biological attack yesterday, and now by the arrival of aliens with unknown intentions.

While she was interested and just as eager to know their motives as everyone else, her primary focus was where it had been since Dr. Wy had given her the nanotechnology months ago, and she had volunteered to stay at the consulate, first as a companion to the Earth women who had been impregnated against their will, and later as caretaker to the infants whose mothers had not survived.

She had literally stumbled to a halt when meeting the fierce gaze of the one-eyed man seated at the head of the conference table as she had rushed past the doorway. For just a moment, all thoughts had fled, and her mind hadn’t been on reaching the nursery or reviewing the tasks ahead of her. For that earthshattering second, her entire world had revolved around the alien male, and everything else had ceased to exist.

It had been only a brief moment in time, but even now, hours after it had taken place, Mac’s heart was still prone to racing unexpectedly whenever she remembered that moment. She’d never been drawn so intently to a man before, and she certainly hadn’t expected to have any kind of connection with the aliens. Not that she harbored prejudice toward the ones she knew and worked with on a regular basis, including Dr. Wy, Commander Darvig, and the contingent of Dazon caretakers who had arrived from Dazonia Major to assist with caring for the newborns.

However, she had endured a traumatic experience at the hands of Jorvak Ha, one that she would’ve assumed would predispose her to being unable to find any of the Dazon males attractive. Apparently, she had been wrong in her assessment.

The baby she was holding cooed up at her, forcing her to break her mental reverie, and she smiled down at the little boy. Unlike the typical Dazon male who wasn’t a human hybrid, baby Jake grew hair all over his head, including the sides, and didn’t have the sparse scrub that many of the men had on the otherwise-bare sections. Instead, he had thick curls, which had been a gift from his African American mother, who had died birthing Jake and his two sisters, Carmen and Lily. He squealed at her, and she couldn’t help how her heart melted as she lifted him higher and bounced him gently.

She’d been appalled to discover the caretakers doled out only a minimal amount of affection to the infants, following the protocol established in their rearing facilities. It was a protocol she had quickly halted with the commander’s full support, but just because she encouraged the caretakers to interact didn’t mean they always did. Many of them still approached the task of caring for the infants as a job and avoided emotionally engaging with the children.

Though she had a few human volunteers who stopped by often on random schedules to help out and cuddle any baby in need, her determination to ensure that each of the infants received the necessary attention and affection often meant she worked long hours in the nursery and had an erratic sleep pattern. It was a small sacrifice to ensure the sixteen children whom Commander Darvig had entrusted to her care received the best upbringing possible, considering they had no mothers or fathers. Their mothers were dead, and their fathers were either part of Ha’s original crew of scientists or had been uninterested in their human-hybrid offspring when Dr. Wy had informed them of the conception, births, and subsequent deaths of the human mothers.

To her knowledge, only Valkor Tosh had claimed his offspring, and that fortunately had a happy ending, because he’d also claimed the mother of said offspring. She had only seen Jessminda Patel and Valkor Tosh on a handful of occasions, but they always struck her as happy and content despite the rocky start to their relationship.

It was difficult not to envy them, or the ambassador and the second prince. She knew of at least one other match that had been made during the debacle, but she had not spoken with Jada Washington since the day of the rescue, nor seen Inquisitor Ryland Breese in the intervening time despite living at the consulate. Perhaps they visited the consulate, but she wouldn’t know for sure. She spent seventy percent of her time in the nursery, another twenty-five percent sleeping, and perhaps five percent mingling with others who lived at the consulate or visited for different purposes.

Jake tugged on a strand of her hair, wrapping it around his pudgy golden fingers and bringing it to his mouth. She shook her head at him and brushed it back, making him whimper in protest. “Shush, little man. Hair isn’t good for you.”

“I’m not surprised he’s drawn to it, having never seen anything so beautiful in all my life,” said a deep male voice behind her.

Without even turning to look, she knew on an instinctive level it was the scarred warrior from earlier who spoke to her. Her nerve endings felt raw, and she shivered with anticipation, not anxiety, when she turned to face him.

Being so close to him, and the focus of his attention, was even more earthshaking than their brief encounter earlier. Her mouth was dry, and she jiggled the baby to have something to do, and as a way to divert her attention from him for a moment, just to compose herself. “I…” How very eloquent of her.

He gave her the tiniest of smiles before his attention drifted back to the little one in her arms. “He’s a beautiful child. Is he yours?”

The maternal side of her softened toward him, even though the feminine side of her was still uncertain—or at least uncertain about how long she could keep her clothes on around him. Suppressing that thought, and knowing it was not going to happen, because she wouldn’t let herself be so irresponsible, she waved a hand around the facility, where ten cribs formed a row. A couple of the babies preferred to sleep alone, but most preferred to be with their sibling or siblings, depending on how many had survived the births. “I guess you could say they’re all mine.”

His brow ridge, minus eyebrows as was common to his race, inched upward slightly. “How is that possible, Earth woman?”

“Mac,” she said through lips that wanted to stick together from their sudden dryness. “My name is Mac Jones, and I’m the head caretaker for the infants who were orphaned from Ha’s irresponsible and illegal experiments.”

He grimaced, looking disgusted. “That was a tragedy, and it clearly remains one.”

She stiffened slightly. “What he did was a crime, and what happened to the mothers was a tragedy, but each of these little babies is special to me, and to your people. They represent a new future and a new hope, but only if we can find an amicable way to help each other.”

His one eye, a startling lilac color, darkened at her words. “I know you speak in generalities, Mac, but the idea of the two of us working together makes my hearts race with anticipation.”

“Oh,” she said softly, once again cursing her lack of eloquence in the face of such an admission. Her physical and sexual interactions with the opposite sex had been minimal, leaving her with little idea how to proceed. She might be thirty-seven, but she had the experience level of a teenager. Kaiser’s Syndrome had struck her down when she was seventeen, because she’d had a particularly rapid onset and severe level of debilitation.

If it hadn’t been for the Dazons coming to Earth so Ha could experiment illegally on Earth women, she might have been dead by now. She certainly would have wished to be, having spent the last two years before her kidnapping wishing she would just die, but not having the physical ability to initiate the process herself.

Now, she was grateful she hadn’t been able to end her suffering at the time and oddly grateful for the results of her kidnapping, at least on a personal level, but the resulting fallout was mind-boggling. She had barely begun to process that roles had drastically reversed now, and the women who had once been healthy were now the ones who were ill, while most of the sufferers of Kaiser’s Syndrome had received nanotechnology over the intervening months since Dr. Wy had set up his clinic at the consulate on the Moon.

The only remaining healthy women had either been at the consulate during the deployment, or were in isolated pockets of the Earth where the technology hadn’t reached. Those areas were scarce and few. Even trying to think at that scale gave her a headache and made her grateful for the comforting confines of the nursery and her clearly defined role within it.

There was nothing clearly defined with the man standing in front of her, a man whose name she still didn’t know. She licked her lips, finding it necessary in order to speak, and she didn’t miss the way his gaze flared with heat, and the mimicking motion of his own tongue across his lips, which made warmth fill her stomach. “It’s difficult to work together when I don’t know your name, sir.”

“General Orix Monash at your service, Mac.”

A general. Wow. “What’s happening here, General Monash?”

He took a surprising step forward, swallowing the space between them. She held her breath when his hand lifted, releasing it in a jerky fashion a second later as he simply smoothed his hand down Jake’s full head of curly hair. “That remains to be determined, Mac.”

“General—”

“Orix.” He practically growled his name, but not in a menacing fashion. Rather, it had a smoky undertone of sexual excitement that even her naïveté couldn’t fail to discern. “I wish to hear you say my name—loud, long, and often.”

Her cheeks heated, and she gave him a look full of bewilderment. “Why, Orix?”

He visibly shuddered with pleasure when she spoke his name in velvety tones. “The moment I saw you, I felt it.”

“It?”

“The mating flare. It’s an instinct that has faded or disappeared among most of the Dazon males, and I never expected to feel even the faintest stirrings of it, and especially not for an Earth woman I saw only in passing. It was an inconvenient surprise to want to mate with you.”

She’d been on the edge of breathlessness, but now she glared at him. “If it’s that inconvenient, perhaps you should just ignore it?”

Orix laughed, a deep and hearty sound. “I would love to, belisa, but I don’t think I could even if I tried. To be honest, the timing is terrible, and I shouldn’t be distracted, but I don’t wish to ignore what I’m feeling.” He took her free hand, the one not cradling Jake, and brought it to his mouth. It was an intimate gesture, far too intimate considering the short length of their acquaintanceship, but she didn’t protest or try to pull away when he pressed his lips against her knuckles. “Do you want me to try to resist the pull I feel toward you, Mac?”

She surprised herself by shaking her head, even as she pulled her hand away from him. “This is… I don’t how to deal with this, Orix. I don’t know much about male and female interactions, but I know it’s certainly not common for Earth men to just blatantly declare they want to mate with women who interest them, so I need time to sort it all out and figure this out.”

He nodded, looking unsurprised by her words. “I shall do my best to give you the time required, but I can make no promises that I’ll stay away from you. There’s a compulsion there, a force with which I am unfamiliar, or was until today. It’s pushing me toward you and driving my need to claim you. I give you fair warning, Mac Jones, that I will claim you.”

Her mouth dropped open, but she had no time to form a reply as he inclined his head just once to her and disappeared from the nursery, moving surprisingly quickly and gracefully for a being who was over seven feet tall and almost as broad-shouldered as the doorway. Her mouth was still open, and she closed it with an audible click as she looked down at Jake, who was smiling up at her.

She wished she could smile, and on one hand, she had the urge to grin like an idiot. The sensible part of her tried to rein in that reaction, reminding her of all the reasons why it was a bad idea to get involved with an alien, especially an alien general who would likely be involved in battles and might not survive the unfolding conflict with Dazonia Major. The last thing she needed was to get her heart broken, or lose the love of her life. It would be better to steer clear of him and dissuade his stated intentions than risk that outcome.

That was the sensible course, but for the rest of her shift, as she held babies, interacted, played, and changed diapers between bottles, she was preoccupied by thoughts of Orix Monash, and what he had meant by claiming her. The physical part was easy enough to imagine, but she wondered if he meant something more than a simple fling. The only way to find out would be to embrace the madness, and she already decided that was a bad idea.

When she left the nursery later in the evening, preparing to get a few hours of sleep before returning, all her common sense and stern mental lectures didn’t keep her from looking for the general on the way to her quarters, or from feeling disappointed when she didn’t see him in the halls before she entered her assigned room, the hydraulic door closing behind her with a soft hiss that seemed to announce what a fool she was.

She was smitten with the general, and no amount of common sense could prevent that reaction.

Orix had a pounding headache from two relentless days of little sleep and countless meetings with the commander, Second Prince Ysaak, and various Earth officials. For what felt like the hundredth time that day, he said very clearly to Jordan Saunders, “I have no idea what the emperor’s intentions are, Ms. Saunders. No matter how you phrase the question, the answer will always be the same. I don’t know his motives or his objectives. I don’t have any insight to share with you on what possible methods he might use to attack, and I don’t have a concrete or foolproof plan that will prevent him from abducting the women whom he infected with the retrovirus.”

Her relentless suspicion was starting to get to him, and his stirring temper was only making his throbbing head that much more noticeable. It throbbed roughly in time with his cock, which made him think of Mac, which only intensified the throbbing in both his groin and his head. It was a vicious cycle, and he was becoming convinced the only way to break it was to see her again.

He’d given her two days. That was all the space he could manage, and he probably wouldn’t have been able to hold out for that long if it hadn’t been for the demands on his time. Everyone was in a panic, and rightfully so, but they were just covering the same ground again.

Deciding he’d had enough, at least for the time being, he stood up from the table where he’d sat for far too long—long enough to make his ass numb—and looked at the three people spread out farther down the table. “All we can do is be ready for an imminent attack and attempt to work together as seamlessly as possible. I’m attempting to establish contacts within the remaining military, Dazons whom I’m certain don’t agree with what the Emperor is doing, but perhaps lacked the conviction or opportunity to defect. My hope is they can provide us intelligence from that side. In the meantime, I plan to take a brief rest from this.”

Saunders’ mouth dropped open, and she looked outraged. “You can’t just take a break and walk away until we know what we’re doing here.”

Orix flexed his shoulders in an attempt to loosen them, though the president’s daughter seemed to take it as a sign of intimidation from the way her back stiffened, and her outraged expression deepened. “You’re not a soldier, Liaison Saunders, so you don’t understand how this works. We can have all the plans we want, and it’s a good thing to plan for all contingencies, which I’m certain Sash, Ysaak, and I have done for the past two days, but in the end, you have to expect the unexpected and remain prepared for anything.

“Planning will only take you so far. In the interim, this is exhausting and futile work, and we need all our soldiers rested and ready to fight, myself included. Now if you’ll excuse me...” He didn’t wait for further reply from the younger Earth woman or his other Dazon companions at the table. With an abrupt nod in their general vicinity, he turned on his heel and marched out of the conference room.

He’d only been at the consulate for two days, and he still rested in his own quarters on his ship, but rather than fold back to the captain’s quarters on the Nembria, he allowed his brain to set the path, his feet complying instantly as he mentally plotted the route to the nursery from the conference room.

Fortunately, the consulate was laid out in an easy design that facilitated quick adaption to its layout. There were also maps at each turn that could visually or audibly guide a visitor who was lost. He needed no such assistance and soon arrived at his destination.

For a moment, his stomach felt like it was curled into a tight ball that was twitching, like the way a Veluvian hand mine pulsed milliseconds before it exploded. A mental image of his gut exploding and painting the walls around him with his viscera had him grimacing, almost as much as the sudden bout of nerves. He was ridiculously excited, yet anxious, at the idea of seeing his mate again.

Composing his features and doing his best to ignore the Veluvian hand mine in his stomach, he opened the hydraulic door with a hiss and stepped through it. Orix paused for a moment, surprised and slightly overwhelmed at the sight before him. When he had tracked down his mate in the nursery two nights ago, the babies had all been asleep, except for the one she’d held in her arms. Now, they were all awake, and chaos ruled.

Several male Dazon attendants were busy chasing after crawling and rolling infants, while Mac and two Earth women he didn’t know sat on the floor with babies crawling all around them. He noticed the baby from the other night was planted firmly on Mac’s lap, holding onto her white fuzzy sweater as though his life depended upon it while he babbled and cooed up at her. She was talking to the other women, but it was clear her attention was also focused on the young ones—so sharply focused that she hadn’t yet realized he had arrived.

His intent was to approach her and remove her from the room with all the children for a brief time, but his mission was unexpectedly impeded by a squirming infant who crawled across his foot. He froze, uncertain what to do for a moment as he looked down at her. She sat on her diapered bottom and looked up at him, first with a large grin that displayed two bottom teeth.

When he didn’t reply with a smile of his own or attempt to engage her, slowly the smile started to disappear, and her lips trembled. Panic rose in him, a kind he’d never known, and he acted on instinct to sweep her into his arms just as the first tears started to streak down her cheeks. His large hand completely encompassed her back as he patted it in an awkward fashion. “Cease your crying, child. I mean you no harm.”

Feminine laughter caught his attention, but his gaze settled directly on Mac, locking with hers, as he intuited he was the source of the women’s amusement. He felt awkward and uncertain, two traits that hadn’t plagued him since he had left the rearing facility and entered the military academy. He extended the child toward her as he walked closer, trying desperately to get Mac to take her. “Take this one. She requires comfort.”

The faintest hint of lines showed at the corners of Mac’s eyes as she smiled up at him, her amusement obvious, but not malicious. She patted the rubber mats on the floor. “You look like you’re doing a fine job, and I have my hands full. Have a seat, General Monash.”

“Orix,” he reminded her as he settled stiffly on the mat, still holding the child with his elbows locked and keeping her extended away from him. She was staring at him uncertainly, and as her bottom lip started to quiver again, he quickly pulled the child back against him, turning to settle her on his lap in a similar way to how Mac held the little boy in her arms. “They bear a strong resemblance,” he said gruffly as he nodded at her boy before looking down at the girl in his lap. “Are they siblings?”

She nodded. “Yes. That little lady is Lily, and somewhere around here is her hellion of a sister, Carmen. She’s the difficult one of the bunch.” Though the words were critical, her expression was soft and full of love as she said the words, making it obvious she didn’t find the problem child much of a problem at all. Her capacity for love awed and amazed him, and he knew instinctively that when she loved, she loved with her whole heart.

It would be the same when she loved him. He would endeavor for it to be the same for him as well, though he had no familiarity with softer emotions or the gentler side of life. He had engaged in intercourse with a Dazon female far back in his youth, but he had never had tender feelings for her. They had both known she would be forced to go to the breeding facility when she was of age, and he would be going into the Academy for military training. It had been a doomed and brief adolescent romance, and it had certainly not equipped him for dealing with the woman who initiated the mating flare in him.

It was as awkward dealing with that as it was trying to figure out how to keep the infant on his lap from escaping. “Are they always so slippery?” he asked as she slid off his lap and tried to crawl away. It was instinct that prompted him to put a hand on her back and pin her carefully to the mat before he lifted her again and put her on his lap once more.

Mac giggled slightly, but then her expression grew serious, though her lips were twitching. “They can be, but usually only after a bath.” For some reason, her words made her companions giggle, and he turned his attention to them briefly. Seeing him do so must have reminded her of her manners, because she introduced him. “General Orix Monash, this is Amelia and Rebecca. They both volunteer here at the nursery, and they also have other roles at the consulate.”

The farthest one from him had gleaming ebony skin and a head full of braids that moved in a softly swaying motion when she ducked her head in an almost shy greeting. “I’m in food service,” she said softly.

Orix wasn’t certain if she was genuinely shy, or just intimidated by either his status or the fact that he was an alien male. He inclined his head and kept his voice as gentle as possible when he expressed his pleasure at meeting her before his gaze turned to the other female.

“I’m a supplier delivering goods from Earth. I was lucky enough to be here at the consulate when the weapon deployed, and Dr. Wy has suggested we stay in isolation until he has a chance to study the retrovirus.”

He nodded. “That would be wise, in case the retrovirus is airborne. It would certainly be an efficient deployment mechanism, wouldn’t it?”

The women traded glances as Mac looked concerned.

“The only one who travels freely back and forth so far is Ms. Saunders,” said Rebecca. The disapproval in her green eyes was obvious. “Not that the president’s daughter would listen to reason.”

“I’m certain she listens to her own reason,” said Orix in an attempt to be diplomatic. Jordan Saunders struck him as a determined woman who would fulfill her duty at the cost of herself, so it was certainly within the personality parameters he’d observed for her to ignore Dr. Wy’s warning and fold back and forth between the Earth and the consulate.

It was unnecessarily risky, since they could communicate electronically, though he imagined the President of the United States wanted private debriefings from her daughter; debriefings she was certain wouldn’t be monitored by alien technology. Still, it was a thoughtless risk to both Jordan Saunders and every uninfected woman on the station. He tried to mask his disapproval and focus his attention on Mac.

As though the two women sensed his desire to be alone with her, or perhaps they simply observed the way he leaned closer to her, and she drifted toward him, as though drawn by a magnet, they excused themselves and moved to a different part of the room, both whispering and giggling as they went.

“Your friends seem easily amused.” By the way her lips turned down in a frown, he knew he must have phrased that wrong. “I mean that as a compliment, not as a disrespectful observation, Mac.”

“It’s difficult to be in a foul mood when you’re with the little ones. I’m sure Amelia and Rebecca are terrified of the future, and effectively quarantined here, they have limited interaction with their daily lives on Earth, but they’re finding comfort in the babies.” She rubbed the little boy’s hand with her thumb gently as she spoke, making it obvious she did the same.

“They are quite soothing.” He looked down, somewhat startled to find the child that had attached to him was curled up against his stomach now, her head drooping forward as she nodded off to sleep. He adjusted her position slightly, so that her head could rest backward rather than forward, and a fluttering sensation in his hearts took him by surprise when she cuddled closer to him, letting out a soft sigh of contentment as her eyelids drooped.

He’d never felt anything like it before, and he might’ve feared the nanotechnology inside him was malfunctioning, allowing his cardiac system to fail, if he hadn’t known how unlikely that scenario was. Instead, it had to be an emotional reaction to the child’s proximity and show of trust. It was disconcerting, but oddly liberating.

“You look very good like that, General.”

He looked up, meeting her gaze, and unsurprised to see her heated expression, since there had been a definite note of huskiness in her voice. “It’s unfamiliar to me, this nurturing, but not unpleasant.”

Her lips twitched, a sure indicator she was trying not to grin at his expense. “Not unpleasant at all, except for the diapers.”

He couldn’t hide his appalled reaction. “I don’t change diapers, Mac.”

She winked at him. “We’ll see. In the meantime, was there something in particular that brought you by the nursery, or did you feel the urge to volunteer with the children?”

Carefully, so as not to dislodge Lily and wake her from her slumber, he slid closer to the woman making his hearts thunder audibly in his ears. “You know very well why I’ve come, Mac. I needed to see you.”

And he certainly had, if he judged by the way his body had now relaxed, and his pounding head had settled down into an almost nonexistent thump. The tiniest headache lingered, but was nothing compared to what it had been before he’d entered the nursery and was soothed both by the child and by being near Mac again.

She frowned at him. “I was beginning to think you had changed your mind.”

He frowned. “You requested space, Earth woman.”

“Not two days without any sort of contact from the man who bluntly stated he wanted to mate with me, Dazon male,” she said in exactly the same severe tone as him.

“I’ve been busy,” he said more harshly than he intended. When she flinched, he deliberately gentled his voice. “I’ve been debriefed until there’s nothing left in my brain, Mac. There was no time to visit you, but I thought of you every waking moment.”

And during the brief stretches of sleep he had managed to steal over the last two days, he had dreamed of her. They hadn’t been particularly sexual dreams. Rather, they had been soothing images of her smile, or a casual touch of her hand against his bicep. Just flashes of possibilities more than actual images or dreams, but they had been soothing in a way, but also a maddening reminder of what he had not yet obtained.

Her expression softened, and she nodded. “I thought a lot about you too, Orix. I was thinking that we don’t know how much time we have, do we?”

He shook his head.

“Before Ha abducted me, I was counting down the days until I died. I was in unbelievable pain and trapped in a body that would do nothing I wanted it to. I couldn’t even use the computer except with vocal commands, so I had no outlet there. I was a burden to my mother and father, and though I know they love me, it was a lot for them to handle. They’re both in their seventies, and they should’ve had time to retire and enjoy themselves. My life seemed fruitless and pointless, and I bitterly dreamed of all the things that I would never have. And then Ha came.”

“You were one of the abducted?”

She nodded. “As far as Dr. Wy can tell, every documented case of Kaiser’s Syndrome was one of the abducted. I was only at his mercy for a short time, and he certainly didn’t have time to experiment on me beyond the superficial. I wasn’t part of his first round of breeding experiments, and I’m thankful for that. When Inquisitor Breese and Commander Darvig freed us, Dr. Wy offered me the nanotechnology treatment. For just a moment, I was tempted to tell him no.”

His brow ridge furrowed in confusion. “Were you frightened of the alien technology?”

She lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Partially, but I was honestly afraid that I might live again. I realized that he was offering me a chance to have a normal life once more. It was a scary prospect, but I accepted the treatment. I couldn’t not do so in good conscience, knowing it would free the burden from my parents and allow them a few years to enjoy their retirement before they passed away.”

“I’m glad you made the decision you did, Mac.” The pain in her voice was leaching into him, making his chest tight and his eyes burn. He blinked and cleared his throat, trying to clear the unwanted reaction.

“As Ha’s experiments became clear, and several Earth women discovered they had been impregnated against their will, I found a purpose. First, it was simply emotional support, but then the babies started to be born, and several of the mothers didn’t survive. We lost six of the twenty women who had pregnancies they didn’t lose or terminate.

“There were some happy results, like for Jessminda Patel, but there were so many babies left with no one who wanted them. I had a purpose, and it felt good. It also made me realize that I shouldn’t waste what time I have, and even before the newest threat emerged, and the realization the Dazon Empire could take away everything we have and hold dear tomorrow, I had already decided that I had to live again.”

He looked down when her hand closed over his, his skin heating at the touch they shared. His eyes widened with shock at her next words.

“You make me feel alive in a way I’ve never experienced before. I don’t know what kind of future we have, if any, but I can’t see wasting the opportunity to find out. If you’re free this evening, I’d like you to come to my quarters.”