Leti stared, still not sure she understood. “What are you saying?”
“A fertilized egg. The start of a baby.”
First everything inside Leti went dead still. Then it exploded. She didn’t realize she was sobbing until Bayla handed her a disposable cloth to wipe her tears.
“I-it’s not possible,” she sobbed. “I shouldn’t be fertile.”
“Some sex slaves aren’t permanently altered. So that their masters can have the opportunity of breeding them if they wish. You might have been given something to suppress it for a number of years and now it’s worn off.”
More tears. A ridiculous amount of tears.
“I mean, I might be wrong! There’s a blood test we can do. Do you want to try?”
She sniffed and nodded. “Yes, please.”
“Okay.” Bayla went to the storage cabinets and searched for a device. When she returned, she cleaned a spot of Leti’s inner arm and shot her with it. Blood filled a cannula and mixed with some other liquid. Bayla popped it out and shook it. “We’ll know in a few minutes. It measures an early hormone.”
Leti’s brain couldn’t even function as she sat there waiting. Every time her thoughts came around to I might be pregnant it stalled and went dead.
After what seemed like an eternity, Bayla said. “Yes, you’re definitely pregnant. And it’s definitely Paal’s. See?” She showed her a readout Leti couldn’t understand, as she’d never been taught to read. “Daneth had Paal’s gene sequence in his database.” She grinned broadly. “You’re having a Zandian young, like me.”
Sweet mother earth. Pregnant!
“H-how old is the baby?”
Bayla grinned. “It’s not a baby yet. But I’d say no more than a planet rotation or two. It’s definitely Paal’s, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
Another sob went through her.
Paal.
The male she didn’t want to care about.
And a baby she’d couldn’t stop herself from loving.
What in the hell was happening to her?
Zander paced the dock of the galactacarrier. Three battleships had docked. He nodded to the pilots as they disembarked. His presence was important. He had to show them they were all in it together. That he didn’t send them out to risk their lives lightly. But he couldn’t think of a vecking thing to say to them.
And so no being spoke.
No one wanted to point out what had become painfully obvious.
Shanli had been a trick. A trap. A vecking mistake.
They’d waited in position through the night and into the next planet rotation, but the ships they’d identified on their radar weren’t there.
Zander had ordered the battleships out to fire at the places their maps showed the Finnian ships, but they weren’t cloaked.
They simply didn’t exist. Or they may exist, but they sure as stars weren’t anywhere near Shanli.
Which meant they were somewhere else.
Zandia.
And Seke didn’t have nearly enough laser power behind him to fight.
And he hadn’t answered any communication since that morning.