“You mean I’m going to infect pure Dinavri DNA with my human genes?”
“We need fresh blood. This is a small tribe and inbreeding is a real danger. You are here for a reason, even if it does not feel like it, and even though you may not understand it. You need to start trusting the universe. It has plans for you.”
He is so wise. But everything he says strongly implies that I am a passenger in my own life, and no matter how hot he is, or how much affection might be growing between us, I do not know if that is enough.
“Do I have a choice in any of this?”
The question is met with silence.
“Come along,” Sithren says a small handful of days later. I was looking forward to another long and tedious day of crushing grain with the other ladies and attempting to be slightly less outcast. That’s a lie. I was not looking forward to it. I hate living wild. I hate the subsistence lifestyle. I hate how there are no distractions from the only two things that have ever mattered to pack animals — friendship and family. I have little of one and almost none of the other.
“We can’t leave. Tethys will worry.” I know it won’t bother Tethys one bit. She has settled in here as if she lived here her entire life. She has a social alacrity I can only envy.
“Tethys is with her friends,” he says. “Don’t worry about her. Worry about yourself.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere.” I am finished bleeding, but the self pity remains.
“I am not asking,” he says. There is a flash of the old Sithren there. I remember when he was a tyrant and a monster. Now he’s a wild warrior, one of a group of males surviving against the elements together. And me? I’m a human feeling sorry for herself because all her dreams have been crushed or sacrificed.
He takes me away from the village, past the river, around the big rocks and to the west of the large trees. There we find a hot spring leaking up from the ground and forming what I can only describe as a pleasantly warm puddle.
“The village men say this is a fertility spring. If we make love here, you are guaranteed to conceive.”
“Wonderful. What do the village men say about my being human.”
"They are still concerned about your scalelessness,” Sithren admits. “But they say you are healthy and well-shaped, and hopefully our baby will have scales.”
“Charming.” I look around. “I guess you brought me out here for sex?”
“No. Well, perhaps, but no. I wanted to give you something privately, so there wouldn’t be any pressure on you as to whether or not you took it or not.”
Now I am curious.
“You have sacrificed everything,” he says. “Absolutely everything you were, everything you wanted. Now it is my turn. I have one last thing to give you.”
He presses a plastic box into my hand. There’s a red button underneath a plastic shield to stop it being pressed accidentally. It looks like a detonator.
“What is this?”
“It is an Authority communicator. All you need do is activate it, and an Authority ship will come for you. I will tell them who betrayed you and provide sufficient evidence. You will be able to keep your date with Vial 22-B.”
“There’s a way off this planet?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t come with me.”
It’s not a question. For Sithren to submit to the Authority would be for him to live the rest of his life as a political prisoner, and for Tethys to be at great risk of being used as a pawn. If I take this way out now, it will be the end of us.
He shakes his head, confirming what I already knew.
I am torn between the prospect of my much vaunted freedom, and the possibility that I will die here in the dirt like an animal never having had my own baby. It should be an easy choice. Why isn’t it a fucking easy choice?
“Thank you,” I say, stuffing it into my pocket. Yes, I still wear pants, no, I don’t care if it makes me look even weirder to the other ladies. I am not going to walk round with my nethers out so they can check for scales. This little device is a detonator, after all. It’s just the kind that blows up a life.
“Let’s walk back,” Sithren suggests. “I know you have a lot to think about, and I want this to be your choice. You’ve earned your freedom. You’ve paid me a thousand times what you ever owed. I want you to have the life you want. Not the one you are obligated to have.”
“Thank you,” I repeat.
We start walking back. It’s sort of all very anti-climactic.
“I thought you’d be happier,” he says, curiously. “I thought you would press the button as soon as you got it.”